Prologue

Black Robe Number Four was the most silent of all the Black Robes, and also the shortest. From her voice alone, she was a woman.

There was something about Number Four that differed from the other Black Robes — an unusual coldness that emanated from her, the kind that discouraged any warm-blooded creature from drawing near.

Tonight’s story began before a bonfire.

It must be said that Number Four’s decision to move the storytelling from inside the tent to outside it was a wise one. To sit and listen to a creature like her tell a story, it was most fitting to have a pile of hot and blazing flames nearby as a counterbalance.

Moreover, Number Four was not one for superfluous words. She spoke no preamble, offered no preparation, only gazed at the leaping firelight and began to speak, at a pace neither hurried nor slow —

“That you love me is no concern of mine.”

The detached voice dissolved gradually into the boundless dark, as the singular fragrance of Grüner Veltliner wine quietly settled into the room.

Beyond the window, a bell rang out through the still and frozen night air — resonant and clear.

A soft sigh drifted out in the space between the tolling, its mingled amusement and sorrow equally balanced.

At this hour, the old year and the new exchanged places amid the happiness of most and the solitude of a few…

1

Situ Yuebo had his arm around Zhong Xu’s shoulders, taking in the view.

Looking out from the north tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the scenery of Vienna spread in its entirety below them. Amid the prosperity of the old city, modern buildings occasionally interspersed themselves, and the two completely contrary styles, rather than clashing, complemented each other to unexpected effect.

“It’s absolutely beautiful!” Zhong Xu clicked her tongue in admiration, shaking her husband’s arm with excitement. “Darling, let’s stay a few more days!”

“A few more days?!” Situ Yuebo affected a look of disdain as he gazed outward, his face deliberately critical. “I’d rather not. What does Vienna have to offer besides building after building? It can’t compete with Egypt’s ancient history, Egypt’s magnificent scenery, or the Nile…”

Zhong Xu punched him in the chest. “Stop mimicking what I said!” she growled. “Didn’t I already accept your suggestion and come to Vienna first?”

Situ Yuebo laughed and pulled his wife closer.

Vienna was the first stop on their honeymoon. Originally Zhong Xu had insisted with all her might on Egypt as the top choice, only to be vetoed by Situ Yuebo on the grounds that African destinations ought to be saved for last, otherwise they would both be burnt as dark as the faces on toothpaste advertisements and ruin their photographs. After some back and forth, Zhong Xu had ultimately yielded to his idea and come first to this city renowned across the world as a musical capital. Just as Situ Yuebo had predicted before their departure — “Once you go, you’ll fall in love with it” — within fewer than forty-eight hours of arriving, the cathedrals blending intricate Gothic and Romanesque styles, the neat and distinctive promenades, the coffee houses to be found everywhere, even the goddess sculptures and fountains before the Parliament building, the wonderful foreignness of it all had roused in Zhong Xu boundless curiosity and delight, and she felt increasingly that such a beautiful city was well worth lingering in for a few more days.

“It’s getting late — let’s head back.” Situ Yuebo watched the languid golden glow along the horizon and took the still-entranced Zhong Xu by the hand toward the elevator. “Didn’t Sabina say she’d be making you some of her specially-made grape pastries tonight?”

Zhong Xu paused, as though she had completely forgotten, then nodded in rapid succession. “Right, right! I nearly forgot completely! Her pastries are so good — my mouth is watering just thinking about them!”

Sabina was the proprietress of the inn where they were staying — a kindly, stout Austrian woman of some years who always wore a plaid apron. Since tasting the complimentary after-dinner treat she had been given that first time, Zhong Xu had become a devoted admirer of the old woman’s cooking. Faced with this Chinese girl who so appreciated her culinary skill, Sabina was delighted, and had promised to make extra pastries that evening so Zhong Xu could eat her fill.

The moment pastries came to mind, the scenery she could neither eat nor drink was immediately relegated to secondary importance, and Zhong Xu began urging Situ Yuebo to hurry back to the inn.

The elevator descended at its steady pace, and the couple exchanged impressions of their day’s excursion. In the midst of their lively conversation, Zhong Xu’s gaze, which had been ranging about, fell on a slender figure standing behind them.

A loose black athletic jacket enveloped a tall, lean body. A wide-brimmed black hat was pulled low over a bowed head, the figure leaning against the cold interior wall, one hand lifting the already deeply pulled brim even lower from time to time. At a glance, nothing was visible save a pair of lips somewhat lacking in color and a sharp chin, along with a few strands of hair that fell to shoulder-level — silver.

They were the only three people in this elevator car. During their exploration of the tower earlier, neither Situ Yuebo nor Zhong Xu had noticed this particular figure among the tourists around them. As the elevator descended, Situ Yuebo looked back twice to study this person who stood with their head bowed in unbroken silence. As for Zhong Xu, she had been staring at the figure in puzzlement for some time, a faint sense of strangeness nagging at her without her being able to name the reason.

The elevator arrived at the ground floor with a chime. The couple stepped out hand in hand, yet they heard not a single footstep behind them to indicate the person had left the elevator as well. After they had walked a short distance, Zhong Xu could bear it no longer and spun around abruptly, peering through the gaps between a group of tourists who had just stepped in. She clearly saw the figure still standing exactly where they had been, still holding the brim of their hat.

The elevator doors slid slowly shut and the car began to rise again.

“Do adults also like riding elevators for fun?” Zhong Xu looked at her husband, mystified.

Situ Yuebo shrugged. “Maybe that’s their peculiar habit.”

“But… I keep feeling something isn’t right…” Zhong Xu was still looking back. “That person seems to have some kind of quality unlike ordinary humans…”

“Darling, don’t forget the agreement we made before we left!” Situ Yuebo hooked a finger under her chin and turned her head forward, cutting off her spirited analysis, his expression becoming serious. “Put your professional instincts away!”

“You…” Zhong Xu was on the verge of arguing, but when she saw her husband’s earnest and serious expression, she lowered her obstinate head and said an unhappy “fine.”

Before they had left China, they had established a gentleman’s agreement: during the honeymoon, Zhong Xu was not to use her “family duty” as grounds to act against any demons, monsters, or spirits they might chance to encounter along the way — unless it was a genuine malevolent entity, in which case some discretion might be exercised. When you found yourself married to a formidable wife who took pride in being a descendant of Zhong Kui, considered the vanquishing of evil her life’s calling, and stood in mortal opposition to every malevolent spirit in existence, arranging such an agreement in advance was entirely necessary if you wanted to pass a sweet and peaceful honeymoon without being disrupted by incantations, talismans, barriers, and all the assorted destructive fallout these things tended to produce. Situ Yuebo could manage his vast Sheng Tang Group with perfect ease, yet he was perpetually troubled by his own wife. In the past, if she wanted to vanquish demons and subdue evil, he had let her do as she pleased — but now, he was absolutely determined not to see his honeymoon swallowed up in a chaos of lurking shadows and flashing blades and talismans flying through the air. As long as it wasn’t some malevolent spirit out to harm people, he would simply look the other way.

Stepping out of the cathedral, Situ Yuebo stretched a contented and leisurely stretch, then turned to look at Zhong Xu, still pouting in discontent, and smiled. “Is it not nice to take a rest? Haven’t you had enough battles already? Don’t forget, your primary battleground is China. Foreign mischief — let them deal with it themselves. Besides, this is a cathedral. I imagine no evil spirit would wander freely in and out of here. Don’t overthink it. That was probably just a person with unusual habits.”

“Vanquishing evil knows no national borders!” Zhong Xu shot him a glare, and said in a muffled voice, “Fine, since I promised not to act unless absolutely necessary, I’ll endure this one! Let’s go eat!”

Situ Yuebo kissed her forehead in satisfaction. “That’s my good girl!” he said, and promptly hailed one of the open horse-drawn carriages distinctive to Vienna, pointing at the charming vehicle with its wheels painted red. “Let’s take this Fiacre through the inner city — we can enjoy the cityscape some more. Then we’ll drive back to Meidling.”

“Fiacre?” Zhong Xu, whose grasp of foreign languages was limited, repeated the word, looking at the carriage. “Is that this?”

Situ Yuebo nodded with a smile. “Yes — it’s actually French for…”

“Alright, alright! I know you speak multiple languages fluently — please don’t give me a lecture!” Zhong Xu’s greatest dread was her self-professedly learned husband putting on his teacher’s face. She quickly stuck out her tongue to change the subject and scrambled up into the carriage.

The white-bearded driver in a bowler hat looked at them with a face full of warmth and welcome. Though he could not understand a word this Chinese couple was saying, beautiful people always drew an extra glance, and the Situ couple was certainly well within the standards of attracting attention. Had the driver spoken Mandarin, he might well have said something like “a perfectly matched pair” in admiration.

Situ Yuebo gave their destination to the driver in fluent German. The four-wheeled carriage glided lightly over the ground, carrying the couple in good spirits forward at a gentle, unhurried pace, the horses’ hooves producing a steady and pleasant clatter.

Leaning against Situ Yuebo, Zhong Xu studied the sights along the way with great interest — distinctive little plazas, thriving taverns, and coffee houses scattered here and there. The streets of Vienna seemed to be saturated everywhere with music, light and floating, unhurried and leisurely — a feeling that defied description.

Rounding a corner, Zhong Xu’s gaze fell on an open-air café to the left. At this hour the customers were few, and most of the tables covered in their tasteful checkered cloths sat empty, save for one. It was at this sole occupied table that her eyes became fixed —

The strange figure they had met in the elevator was sitting motionlessly before the table, a full cup of coffee placed in front of them, showing no sign of having been touched. The brim of the hat was still pulled low. Judging by the angle of their gaze, the person was staring at the ten fingers crossed and resting on the table. The light falling from above landed on that black-clad figure and brought out no warmth whatsoever — only a greater coldness.

“Darling, darling! Look over there!” Zhong Xu tugged at Situ Yuebo and pointed back at the café that was now falling behind them. “How did that strange person in black end up over there?!”

Situ Yuebo turned to look carefully, then smiled with easy unconcern. “They probably drove here. Of course they’d be faster than our horse carriage.”

“Something is off — I’m sure something is off. I just keep feeling this person…” Zhong Xu was again consumed by her “professional instincts.”

Situ Yuebo gave two deliberate coughs and gave her cheek a light pinch. “Stop. Remember we’re here for a honeymoon. Don’t go making assumptions about other people.”

“I know, I know!” Zhong Xu turned away in discontent. Heaven help her — expecting Zhong Xu to overlook “non-human entities” in the world around her was genuinely harder than getting a devoted smoker to quit cold turkey. With her extraordinary powers of perception, she was entirely certain that the black-clad figure was not the same type of being as the ordinary humans walking up and down the street.

Carrying a small dissatisfaction and a small annoyance, the couple finished their tour of the inner city by carriage, then transferred to the RV provided by Situ Yuebo’s Austrian branch office and drove back toward their inn in Meidling.

Traveling along the road flanked by scenery like a painting, Zhong Xu pressed her face to the car window and eagerly drank in the landscape along the way, the unease and puzzlement the black-clad figure had stirred in her long since washed clean by the beauty around her.

“Vienna must be full of legends too, I imagine,” said Zhong Xu, turning her head to ask her widely-traveled husband.

Situ Yuebo kept his eyes on the road ahead while speaking. “Mm. Vienna has always been a city of cultural distinction. Take Meidling, where we’re staying — back in the day, the heir to the Habsburg throne had a hunting lodge built there. So small as it is, it does have its historical provenance.”

One had to admire Situ Yuebo. Things that Zhong Xu would never be able to produce off the top of her head came effortlessly to him.

With the foreign landscape outside and Situ Yuebo serving as her personal touring guide within, Zhong Xu’s Vienna journey truly deserved top marks — that is, of course, had their car not broken down partway through, she was certain her good mood would have carried on uninterrupted. By the time Situ Yuebo had repaired the car and the couple had made haste back to their inn — a place called “Forest” — it was already deep into the night.

The car had barely pulled up when the police vehicle parked at the inn’s entrance and the muffled commotion faintly audible from inside hinted to the couple that something was amiss.

They had barely stepped through the door when they saw a police officer speaking with a white-haired old man slumped in a chair by a round table near the wall, while another officer emerged from the side door leading to the cellar, calling out loudly to calm and disperse the cluster of onlookers gathered at the entrance.

Zhong Xu recognized the white-haired old man — he was the inn’s proprietor, Sabina’s husband. The vacant look in his eyes, the way his thin arms wrapped around his shrunken body, the involuntary flinch his body produced at any slightly louder sound — his whole manner was that of a thoroughly startled old mouse.

Amid the low, anxious murmuring of the onlookers, a sharp metallic ring suddenly cut through — a metal spoon had dropped to the floor and bounced up high. Following the sound, Zhong Xu and her husband noticed for the first time that in the shadowed area behind the counter, where the ceiling light had burned out, a figure was standing against the wall. That spoon had been the one to slip from this person’s hand.

The figure bent to pick up the spoon, then stepped slowly out of the dark. The warm yellow light from the central hanging lamp in the front hall fell on a head of hair as dark and lustrous as silk and a young, delicate eastern face free of any cosmetics, a slender shadow trailing behind a tall and finely proportioned figure.

“A’Jing…” Zhong Xu gazed in recognition at the woman who was walking forward while using her snow-white apron to wipe the spoon with careful attention, and called her name. She remembered that on their very first day at the Forest Inn, this eastern girl who spoke flawless Mandarin had been the one to show them to their room and warmly introduced them to the inn’s facilities and the local food culture. Encountering a fellow Chinese person in a foreign land who shared her complexion and was moreover so likeable was genuinely something that made a person happy. During their chat, they had learned that her name was A’Jing, that she was of Chinese heritage, her family having emigrated from China to Vienna many years ago, and that she had come to the Forest Inn to help out through an introduction a month prior. It was clear that both Sabina and her husband had taken a great liking to this capable, amiable, and clever Chinese girl, and the inn’s guests always looked at her with eyes full of admiration and esteem. Situ Yuebo had even praised her in front of Sabina as an exceptionally competent assistant, and added with a laugh that if Sabina would be willing to part with her, he would recruit A’Jing on the spot into his own hotel group, causing Sabina to laugh heartily.

In the face of everyone’s praise, A’Jing neither deflected compliments with forced modesty nor showed visible pleasure. She would always smile a faint smile and then find an excuse to slip away — either to help in the kitchen or to attend to other guests, perpetually occupied and cheerful. A hardworking subordinate like that would be well-liked anywhere, let alone one who was a beauty of natural, unadorned loveliness.

Yet the A’Jing before them now had none of that original warmth in her smile, and her eyes, once as clear and transparent as crystal, were now clouded with a dead, gray film. Her slender fingers, delicate as the shoots of spring onion, gripped the spoon handle with a tightness that seemed as though it could snap it in two.

A’Jing did not appear to have heard Zhong Xu calling her name. She walked straight toward the innkeeper across the room, and then, to everyone’s surprise, knelt down before him, leaned her head against the old man’s knees, and began to cry in soft, broken sobs. Moisture gathered in the old man’s eyes as well, as those feelings long suppressed finally broke free of their dam. He bowed his head and held A’Jing, tears streaming down his aged face.

“Why are you standing there?! Go and ask what happened!” Zhong Xu recovered herself and urgently pushed Situ Yuebo. She needed him to serve as her German translator.

Situ Yuebo nodded and went to speak with the officer who had emerged from the side door. After several exchanges, the expression on his face gradually turned grave.

“What on earth happened at the inn?” Zhong Xu moved to stand close to her husband, who was deep in thought. “Why are A’Jing and the innkeeper crying like that?”

“Sabina is dead.”

Her husband’s brief sentence hit like a heavy bomb. Zhong Xu was stunned for a moment, then murmured: “Just this morning she was telling me she wanted to make grape pastries for me… how could she…”

“Her husband called the police. About two hours before we returned, he found his wife’s body in the cellar.” Situ Yuebo sighed.

“Murder?” Zhong Xu’s instincts were completely certain that this always-cheerful old woman could not possibly have taken her own life. The more she thought about it the more suspicious she felt, and she lifted her foot and started toward the side door. “Let me take a look!”

A police officer built like a bear blocked her path, then gesticulated at her while producing a rapid stream of incomprehensible sounds.

Situ Yuebo put an arm around his wife’s shoulders, first apologizing to the officer in German, then telling Zhong Xu: “Don’t cause trouble. No one except law enforcement personnel may enter a murder scene. They’re waiting for backup.”

