The white and elegant funeral hall overflowed with celebrities and industry elites, all gathered to bid farewell to Chu Xiaxing, the famous director. Dressed in somber attire, they formed a solemn procession, each taking their turn to pay respects before her portrait. With heavy hearts, they offered condolences to her grieving relatives.
As Chu Xiaxing had no husband or children, her niece, Han Chuning, oversaw the funeral arrangements. The twenty-four-year-old's face was etched with sorrow, her eyes dimmed with grief. Although Chu Xiaxing was her aunt, their bond ran far deeper, no less than that of mother and daughter, which naturally hit her hard.
Mustering her strength, Han Chuning received the endless stream of mourners. Chu Xiaxing's reputation was quite high in the circle so a large crowd of both men and women came to pay their respects.
"Had Director Chu not promoted me back then, who knows where I'd be now? She's truly a great director—a trailblazer for women, every bit as capable as any man..." As the man spoke, his eyes reddened. He suddenly wailed and cried out, "Director—Xiao Wang has come to see you—"
Han Chuning watched helplessly as the man crumpled to the ground in tears. She felt a little overwhelmed and tears welled up in her own eyes. When the other mourners saw such raw grief, they held back their words of comfort. The man who was crying on the ground had worked with Chu Xiaxing for many years, they only thought that he had a close bond with Director Chu.
"Cut the crap about 'trailblazer'. Didn't seem to remember my trailblazing and your promotion when you were screwing me over." Chu Xiaxing lazily drifted past the wailing Xiao Wang, his cries grating on her nerves. She floated back to the middle near the ceiling, muttering, "If you have the guts, come down to see me ah. You even added a role to yourself..."
Chu Xiaxing was now a spirit, she was patrolling over her own funeral from above. Listening to the crying and wailing below, she felt quite upset.
She did not feel grief over her own death. Sixty years of life had seasoned her, broadened her perspective. At her age, she had come to terms with many things. Funerals were just formalities after all.
After drifting aimlessly through the hall, she felt bored and wanted to float away with the wind. The sincere tears of her relatives and friends weighed heavily on her heart, while the theatrical displays of the passers-by fueled her annoyance. She just wanted to hammer the heads of these hypocrites.
Because she had worked in the world of fame and fortune all her life, even in death, at her own farewell, the theatrics continued unabated. She'd seen friendships crumble over ambitions, and had also reconciled with her competitors. Now everyone seemed to have forgotten the past love-hate entanglements, and gathered here to mourn her, their sincerity questionable at best.
In life, Chu Xiaxing had been both loved and hated, but after her death, she was deified because of her achievements. She became a perfect person in the history of cinema.
She had no desire to listen to the endless praises being heaped upon her. She simply floated away leisurely, flying freely into the vast expanse of the sky, without even looking back.
She felt that being a wandering soul was quite interesting. She also met many wandering souls who had just passed away. Together, they floated in the sky, waiting for the moment when they would return home for the last time on the seventh day after their passing. It was said that after this final farewell, their spirits would naturally dissipate.
"Why does that one look different from us?" Chu Xiaxing looked at the golden-white souls around her that looked like a river of stars, but she found a light blue alien among them, so she was naturally quite curious. She had always been very courageous and spoke frankly. Even if she didn't know the surrounding souls, she likewise dared to open her mouth and ask questions.
"Ah, that one's a living soul. It must have gotten accidentally mixed in…" The soul next to her actually answered.
"A living soul?"
"Yes, the body is still alive, but the soul has somehow separated. If it doesn't return soon, their physical body will die."
Chu Xiaxing was taken aback. "You seem to know a lot about this. What did you do when you were alive?"
The soul who answered was embarrassed, "This humble Daoist knows a thing or two."
His self-proclaimed title gave Chu Xiaxing an idea. This soul must have been a Daoist in his life. "Clearly, you only know a 'thing or two', otherwise, you wouldn't be stuck here with us," she teased.
Chu Xiaxing: Aren't people who practice metaphysics supposed to be immortals?
The Daoist soul said helplessly, "Transcending life and death is a heavenly cultivation. This humble Daoist also naturally has to experience birth, aging, sickness and death..."
Chu Xiaxing: "How long can a living soul be out of the body?"
Daoist soul: "For ordinary people, it can only be one or two hours at most. If it is longer, their lives will be in danger."
Chu Xiaxing was stunned when she heard this. She immediately floated down to find the living soul while saying, "Then we need to get it out of here! It'll die if it stays with us!"
The Daoist soul: "Aiya, living souls are mostly mentally unstable. It might even think you're meddling in their business."
Normal people's souls would not leave the body. Living souls that leave the body basically have some problems, and may have been seeking death for a long time.
