"Mr. Song, step back." Jian Xi pinched out a few talisman papers and threw them out together. The talisman papers flew to various parts of the room and hovered in mid-air, encircling 'Song Min'.
Song Zhou retreated from the room and stood not far away, at a position where he could clearly see 'Song Min' frantically flailing in the air.
Jian Xi produced several sheets of pre-cut yellow paper from thin air, along with a wolf-hair brush.
She calmly distributed the yellow papers to Tang Xingyou and the others, "Help me tear them, let's start with thirty." A paper person takes two minutes, so thirty would be an hour, enough time.
While pricking her finger with a silver needle to draw a drop of blood and dipping the wolf-hair brush into it, she took the first little paper person handed to her by Nie Xiujin and dotted his forehead, "Ethereal and spirit-like, highest jade clarity, aid the imperiled, paper soldiers cut, three souls to the left, seven spirits to the right, rise swiftly, obey my commands."
As the words fell, the little paper person instantly came to 'life'. Jian Xi uttered a sentence, "Go, drag that parasitic ghost out for me!"
The little paper person 'understood' and ran straight towards 'Song Min'.
"The mysteries of heaven and earth, the vast primordial chaos, the waxing and waning of sun and moon, the arrayed stars..."
Jian Xi took out her peach wood sword and tapped 'Song Min' on the shoulder.
The now completely immobilized 'Song Min' let out a horrifying scream, causing Song Zhou outside the door to shudder, his heart wrenched as if gripped by an unseen force!
For the scream he had heard was definitely not his daughter's voice, but that of someone else's!
Jian Xi sheathed her peach wood sword, and the first little paper person crawled up 'Song Min's' body to the spot Jian Xi had tapped, less than a centimeter from her shoulder. It immediately sank its teeth in and started twisting and pulling outwards!
Nie Xiujin and the others stopped tearing the paper people, staring dumbfounded at the slowly retreating little paper person and the parasitic ghost letting out agonizing screams in sync with its movements.
Yes, a parasitic ghost, not Song Min.
Now in their eyes, Song Min's face had another face on it, that of another young woman with a ghastly pale complexion and heavy goth makeup, her panda-like eye makeup more twisted in pain!
"Keep tearing, we'll run out soon!"
Jian Xi's voice snapped them back, and they startled before hastening their paper-tearing pace.
When she took the second paper person from Lin Xi Wen, Jian Xi dotted its forehead again and recited the incantation, sending it scurrying to relieve the first paper person.
Nie Xiujin made a note - one paper person took about two minutes.
As Jian Xi took the third paper person from Tang Xingyou, she said to her, "Xingyou, watch carefully. When you practice this later, you must pay attention - you don't just dot the cinnabar directly. You need to do it like this, like this, and like this, with swift and fluid motions in one go, or it will fail. Understand?"
"Also, when reciting the incantation, you must calm your heart and coordinate with your magic weapon. The magic weapons contain spiritual energy that can empower the spell."
The parasitic ghost: ...Are you people even polite?
Soon they had gone through the instructions for the paper person technique. At this point, the fifth paper person was already 'working'.
The group carefully noted down the method and incantation for the paper person technique. It sounded simple, but to truly master it would undoubtedly take a year or two, perhaps even three to five years!
Suddenly, there was a knock at the main door. "Hello, police. We received a noise complaint about this residence!"
Song Zhou panicked - if he opened the door, the police would surely discover what Jian Xi was doing and it would cause her trouble. What should he do?
As he racked his brain, Jian Xi called out "Fan, could you handle this?"
The reason Jian Xi didn't ask Qi Yunzheng, who was closest to the door, was that among them, Fan was the clumsiest at tearing the paper people - his looked utterly disfigured!
Glancing at the still incessantly screaming parasitic ghost, Jian Xi resignedly took out a noise-canceling talisman she had invented from her bracelet and affixed it to the half of the ghost's head that had been pulled out.
Instantly, the room fell silent.
With no noise, Fan simply took out his ID at the door. "The Special Security Bureau is conducting an operation here. It'll be over soon, apologies for the trouble."
The two beat cops examined Fan's ID, returned it to him with a salute, and left without further questions.
Song Zhou, who had accompanied Fan, was astonished. The people following Jian Xi were official agents? He wasn't blind - that was clearly a police badge on the ID!
So the nation had a department for handling these kinds of matters?
Was Jian Xi also an official agent?
Noticing the dazed Song Zhou, Fan took out his phone, tapped it a few times, and handed it to him. "Sign this, please, Mr. Song." They had all heard Jian Xi address him as such earlier, so they knew his surname was Song.
Taking the phone from Fan with both hands, Song Zhou saw it displayed the four large characters: Confidentiality Agreement.
He read through the dense terms and conditions before finally signing.
Meanwhile, on Jian Xi's side, they were on the twentieth paper person already. By the nineteenth paper person, Jian Xi had noticed that she seemed to be controlling them for longer periods, so she reset the timer on the twentieth.
Though somewhat fatigued, she was exceptionally excited, for her control time had increased from two minutes to five minutes!
Was this a result of practice making perfect?
Prior to today, she had only used this paper person technique from her ancestral secret manual a handful of times in total. Today, however, the process of exorcising this parasitic ghost had inadvertently sharpened her skills!
She celebrated inwardly, completely oblivious to the looks Nie Xiujin and the others were giving her - they seemed to be staring at some kind of 'monster'. To continuously improve while expending so much mental effort, how was that even possible?
This was just unfair!
Jian Xi pondered for a moment, then took all the remaining paper people into her hands, dotting each one with a drop of her blood. She wanted to test something - if one paper person could be controlled for five minutes, could five paper people be controlled together for one minute?
While one referred to quality and the other to quantity, the difference between the two was worlds apart.
Controlling one paper person for five minutes only required a single portion of her mental focus. But to control five paper people simultaneously, although the time was reduced, she would need to split her consciousness into five parts.
Only mystic cultivators like them could appreciate the immense difficulty involved!