Given Zhong Xu’s personality and the “professional instincts” that were again stirring to life within her, asking her to ignore a murder — let alone the murder of someone who had been so good to her — was more painful than starving her.

She looked up, her stubborn gaze boring into Situ Yuebo’s eyes, her shoulders working with force as she tried to shake off his hold.

As her husband, of course he knew what she was thinking at this moment. He gave the officer a grateful smile, then firmly steered Zhong Xu to one side and said in a lowered voice: “You reckless girl — if you want to make trouble, at least not now!”

Zhong Xu’s eyes darted around in quick comprehension. With her abilities, slipping past a mere few police officers’ notice to enter the cellar would truly be child’s play. Steadying herself, she moved past the onlookers who still refused to disperse, then went to stand behind A’Jing, who was quietly weeping. For a moment she didn’t know what to say, for A’Jing had mentioned that Sabina had treated her like a daughter, and now that she had died so suddenly, it was no wonder A’Jing’s grief was this deep. Zhong Xu reached out and gently patted A’Jing’s shoulder, then gave the innkeeper, deep in the anguish of losing his wife, a sympathetic and consoling look.

A’Jing slowly raised her face, turned back, lifted the spoon she was still holding, and said between sobs: “This afternoon… this afternoon she was still teaching me how to make a new kind of soup with her own hands, using this very spoon… she said this was the one she’d had the longest and the one she was most comfortable with…”

Zhong Xu saw a pair of eyes swollen like peaches, and a face glittering with tears in the lamplight. Her lips moved. She said quietly to A’Jing: “My condolences…”

Beyond those two words, what else was there to say? She walked back to Situ Yuebo’s side, her mood fallen terribly low, clenching her teeth inwardly: If this was murder, I will not let the killer go free.

Situ Yuebo drew her into his arms, gently stroking the back of her head, thinking to himself that this time it seemed he would find no reason to stop her. This incident had occurred with a genuinely alarming suddenness. Even without having yet become involved, even without having seen Sabina’s body, he had already sensed a thread of strange wrongness running through it all.

The sweet journey that belonged to the two of them had, from this moment forward, been touched by a trace of blood — a trace that was most unwelcome.

The murmuring of the onlookers continued. A heavyset man in suspenders drew a cross on his chest as he whispered uneasily to the red-haired woman beside him, who held an infant. Two elderly couples in woolen hats showed great interest in their conversation and joined in, occasionally adding a few words. Every face was crossed by the same bewilderment and alarm as they spoke, and the spontaneous discussion grew livelier by the moment.

Most of these onlookers with their varied expressions were local residents — drifting into the Forest Inn in their leisure time for gossip and a glass of fine wine and a taste of Sabina’s delicious pastries was their greatest pleasure.

Perhaps because of unease and even fear, their voices, though not quite whispered, trembled and broke like something that had been exposed to extreme cold — the tone of people speaking of forbidden things that were not meant to be spoken aloud. None of them took any particular care to keep their voices from the Chinese couple standing nearby, unconsciously assuming these two foreigners’ German was not quite good enough to catch every word.

Situ Yuebo listened quietly to each word that fell from their lips, and a faint curve appeared at the corners of his mouth.

2

An hour passed, and the backup units the two officers were awaiting had still not arrived. After completing their basic questioning and taking notes, they stood guard at the entrance to the side door, their expressions grave. As small-town officers who spent most of their working lives dealing with popcorn and chips rather than corpses, guarding the crime scene until help came was their one and only task.

The onlookers had mostly dispersed — some back home, and the small group of Americans who were the only other guests at the inn besides the Situ couple had also gone upstairs to their rooms. Zhong Xu and Situ Yuebo helped A’Jing escort the inconsolable innkeeper back to his room, and after offering some words of comfort to A’Jing they took their leave.

Coming out of his room, they passed by the side door. Zhong Xu cast a glance at the two door-guardians standing on duty, and quietly formed a plan in her mind.

Back in their room, Zhong Xu wasted no time in rummaging through a large amount of luggage to locate a small, elegant black leather case, from which she produced two brushes and a tiny object resembling a painter’s palette. She also drew from a hidden compartment in the case a stack of red paper cut to three-inch squares, then took all these little tools to the vanity table, sat down, opened the palette to reveal two small square compartments filled respectively with gold and black paint, raised a brush, and without hesitation loaded it with black, bent over the red paper, and began to write and draw in a vigorous, flowing hand. After finishing several black ones she switched brushes, dipped them in gold, and continued.

Situ Yuebo sat on the edge of the bed with great patience, watching his wife in her “working state.” When he estimated she was nearly finished, he asked: “Darling, the houses here are mostly built of wood — easy to catch fire and burn down. Those items you’re producing — how high is their destructive capacity?”

Zhong Xu set down her brush, picked up the set of specially-made ancestral spirit talismans she had completed with great satisfaction, turned to look at her husband, and smiled with confidence: “Don’t worry, right now I only need to find a way to get into the cellar without being noticed. Even if I find the killer inside the inn, I’ll handle it carefully and won’t destroy such a beautiful building.” She finished with a pointed glance at him. “Your wife isn’t made of a bulldozer!”

“I thought it best to mention it, you do have a precedent…” Thinking back to an incident in which, in the course of subduing a malevolent spirit, his formidable wife had left his company headquarters a scene of utter devastation, Situ Yuebo could not help muttering this, then asked with more seriousness: “Tell me, how do you plan to get past those two police officers without being noticed? Do you need my help?”

Zhong Xu picked up two of the red-paper talismans covered in black script and raised an eyebrow. “Confusion charms.”

“A new product — I don’t think I’ve seen you use those before.” Situ Yuebo scratched his nose, trying to imagine what these two thin sheets of paper might produce.

Zhong Xu set the talismans aside, walked to his side, and said: “I don’t want those two officers to be harmed in any way — using confusion charms is far gentler than punching them both in the face. Though I do need you to help me with one small thing, or I won’t be able to make my move.”

“No problem. As long as it doesn’t involve violence or sacrificing my charm.” Situ Yuebo smiled with a hint of mischief.

“You’re still in the mood to tease me!” Zhong Xu gave him a playful punch, then seemed to remember something. “By the way, what were those onlookers whispering about? Their expressions seemed strange.”

Situ Yuebo thought for a moment. “They said: ‘The villa has appeared again, and the monastery can’t contain the Crown Prince and Mary. Their revenge has started again.’ More or less that, without much context. I’m not sure what it means.”

“The Crown Prince?! Mary?! A villa?!” Zhong Xu picked out the key words and clapped her hands together. “Right — didn’t you tell me earlier about some imperial heir having a hunting lodge in Meidling?!”

“Yes,” said Situ Yuebo. “That was Franz Joseph Emperor’s only son — Crown Prince Rudolf. Also the son of the famously beloved Empress Sisi.” As he spoke, a furrow gradually appeared between his brows. “Now that you mention it, I do remember a bit of the story surrounding this person, and that… Mary.”

“Hold on!” Zhong Xu interrupted her husband and stood up, pulling his hand. “Save the story for later. We need to go see Sabina’s body in the cellar before the backup unit arrives.”

And so the couple crept quietly out of their room, descended the stairs, and concealed themselves at a corner with a clear view of the two vigilant police officers across the way. After confirming there was no one else around, Zhong Xu whispered a few words to Situ Yuebo.

Situ Yuebo straightened his clothes, walked toward the two watchful officers with the expression of a man who had nothing on his mind, and produced an innocent smile.

“Officers, when I was just now walking the innkeeper back to his room, he suddenly remembered some details that may be of use to this case. I’ve come specially to tell you.”

The officers exchanged a glance. One of them asked: “What details?”

“Ah… well, this afternoon, Sabina she…” Situ Yuebo began to speak with an air of great significance as he moved to stand before them, all while shifting his own position with a naturalness that went unnoticed. The two officers unconsciously turned to follow his movements, turning their backs on the path behind them.

“What happened to the deceased this afternoon?” the more impatient of the two asked, pressing him when no follow-up came after a long pause. Neither of these large men, whose attention had been drawn away by Situ Yuebo, noticed the dark shadow that had arrived behind them, lighter on its feet than a cat.

Slap — slap.

A red-papered, black-scripted talisman landed simultaneously on the back of each officer’s head, and two invisible currents of energy dispersed outward, embedding themselves in their bodies in an instant. The officers’ eyes went from blue to a blank, ashen gray, as though covered by years of gathered dust, their bodies frozen as if stopped in time.

Zhong Xu’s satisfied face appeared from behind them. She pressed the center of both talismans with her index finger, using a touch of pressure, and breathed: “Sleep!”

The officers’ eyes shut in a flash. They dropped to the floor with a thud, unconscious. She dusted off her hands, grabbed Situ Yuebo, and ran with him in through the side door they had been guarding.

Making their way down the dimly lit staircase, Situ Yuebo asked with some concern: “Darling, they won’t be harmed, will they?”

“Those two charms will just put them to sleep for fifteen minutes. When they wake up, they won’t remember anything, including having seen us.” Zhong Xu patted her chest for him to rest completely easy — the spell she had placed on the talismans was barely half a tenth of her full power. If she used her full ten-tenths, those two men would probably sleep for a year before waking.

The cellar’s furnishings were spare and somewhat disorganized — two rows of wine racks filled with bottles lined the walls, several large old wooden barrels leaned on their sides nearby, and then there was a general scatter of various odds and ends.

Sabina lay face up below one of the wine racks. Beside her was a shattered wine bottle, the top of which was still held in her hand.

Suppressing the grief in her heart, Zhong Xu strode forward and examined Sabina’s body with the thoroughness of the most professional forensic examiner. The only difference was that she made use of no tools at all — simply closing her eyes lightly, concentrating, and kneeling half-prostrate beside the body in devout attention.

Presently, Zhong Xu opened her eyes and said only a single sentence: “Evil energy.”

“You’re saying Sabina was killed by…” Situ Yuebo was briefly startled.

“The malevolent aura enveloping her is still fresh.” Zhong Xu raised her head, brow furrowed. “And look at Sabina — I don’t think a drop of blood is left in her body.”

Situ Yuebo quickly crouched down to look closely, and found that this old woman who in life had been flush-cheeked to an extreme could no longer be described as merely pale. Every inch of her exposed skin was as exaggerated as though it had been coated in a layer of white paint.

“Vampire?” he offered.

“You’ve watched too many films!” Zhong Xu shot him a look and pointed to Sabina’s carotid artery. “Look — any wounds?”

Sabina’s neck was smooth and unmarked, with no suspicious wounds to be found anywhere. In fact, her entire body showed not a single wound of any kind. Had it not been for the obvious severe blood loss, she looked as peaceful as someone sleeping. Not a trace of the terror of being suddenly attacked or the despair of facing death could be found on her face. At the corner of her mouth, there was even a faint contented smile.

The smell of evaporated wine still hung in the air, and this old woman who had died smiling gave the cellar an atmosphere that grew increasingly eerie.

“I think Sabina was attacked while reaching for wine… but that expression of hers is genuinely baffling!” Zhong Xu pinched her chin in thought. After a minute, her gaze landed on Sabina’s open left palm. She studied it for a moment, then nudged Situ Yuebo with her elbow. “Look at her palm!”

A nearly imperceptible red dot, barely visible, lay buried in the densely lined center of her hand.

“Perhaps that is what killed her,” Zhong Xu said. Before she had finished speaking, Situ Yuebo was already looking at the front of Sabina’s clothes. “There appear to be a few claw marks on Sabina’s jacket.”

At his prompting, Zhong Xu noticed that the front of Sabina’s chest did indeed have several neat scratches — the gray wool fabric was slightly torn, revealing the same gray of the lining beneath. No wonder she had not noticed this detail earlier.

A red dot on the palm, claw marks on the chest, Sabina’s smile, and that layer of malevolent energy — how were these to be connected into the clearest answer?

Racing to get back before the officers woke, Zhong Xu and Situ Yuebo returned to their room carrying a stomach full of unanswered questions.

“This matter, I cannot ignore!” Zhong Xu brought her fist down on the table.

“You’ve already gotten involved.” Situ Yuebo sipped his steaming tea with quiet appreciation. “Sabina must have gotten along well with people in general — murder by a grudge-holder is unlikely.”

Zhong Xu stared at her husband as though he were a creature from another planet, and said word by word: “Sabina’s death could not possibly have been caused by a human being. The malevolent energy left on her body is impossible to miss. You’re not going to question my judgment, are you?”

“Ah… of course not! In matters like this my wife’s judgment is absolutely top-tier!” Situ Yuebo immediately and soothingly drew his wife close, then ventured with some caution: “However, you specialize in dealing with malevolent spirits and the dead. Demons and these other things seem to be a different category, don’t they?”

Zhong Xu considered this and nodded. “True. There is a difference between demons and spirits of the dead. And our family, the Zhong clan, generally doesn’t involve ourselves in demon affairs.” Here her eyebrows arched sharply upward. “But this time I cannot swallow my indignation! The occasional demon stirring up mischief, stealing a thing or two — fine. But this one, right under my eyes, dared to take a human life. If I don’t eliminate it, I’ll never rest easy even in death!”

Situ Yuebo, knowing his wife’s ironclad style of meaning every word she said, had no intention of stopping her, and only said: “One, don’t let yourself get hurt. Two, don’t let innocent people get hurt.”

“When I handle things, you can relax!” Zhong Xu stuck her tongue out at him, then looked out the window into the night with a serious expression. “If I don’t eliminate this killer, I’m afraid a second and third Sabina will appear very soon. These things have no regard for human life.”

“Regardless of whether it has any regard for human life. I am genuinely curious about its method of killing.” Situ Yuebo thought of Sabina’s manner of death and the red dot on her palm, turning it over in his mind. “Sabina’s entire body’s blood — it couldn’t all have drained through the palm, could it? Such a tiny dot… though if the killer is non-human, it isn’t impossible…”

“Not bad — you’re analyzing the case now.” Zhong Xu gave him an approving pat on the shoulder, then turned serious. “I thought of what you’ve just said long ago. To drain every drop of blood from a living person’s body, you don’t actually need to do anything as troublesome as cutting flesh or drilling bone. As far as I know, within the demon world there is a class of blood demons who need only open a wound no larger than a needle’s point on the victim and can then use their supernatural energy to compress the blood within a human body into a single stream of blood-energy in an instant, and absorb it in one breath. Their abilities are something human physics can never explain. Like the vampires you just mentioned — yes, they also drink human blood, but compared to blood demons, their method is altogether lacking in sophistication.” Zhong Xu paused, her expression somewhat grave. “So I believe this time, we have encountered a relatively rare blood demon.”

Situ Yuebo frowned. “What does a blood demon look like? What other abilities does it have?”

“I don’t know. I’m not familiar with demons.” Zhong Xu shook her head in disappointment. “I’ve only heard my grandmother mention it briefly. ‘Blood demon’ isn’t a name for one specific type of demon — it’s a general term for high-level supernatural entities in the entire demon world who use this method of condensing energy to feed on human blood. These blood demons may transform into the appearance of a human, or may be a stray cat crouching in a corner, or even a hedgehog passing by — their outward form has no fixed state.”

A small moth chose an inopportune moment to flutter past both their heads. Situ Yuebo instinctively ducked, his gaze tracking the uninvited guest with an expression full of suspicion.

“Don’t be so jumpy!” Zhong Xu straightened his head, half exasperated and half amused.

“Speaking seriously — if it truly was this legendary blood demon. How do we find it?” Situ Yuebo asked his wife with the utmost sincerity, like a primary school student consulting an expert.

“Tsk tsk. Has the great President given up business to catch demons now?” Zhong Xu expressed exaggerated surprise and teased him, for this husband of hers had at all times previously kept concepts like capital acquisition, stocks, and funds on his lips, and she had never anticipated the day he would step foot in her own “line of business.”

“You’re in a foreign country and your family can’t help you. Only this husband of yours is available to step up!” Situ Yuebo pounded his chest with a thumping sound, full of determination.

“The supernatural entity capable of hurting me probably hasn’t been born yet.” Zhong Xu rolled her eyes, unmoved by the display, but then a puzzled look crossed her face. “Only there’s one thing that genuinely puzzles me. If this was a blood demon, I could not possibly have failed to detect the residual energy it left behind.”

“Residual energy? Didn’t you just say Sabina had malevolent energy on her? Now you’re saying you can’t detect it?” Situ Yuebo seemed confused.

