"Qingyun, my… my grandson, is he alright?" the village chief asked softly after I had examined the last of the children.
I shook my head, not answering immediately, as the situation seemed too bizarre.
The four children's body temperatures were lower than normal, their pupils constricted and vertically slit. There were blueish lines beneath their whites, symptoms of a lost soul, suggesting a fragment of their spirit had been seized by an evil entity.
This put me in a difficult position.
Although I could identify the children's symptoms, I couldn't resolve them. I had studied the Yin Gua, which allowed me to divine for Yin souls and locate the remains of a deceased person's relatives for the living.
When living people lost a soul fragment, my master would usually help them find it. If it were a common soul loss, it would be easy. One would simply need an item of clothing belonging to the person who lost their soul, go to the place where it was lost, and call their name as the sun began to set. The soul would naturally follow the clothing back.
However, the symptoms of these children were clearly not ordinary soul loss. In typical soul loss, pupils dilate, eyes become unfocused, and the body feels weak, but it doesn't lead to a coma.
These children were different. Not only were they comatose, but their pupils were vertically slit. Human pupils are round, and only felines and cold-blooded animals possess vertical pupils.
This indicated that these children had not merely lost their souls in the usual way; they had likely been deliberately taken by an evil entity.
Seeing that I remained silent after my examination, the village chief grew anxious. His voice trembled with a hint of tears as he grabbed my hand, "Qingyun, you… you speak! What's wrong with my grandson…"
"Yes! What's wrong with