As soon as the Daoist soul finished speaking, Chu Xiaxing had already floated far away, and her domineering voice was still carried back by the wind, "I don't care what it thinks, I care what I think!"
A Scorpio through and through, Chu Xiaxing had always been a woman of strong desire for control during her lifetime. In life, she ruled her film sets with an iron fist, giving orders and saying whatever she wanted on the set, directing everyone around her. Her niece, Han Chuning, had grown accustomed to her aunt's firm hand since childhood, not to mention the other subordinates she met at work, all of whom were pieces on her chessboard, moved according to her grand design.
The thought of being labeled "meddling" didn't faze Chu Xiaxing in the slightest. If she felt something was wrong, she wouldn't hesitate to get involved. With that in mind, she went straight to the fading blue soul.
The faint, blue light flickered weakly amidst the vast river of golden-white souls.
Above them, countless souls danced across the sky, like a mysterious and magnificent painting, or like a mystical and surreal fantasy dream.
The blue soul sobbed uncontrollably, consumed by despair. It saw no reason to continue living, believing death to be the only escape from its pain. True to her nature, Chu Xiaxing took a direct approach. First, she gave the blue soul a violent beating, then persuaded it for a long time with earnest words, fed it a lot of chicken soup for life. Finally, she managed to quell the soul's cries for death.
Regrettably, although the blue soul gave up the idea of death, it also lost track of time in the long drifting. It had no idea how to return to its physical body.
"I suppose this is fate. Even though I can't find my way back, there are still people willing to persuade me to live before I completely fade away. That's enough for me…"
"I'm sorry, but I'm not actually a person anymore, just a soul." Chu Xiaxing watched as the blue living soul grew dimmer and dimmer, she couldn't help but anxiously say, "Wait, there must still be a way, where's that Daoist soul just now?"
The Taoist soul drifted closer, and said helplessly, "I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. A living person needs to call out its name for it to find its way back. We're all dead souls. We can't help."
"No one will call my name anymore. My mother is gone. I have no home," The blue soul's tone was low. "Just let it be. I was scared of the pain of slitting my wrists anyway. It's not so bad to disappear in this way..."
Chu Xiaxing watched helplessly as the blue soul continued to dissipate in the wind. Though she was now a soul herself, she felt uncomfortable when she saw the disappearance of the living soul so she asked, "Girl, what's your name?"
While trying to persuade the blue soul earlier, Chu Xiaxing had heard some things from the other party. She always felt that the soul was still a young girl. While her own funeral had left her unmoved, she couldn't bear to see the death of a young child.
"My name is Chu Xiaxin."
"Xiaxin? Xiaxing? Our names are so similar. What a strange coincidence." Chu Xiaxing murmured the name to herself. "Chu Xiaxin, Chu Xiaxin…"
As she repeated the blue soul's name, she watched in shock as it flickered brightly, like a firework, before vanishing completely into the air, never to find its way back.
"Thank you for calling my name."
Those were the last words of the blue soul before it dissipated, which made Chu Xiaxing feel quite frustrated.
She hovered in the air for a long while before rejoining the other souls, returning to the main group of the departed.
Chu Xiaxing felt like she had been having a long dream. In the dream, she was a formless golden-white soul, colliding with the blue soul in the air, forcing the other to return to its original body, only to end up regretfully watching it dissipate.
"Chu Xiaxing! Chu Xiaxing! Wake up!"
What a nuisance…
"Are you crazy? If you want to die, do it somewhere else!"
"Chu Xiaxing—"
Jolted awake by the harsh voice, Chu Xiaxing opened her eyes in annoyance, wondering who dared to call her by her full name, and in such an impolite tone, only to realize that she was lying in a bathtub, and her body felt weak and soft. She was in a small, closed bathroom, and the person standing over her wasn't her niece, Han Chuning, but a rather ordinary-looking stranger.
Seeing her regain consciousness, the woman, her agent Xiao Cheng, breathed a sigh of relief, before launching into furious curses, "Chu Xiaxing! Are you out of your mind? Like you haven't caused enough of a stir already! Now you're even going to play the wrist-slashing game?'
"Let me tell you, don't pull these non-mainstream teenage girl stunts. Lying in the bathtub bleeding with all that melancholic drama—you do know the success rate for wrist-cutting su*cides is only 20%, right? You're more likely to end up with a permanent disability…"
Chu Xiaxing stared down at her pale wrist in a daze, noticing several thin, white scars where the bleeding had stopped. Chu Xiaxin had mentioned being afraid of pain. When she talked about wrist-cutting before, she had been sternly taught by Chu Xiaxing in a long and serious manner.
Clearly, Chu Xiaxin didn't succeed in slitting her wrist, but ended up disappearing due to her living soul leaving her body.
The memory of the blue soul, coupled with her own bizarre circumstances, left Chu Xiaxing feeling dazed and disoriented.