“That’s not what I mean.” Zhong Xu patiently explained. “When a blood demon kills Sabina, leaving malevolent energy on her body is natural. But once its objective is achieved, it still has to leave. Whether it flies away or disappears through the ground, it will inevitably leave some trace along its departure route — a mark that supernatural entities cannot erase. We can usually track their whereabouts from this. But this time, even with my spiritual energy raised to its highest intensity, I detected no malevolent energy anywhere except on the body. It’s as though the killer vanished into thin air at the scene after committing the act — impossibly clean. That is the part I still can’t work out.”

“Doesn’t that mean we’ve lost the lead?”

But Zhong Xu was undisturbed. “Where there’s a crime, there’s bound to be a flaw. I’d dig down three feet through the earth if that’s what it takes to pull the killer out.”

Three feet through the earth… An ominous feeling flashed through Situ Yuebo’s mind…

At that moment, a clamor came from outside. The police reinforcements had finally arrived.

The two officers who had been rendered oblivious by Zhong Xu’s charm had long since woken, each assuming they had dozed off out of drowsiness, and were now busily cooperating with their colleagues as though nothing had happened.

The entire inn’s guests were probably all unable to sleep in such an environment. Several of the curious had even emerged from their rooms, watching the busy officers like spectators at an event.

Zhong Xu stood at the window and watched as the long-occupied officers finally carried Sabina’s body out, into a vehicle, and away. The flashing police lights left a long trail of light and shadow in the dark night, and then disappeared. The entire Forest Inn finally returned to quiet.

“Sleep for a while — it’ll be dawn soon.” Situ Yuebo pulled her hand and walked toward the bed, giving a yawn.

Zhong Xu refused. “I can’t sleep. Until the killer is brought to justice, I…”

“You won’t sleep for one single day? What sort of childish tantrum is this!” Situ Yuebo put on a stern face. “We’re still in our honeymoon period. Don’t age yourself before your time!”

His words were barely out when a scream erupted from outside the room — the kind that shook the mountains and moved the earth, saturated with limitless terror.

The couple immediately rushed out the door. Their eyes quickly landed on the other end of the corridor, at the doorway of the second-to-last room —

An American woman in her nightclothes, hand over her mouth, eyes wide in blank horror, her feet stamping up and down in that involuntary, unconscious way of someone releasing fear.

Something had happened to the Americans staying at the inn?!

The couple crossed to her in a few quick strides. Following where the woman was pointing, they saw — in the room, lying sprawled, were a man and a woman. The man was leaning sideways half-fallen off the bed, one foot propped on the bed’s edge, the covers and sheets kicked into a complete tangle. The woman was face-down on the carpet not far from him, an empty coffee cup in her hand, its former contents spilled in a dark brownish-black stain on the light carpet. Looking further in, when the scene in the room was reflected in the large decorative mirror on the wall, the disorder and unease seemed doubled.

The American woman outside collapsed softly onto the floor, hand still over her mouth, without even the courage to take a single step closer. Zhong Xu had no time to comfort this shaken woman and moved quickly to the bedside, bent down to check the man’s breathing, touched his carotid artery, searched with her eyes across the exposed pale white of his skin, and finally came to rest on the stiffly splayed palm of his left hand. She studied it for a moment and furrowed her brow.

“Darling, this one’s still alive!” From the other side, Situ Yuebo helped up the middle-aged woman with her disheveled brown hair. Zhong Xu immediately ran over and examined this survivor with the manner of a professional physician, checking for any fatal wounds.

Situ Yuebo tilted his head toward the bed. “And that one?”

“Dead,” Zhong Xu answered plainly, then lifted the woman’s eyelid for a look, and relaxed somewhat. “Barring anything unexpected, she just fainted.”

She placed her hand on the woman’s forehead, concentrated, and pressed a current of warm, clear energy from her palm into the other woman’s body. After a moment, she lifted her hand. “She’ll be awake shortly.”

At that moment, the sound of footsteps came from outside the room — A’Jing and the innkeeper arriving in a hurry. That scream had been enough to alarm them downstairs.

“Don’t come in for now!” Zhong Xu waved firmly at the two alarmed faces in the doorway, then pointed to the stunned woman and gave A’Jing an instruction that brooked no contradiction: “Take her downstairs first! Don’t call the police yet — come find me shortly!”

A’Jing looked at everything before her in helpless bewilderment, gave a flustered nod, and together with the innkeeper lifted the American woman from the floor and made their way downstairs in stumbling steps.

“If this is the same killer, I have to admire them.” Situ Yuebo supported the middle-aged woman, who was showing signs of reviving, and looked back at the unfortunate male victim, then tentatively addressed Zhong Xu’s grave expression: “I wasn’t actually right, was I?”

“Almost identical to Sabina’s manner of death.” Zhong Xu confirmed his guess, but added in puzzlement: “His expression is not as peaceful as Sabina’s, though — he appears to have seen something extremely terrifying at the moment of death. His features are completely contorted.”

The police had barely left when the killer had brazenly committed another murder. It was unclear whether this was to flaunt their remarkable “ability,” or to mock those who were trying to catch them.

Zhong Xu was enraged by this killer who struck with such precision and left no trace. From the standpoint of her identity and her illustrious battle record against malevolent spirits over the years, cat and mouse could never have their positions reversed, and she would absolutely not tolerate a mouse that presumed to toy with the cat.

“The foreign man’s body is still thick with evil energy. But just as before, it exists only on him — the killer left no trace at all.” Zhong Xu thought for a moment, then looked at the survivor in her husband’s arms. “I hope we can find some useful leads on her. Let’s first move her to our room — I’m worried that if she wakes up and sees the body right away, she’ll fall apart.”

“Alright.” Situ Yuebo lifted the woman, who was not at all light, carrying her with difficulty back to their room. After settling her comfortably on the bed he asked his wife: “What if she doesn’t remember anything?”

“Then I’ll have no choice but to use the last resort.” Zhong Xu’s tone held a resolve as of someone going calmly to their death. “Deploy my family’s forbidden art — summon Sabina’s spirit and ask her directly.”

“Is such drastic measures necessary? You called it a forbidden art yourself. If it’s that, how can it be used casually? The side effects must be serious,” said Situ Yuebo, moving to object.

“It’s not too bad — at most it costs me some vitality.” Zhong Xu feigned lightness, though she was inwardly clear about the consequences that randomly summoning a dead spirit would bring upon herself.

“No — I absolutely don’t agree!” Situ Yuebo refused categorically. “There must be another way. Don’t rush into —”

Before he had finished, the woman on the bed gave a weak moan and slowly opened her eyes.

The calm of first waking lasted in her eyes for less than a second. Terror and despair occupied everything in an instant.

“Alex!” She shot upright, crying out a name, and then threw back the covers and tried in a panic to jump from the bed.

Situ Yuebo quickly held her back and, with composure, produced a stream of fluent English to comfort her.

Under his efforts, the woman’s initial panic eased somewhat. She lay back on the bed, curling into herself, trembling continuously.

Though Zhong Xu knew it was not quite appropriate to force her to relive what had happened in such a moment, time would not tolerate waste. She steeled herself and asked Situ Yuebo to question her about what exactly had occurred before she lost consciousness.

After a series of exchanges phrased as gently as possible, Situ Yuebo turned back to his wife: “She says she had just finished preparing coffee for her husband, then felt something like an electric shock to the back of her head, and her consciousness slipped away gradually. Just before she completely blacked out, she vaguely saw a tall, thin dark figure — and silver-colored long hair trailing behind it.”

“It was him?!” Zhong Xu stood bolt upright, immediately mobilizing every memory that might be connected to this person. “That person in black who has been following us since the elevator at the cathedral! I said from the very start something was wrong with him, but you wouldn’t listen!” Zhong Xu fixed Situ Yuebo with a look, then spoke to herself: “Could he be this so-called blood demon, taking on a human appearance to wreak havoc?!”

“If it really is him, then matters are actually simpler.” Situ Yuebo found a faint smile making its way to the corner of his mouth. “He’s been following us since the second day of our arrival here. It seems we are also among his targets. So he will definitely come looking for us.”

“But I want to catch him before he commits his next murder.” Zhong Xu’s eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance, her gaze sharp and severe. “I’d almost rather be his next target.” Having said this, she switched to halting English to tell the poor woman not to worry and to stay quietly in the room. As she spoke, she deftly produced a red talisman, and when the woman was not expecting it, pressed it to her forehead. Once the talisman absorbed into her body, she fell into a drowsy sleep just like those two officers earlier.

“Sleep is most suitable for someone in an emotionally unstable state.” Zhong Xu exhaled, took Situ Yuebo’s hand, went out of the room and downstairs, and told the innkeeper to call the police.

Along the way, Zhong Xu suddenly asked: “Weren’t you going to tell me about the Crown Prince and the monastery, and some revenge, that the onlookers mentioned? You still owe me that story, don’t you?”

“The son of Empress Sisi, Crown Prince Rudolf, wished to divorce for his young love, Mary — but the Pope refused to declare his existing marriage void. Combined with the Crown Prince’s deep disappointment in his father Emperor Franz Joseph’s conservative policies, one winter night in 1889, the Crown Prince shot Mary dead at the hunting lodge in Meidling, then covered her with flowers and quietly kept vigil beside her. When dawn broke, the Crown Prince turned the gun on his own temple. To ensure he would not miss, he looked in a mirror as he did it.” Situ Yuebo sighed at this point. “This rather legendary tragedy was deliberately covered up by the imperial family, however, and its details and truth remain a mystery to this day. The various accounts in common circulation are of uncertain authenticity. The one thing confirmed is that not long after this event, the hunting lodge was demolished and a monastery built on the original site. I believe the place those people mentioned is the one.”

Zhong Xu listened with great attentiveness, nodding from time to time, not speaking much, only gazing inward in thought.

Descending to the main hall downstairs, they came face to face with the eyewitness sitting in a chair clutching a cup of hot tea and trembling. A’Jing and the innkeeper sat on either side of her, their expressions a mix of confusion and grief, wanting to comfort her yet not knowing where to begin. As relatives of this incident’s victims themselves, still submerged in the sorrow of losing loved ones, how could they possibly have the energy or composure to console others?

Seeing the Situ couple arrive, A’Jing quickly rose to meet them. Just as she was about to ask, Zhong Xu spoke first —

“Call the police. The man is dead; the woman is all right.”

Hearing the word “dead,” A’Jing’s slightly open mouth could no longer close. She stood motionless for several seconds as grief and fear alternated in her eyes. She turned and walked to the telephone on the counter, dialing the numbers she had no wish to dial again.

The trembling American woman seemed to not understand German and only watched in a daze, with great agitation, as A’Jing spoke slowly into the receiver. The innkeeper, whose expression had never been particularly good to begin with, turned even more ashen after hearing the content of A’Jing’s call — it looked as though the wrinkles on his face had multiplied by several additional lines in that single instant. Another tear fell from his clouded old eyes, accompanied by a despairing sigh.

Zhong Xu heard this pitiful old man murmuring under his breath, and immediately looked at Situ Yuebo.

“He says he’s afraid his inn is done for.” Situ Yuebo looked with sympathy at that aged face that had just lost a wife. “Two deaths in quick succession — the inn’s business will genuinely be affected.”

A’Jing set down the phone, walked to Zhong Xu, and said quietly: “The police will be here soon.”

“Don’t be frightened — we’re here.” Zhong Xu patted her thin shoulders. This young woman’s helplessness touched a spontaneous sympathy in her.

In A’Jing’s eyes, faint tears glimmered. She could not speak, only pressed her lips tightly together.

“Actually, ask him — why do the people around here get so frightened when the Crown Prince and the monastery are mentioned?” Zhong Xu tugged at her husband’s sleeve, signaling him to ask the innkeeper.

She sat down and watched back and forth between her husband’s moving lips and the innkeeper’s ever-changing expressions, guessing from their conversation how the subject that interested her was landing on the old man. In fact, from the way the old man’s face shifted between wistfulness and fear, she felt her guesses were probably not far from the truth.

After roughly the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, Situ Yuebo turned his head, gathered his thoughts, and relayed the key points to his wife: “He says there is a terrifying local legend. Not far from town, in the forest, stands the monastery built on the site of the old hunting lodge. It was abandoned many years ago. But beginning one strange night of a total lunar eclipse thirty years ago, people passing through the forest at night have frequently reported seeing with their own eyes the monastery transformed back into the hunting lodge, with lively waltz music drifting from within — although some people say what they heard were gunshots and a woman’s weeping. Everyone thus speculated that it is the dead Crown Prince and his lover causing mischief — their souls clinging to the happiness of their lifetime, yet unable to erase their hatred over the happiness stripped from them, they began to take revenge, harming innocent people to vent the anguish of that original event. Twenty years ago and ten years ago, there were similarly inexplicable murders here — victims drained of every drop of blood yet with no wounds to be found anywhere. The residents became convinced that the Crown Prince and Mary were restless and aggrieved souls bringing endless unease, leaving everyone living in perpetual fear. Though the police did investigate these murders seriously, the cases were ultimately never solved. Now ten years on, and here this same tragedy has occurred again.”

Zhong Xu drew in a deep breath and said decisively: “I want to go see that monastery.”

“But that’s only local rumor and speculation — perhaps it’s just a coincidence?” Situ Yuebo was far more cautious than his wife by nature, always maintaining an extremely objective stance toward hearsay.

“Don’t misunderstand me. The way things look now, this matter may not actually be connected to ghosts at all.” Zhong Xu stood up and looked toward the closed main door. “My years of experience dealing with non-humans, combined with instinct, tell me there must be a deep connection between the monastery and the killer. Of course, you’re entirely welcome to dismiss this as nonsense right now. Once I’ve been to verify it, there will naturally be a conclusion.”

“Alright. I’ll go with you.” Situ Yuebo chose to lend his wife support. It was evident that he himself was also very curious about the monastery.

Hearing this couple make plans to go to the monastery, A’Jing stood up in alarm and waved both hands frantically. “Don’t go there! Please don’t! People say it’s very dangerous there — even if the ghost story isn’t true, it’s better to be safe than sorry! You’re only visitors — you’d best leave early. Two people have already died. I don’t want anything to happen to you!”

“A’Jing, don’t worry.” Zhong Xu smiled at her with confidence. “The malevolent entity that could hurt me hasn’t been born yet. We’ll go safely and come back safely.”

“We’ll be fine — don’t worry.” Situ Yuebo gave her his assurance. This girl who so genuinely worried for them was at once pitiable and endearing.

“Then… then let me go with you. The road to the monastery is rather out of the way — you might get lost.” Seeing that they were set on going, A’Jing stopped trying to dissuade them and shyly proposed to come along.

“Well…” The couple exchanged a glance, quickly weighing in their minds what the probability of danger would be if they brought A’Jing with them. In the end, confidence won out over everything. Zhong Xu trusted that her own abilities were more than sufficient to protect both her husband and A’Jing, and so she nodded. “Very well. Let’s set out right now!”

“Why not wait until after dawn, eat something, and then go? Besides, traveling by day the driving will be easier.” Situ Yuebo imagined the vast, frozen darkness outside and concluded this was not an ideal time to depart.

“That’s fair too. A’Jing, look after your boss and the foreign woman, and get some rest yourself. We’ll set out first thing in the morning.” And with that, Zhong Xu and Situ Yuebo turned and went upstairs.

An unfamiliar coldness flickered through A’Jing’s eyes as she watched them go, but it vanished immediately, replaced again by the initial fragile, pitiable look.

Back in their room, Zhong Xu was busy packing her various “implements” one by one into a small crossbody bag for easy carrying, while Situ Yuebo found a heavier outer layer to change into and tossed one to his wife as well. “Put this on — the forest at dawn is very cold.”

“Thank you, darling!” Zhong Xu pressed a kiss to his face, then as if remembering something, took his face in both hands and said with earnest solemnity: “Remember — tomorrow, no matter what happens, if I tell you to go, don’t look back. I have the means to handle everything. Now put this in your pocket —” She produced a talisman and pressed it into his hand. “Keep this safe. When necessary, you can stick it onto any non-human you have concerns about. It can save your life.”

Situ Yuebo carefully tucked the talisman into his shirt pocket and patted his chest with the exuberance of a child, promising: “Don’t worry, darling — I’ll follow your command and come back safe and sound. And…” He paused, and the childlike smile was instantly replaced by an unhesitating, commanding authority. “I will protect you.”

