The art of guiding spirits has several schools:
The Guiding School advocates, "Understand their attachments, resolve their obsessions, and guide them onward." Its followers believe in gentle guidance and that every soul deserves a chance to be understood. This school demands great empathy and patience. The process is slow, but it preserves the soul's integrity as much as possible and helps it pass on.
The Annihilation School advocates, "Identify their evil, stop their harm, and cut them off at the root." Its followers believe that any soul lingering in the mortal world is an anomaly, and if it has begun to harm people, it must be swiftly eliminated, for protecting the living comes first. This school is formidable in combat and decisive in its actions, but its victims' souls are often scattered, leaving them no chance of reincarnation.
The two schools have argued for a thousand years. Each has its reasons, and each has its limitations.
The Guiding School is often too gentle and misses its chance, allowing vengeful spirits to grow stronger. The Annihilation School, meanwhile, often kills too readily and mistakenly destroys wandering souls that could still have been saved.
Even so, these two schools, along with the other branches that later emerged, make up the secretive group known as "spirit guides," who walk the boundary between yin and yang.
They have no official appointments or fixed lineages. Their calling is often passed on through fate, talent, or blood ties.
They have witnessed the lonely dead weeping beneath the splendor of prosperous eras, and endured the surging resentment of souls amid the flames of war.
Most of them hide among ordinary people. They might be an old person sunning themselves on a street corner, an unremarkable student at school, or a young woman walking alone late at night.
They share only one thing: they can see. They can hear. And then they choose to "guide" or "slay."
