The battle was over.
The remnant shadows flew back into the clouds. The Candy Girl army descended from the sky and stopped all their activities.
The dark clouds parted, revealing sunlight that formed a magnificent pillar of light that descended from the sky.
The city that was illuminated by the light was speedily dispelled, but it didn't return to its original state. Instead, it began to collapse.
It was time to wake up from this dream.
Seiji and Mayuzumi weren't in a hurry to leave. Instead, they stayed together with Ling Yang and waited for her to stop crying and calm down.
"Brother Harano …"
"Let me introduce you. This is Little Ling Yang, and this is Mayuzumi Amami," Seiji indicated.
"For such a long time, you've always treated her as your mother … don't you think you should say something to her?"
Ling Yang looked towards Mayuzumi.
"I'm sorry … for causing trouble for you." The little girl bowed and apologized.
"It's fine."
Mayuzumi smiled gently and squatted down in front of her.
"Ling Yang, you said goodbye to your mother properly. You were so strong."
The little girl had a pained expression, but she didn't cry again.
Mayuzumi reached out and gently patted her head.
"This child gave you so much trouble. It's not something that can be forgiven so easily, Sensei …" Seiji sighed.
"… Forget it. Since Sensei doesn't mind, I won't say anything else."
"Little Ling Yang, you did a good job in sending your mother off," he told her seriously.
"Brother Harano …" Ling Yang looked towards him again.
"I've been dreaming for so long. It's time to wake up." Seiji smiled. "Let's meet in real life."
Sunlight shone down on them.
The three of them were enveloped in the light.
…
Seiji opened his eyes.
"Brother!" he heard Little Shi calling out to him.
"Mayuzumi!" he also heard Editor Yoshizawa calling out to him.
He looked to his right and saw that the manga author had opened her eyes.
They exchanged glances and smiled at each other.
Then, Seiji looked to his left.
He saw that Ling Yang was also slowly opening her eyes.
Seeing the scene in the room, the little girl had a blank look on her face.
"Welcome back, Little Ling Yang," Seiji said to her.
…
Tachibana Ling Yang's only clear memory of reality was that he and his uncle Shouhei Hirai went to visit Seiji's grave, and that was when he went to bed that night.
From the looks of it, while she was sleeping or dreaming, she activated a mysterious power that caused Hirai, who lived under the same roof as her, to become like that and even attack Mayuzumi.
As for herself, she vaguely remembered that she seemed to have gone to many places to look for her mother, and then she found her …
Well, to put it simply, Tachibana Ling Yang was sleepwalking!
Seiji sleepwalked and found Mayuzumi, who also possessed a mysterious power.
The little girl couldn't say anything about this energy. She had no idea why this energy was in her body or how it was activated.
After all, he was just a child.
It had been such a long time … She had forgotten most of the dreams during the mental time. She could only remember the rough scenes of her life and the important things.
It was the same for Seiji and Mayuzumi. After they woke up and tried to recall what happened during the mental time, they felt that their memories were hazy.
Summer Night and the others were astonished at how long the three of them had spent in the soul realm.
Everyone had been quite worried when they lost contact with Seiji, but Summer Night was certain that Seiji was fine. She didn't know what would happen if they suddenly stopped the spell.
After comparing the two, and everyone's trust in Seiji, they decided not to stop the spell for the time being. Instead, they tried their best to reconnect with him.
The results proved that this was the correct decision. However, they never expected that Seiji and the others had actually spent such a long time in the soul realm!
"I've heard that masters of soul spells are able to cast a spell that allows one's spiritual sense to stay in the soul realm for a relatively long period of time." The Grand Mistress sighed. "It would seem that the mysterious power has a similar effect."
This effect … it would be great if they could make good use of it, but if they didn't …
Seiji was glad that this time's experience was within an acceptable range. If the time ratio was even larger, such as one minute in the real world being equivalent to one year in the soul realm, then it would really be …
At any rate, it was fine as long as they survived.
After working so hard, apart from helping Ling Yang regain consciousness, they also understood the reason for Mayuzumi's nightmares as well as her androphobia.
It was because more than ten years of frightening spiritual experiences had left a deep psychological shadow on her, and she was stimulated by the mysterious power, which caused her to recall it.
They didn't know how to deal with the mysterious power, but if they could completely seal these memories, they should stop having nightmares, and their androphobia would be cured.
Summer Night indicated that they could give it a try.
"After listening to your experiences, I feel that the key to activating the mysterious power lies in the owner's spirit … in other words, emotions, intentions, willpower, and so on.
"After Ling Yang Tachibana went to visit her mother's grave, she had a strong desire to see her deceased mother again, which activated the power and caused this incident.
"In the soul realm, whenever she strongly denied something, a dark phenomenon would appear, and when she stopped denying something and fell into despair, an undead tide would appear.
"The specific principle is unclear, but the cause and effect relationship is quite obvious. This power will act according to the owner's thoughts.
"From this, I can infer that as long as she maintains a calm mind and properly controls her emotions, it won't activate.
"That is to say, as long as Amami-san maintains a calm mind and accepts my spell, it should be possible to successfully seal her memories."
There was no time to lose.
Mayuzumi had already suffered far too many nightmares in her soul realm. She had only managed to survive because of her strong will.
While she was "sick," the sickly appearance that Ling Yang saw wasn't all fake.
He needed to seal those frightening memories as soon as possible.
Before that, there was one last thing that he wanted to talk about, as well as the biggest and scariest mystery of all, and that was...
Just who was this "Hinako Tachibana"?
Was she really Ling Yang Tachibana's mother, the one who had already passed away one year ago? Or was it just some sort of incredibly realistic illusion?
Both Seiji and Mayuzumi were inclined to believe that it was the former since they had personally witnessed it.
If that was the case, then the mysterious power had the powerful ability to summon the dead!
This was different from summoning heroic spirits. Heroic spirits were existences born from collective knowledge, not the souls of real people in history.
This was also different from summoning a ghost that was formed after a person died. That was a person's soul, or a part of their soul, that remained in the real world for some reason and was summoned by a spell.
The mysterious power was summoning a soul that had already been reincarnated and left the real world!
What did this mean?
This meant that the barrier between life and death had been broken!
This was a serious matter. Although in some anime and television shows, this seemed quite easy to accomplish, as if it wasn't a big deal at all. A typical example would be Naruto's Obsidian Reincarnation technique …
But this was actually quite a frightening matter.
People could still come back to life after death.
This meant that …
Immortality.
Revival.
Immortality.
This would definitely drive many people insane!
Even the slightest possibility would cause a frightening battle.
There was no need to think too deeply about it. Anyone with a normal brain would realize how serious this matter was.
This definitely couldn't be revealed.
Summer Night warned everyone in a serious tone.
Little Shi, Mai, and Saki were all trustworthy people.
The biggest factor of all was … Ling Yang Tachibana, who was still an elementary school student.
"Little Ling Yang, you can't tell anyone else about this, because this is an important secret. If you tell anyone, the consequences might be severe."
Seiji told the little girl in a serious tone.
"You can't even tell your uncle, because there's no benefit to him knowing, and it might only put him in danger.
Don't worry about how you're going to tell your uncle about what happened today, I'll tell him for you. As long as you promise me that you'll keep this a secret. "
Actually, there was another method, which was to seal away Ling Yang's memories related to this.
But that would make her forget about meeting and saying goodbye to her mother.
That wouldn't be good, and he couldn't do that.
It was important to keep this a secret, but so was the precious bond between mother and daughter.
Ling Yang looked directly at his face.
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