Zhong Xu stared at him, and it was only after a long moment that she drew him close and laughed: “I know.”

He had always been this way. Though he knew nothing whatsoever of mystical arts, he could invariably maintain a steadiness in any abnormal situation that most people found impossible to achieve. And at times, the authority that emanated from him made him appear before others like a king — even she, who had her family’s inherited techniques to draw upon, had never once doubted that this man was entirely capable of protecting her. A strange feeling.

“Go wash your face — I’ll go find something to eat. It looks like we’re pulling an all-nighter today.” Situ Yuebo yawned and stretched his neck as he stepped out of the room.

Zhong Xu walked into the bathroom, rolled up her sleeves, and turned the tap. Hot water gushed out in a cascade of rising steam. The water here was said to come largely from natural springs, supposedly with remarkable effects on beauty and skin — such a fine thing, Zhong Xu was naturally not going to waste it. She bent over the sink and scooped up the pleasantly hot water, splashing it vigorously onto her face.

At this moment, the bathroom door that had been standing open began to close slowly on its own, as though pushed by an invisible hand.

Water sound can hinder hearing, but it cannot hinder acutely sensitive perception. Zhong Xu felt a strange energy brush past her from behind like a shot, and a precise signal of danger immediately lit up in her mind. She snapped her head up, and amid the splash of water, the flower-rimmed round mirror in front of her reflected clearly everything happening behind her —

The door had been pulled completely shut, and a crisp click followed as the gold lock turned of its own accord.

Zhong Xu regarded this “fully automatic” door without changing expression, stepped forward, and without any rush to open it, let a smile pass through her eyes.

“What — come to have an exclusive look at how pretty I am while washing my face? Even locked the door. Not afraid I’ll cry harassment?” Zhong Xu crossed her arms over her chest and taunted the empty air at her leisure.

The voice, as clear as a silver bell, was still reverberating in the sealed room when the mirror on the wall beside her began to emit a cracking and splitting sound. Before she had time to turn her head, the perfectly ordinary mirror fragmented in a thousandth of a second into pieces roughly the size of a bullet head, then erupted outward from the wall in a spray. Every fragment caught the glinting light, and the combined effect of those thousands of reflected beams of light — to say nothing of looking directly at them, a single glance was enough to make anyone’s head spin. Yet the most frightening thing was not this — in the instant those glass fragments left the wall’s surface, they abruptly sprouted points as sharp and fine as thorns, and came surging in a swarm toward Zhong Xu, who stood only a few steps away.

If she were hit by all of that, could a single piece of her flesh remain intact? With their force of impact, she would likely be reduced to fragments in the time it took to blink.

In this thousand-to-one critical moment, Zhong Xu showed no alarm and no panic. She pushed off the ground, propelled herself upward, completed a series of clean sideways flips, and with her left foot lightly tapping the wall, landed lightly on the iron rose relief that jutted from the window frame for decoration. Though it was a space no bigger than the sole of a foot, it was enough for her to stand pressed against the wall in mid-air. All those ferocious glass fragments drove themselves into the wall at the exact spot she had just occupied, sending innumerable cracks shooting outward. Zhong Xu felt the entire room shudder.

She dropped down and kept a wary eye on that battered section of wall, turning over in her mind whether this had been the attacker’s signature move.

As she was stepping cautiously closer to the wall, a bizarre sucking sound suddenly came from within it. Those glass fragments that had embedded themselves in it abruptly sank, like stones dropping into a swamp, and in an instant disappeared entirely, even the cracks they had caused going with them. Before her, it looked as though nothing had happened at all.

Zhong Xu’s nerves were not in the least relaxed by the stillness before her, because the dense malevolent energy was still spreading through the room.

Standing at the very center of the floor, she held her breath and steadied herself, calmly scanning every direction in the room. Without warning, an otherworldly current of energy distinct from the cold wind grazed past her left side, stirring her hair — a feeling like a sharp-edged blade cutting toward her. Sure enough, a gray protrusion burst from the wall to her left, as though something alive was stirring beneath a thin membrane, bursting through its barrier in the fastest possible time. It was those same vanished mutated glass fragments again — only now they had been flattened, coalescing into a single razor-edged blade bristling with barbs, scattering dazzling light in all directions, flying at lethal speed toward Zhong Xu’s heart.

Seeing the situation, Zhong Xu performed a textbook backbend right where she stood. In the instant the “blade” was about to reach her, she let it graze past her forehead and fly through. With a clanging sound it embedded itself in the tiled surface of the sink on the opposite wall. She kicked herself back upright and looked back — and just as before, those glass fragments that seemed so determined to have her life had completely dissolved into the tiles, not leaving so much as a speck behind.

“Wretched thing!” Zhong Xu spat through clenched teeth, fists clenching tight.

Just as her desire to retaliate rose sharply, an earthquake-like shaking began from beneath her feet — no, pressing in from all directions with extreme force. Countless blinding beams of light shot outward from the floor, the walls, even the ceiling, causing Zhong Xu to instinctively raise her hand to shield her eyes. It was the strangeness underfoot that next drew her attention. Forcing her eyes open, she saw that the originally mirror-smooth floorboards were slowly sprouting countless silver-white needle-sharp objects, growing faster and faster, the needle-points growing longer and longer. Anyone standing on this barefoot would have long since been reduced to shredded flesh. Fortunately Zhong Xu was wearing a pair of thick rubber-soled winter boots, and when she stamped down hard, the needle-points snapped into countless pieces, scattered across the floor, and then disappeared, replaced by even more new ones growing in their stead. Not only the floor — the ceiling, the walls, every visible direction in the room, the same things were sprouting like mushrooms after rain, growing longer and longer, faster and faster. If this continued, within three minutes, Zhong Xu, surrounded inside this ring, would be perforated with wounds covering her entire body.

She crushed a dozen or so long spines with several stamps, temporarily clearing a foothold, and glared coldly at the now-empty mirror frame on the wall, snorting: “Just because this tiger hasn’t shown her might, you think she’s a house cat?!”

She focused, closed her eyes, formed her hands into a seal, and called out sharply: “Nine-Flame Earthfire, purge all impurity of the three realms! Come forth!”

A brilliant golden flame surged out from the palms she thrust forward, like a divine dragon extending its claws, carrying upon its body a supreme righteous energy capable of sweeping away all the demons and malevolent entities under heaven. It roared toward the empty mirror frame. A tremendous sound, like a muffled thunderclap, followed. A large golden ring of light burst from the mirror frame. By comparison, the light emanating from those glass pieces immediately dimmed and ceased to “grow.”

Then from within the mirror frame, a cobalt-blue flame leapt up and locked the entire frame fast within its fire.

A——!!

A tragic shriek rang out from the void.

Every blaze of light, every needle-point, in that instant dissolved into nothingness. In the small bathroom, everything — save for the mirror frame still burning vigorously — returned to its original calm.

Zhong Xu’s heartbeat had not yet fully returned to its normal rhythm when she heard a loud bang, and the locked door was forcibly shouldered open.

Situ Yuebo came in with an alarmed expression and held her, asking hurriedly: “What happened? I heard strange sounds from in here! The door was locked from the inside — are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Someone launched a sneak attack just now.” Zhong Xu lightly stuck her tongue out at him.

“Oh — how did the mirror catch fire?” Situ Yuebo stared at the mirror frame on the wall and moved to find water to put it out.

“My Nine-Flame Earthfire can’t be doused with water.” Zhong Xu stopped her husband, then judged the timing to be about right. She muttered a few words internally, formed one hand into a seal and with the other hand made a sweeping gesture toward the mirror frame, and called out: “Return!” The flame, as though it understood the words, obediently contracted in mid-air into a thread of gold-tinged blue, and returned to Zhong Xu’s palm.

“All right, let’s go out.” She dusted off her hands and pushed her husband, who had let out a sigh of relief, out of the bathroom.

She sat in a chair, her chest still rising and falling slightly.

“You’re really all right?” Situ Yuebo took her hand, guessing whether this wife who habitually put up a brave front had been telling the truth.

“Really! The worst of it is that my shoe soles took a beating!” Zhong Xu playfully raised her foot to show the soles of her boots, punctured by numerous small holes from the sharp spines earlier. “Good thing these shoes are quality-made!”

Situ Yuebo relaxed slightly, rose, and went to stand before the bathroom entrance. His sharp gaze moved up and down over the somewhat disordered scene, then he returned to her side and said: “The mirror frame is empty. But there’s not a single piece of glass on the floor. You were attacked by someone — did you get a clear look at them?”

“What attacked me wasn’t a person at all.” Zhong Xu stood up and described to her husband everything that had just happened, then furrowed her brows. “Didn’t even reveal its true form — only used malevolent energy to manipulate and transform physical objects, trying to kill me without anyone knowing. Very tidy work.”

“Not only did it gain no advantage — it must have been injured, too.” Situ Yuebo remembered the scream he had heard a moment ago.

“The Zhong family’s Nine-Flame Earthfire is effective not only against spirits of the dead but against everything malevolent and unclean in the three realms — it burns them all without exception.” Zhong Xu spoke of her family’s inherited technique with considerable pride. “If that creature hadn’t been hiding somewhere in the dark, it wouldn’t have gotten off as lightly as just screaming once.”

“Lucky it didn’t burn down the building…” Situ Yuebo muttered, then turned it over in his mind and said: “The creature that attacked you — it didn’t choose to come earlier or later, but precisely when we decided to go to the monastery…”

At these words, the couple exchanged a glance, and in both their minds a vague answer took shape unbidden.

A siren wailed in the distance, coming closer — those beleaguered police officers, it seemed, had not imagined they would be called back so soon.

Outside the window, the ink-black sky was being peeled open at one edge by a thin line of white, like an eye opening slowly…

3

Exhaled warmth left a milky veil on the cold car window. The black SUV moved steadily through morning mist that shifted between thick and thin, the dense forest on either side — wearing the last of its faded green — rushing backward at speed. Situ Yuebo kept his full attention on the road, following the direction A’Jing pointed out, advancing toward the monastery hidden within the trees. Zhong Xu looked at A’Jing huddled in the backseat — her thin frame motionless beneath a heavy coat, her pale face faintly pink from the cold since the moment they left the inn. The tip of her small nose moved now and then with a small sniff. She kept looking out the window, and although her exhaled warmth left a layer of milk-white on the glass to obscure the view, she looked with great focus.

“Stop grieving.” Zhong Xu knew she was using silence to release sorrow. Two deaths in a single day, the once lively and warm inn transformed overnight into a place people spoke of with dread — the blinding police lights, the officers’ questioning, the innkeeper’s mournful sighs, the lingering aftertaste of death, all of it pressing the air into something dense and frozen. In such an atmosphere, no one could feel at ease, including the Situ couple, who in some sense were outsiders.

A’Jing looked back, watching Zhong Xu, who seemed to be about to speak but held back, and said: “The innkeeper said next week is his and Sabina’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. They met when they were seventeen. Spring, sunshine, and flowers all through the forest.”

“A’Jing, life and death are determined by heaven. Grief beyond this point helps no one.” Zhong Xu produced the most standard comfort available, then with a shift in tone, a light of sharpness passing through her eyes: “Catching the killer is the best way to honor the dead.”

A’Jing bit down on her lip, lowered her gaze. Her long lashes trembled faintly, covering her dark eyes. She murmured: “Leaving with a loved one’s eternal care following you… Sabina was still fortunate in the end, perhaps…”

Zhong Xu paused, and Situ Yuebo picked up the thread: “Yes — that is a kind of immeasurable happiness. A’Jing, if you can think of it that way, it won’t be quite so hard.”

A thin, bittersweet smile floated onto those pale lips. A’Jing raised her head, and studied them both for a steady moment. “I know. Happiness comes in many forms. Mr. Situ — you two are happy.”

Situ Yuebo smiled and said nothing.

When the topic shifted suddenly from one person’s death to a definition of happiness, the sensation was genuinely strange. Zhong Xu turned her head and reflected on what this fine young woman had been put through by this incident, brought to the verge of collapse — what a hateful killer this was. She vowed she would turn Vienna upside down if that’s what it took to find them and tear them apart.

The car fell quiet. Situ Yuebo casually pressed a button on the steering wheel, and the car audio system played a soft piano piece.

Zhong Xu glanced at her husband. He always did the right thing at the right moment, even in small details.

In the music, Situ Yuebo gave a yawn, a faint tiredness settling at the corners of his brows. Zhong Xu noticed and suddenly realized that like herself, he had not slept the entire night. She felt a pang of sympathy, saying: “Darling, if you’re too tired, let me drive.”

“You don’t even have a license, darling.” His eyes did not leave the road, and inwardly he was somewhere between amused and exasperated.

“But you taught me, and I drive perfectly well! You haven’t rested all night — let me take over.”

“Be sensible — even if you don’t care about your husband’s life, surely you care about A’Jing’s?”

“…”

The soulful musical notes drifted slowly through the car. A’Jing watched in silence as the couple in front traded words in affectionate banter, and a complex, indescribable look drifted through the depths of her eyes.

Looking at the time, they had been driving on the forest road for nearly three hours. The mist hovering around them had not diminished with the approach of midday — if anything it had grown denser. A fork in the road appeared ahead, slanting upward, and in the headlights’ beam they could dimly make out several leaning, dead trees lying across the roadside, blocking the way. Situ Yuebo pulled to the side and stopped. “A’Jing, are you certain the monastery is through here?”

“Yes.” A’Jing gave a certain nod. “Those dead trees up ahead are the best landmark. They’ve been there — they’ve apparently been standing there for many years.”

“The local authorities really don’t clear obstructions from the road.” Zhong Xu grumbled in dissatisfaction, pulling her coat a little tighter and pulling her hat out to put on. “No choice then — we walk. How much further is it to the monastery from there?”

“Hmm…” A’Jing thought for a moment, looking toward the small path vanishing into the mist. “About an hour.”

And so the leaf-scattered path had three figures added to it, walking along and breathing out plumes of warm mist. The occasional exchanges between them were the only sounds of movement beneath the sky. The mist wound and drifted through the trees on either side, and the straight trunks, at a glancing look, had taken on something of a human quality — standing languidly in the shadows, watching the uninvited guests who had woken them from their sleep.

“Does no one usually come here?” Zhong Xu knew Austria was far less populous than China, but surely not so sparse that not a single soul was to be seen the whole way. Walking the open path, she felt even the sound of her own voice carried an echo.

Situ Yuebo looked around and said with a smile: “This is a remarkably tranquil place — if only there were some sunlight, it would be a paradise, but unfortunately it’s all overcast and misty. Depressing. A’Jing, have you been to the monastery before?”

She pulled her hat down a little further, then wrapped her thick scarf more snugly around her. Visibly susceptible to the cold, she answered with a shiver: “Yes. A friend brought me. We only looked from outside and didn’t dare go in.”

“Did the place frighten you?” Situ Yuebo was very curious about why she hadn’t gone in.

“That place… it’s not a place that makes you feel good…” A’Jing seemed to be sinking into some unpleasant memory, but quickly smiled it away. “A very old building, like a haunted house in a film. Haha, my friend and I hesitated for a long time and in the end still didn’t go in.”

“Most girls are the same — timid. Not like my wife, whose courage exceeds even that of a bull.” Situ Yuebo said lightly, and with that natural smile, the grim atmosphere lifted somewhat. He looked at A’Jing, his tone carrying care: “Still, you don’t need to come in with us later. Just wait outside. I’d rather not be blamed for terrifying a young woman.”

“No, no… I…” A’Jing instinctively waved her hands, then quickly realized she had overreacted. She dropped her head, and only after a long moment raised it again, an expression of sincere entreaty in her eyes. “Let’s… let’s not go after all.”

Situ Yuebo and Zhong Xu exchanged a glance. All three sets of footsteps came to an involuntary halt. Zhong Xu took A’Jing’s hand with some concern: “Are you all right? Your lips have gone quite purple from the cold.” Though it was cold, it wasn’t cold enough to turn someone purple in such a short time. Still, she was a frail young woman — between excessive grief and a sleepless night without food or drink, plus the journey to this place, it was perfectly normal for her strength to give out. With that in mind, Zhong Xu added: “If you’re truly not feeling well, we’ll take you back first. Just describe the rough location to us — is it along this path going straight?”