"Chu Xiaxing, are you even listening to me?" Xiao Cheng, exasperated by her blank eyes, immediately spoke impatiently to remind her.
"It's Chu Xiaxin," Chu Xiaxing corrected. Her head was aching from the roar of the woman. She subconsciously wanted to rub her temples in an attempt to ease the throbbing in her head but the movement pulled at the wound on her wrist, causing her to wince. It was starting to dawn on her just how strange this situation was. There were not many little girls in this world with similar names to her who still slit their wrists that too at the coincidental time.
Agent Xiao Cheng froze, "What?"
Chu Xiaxing raised an eyebrow at her, and slanted her a glance, and said faintly. "Chu Xiaxin. It's Xin, not Xing. You can't distinguish the nasal sounds in both?"
The woman didn't pronounce the name correctly from the start, which led Chu Xiaxing to believe someone was calling for her. This whole situation was simply outrageous. Somehow, she had been pulled into this body, while no one called the soul Chu Xiaxin back and so the living soul had been left to fade away.
Chu Xiaxing was now suffering from an occupational disease. She just couldn't stand the mispronunciation and would feel uncomfortable all over. Even in this age of voice-overs and dubbing, she couldn't tolerate actors forgetting their lines, let alone directly mispronouncing them.
Chu Xiaxing: The girl's soul is gone, and you can't even get her name right!
Xiao Cheng was blocked by the other party and then said angrily, "Chu Xiaxing, are you kidding me right now?"
Realizing she wasn't on a film set, she gave in and said, "Forget it, you seem to be too clumsy to pronounce this sound, so I won't force it..."
"Six hours I spent trying to reach you, only to find you fooling around in the house! If you want to die so badly, go ahead! I don't care! Just don't do it in the company's rented apartment! It's bad luck!" Xiao Cheng was half dead angry by the other party's attitude. She originally had an average relationship with Chu Xiaxin, at first she was really afraid that the artist would die in the bathtub. Now that she saw that the other party had recovered her spirits and was still talking back, she instantly reverted back to her old self.
She slammed a folder down on the table, unwilling to waste any more time on the scandal-ridden actress, and stormed out, slamming the door behind her.
Chu Xiaxing dizzily climbed out of the bathtub. The cuts on her wrists had stopped bleeding, but she could feel the effects of the blood loss. She wasn't about to ask for help from a stranger who clearly didn't care, and she knew nothing about Chu Xiaxin's life or the people in it, so she'd better have less contact with these people.
Chu Xiaxing would only seek help from the people she trusted the most. She walked around the cramped house, found Chu Xiaxin's mobile phone, dialed the number she knew by heart, and then heard Han Chuning's familiar albeit depressed voice.
"Hello?" Han Chuning was busy with Chu Xiaxing's funeral recently. She was in a low mood and her voice was hoarse.
Chu Xiaxing said calmly: "Hey, Ningning, it's your aunt. You hurry to call a taxi over to pick me up, I'm at......."
Chu Xiaxing hesitantly looked around, she also did not know where this place was, and looked confused for a moment. "Actually, I don't know where I am either. I'll send you the location once I figure it out. Oh, and bring some stir-fried pork liver and celery with lily bulbs. And no chili peppers in the pork liver. It's not good for wound healing."
"..." Han Chuning listened to the unfamiliar female voice on the phone, and the other party claimed to be her aunt, Chu Xiaxing. She was stunned and a little overwhelmed for a moment, feeling the deep malice of life.
Han Chuning: I'm grieving the loss of my aunt, and some insensitive stranger decides to shamelessly prank call me with this ridiculous ghost story?
Chu Xiaxing looked at the wrist injury and continued to nag, "By the way, take me to the hospital later. I want to make sure there's no permanent damage…"
Han Chuning thought that the other party might be sick in the head. Everyone knew that her aunt had just passed away, and there were still people who dared to bang their heads on the gun. She said unhappily: "I don't know what you're trying to pull, but I think your behavior is quite distasteful. This is not a laughing matter!"
Han Chuning: My aunt is gone, and you're still playing god!
The next second, Han Chuning decisively hung up the phone. She had always been well-mannered to curse dirty, and she had no desire to entertain this prankster any longer.
This was the first time that Chu Xiaxing was hung up by her beloved niece. She stared at the phone in her hand, stunned. "?" This little kid's rebellious period came suddenly?
Chu Xiaxing angrily called back. It was rare for her to be disobeyed by a younger generation. She said angrily: "Who told you that people can't see ghosts? Didn't I come here to let you see it!?"
Han Chuning: "..."
[Translator's Note: xīn in chǔxiàxīn means wick like in lamp or candle wick, and xīng in chǔxiàxīng means star.]