“No — I’m not unwell at all — I just…” A’Jing hurriedly denied this, then hesitated, only saying: “Better not…”

Before she could finish, she suddenly pressed a hand to her chest, her brow creasing in discomfort. Her whole body slowly sank down onto the ground.

“A’Jing!” Both of them sensed something was wrong and bent quickly to support her.

“Don’t… don’t move me…” A’Jing asked them to let her go, her voice trembling. “An old complaint flaring up — it’ll pass in a few minutes…”

And indeed, two or three minutes later, she slowly exhaled a long breath, and her expression returned from pain to normal. She rose slowly, lowered the hands from over her heart, and told them apologetically: “When I was small I fell and hit my chest on a brick, and ever since then I’ve had occasional heart pain. It flares up sometimes in the cold. I’m used to it — it’s nothing serious. Let’s go — around the bend up ahead, you’ll be able to see the monastery.”

“Really nothing to worry about?” Situ Yuebo still felt a little uneasy, looking at her color, which was genuinely better than a moment ago.

“Let’s hurry — at this rate, I’m afraid it will be dark before we arrive.” A’Jing gave him a relaxed smile. The earlier pain had left no trace on her at all; if anything, the spirits that had been somewhat subdued in her seemed to have lifted.

For the rest of the journey, A’Jing no longer fell behind. Like a proper guide, she led the way from the front the entire time.

After walking a good while longer, when A’Jing stood on a raised stone and pointed toward the upper left, calling “Look there!”, Zhong Xu and the others raised their eyes. Through dozens of deep brown tree trunks, on the undulating hillside, a Romanesque-style building stood in the gray murk. Strangely though, the thick mist seemed to deliberately avoid this monastery — only thin, wisping tendrils drifted above it, like gauze curtains floating in a dream, covering a pair of eyes that longed to see the world yet refused to be seen by it.

With the mist out of the way, they could clearly make out the monastery’s exterior. Compared to the great cathedral they had visited, it was considerably more modest and unassuming — the solid walls bore only black, white, and gray, simple yet perfectly balanced, as though precisely mixed on a palette, giving its solemn gravity a natural, harmonious expression. A lone cross stood on the highest point of the vaulted roof. Facing it, on the north and south, rose two bell towers.

A’Jing jumped down from the stone, gazing at the building beyond the trees.

“You should wait here.” Zhong Xu walked to stand before her. She herself had no concerns given her own abilities, but A’Jing was only a girl without any means to defend herself. When everything was still an unknown, no one could guarantee her complete safety.

“But…” A’Jing was not willing to stay behind, and was about to refuse, but Situ Yuebo gently took the words from her: “We’ll be in and out quickly. The place has been abandoned for years — the dust alone would probably choke you, and there might well be loosened beams that could fall. To be safe, stay out here and wait for us. That’s settled.”

Though he was smiling, there was an authority about him that left no room for refusal. A’Jing nodded. “All right. I’ll wait here. Be careful — please be so careful!”

Their slightly hurrying figures gradually left that slender silhouette behind. The mountain wind stirred the mist. A’Jing’s words of concern, together with her figure, went from hazy — to gone.

The ornately-decorated iron gate was wrapped in chains as thick as a child’s arm. Though heavily rusted, it still managed to project a sturdy, impenetrable presence. Looking up at this barrier that must have been five or six meters high, Zhong Xu rubbed her hands together, grabbed the iron bar, and with a single leap vaulted upward — lightly clearing the top and landing on the other side, light and steady as a bird. She looked back, only to find Situ Yuebo on the other side of the gate wearing an embarrassed smile.

“Wait there — there’s bound to be a back entrance!” Zhong Xu, certain her husband had no ability to vault over this iron guardian — his talent for making money far outpaced his talent for physical exertion — was about to run off to look when she heard Situ Yuebo call from behind: “Darling, don’t bother! The lock isn’t actually locked!”

With a rattling sound the chain slid off the gate like a dead snake.

Situ Yuebo rubbed the rust from his fingers and jogged to Zhong Xu’s side. “Lucky I didn’t even think about climbing over!”

“But…” Zhong Xu blinked in confusion, murmuring: “I could have sworn it was locked.”

“It was locked — just a superficial lock. A little force was all it took to pull it free.” Situ Yuebo was equally puzzled. “Maybe after so many years it just stopped working.”

Meeting a small strangeness right on the first step into the monastery grounds. The couple chattered back and forth as they walked toward the main entrance.

The grounds inside the iron gate were not particularly spacious, and empty — beyond the monastery building at the center there was not even a decorative sculpture. The lawns that had gone untended for years had grown a dense tangle of wild grass that swallowed your ankles when you stepped into it.

Before them, two broad wooden doors, their black paint peeling away everywhere to reveal the deep brown of the original grain — most likely waterlogged over the years by the forest’s humidity — gave off a faint smell of mildew at close range. Dust and soil particles packed every carved groove in the wood, and only the fine gilded decorative patterns that remained embedded in the doors made any feeble gesture toward reminding visitors of their former distinction.

“It really has been abandoned a long time.” Situ Yuebo flicked the dust from his fingers. “At least several decades.”

Zhong Xu said nothing. She placed her hand on the door and moved as if to push it open. “So cold…” she remarked.

“Cold? Let me give you my scarf.” Situ Yuebo moved to unwrap it, not realizing he had misunderstood his wife.

“I’m not saying I’m cold. What’s coming through the door — that cold doesn’t belong to this world.” Zhong Xu put some force behind her hand. There was a click, accompanied by a cascade of falling dust, and the door creaked slowly open.

“Not locked either?” Situ Yuebo went around to the back of the door and examined the old-fashioned golden lock there — it had not malfunctioned. That click had clearly been the sound of the lock springing open. He couldn’t help but ask with suspicion: “Darling, this should have been locked from the inside. We had no key, and yet we just pushed the door open?”

“Never mind the lock.” Zhong Xu’s full attention was on the monastery’s main hall, now laid open before her.

There was no artificial lighting here at all. The only light source in the hall came from natural light filtering through the narrow windows, and without any sun, these sparse beams were even more pallid and dim.

Large white sculpted pillars stood faithfully at every point in the hall where they were needed, like loyal soldiers. Dozens of rows of long pews were arranged in neat lines between them, flanked by wrought iron candelabra whose aged wax lay solidified in layers of ash on their surfaces. One arm of a support had snapped and hung from the rest, incomplete, like a severed limb. The altar at the far end had long since lost all trace of its original color. A small bowl, black with a residue of faint silver white, lay tipped over on top of it, a thin cobweb trembling against it.

“A monastery, and not a single holy image to be seen.” Situ Yuebo muttered this as he walked forward, then stopped, fixing his gaze on the floor behind the altar. “Come look at this.”

Zhong Xu went over and looked — a pile of colorful fragments half-buried in the grime and dust. They crouched down, and Situ Yuebo brushed aside the topmost layer of filth. A porcelain hand, missing three fingers, was revealed, with nearby half a face with a beautifully carved eye, and a faded cross lying beside them helplessly.

“Ah — the statue of the Virgin is here, then…” Situ Yuebo cleaned his hands and let his gaze continue to search around the broken statue. Very quickly he discovered a ring of scorched black marks a few steps away. Zhong Xu noticed the unusual marks at the same moment, walked over, and fanned away the dust covering them. A clear Star of David appeared before them — not drawn deliberately, but a mark burned by intense fire, permanently embedded in the floor. Stare at it long enough, and the air seemed to carry the faint suggestion of a burned smell.

“Well now — a Seal of Solomon, of all things.” Zhong Xu studied it for a moment, then placed her palm over the six-pointed star. At last she said with certainty: “But it stopped working a long time ago.”

“You’re this familiar with Western techniques as well?” Situ Yuebo looked at his wife with admiration. “What is the Seal of Solomon for?”

“Evil entities and the malevolent have no national borders — our Zhong family has always taken a blended East-meets-West approach to all matters of warding off evil!” Zhong Xu never missed an opportunity to add to her family’s prestige, and continued: “This comes from Judaism. This seal has two completely opposite uses — one is to seal away a demon, the other is to summon one. It all depends on whether the practitioner who uses it is righteous or wicked.”

“And which is this one?” Connecting it to the once-holy space of the monastery, Situ Yuebo guessed: “It should be for sealing demons…”

Zhong Xu stood up, a coldness in her eyes: “Wrong. It’s for summoning one. The malevolent energy the seal released has not dissipated even now.” Looking around at the dim surroundings, she exhaled slowly and smiled. “This is an interesting place.”

“Summoning a demon in a monastery — that’s an absolutely forbidden transgression of the most dangerous kind. The person who put down this seal is no ordinary figure.” The more Situ Yuebo thought about it, the more “interesting” he found it.

Before his words were finished, there was a cracking sound overhead, and a massive dark shape came crashing down from above at lightning speed toward the two of them.

“Get out of the way!” Zhong Xu cried out, pushing her husband aside.

A wind sharp as a blade grazed past both their faces, and with a thunderous crash, a beam as thick as a person’s waist came down squarely between the couple. Its force was such that more than half of it buried itself into the floor, and as the dust flew and the ground shuddered, countless cracks crept outward from the impact point — a deeply unnerving sight.

Looking at the enormous thing that had landed no further than a foot from her toes, both Situ Yuebo and Zhong Xu were momentarily still.

“Darling, are you all right?” Situ Yuebo scrambled up — Zhong Xu was already on her feet on the other side, dusting off her clothes with complete composure, shaking her head. “I’m fine. This wretched place!” Situ Yuebo relaxed somewhat, then looked up at the ceiling and back at the massive beam. “This should be a support timber from the rafters. But look at the end of it.”

Following her husband’s finger, Zhong Xu saw a clean, smooth cut at one end, as though made in an instant by some sharp instrument.

“This timber didn’t fall because it rotted through with age — it was broken by a person…” Situ Yuebo’s brow gradually furrowed — puzzled, but not alarmed.

“Ha — someone doesn’t welcome our visit here.” Zhong Xu gave a cold smile, then walked to the center of the main aisle and faced forward, where nothing appeared out of the ordinary. The caution and pride in her eyes made it seem as though what hovered before her was not air but a malevolent entity with which she could not coexist.

“Is there… evil energy?” Situ Yuebo stood beside her. Every time his wife wore this expression, it meant a battle was about to begin.

“No.” Zhong Xu’s answer came unexpectedly. “I feel no active evil energy. Very strange… but I’m certain that somewhere, there are eyes I dislike watching us.” Hearing this, Situ Yuebo said nothing, silently scanning every direction as though searching for those “eyes” hidden in the darkness.

Faint white breath issued from their mouths and noses. The hall was silent, and when they were not speaking, only the quiet sound of both their breathing could be heard.

“Ah!“

Suddenly, a sharp female scream pierced the boundless stillness. Though the sound came from outside the main door, Zhong Xu and her husband instantly knew — it was A’Jing.

The two ran toward the main door, regretting with every stride — they had only thought about possible danger inside the monastery, completely overlooking the fact that a girl left alone in the open forest was no match even for an ordinary wild animal, let alone anything supernatural.

Situ Yuebo pulled the barely-shut door open with a jerk. It groaned, and the couple rushed out one after the other. Yet the scene that appeared before them caused both to freeze involuntarily in their tracks —

Outside the door was not the overgrown wilderness they had walked through. It was the monastery’s same dilapidated main hall — the pews, the candelabra, the white pillars, even the timber that had come crashing down beside the altar, all identical.

Situ Yuebo instinctively blinked, nudging Zhong Xu. “Darling — I’m not seeing things, am I?”

“No.” Zhong Xu, long accustomed to all manner of strange scenes, was unperturbed and said with calm certainty: “We’ve looped back.”

They turned around. The door had shut at some unknown moment. Situ Yuebo pushed hard against it — it had become a wall of iron and bronze, immovable regardless of how much force he exerted. They stood behind the door, a long corridor stretching out from beneath their feet — and the way back had been sealed off.

“Don’t worry — I’m here. If we could come in, we can naturally go out.” Zhong Xu pulled her husband over, slightly concerned that someone who had never encountered this kind of situation might feel a psychological burden.

“I know. I’m just very puzzled.” Situ Yuebo’s composure was no less than hers. He smiled and patted her shoulder. “Your husband is not a coward. And —” His expression shifted. “We need to find A’Jing quickly… if she’s also ‘in here.'”

“Wait a moment — what we heard just now may not necessarily have been A’Jing’s voice.” At this point, Zhong Xu had lost all urgency to rush off in search of anyone. She walked forward several paces, drew a small white bottle from her bag, dipped a trace of something red like paint onto her fingertip, and then pressed it between her eyebrows. She focused internally and called out quietly: “Open!”

Two razor-sharp gazes, capable of penetrating steel and concrete, shot out from her bright eyes, and not a single corner of the hall escaped her sweep.

After a moment, she furrowed her brow slightly and said: “It’s not an illusion. What we’re seeing is a real space.”

Staring at the red mark between her brows, Situ Yuebo was confused. “Do you mean you always assumed we were both hallucinating?”

“Certain malevolent entities create illusions to confuse and ambush humans. Our family’s ancestral Lingzhu vermilion is specifically for seeing through this kind of trick.” Zhong Xu returned the bottle to her bag and said seriously: “I can now confirm that this hall before us, which shouldn’t be here, is a genuinely real space — not an illusion conjured by an external force.”

Hearing this, Situ Yuebo said with no small concern: “If it’s a real space, then that scream just now…”

“Let’s find people! The main hall is all visible at a glance — let’s go upstairs.” Zhong Xu quickened her pace, searching for stairs leading to the monastery’s second level. At a place on the right side of the altar that was partially concealed by scattered planks and rubble, Situ Yuebo stopped and pulled several pieces aside, revealing a mottled iron door of dark red behind them. He called Zhong Xu over from where she had been searching for a way in, and together they cleared the obstacles — long since weathered into decay by time and dust — off to one side.

“Could A’Jing be upstairs?” Situ Yuebo fanned away the suffocating dust heading toward him and looked at this door, whose handle was completely rusted, clearly untouched by anyone for years. “This place really doesn’t look like anyone has passed through.”

Zhong Xu didn’t concern herself with this, picked up a decently weighted stone, and brought it down hard against the barely-hanging lock on the door. The lock — little more than decorative at this point — dropped to the floor at the blow. “If a demon has taken a hostage upstairs, it has absolutely no need for stairs. But you and I do.” With that she gave the door a push. Lime and iron filings fell like a small shower from the door quivering open, and a dark, damp staircase rose steeply upward, its top hidden in darkness.

“Let’s go.” Zhong Xu slipped through the door. Situ Yuebo followed, but before he did, he suddenly looked back toward the altar — and a flicker of something unusual crossed his eyes.

He lit his lighter, the small flame casting a limited amount of light onto two figures carefully making their way up the stairs. Situ Yuebo looked now and then at the wall appearing and vanishing in the dancing light. “Look at the walls — they seem to have some strange markings.”

Bringing the lighter closer, the two carefully examined that section of wall, its outer surface peeling away in large patches. They found in the inner layer of the wall a string of red symbols — neither Chinese nor English nor pictorial — engraved there in a neat single line. Had the outer layer of the wall not been damaged, there was no way anyone would ever have discovered this.

“These… look like… no, they don’t…” Situ Yuebo stared at these “alien characters,” seeming to recognize them yet not quite certain. Zhong Xu tilted her head this way and that, studying the symbols. “They look like English but aren’t, and the strokes look so awkward! Though from my experience, these should belong to some kind of incantation — otherwise they wouldn’t be hidden this mysteriously inside a wall.”

“Wait…” Situ Yuebo’s eyes lit up. He dug from his pocket the phone with its mirror-like case design and held it up to the characters on the wall. Comprehension arrived immediately. “No wonder they looked familiar yet I couldn’t quite recognize them — the entire wall is written in reversed Hebrew. Look.” He held the phone before Zhong Xu’s eyes. Through the reflected image on the back of the phone case, Zhong Xu’s eyes went wide. “It really is Hebrew! No wonder it looked so awkward to me — all written backwards!” But then…” Both of them withdrew their gaze. A string of Hebrew characters buried in a wall, written in reverse — appearing, unbidden, like a sudden fuse, lighting the same eerie, dangerous feeling of premonition in both of them at once.

This monastery that had appeared where there should be a doorway — a space hovering between reality and illusion — was like an enormous, greedy black hole, seeking to swallow any prey it had set its sights on.

Carrying a stomach full of unanswered questions, the two finished climbing that long staircase.

To their surprise, what greeted them at the top was neither a sealed iron door nor a normal passage — but a bead curtain of crystal or glass hanging down from the ceiling. Years of accumulated dust had obscured their original color and luster, and they hung there like a quiet, humble little handmaiden in plain clothes, bowed in waiting.

They pushed through the curtain and entered, a cascade of falling dust landing on both their heads — and they immediately found there was a second bead curtain. They pushed through it, and discovered a third. The two looked at each other, then patiently repeated the same motion. By the time they had passed through the seventh curtain, a blinding light suddenly poured in from ahead — as though they had emerged abruptly from a dark valley into full sunlight. Zhong Xu and Situ Yuebo both turned their faces away instinctively to avoid the sudden brightness.

Several seconds later, as their eyes adjusted to the changed light, Zhong Xu looked at the second level of the monastery now spread before them and came to a brief stop. Situ Yuebo opened his mouth slightly, speaking as if to himself: “This… doesn’t quite look like a monastery interior at all…”

Moonstone-white marble laid out a floor as smooth as a mirror. The junctions of walls were adorned with rose wood and gilded carvings, and on the main wall directly opposite hung dozens of paintings — white backgrounds with blue designs. Amid the luxurious European Classical medieval-style furnishings placed throughout, many fine and elegant pieces of Chinese porcelain were thoughtfully placed in the best positions, and at the windows, long lace-trimmed cream-colored curtains with pale blue silk bows tied at their tops swayed and drifted beautifully in a gentle breeze. The magnificent crystal chandelier overhead poured a warm yellow glow gently across the space, and throughout the hall a shimmering translucent light flowed like water.

“Darling, is it an illusion?” Situ Yuebo asked his wife with suspicion. Indeed, no one could reconcile this hall that combined opulence with elegance with a solemn, austere monastery.

Zhong Xu shook her head. “It’s not. It’s still a real space.”

“How fascinating…” Situ Yuebo gave a small laugh and marveled: “What kind of place have we come to?”

“Don’t be afraid — nothing bad will happen.” Zhong Xu gave him her assurance with confidence, then ran her finger along the top of a cabinet standing nearby and held it up before him with a playful look. “Look how clean it is here — whoever lives here is quite diligent.”

“Is there anyone here? I don’t see a single person…” Situ Yuebo turned a full circle. Large as the hall was, it was remarkably open — you could see to the very end at a glance, with no nook or cranny for anyone to hide in.

“The owner here is very shy, or possibly just ugly, and doesn’t dare show themselves to visitors. Of course you can’t see anyone.” Zhong Xu spoke lightly, the teasing tone maintained, though her expression changed abruptly a moment later. She called out under her breath: “Evil energy…”

“What…” Situ Yuebo had barely spoken when a crash sounded from the right, and the white and gold-trimmed standing cabinet against the main wall was suddenly burst open from the inside. A person rolled out through the open cabinet door.

“Help…!” A’Jing lay on the floor with a face full of terror, her long hair in wild disarray. Both her hands were pressing hard against her neck, her posture very much like someone desperately trying to pull away an invisible cord that was throttling her. And her dirt-smeared feet kicked out instinctively in every direction, the rubber soles of her sneakers scraping against the floor, producing a harsh squeaking sound.

Before either of them could rush over, there was a whooshing sound, and an invisible force lifted A’Jing entirely from the ground, dragging her at speed through mid-air toward the wide-open window. Her calls for help, filled with terror and despair, echoed with a reverb that seemed sufficient to stop the breathing of anyone who heard it.

Zhong Xu stepped up onto the sofa in front of her, used the height to vault upward, landed atop the tall wooden bookcase beside it, then nimbly leapt up from there and grabbed hold of the only available support on the ceiling — the chandelier. She swung herself up, locked on the target, kicked off with both feet, and with the momentum launched herself like a swallow toward A’Jing, who was just a few steps away from sliding out the window. She got one arm around A’Jing’s waist, and with her other hand produced as if by sleight of hand a black-scripted talisman, held it up, and called out: “Ghost-Subduing Golden Sword — let all malevolent spirits disperse!”

In an instant the talisman transformed into a flash of brilliant gold that shot out from between Zhong Xu’s fingers at speed, driving itself into the ceiling just above where A’Jing had been, sending out a ring of commanding, powerful energy.

A wail rang out — and a gray-black smoke began to seep from the place where the golden light had entered the ceiling. At the same moment, Zhong Xu felt the weight in her hand lighten, and the force restraining A’Jing vanished in an instant. Both of them dropped from the ceiling.

By some stroke of fortune in their misfortune, Situ Yuebo had just arrived at their landing point. No one knew where he had found the strength — at the risk of breaking bones, he stretched out his arms and, in the most remarkable of coincidences, caught them. Then all three of them tumbled unevenly across the floor.

“Are you all right?” Zhong Xu, unharmed, scrambled up and hurried to help A’Jing off Situ Yuebo’s body, where she was coughing continuously. She turned anxiously to pat her husband’s shoulder. “Darling, did I crush anything?”

Situ Yuebo let out a long breath and climbed upright, rubbing his lower back. “Fine, fine — the two of you together aren’t quite enough weight to break me. See to A’Jing.”

Zhong Xu looked down at A’Jing leaning weakly against her, hands clutching her throat, coughing with difficulty. The terror in her eyes had not diminished in the slightest, and her color was worse than when they arrived — not merely pale, but with an added layer of gray. To put it bluntly, she looked barely better than a fresh corpse.

“A’Jing, don’t be afraid — it’s over.” Zhong Xu held her closer. She knew well how tremendous the shock would be for an ordinary person in the aftermath of something supernatural like this. A young girl who hadn’t died of fright was already lucky.

“I… I…” A’Jing trembled, and the shock must have been extreme — tears poured down her face as she held on to Zhong Xu and spoke incoherently: “I was outside just now… waiting for you… someone knocked me out, I don’t know who… when I came to I was already here… there was a rope around my neck, so tight, trying to strangle me…”

“Despicable…” Zhong Xu had barely gotten out the curse when Situ Yuebo shouted: “Darling — look above!”

Zhong Xu looked up. The gray smoke expelled by the Golden Sword had not dissipated — it had grown thicker and thicker. Within a matter of seconds it had gathered into a strange face-shape, half-human and half-beast, staring down at them from the ceiling with murderous intensity. Then its mouth opened and it blew a stream of turbid black breath toward them.

Sensing the danger, Zhong Xu shoved Situ Yuebo and the others aside and rolled out of the way herself. The black breath fell directly onto the spot where all three of them had just been standing. The marble floor instantly had a large hole corroded into it, its edges still fizzing and bubbling.

The group broke into a cold sweat.

Even the Ghost-Subduing Golden Sword didn’t stop it… A trace of unease crossed Zhong Xu’s heart. Over all her years, whenever her family’s Ghost-Subduing Golden Sword appeared, all malevolent entities large or small would be either killed or gravely wounded. And yet this thing… there was no time to think further. Dispatching this quickly was the best course. She pushed A’Jing into Situ Yuebo’s arms, stood, and without a trace of fear looked up at that grotesque face overhead, then looked down at her husband: “Move back with A’Jing. Today fire is the only way.”

Hearing this, Situ Yuebo quickly guided A’Jing back to the wall, wondering — only heaven knew — whether this wife who was about to unleash her power would end up leveling the entire hall.

“Whatever you are, demon or spirit — meeting someone of the Zhong family means only one end for you.” Zhong Xu stood with her brows arched sharply upward, looking at that hateful “face” overhead. She formed both hands into a seal, elevated her spiritual power within to its full ten-tenths intensity, and called out: “Nine-Flame Earthfire, purge all impurity of the three realms! Come forth!”

A flame of crimson gold wrapped in cobalt blue — more accurately described as a huge fire dragon — answered from Zhong Xu’s palms, and in an instant the entire ceiling was a sea of fire. Though it was the same technique, compared to the time in the bathroom, this fire dragon was immeasurably more powerful. The radiance and scorching heat emanating from the flames were alone enough to convince any witness that the gold-and-blue fire born from this woman’s palms had the power to burn away every evil thing in the three realms.

The ghost face howled as it thrashed back and forth within the sea of fire, but wherever it retreated, the fire there intensified tenfold. When it tried to open its mouth to spit black breath in counterattack, the black breath was dissolved by the flames before it could leave its mouth. With no means of retaliation, it was like a fish caught in a net — twisting in agony within the light.

Situ Yuebo shielded A’Jing, deliberately blocking her line of sight, not wanting the harrowing scene to frighten her further.

“Mr. Situ… I’m so frightened…” A’Jing buried her face in Situ Yuebo’s embrace and began to cry softly, her body shaking harder than before.

“Don’t be afraid — it’ll be over very soon. My wife is remarkable.” Situ Yuebo lightly stroked that thin, slight back, smiling as he comforted this badly shaken young woman.

Yet his smile vanished in an instant, the composure he had maintained throughout replaced by utter astonishment. He pushed A’Jing away from him and looked down. A thin, razor-edged fragment had driven itself deep into his chest — on both sides of it were clear mirror surfaces, one reflecting Zhong Xu, who was absorbed in subduing the ghost face, and the other reflecting A’Jing, sitting beside him, smiling lightly as she looked at him.

Perhaps because the stabbing had happened too fast, perhaps because the weapon was too sharp — Situ Yuebo felt no pain at all. He only watched as the front of his shirt was gradually spread with blood.

“A’Jing… you…” He covered the wound, staring in disbelief at this frail young woman his wife had thrown herself up to save, but before the words could be finished, a mouthful of blood welled from his lips.

Over there, Zhong Xu was still absorbed in the task of subduing the ghost face, completely unaware of what had happened to her husband — all her attention was fixed on the enemy overhead, which had already been burned into a distorted, fused mass in which no individual features could be made out. She sensed that this entity would be extinguished very soon. Allowing herself a brief breath of relief, she turned around, intending to report to the other two that success was imminent — and saw what she had never in her life expected to see.

“Darling!” She cried out and charged over without a second thought.

“Stay back!” A’Jing gave a low command. One hand seized Situ Yuebo by the throat — and in that instant her fingers lengthened and transformed, becoming five blades that would slice into flesh and bone with the slightest added force. Every blade reflected Zhong Xu’s complex gaze, in which confusion and fury coexisted.

“A’Jing, have you gone mad?” Zhong Xu stopped a few steps short of them, forcibly pressing down the urgency and rage in her chest. “What exactly are you trying to do?”

A light, indifferent laugh sounded, echoing in the room. A’Jing tilted her head as if considering how to answer. The once pellucid round eyes were half-narrowed like a lazy cat sunning itself.

“Answer me!” Zhong Xu stepped one step closer, and even now could not believe she had saved such an ungrateful, treacherous creature.

“I told you not to move!” The blades at Situ Yuebo’s throat pressed in a fraction deeper, drawing thin trickles of blood. A’Jing remained immovable, and then smiled: “You should not have come here. If you had been willing to listen to her and left earlier, none of this would have been necessary.”

“Her?!” Zhong Xu was taken aback, turning that inexplicable remark over in her mind — but a single look at Situ Yuebo’s increasingly pale lips drove everything else from her thoughts. She ground her teeth: “Whatever your purpose is — if anything happens to my husband, I won’t just have you buried with him. I’ll make sure you never enter the cycle of reincarnation again!”

“Darling…” The already gravely weakened Situ Yuebo made the effort to raise his head and look at Zhong Xu, forcing a smile. “I… I won’t be in any danger… our honeymoon has only just… just beg—” He had no time to finish. The light in his eyes flickered like a candle in the wind — and went out. His head drooped down with no force to hold it up.

“Darling!” A wrench of heart-cutting anguish nearly brought Zhong Xu to the floor, yet she steadied herself nonetheless. Two gazes of lethal force locked onto A’Jing, and her hands clenched into fists.

There was likely no one who, faced with such a gaze, could remain unmoved. A’Jing naturally sensed that Zhong Xu was “about to explode,” and said lightly: “Don’t make any rash moves. He’s only fainted. If you act rashly, I can’t guarantee your husband’s safety.”

“You…” Zhong Xu, at an impasse, stood rooted in frustrated helplessness. Her abilities might be extraordinary, but she would not gamble with the life of the one she most loved.

“At first, I thought you had some remarkable level of cultivation hidden away.” A’Jing looked at Zhong Xu with a sidelong glance. The long black hair that fell from the roots had begun to shed, layer by layer, into something as luminous as moonlight. The silver hair shifted gently with A’Jing’s movements, tracing graceful patterns in the air. And those eyes full of contempt had changed from deep brown to a pale violet.

Looking at A’Jing’s transformed appearance and sensing the evident demonic energy now emanating from within her — energy that had only floated out at this moment — all the strange occurrences they had encountered flashed across Zhong Xu’s eyes like a reel of film, stimulating every cell of her thinking. The person in black who had been following them, the tall and slender figure, the deliberately pulled-down hat… very quickly she fixed her gaze on A’Jing and said without hesitation: “The person who followed us, the killer who killed Sabina and the American, and the creature that attacked me in the bathroom — it was all you, you demon!”

“Haha — don’t be in such a rush to curse. Blame yourself for your cultivation being insufficient, if you only realized my identity at this point.” A’Jing laughed coldly, and with her other hand slowly ran a finger across Situ Yuebo’s bloodless face, exclaiming in admiration: “This is quite a fine meal!”

“You wretch — take your filthy hands off him!” Zhong Xu erupted in furious indignation, wishing she could tear this creature to pieces on the spot.

“My hands are perfectly clean.” A’Jing held them up and gave them a childlike little wave, then her expression immediately shifted. She said coldly: “The truly filthy people — you have not yet encountered them.”

“Hmph!” Zhong Xu spat in contemptuous fury. “Are you trying to tell me that everyone you’ve harmed was utterly filthy and deserved to die?”

“Of course not.” A’Jing replied tonelessly. “They are just food, or one might say, tools. You are the same.”

“You madwoman!” Zhong Xu had no interest in listening to any further ravings, and was absolutely determined that this fine honeymoon would not be ruined by this wretched creature. She thought for a moment and said: “Release my husband. If you want food, I taste better than him.”

“Oh?” A’Jing widened her eyes in a show of maddening innocence. “How admirable. You’d give up your own life for him?”

“Yes.” Zhong Xu answered with absolute certainty.

“Throw down that bag you’re carrying!” A’Jing said coldly.

Zhong Xu’s hand instinctively touched the bag packed with talismans and her family’s inherited instruments. Without much deliberation, she removed it and threw it aside, cursing the other’s underhanded methods inwardly, then said: “Release him. Whatever you want, come at me. I promise not to retaliate.”

“Very well. In honor of your great nobility.” A’Jing removed the “blades” from Situ Yuebo’s throat. Her five fingers gradually returned to their normal shape. She pushed the unconscious hostage over onto the floor, then stood up, walked before Zhong Xu, and looked at her with a smile. “You promised not to retaliate, remember!”

In the tense moment of A’Jing closing in step by step, Zhong Xu was inwardly reciting an incantation, and a radiance brilliant as the blazing sun began to glow in the hands she had held behind her back. The instant A’Jing was less than half a foot away, a lethal force erupted from Zhong Xu’s body. She swung her right hand with force and cried out: “Zhong Kui’s Sword — come forth!”

A sword three feet long and blindingly red materialized from the glowing point in her palm, its translucent blade surging with crimson flow, projecting an awe-inspiring killing energy.

“Zhong Kui’s Sword?!” A’Jing stared blankly at the deadly blade sweeping down toward her skull, and not a single thought of evasion entered her mind.

The sword’s force sent A’Jing’s silver hair flying in all directions. The blade descended from the top of her head — Zhong Xu kept a tight grip on the hilt, her cold gaze fixed on this creature about to meet its end. She assumed this despicable thing had been paralyzed by the Zhong Kui Sword’s imposing power — not that she wouldn’t dodge, but that she simply couldn’t.

Yet A’Jing did not dissolve into nothing as Zhong Xu had anticipated. She rolled her eyes upward, looking at the Zhong Kui Sword that had embedded itself into her body, and broke into a smile. She extended a finger and gave the blade a light flick — and this sword that Zhong Xu had always taken the most pride in shattered in an instant into countless pieces, dropping to the floor and vanishing. A’Jing’s body was left without so much as a scratch.

Zhong Xu stared at her empty hands. The Zhong Kui Sword, though called a sword, was actually an intangible thing born of spiritual power. Any demon, spirit, or monster struck by the Zhong Kui Sword would instantly be annihilated, their soul scattered, never to be reborn — yet today this creature had shattered the Zhong Kui Sword with a casual flick, and still stood there completely unharmed. How — how was this possible?!

“Haha — did you think… I was really that foolish?” A’Jing smiled pleasantly at Zhong Xu, casually smoothing a few strands of hair blown out of place by the sword’s force. “This is my domain, not yours.” Having said this, she placed her cold hand on Zhong Xu’s shoulder and laughed coldly: “From the moment you stepped into the monastery, you were destined to lose utterly.”

“I would lose?! Aren’t you afraid the wind will knock you off your feet with talk like that?” Zhong Xu refused to yield a single inch, gesturing at the still-burning flames on the ceiling. “Look at your companion — worse off than a roast pig. Do you think Zhong Kui’s Sword is the only thing I know?”

“Haha.” A peal of laughter as clear as a silver bell brought a layer of gooseflesh to Zhong Xu’s skin. Before she could make any move, A’Jing’s figure flickered like a corrupted television signal and disappeared entirely. By the time Zhong Xu reacted and spun around, A’Jing was already standing behind her at some distance, pointing at the scorched face on the ceiling and saying: “You call it my companion? Haha — how amusing. Look more carefully!” She drew a circle with her hand in the direction of that face, and a flash of white light passed. Something bright and small fell from the ceiling. Zhong Xu fixed her eyes on it — it was a glass mask, barely two inches across.

“You were all being so serious about it, so I was happy to use a little prop to play along.” A’Jing tossed the mask up and caught it. “Without it to ‘abduct’ me, how would you have been so comfortable handing me over to your husband? My acting was rather good, don’t you think?” Her laughter carried an emerging killing intent in those violet eyes.

Was this creature really the bright and gentle A’Jing, like sunshine? The A’Jing who had smiled while chatting about the future and about scenery, who had been heartbroken to tears over Sabina’s death? Zhong Xu looked directly at her eyes, for she had always believed that no matter how carefully a person hid their thoughts, their eyes would betray them. Her strong instincts told her that the pellucid goodness in the eyes of the A’Jing she had known before could not possibly be something a creature reeking with killing intent like this could have faked. What was more, she had genuinely detected not a trace of demonic energy from “that” A’Jing, unlike right now — whose demonic energy was dense enough to be overwhelming. But if this demon had taken on A’Jing’s appearance to deceive them, when she had rescued her just now she had also detected no demonic energy. So what on earth was going on?

“Something is wrong…” The more Zhong Xu thought about it, the more wrong it felt. She stepped toward A’Jing, saying word by word: “You — are not A’Jing!”

An almost imperceptible flicker of surprise passed through A’Jing’s eyes. She laughed. “Haha — your imagination is quite impressive.” Her laughter broke off as she suddenly dropped the lightness from her expression. Her words, each one, carried a chilling edge: “But who I am no longer matters. Those who are about to die have no need to know so much.”

“Ha — I think you have it backwards!” Zhong Xu regarded her coldly. Over all the years, there had been no shortage of malevolent entities who had talked big in front of her only to die in most wretched fashion afterward. Though this A’Jing was the first entity ever to shatter her Zhong Kui Sword — still, as long as she was connected to the malevolent and the evil, she would not let her go even at the cost of her own life! The descendants of Zhong Kui were not merely a title for prestige.

Just as Zhong Xu was reaching into her coat pocket for the last two talismans she had left, she felt a sudden cold at the back of her neck. A chill surged from that point through her entire body at speed. Flesh, meridians, blood — everything froze in an instant. An irresistible numbness mixed with a heavy drowsiness came flooding in from all sides. In less than one thousandth of a second, Zhong Xu’s world went dark before her eyes and her body began to fall backward involuntarily.

Situ Yuebo reached out and steadied Zhong Xu’s now-unconscious form, then carefully and gently lowered her to the floor.

“You…” Every trace of calm vanished from A’Jing’s face. She stared at Situ Yuebo, completely unharmed, in shock. “How are you still…”

“How am I still not dead, how do I still have the strength to stand, how could I have rendered my wife unconscious — right?” Situ Yuebo finished the thought for her with a pleasant smile, then looked down at the bloodstains on his shirt and shook his head. “Tsk, tsk — a perfectly good shirt, and you’ve ruined it.”

A’Jing looked at this man who still bore his unhealed wound with blood not yet dried, yet was utterly unlike the dying figure of moments ago — a conflicting mix of confusion and alarm rose in her, impossible to suppress. Why should she be afraid? She found the feeling strange herself. But the moment she looked into his eyes — that warm, composed expression — she felt an involuntary dread. Behind this man’s exterior lay a force that could not be looked upon directly. If he wished you to fear him, a single smile without warmth was all it took.

Situ Yuebo walked toward her. She instinctively stepped back. A single thought spread through her mind — the moment she let him close, she would crumble to dust.

“If my wife had tried to match you with force, she might not have had the advantage here.” Situ Yuebo stopped walking, making conversation as though discussing everyday matters. “Without knowing the trick, no matter how high her cultivation, she is no match for you here. Isn’t that so, A’Jing — you said correctly: this is indeed ‘your domain.'”

“You… trick? Ha, there’s a trick to this place of mine?” A’Jing forced herself to hold his gaze, feigning indifference.

“If my wife had been reciting her incantations in reverse during her techniques, do you think you could still be standing here talking to me now?” Situ Yuebo looked her up and down as he asked.

As if someone had put a finger on the precise spot of her vulnerability, A’Jing’s expression underwent a profound change. “How did you know that?”

“The space we are currently in is like a world reflected in a mirror — it is inverted.” Situ Yuebo surveyed the surroundings with unhurried composure and laid out the secret of it. “The fallen beam was originally tilting to the right, but when I looked again just now, it was tilting to the left. The Seal of Solomon beside the altar had also moved to the opposite position. And of course, the most obvious giveaway was the Hebrew writing in the walls — all written backwards. My wife, who habitually overlooks such small details when she is focused on tracking demonic energy, missed these things entirely. And so the techniques she used in the usual manner would be reversed by this ‘counter-force,’ the effects negated — hence all the form with none of the substance. That is why you could behave so brazenly in her presence for so long.”

Like a snail stripped of its shell, A’Jing was surrounded entirely by the panic of having the deepest layer of her heart seen through at a glance. The pupils in her violet eyes contracted with tension. Every ounce of force in her body drained away piece by piece. Before this man, she found herself unable to form even a single word of bravado — more precisely, she did not dare.

“Did I frighten you?” Situ Yuebo advanced a small step, his smile deepening. “You probably labeled me ‘harmless’ very early on, didn’t you? Ha — assuming that like the others who died at your hands, I was nothing more than a weak and powerless body of flesh and blood. Instead it was my wife with her aura of ‘killing intent’ who made you wary. Even having lured us into your territory, you still didn’t feel secure, and wanted to use me as a hostage to force her to lay down all weapons that could possibly harm you — only then did you feel completely safe. Is that not right? Tsk, tsk — you are quite a calculating creature.”

He advanced a step, she involuntarily retreated two. There were very few people in the world capable of matching this man — in the calmness of a light breeze and scattered clouds, concealing a force that allowed no others to advance.

“How very troublesome!” Situ Yuebo’s tone shifted, and in this moment of drawn swords and taut strings he stretched a languid, unhurried stretch, half-closed his eyes and complained: “Getting to have a honeymoon is a rare thing, and all I wanted was a little peace and quiet. And yet look at you — you had to go and take lives, force my hand.”

Having said this, he extended his left hand and blew a lazy breath onto his palm. A light, flowing radiance, hovering between pale blue and transparent, gradually materialized there. Flecks of light drifted through this water-like, beautiful luminescence. Several wisps of faint white mist breathed out from within it like softly drifting white feathers, and descended slowly to the floor.

A continuous series of cracking sounds broke out where the white mist touched the floor. A layer of ice — bone-piercing cold yet perfectly crystalline — formed in an instant, coming to life as though animated, advancing in a straight line at rapid speed toward where A’Jing stood. No one could know what consequence this apparently ordinary ice would bring. But the cold rushing toward her made A’Jing feel as though ten thousand blades had pierced her through — every cell frozen in the same instant, then crushed one by one. The premonition of utter destruction manifested genuinely and completely inside her body.

But resistance is an instinct. A’Jing steeled herself and, just as the line of ice was about to touch her, leapt sharply backward. Her body suspended half in the air, she stacked both hands over her chest and began to mutter words in a rapid, concentrated stream — as if drawing every last reserve of power within herself outward. Quickly, a mass of deep violet mist-like energy seeped from her chest, dyeing both her hands in an instant to a terrifying purple. Tendrils like veins and meridians churned beneath the surface of her palms, a vivid, startling crimson.

An inhuman, beast-like howl surged out of A’Jing. Silver hair flying, both violet eyes shot through with dense threads of blood, two sharp fangs protrude from between colorless lips, and even her previously normal ears had elongated into sharp points. Her palms pushed outward, and two writhing masses of a blood-tinged, eye-searing purple light shot toward Situ Yuebo. The air was instantly saturated with a thick smell of blood. When the bizarre, intense violet radiance was nearly upon his face, it shifted again into the form of a beast whose eyes and mouth were clearly visible yet had no name, its enormous maw opening wide and plunging thunderously down toward Situ Yuebo’s skull.

Faced with his opponent’s frenzied counterattack, Situ Yuebo did not move. Like an audience member watching a film, he did not even make the effort to blink.

Ding ding!

The sound as of a row of sharp iron nails striking solid tempered glass. The bizarre, ferocious beast above Situ Yuebo’s head froze in place, barely an inch from the top of his skull — like a frame suddenly paused. One second later, a blaze of light erupted, and the thing, like a shattered mirror, broke apart into countless tiny flecks wrapped in a dim violet, flickering feebly in the air before dissolving into transparent dust that the air current blew entirely away.

Situ Yuebo waved his hand dismissively at the odor of blood that displeased him, and said with a smile: “One turn each — my turn now.”

“You…” The contorted face of A’Jing’s transformation was twisted in extreme terror. She probably had not expected that her full-power attack had not so much as grazed a single hair on Situ Yuebo’s head. Even as she had not yet recovered from that extreme panic, the line of ice on the floor had already extended to below her. It surged upward — like a cord operated by someone’s hand — and locked fast around her feet.

The feet encased in ice lost all sensation instantly — not painful, not cold, just the sudden feeling that the legs no longer belonged to her. A’Jing struggled with all her might, but it was useless. Her body was forcibly held in mid-air by this “rope” of ice.

“Who are you — just tell me! Who are you!” A’Jing could restrain herself no longer and cried out.

Situ Yuebo walked to within one step of her. The luminous flow in his palm still moved in slow, gentle currents, its pale blue and transparent light illuminating the depths of his profound gaze.

“All things in the world that are without life fall under my dominion. Those who know me are accustomed to addressing me as…” The perfect arc of a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth: “King of the Underworld.”

“King… of the Underworld…” A’Jing was struck dumb.

Situ Yuebo moved his fingers, and the ice rope carried his defeated enemy slowly back down to the floor. “Though you do have some ability. Even I failed initially to detect the demonic energy in you, and took you for an ordinary human.” He studied the face of his vanquished foe with careful attention, and then, after a long moment, rubbed his eyes and smiled: “Looking more closely now, I seem to detect the shadow of two souls in you. Could it be that I’m getting old and my eyes are failing?”

Hearing this, A’Jing quickly turned her face to one side and murmured: “That’s… I…”

“No matter how many souls you carry, no matter what kind of creature you are — what you have done means you cannot remain in the human world any longer.” Situ Yuebo’s smile gradually faded, and the radiance in his palm intensified several times over. “Those who commit wrongs must receive their punishment.”

“No! Please don’t! Your Majesty the King of the Underworld, please stay your hand!” A voice of desperate entreaty rang out — no longer with the coldness and contempt of before. The voice sounded as though from a completely different person. A streak of violet light flew from A’Jing’s forehead and dropped to one side. Within a ring of light, a human form gradually materialized — a silver-haired youth, violet-eyed and red-lipped, his skin pale as frost, a pair of notably pointed ears drawing the eye at once. His bare body curled weakly upon itself.

“Two people after all…” Situ Yuebo lowered his hand somewhat, and the radiance in his palm also diminished. This suddenly appearing additional person gave him cause to temporarily withhold his action.

“Your Majesty… I beg you… spare him!” On this side, A’Jing had reverted to her previous normal appearance — even her hair color restored to the original black, just as it had been the first time they met.

“Spare him?” Situ Yuebo smiled. “Give me a reasonable reason.”

“A reason…” A’Jing’s lips moved wordlessly. She shook her head, without strength. “I have no reasonable reason. I only know — everything is my fault.”

“If you have no reason, at least give me an explanation.” Situ Yuebo pointed to the youth who looked like a sick cat. “Who is he, and who are you?”

A’Jing looked at the youth, her heartache evident for all to see. She said in a choked voice: “Your wife guessed correctly. Tino is one of the rarest creatures in the demon world — a blood demon. He is also an orphan, abandoned by his parents. He grew up in this forest, feeding on the blood of small animals, cut off entirely from the world. Until he encountered Mary and the Crown Prince — and his lonely life finally came to an end.” A flicker of long-absent happiness appeared in her eyes. “They took him in, gave him a place to live in the hunting lodge, and found him easy, light work to do. Tino was extraordinarily gifted — he needed only to hear a piece once to play it in its entirety. In those days, I would often see the Crown Prince and Mary dancing together in the hall full of roses under the silver moonlight, while Tino sat before the fine piano, playing for them with happy, rapt concentration.” Her gaze moved to the other side, resting on the still-bright piano by the window, as all the scenes of those days arose one by one before her.

“Ha — taking in a blood demon. Weren’t they afraid of being drained dry?” Situ Yuebo could not help thinking of the victims this creature had claimed.

“The Tino of those days was nothing like the Tino of now.” A’Jing shook her head. “Not every blood demon is a monster knowing only how to drain human blood. Perhaps you won’t believe this — the Tino of those days was very pure-hearted and good. Perhaps because he had never taken a human life, his malevolent nature had not yet emerged. Or perhaps as one’s appearance comes from the heart, he looked just like an ordinary youth with a dazzlingly radiant exterior — the kind of person who makes you want to fall in love with them at first glance.” A’Jing lowered her head. A faint, bashful smile appeared and then vanished. “The Crown Prince and Mary treated him very well — like family. In those days in the hunting lodge, anyone who saw them would have called them happy. Until…” She bit her lip instinctively. “Until that night. Because the Pope refused to declare his existing marriage void, combined with the hopelessness of his political future, the Crown Prince, in the depths of despair, created the most tragic end — he shot Mary dead, and then took his own life to follow her. That day, the Crown Prince had deliberately sent Tino to a distant town on an errand. When Tino returned the next day, all he found were the cold bodies of Mary and the Crown Prince. And the guards and priests moving through the lodge.”

“He started killing?” Situ Yuebo easily guessed the next part.

A’Jing sighed. “He read the suicide note the Crown Prince had left behind. He developed a bone-deep hatred for the papal forces that had prevented the Crown Prince and Mary from being together. With his mind consumed by hatred, in a single night he killed all the priests who remained in the lodge. That time, the entire hunting lodge ran with rivers of blood, and the white roses in the garden all turned red. Very quickly, the news that there was a demon in the lodge reached the Church. The Pope sent three of his most skilled agents here. Tino was no match for them, and was ultimately sealed by them using the Seal of Solomon into a statue of the Virgin Mary. The imperial family, following the Pope’s wishes, had the lodge swiftly demolished and this monastery built on the original site — partly to completely cover up the tragedy that had occurred here, and partly to use the monastery’s holy power to permanently suppress the sealed Tino.”

“But the seal was broken.” Situ Yuebo picked up the thread, remembering the statue fragments they had seen earlier. “If those priests sealed him inside the Virgin Mary statue, then their Seal of Solomon must have been used to bind the demon. Yet I saw beside the fragments of the Virgin statue, another Seal of Solomon — that one was for summoning a demon. It seems someone used both sides of the Seal of Solomon — the righteous against the wicked — to break through each other, and rescued the blood demon.” He looked at A’Jing with a measure of appreciation. “That person was you.”

A’Jing did not deny it. She sighed and lowered her head.

“Your own identity interests me more.” Situ Yuebo walked to her side and crouched down, then lifted her chin. “There is a soul inside your body, yet that soul belongs neither to a human nor to a demon.”

After a silence, A’Jing said slowly: “I am a… mirror spirit. In ancient times, the goddess Nüwa smelted five-colored sacred stones to mend the heavens, and I was a piece remaining from those stones that went unused. The goddess, finding me colorless and transparent and greatly pleasing to her eye, transformed me into a mirror and carried me with her always. As I was born of the concentrated essence of heaven and earth to begin with, and was over time suffused with the essence of the goddess Nüwa’s vital energy, I gradually developed my own primordial soul. The goddess had severely depleted her vitality through the act of mending the heavens and ultimately vanished from between heaven and earth. As for me, I changed hands over the ages and drifted into the mortal world, passing through long years in a state of half-waking. I cannot recall how many people have used me to see their reflection. I know only that several hundred years ago I was sent from China to Austria as a gift. Crown Prince Rudolf brought me to the hunting lodge and gave me to Mary as a birthday present.”

“So you are a divine implement formed of the essence of heaven and earth.” Situ Yuebo gave a sound of admiration. “No wonder the natural purity you carry could conceal all demonic energy. Even I was deceived by you.”

“To rescue Tino, I took human form and returned to the monastery, expended my entire spiritual energy, and used the Seal of Solomon to summon an infernal demon to help me break through the seal the priests had placed on the Virgin statue — rescuing Tino, who was barely alive. To keep those priests from troubling him again, I sealed him inside my own body. In that way, even the most skilled practitioner could not discover where he had gone. In fact, after the Virgin statue was found broken, the Church sent even more skilled agents in search of Tino. Several searches yielded nothing. And so the stories began circulating — that Tino was Satan from hell, that he would eventually return for his revenge. Panic spread throughout the monastery from top to bottom, until all of them eventually left, and over time the place fell into disuse. I brought Tino back here, and we have lived here ever since.” A’Jing raised her head, seized Situ Yuebo’s hand, and begged: “You know he is not a bad person. I went to such lengths to keep him safe because I never wanted him to meet an undeserved death. I beg you — spare him.”

Situ Yuebo looked at the shivering youth, barely conscious, and shook his head. “If what drove him to kill those priests was vengeance — then what of the local residents who died from being drained by him over nearly thirty years? How is that to be accounted for?”

“That…” A’Jing was momentarily at a loss for words. Her hands fell lifelessly to her sides. “The first time Tino tasted human blood, he would die of starvation if he continued to abstain. But I did not want him to kill again, so I refused to let him leave my body, and used what remained of my spiritual energy to sustain his life. And so it went on, until thirty years ago, that night of the total lunar eclipse, when I clearly felt that Tino was only a thread away from death. He was a blood demon after all — blood is his only food. I could not let him die. So I…” Her hands curled into fists. “I brought him out with me and attacked someone passing through the forest… After that, every ten years he needed to feed on human blood once. And I… one time after another watched those living people lose their lives before my eyes, their blood passing through my mouth into his body. I did not want it… I truly did not want it…”

“Sabina died very peacefully.” No reproach, no further questions. Situ Yuebo said this mildly.

“I couldn’t stop him — I could only use a spell to make Sabina die in an illusion, without pain.” A’Jing wiped her tears and tried to make herself calm. “From the very first day you arrived at the Forest Inn, he sensed from your wife an extraordinarily powerful presence unlike that of an ordinary person. And so he followed you, wanting to feel out your wife’s true capabilities, intending to… make her the next target. Your every movement at the inn was visible to me, including your wife rendering the officers unconscious with talismans to go and examine Sabina’s body, and everything the two of you discussed.”

“Quite the first-rate surveillance capability!” Situ Yuebo said dryly, then added: “You are a mirror spirit. Then all the mirrors in the inn were your informants.”

“I’m sorry.” A’Jing apologized with deep regret. “After he learned that your wife was no ordinary person, he was very excited, and to ensure a clean result, decided to test your wife’s capabilities. The American was the most unfortunate — Tino chose him completely at random, purely to give himself a little extra strength before testing your wife. Then using my power and the bathroom mirror as his medium, he launched a sneak attack on your wife. When he discovered she was not as easy to deal with as he had imagined, he decided to lure you into the monastery when you came here, pulling you into this counter-space generated by my spiritual energy — and using the particular properties of this space to kill you. On the way, I had wanted to stop you from coming, but he inside my body refused to relent… and yet, what none of us anticipated was that you — whom we had consistently overlooked as an ordinary person — were the… King of the Underworld.” She gave a rueful smile. “Ha, self-inflicted calamity…”

At this point, Tino suddenly moved, releasing a long moan. Those long lashes trembled, and the tightly-shut eyes were about to open.

Seeing this, A’Jing’s heart tensed again. She pleaded once more: “Don’t kill him! I…”

Situ Yuebo interrupted her: “He stayed inside you only because your body could help conceal his demonic energy. This is the one thing my wife could never quite work out — when he was the one killing, he was the master of your body and the demonic energy naturally leaked out. Once the kill was complete, he retreated to his dormant position, you resumed as master, and your transparent clarity of a mirror spirit completely covered his demonic energy. Even the immortals couldn’t find this killer. Utterly clever!” He even smiled and gave a small round of applause, then his expression hardened immediately. He said coldly: “A’Jing — to him, you are only a tool. You clearly had the power to force him out of your body, yet you chose again and again to shield and enable him!”

“I only didn’t want him to be sad… didn’t want him to be disappointed…” A’Jing’s voice dropped so low that even she could barely hear herself. “I love him… from the first time I saw him, when he smiled at me for the first time…” Suddenly, her gaze, resting on Tino’s face, went still. The remaining words were swallowed back.

Tino had come fully awake, rising slowly to a sitting position. The cold wariness in his violet eyes moved between A’Jing and Situ Yuebo.

“Tino!” A’Jing reached out, her instinct to go to him — but the ice binding her feet held her fast. Her body, straining forward, fell heavily to the ground. Powerless, she wept out to Situ Yuebo once more: “Don’t kill him! I beg you!”

Tino looked at this woman fighting desperately on his behalf, then at the expressionless Situ Yuebo, and said nothing.

“Do you think going back to the past would actually change history?” Situ Yuebo fixed his gaze on Tino, as though questioning a child caught stealing sugar.

Tino, assuming he was certainly going to die, felt a strange defiance rise up in him before this judge of all lives — he lifted his head and said: “Yes!”

Situ Yuebo shook his head, then bent down and patted Tino on the head. “Shall I call you naïve, or foolish? Listen: history has no reversibility. Even if you went back a hundred years and stopped the Crown Prince from his act of madness on that day — what then?”

“What then?!” Tino found the question absurd, turned his head away from Situ Yuebo’s hand, and said loudly: “Then Mary would not die! She could live on happily with the Crown Prince — dancing among the roses, sipping the Grüner Veltliner wine she loved most before the window where the moonlight came in!”

Hearing this, the flow of tears on A’Jing’s face gradually ceased, and an indescribable, complex sentiment gathered in the lines of her brow.

“You are wrong. Unless you can remove the despair from the Crown Prince’s heart — which is to say, change the governing policies of the entire imperial dynasty — he would still do it again. The Crown Prince and Mary’s fate would not change because of your appearance. At most you would delay this tragedy from occurring.” Situ Yuebo turned to look at A’Jing’s heavy expression, then back at this righteously aggrieved Tino, and could not help asking him: “From start to finish, I’ve heard you say only ‘Crown Prince,’ ‘Mary.’ All these years — was there only them in your heart?”

When the sole hope was entirely negated, grief and indignation crashed through Tino’s body, rising into a shout: “Yes!”

Situ Yuebo said nothing. He turned and walked to A’Jing’s side. His palm curled slowly to a fist, then opened again — and the luminous flow that had been glimmering in his palm was gone entirely. The ice rope binding A’Jing also dissolved into a faint smoke.

“Your Majesty…” A’Jing looked in disbelief at Situ Yuebo, who had returned her freedom.

“And what of her?” Situ Yuebo helped her up from the floor, then walked before Tino. “Do you know how much vital energy and spiritual power it took to break the Seal of Solomon and use your own body to conceal you? If she were not an ancient divine implement, she would long since have been extinguished. A person like that — and I have not once heard you mention her?”

Tino glanced at A’Jing, then immediately turned his face away, saying nothing in stony silence.

“If she hadn’t fallen in love with you, she wouldn’t have done so much for you.” Situ Yuebo softened his tone. “Not even caring whether she lives or dies. Have you ever considered her? Even a little?”

A’Jing leaned against him, her head lowered, long hair covering her face, making her expression unreadable.

“That she loves me is no concern of mine.” Tino turned his face, his violet eyes as cold as frost. “I never asked her to love me. Everything she did was of her own free will. This is not a transaction — I have no obligation to repay it.”

Situ Yuebo felt clearly the violent tremor that passed through the person leaning against him, and even from inside her body a sound came — barely audible, like something shattering.

Slap!

Before anyone could see how Situ Yuebo had crossed the several steps between them, a resounding slap had landed across Tino’s face. Stumbling, he fell to the ground, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

A’Jing cried out and threw herself over to shield Tino, holding onto Situ Yuebo’s legs in desperation: “I don’t mind — I never minded! Being able to be with him, being able to help him — I am already content. I know I have done many wrong things. I am willing to accept any punishment. I only ask that you spare him!”

Tino watched this woman throwing herself in front of him to protect him at all costs, opened his mouth, but in the end chose silence.

Situ Yuebo’s face showed not a trace of anger. His voice, however, was colder than it had ever been: “A ferocious blood demon without feeling — left in the world, it only brings calamity.”

At only these words, the air was instantly saturated with killing intent. Tino’s chest rose and fell rapidly, yet he tilted his chin upward in a stubborn effort to meet the gaze of the one holding his fate in their hands — asserting through sheer act of will that he was not afraid to die.

“Tino! Don’t be so willful anymore — His Majesty the King of the Underworld is not a bad person! And in truth, we were the ones in the wrong first — we harmed so many innocent people…” A’Jing, fearing that Tino’s rashness would further infuriate Situ Yuebo, held on to him and begged him to lower that stubborn head.

“Were the Crown Prince and Mary in the wrong? Why wouldn’t those people let them be? They had to destroy them to be satisfied?” Tino looked at her as though looking at a stranger, then with a sudden, unhinged laugh, pointed at Situ Yuebo: “No one is innocent — every person in this world is a sinner!”

“Beyond saving.” Situ Yuebo slowly raised his hand.

“No!” A’Jing cried out in terror, threw herself forward and grabbed Situ Yuebo’s arm, disregarding everything: “Spare him! I can reduce him to an ordinary person with no demonic energy and no memory — he won’t threaten anyone anymore! I beg you!”

Situ Yuebo studied that exhausted, tear-drenched face before him and raised an eyebrow. “You mean to…”

“Only give me your word that you will let him live!” A’Jing wiped her tears away, her gaze resolute and unwavering. “I promise — I can do it!”

He considered for a moment, then said: “If he can truly become an ordinary person who will not endanger others’ lives, I can let him go.”

A’Jing’s face broke into joy. She said with excitement: “It’s agreed — you’ve given your word!”

“You two…” Tino looked at the two people “making their deal,” tried to stand up and stop them, only to find that he didn’t have the strength even to stand. Being struck by the King of the Underworld and not having his soul scattered was already the greatest of fortune.

“Thank you!” A’Jing gave a deep bow to Situ Yuebo, then walked back to Tino’s side, studied him for a long, quiet moment, and smiled. “The first time you held me in your hands, you said this mirror is so beautiful. That day, the May sunlight was pouring over your hair — dazzling, more captivating than any jewel. I love watching you in the still of the night, sitting by the window and playing those melodious pieces over and over. Even though your gentle gaze always passes over me and falls on someone else. You are right — loving you is only my own affair. I do not ask for anything in return, because having someone I am able to love is already happiness in itself.”

In a smile that bloomed like a flower, A’Jing closed her eyes in contentment. She brought both hands together before her chest and slowly began reciting an incantation. A stream of five-colored radiance floated out from between her brows, swirling as it spread outward, and very quickly enveloped her entire body in a scattering, shimmering brilliance. And in that moment, a layer of translucent silver luminosity crept slowly upward from her feet — like water spreading into fine paper — expanding rapidly. Within just a few seconds, her entire figure was submerged in something like a dreaming moonlight, her form also contracting gradually and slowly within the haze, until she had become a silver point of light the size of an egg. Trailing a comet-like streak of radiance, it flew out at an even speed from within the five-colored brilliance surrounding it, circled through the air several times, and then sank into Tino’s chest. A transparent current of energy, rippling like the surface of water, surged from within his body and lifted him from the floor into the air. He clasped his hands over his chest and opened his mouth wide yet could not make a sound — his expression seemingly one of pain. And his long silver hair, as though submerged in the deep sea, changed to black in rhythmic pulses, and those violet eyes shifted accordingly to the deep brown of an ordinary person.

Situ Yuebo half-narrowed his eyes as he watched the transformed Tino floating in mid-air and slowly descending to the floor, where he lay unconscious beneath that still-unfaded five-colored radiance.

Swish! Another bright flash passed. That five-colored radiance was compressed in an instant to a single thread, then contracted into a single point, which dropped from the air and landed on the floor with a clear, bright ringing sound. A perfectly transparent, gleaming round mirror rolled out, coming to rest right at Situ Yuebo’s feet.

He picked up this beautiful little thing and smiled. “Don’t worry — I always keep my word.” As he spoke, he abruptly paused. On the mirror in his hand, a layer of moisture had appeared from somewhere — a faint hint of saltiness, like an eye soaked in tears.

He gently wiped the mirror dry with his sleeve, then walked to Tino, who lay unconscious, and placed it in his hand. He removed his own outer coat and draped it over Tino, then said quietly: “You are not without feeling. You simply never learned to cherish the one in front of you. If you are fortunate enough to meet another A’Jing in the future, I hope by then you will know what to do.”

The words had barely faded when the hall, in a state of disorder all around them, suddenly lost every source of light. Situ Yuebo felt the world before his eyes go dark, and when he opened them again, he was already outside the monastery, standing in the overgrown grounds. The counter-space that A’Jing had single-handedly created had, with her complete dissolution, turned to dust.

He went to the other side, gathered the deeply sleeping, soundly snoring Zhong Xu into his arms, glanced once more at the slender figure lying in the overgrown grass, gave a faint sigh, and walked out without looking back.

The mountain wind moved through. The trees and grass rustled softly. Situ Yuebo carried his wife along the quiet little path, muttering to himself as he thought through how to fabricate a story to conceal from Zhong Xu everything that had happened with A’Jing. He walked on, sighing — a King of the Underworld in all his dignity, and he couldn’t even take a peaceful honeymoon. Just as he was turning this over in his mind, as if in a dream, a melodious waltz seemed to drift toward him from behind, its dancing notes bringing color to the dim mountain path. Situ Yuebo looked back. In the fading evening light, there was no longer any trace of the monastery — only a magnificent and beautiful villa, like a gracefully dancing woman, bidding farewell in the music to those who had once stepped foot within its doors.

Epilogue

I clapped. “That was a wonderful story.”

Black Robe Number Four was unmoved, and said without particular feeling: “Thank you.”

“To know even a story about the King of the Underworld — you have quite the background.” I smiled with a certain meaningful intent.

“I’m tired. Good night.” Number Four rose and walked toward the tent. “This is only a story. Whether true or false, whether liked or not — none of that matters.”

“Then what does matter?” I watched Number Four’s retreating back with interest.

“If you’ve listened to this entire story from beginning to end and still don’t know the answer, you should go and get your intelligence tested, woman.” Number Four tossed out this last remark matter-of-factly and ducked into the tent.

“She has a difficult temper — don’t mind her. Come eat and drink with us!” The other Black Robes pulled me into the bonfire gathering with easy indifference.

I turned and called into the tent: “Thank you!”

Clever as I am, how could I not understand what you meant? I smiled.

The night was like water, the bonfire blazing, wine and food in abundance. Ao Chi had drunk himself into a swaying stupor and was still clutching his bottle, howling across the desert night in his broken voice — My passion! Like a great fire! Burning through the whole desert!

In the end, he toppled against me, his head settling on my lap, one arm around the bottle, his other hand doing what it always did — finding mine and holding on, and he slept.

The stern and austere desert grew tender.