· Prologue ·

Many years ago—

Blood covered the ground. Wounds covered his body.

He braced himself against an ice pillar, its coldness seeping into his very bones, and gazed coldly at the figure standing before him. “You’re really leaving?”

“That question is unnecessary.” The other party gave him only their back. What truly commanded their attention was the circular ice platform gleaming with flowing brilliance.

Twelve ancient wooden coffins carved with phoenixes bathed in fire floated above the platform, their radiance so blinding it could set a person’s eyes aflame.

“Before I leave, you may stop me by any means you choose, including taking off my head.” His opponent reached into their chest and produced an exceedingly rare ink-jade gourd, no larger than half a palm.

With a clatter, he set down the sword in his hand, stepped aside to clear the path, and suddenly smiled. “Care to make a wager?”

“Wager on what?”

“That creature—what it wants is only the small gourd in your hand. Not you.”

“There you go again, always acting as though you’ve seen through everything in this world.”

“I’ve eaten more salt than you’ve eaten rice.”

“Fine! A wager! If I win?”

“I’ll lead all of the East Sea, with a dragon carriage procession ten li long, to welcome you home!”

“Deal. And if I lose—I’ll cut off my horns, gouge out my scales, and never be a dragon again.”

The East Sea’s deepest, coldest depths—and yet, not half as cold as those few brief words exchanged.

Many years later—

“I’ve won again.”

“Continue!”

“But you have nothing left to lose to me.”

“My life.”

“Now that is a very large stake. What could I possibly match it with?”

“Come with me to a place. Meet someone.”

“Very well, Mr. Ao Chi.”

Inside an enormous, gleaming room, an oval black stone gambling table commanded all attention. Its surface, polished smoother than a woman’s skin, reflected two men’s faces—close in age, matched in handsomeness, and sharing a similar resolve: if you won’t descend into hell, I will.

Behind the gambling table, the wall was covered in the most meticulous and extravagant artistry—a peculiar creature rendered in exquisite detail: a colossal purple-scaled serpent rearing its head high, yet spreading across its spine a pair of wings covered entirely in white feathers. Its cold serpentine eyes were not deliberately wide with menace; rather, they were languidly half-lidded, like someone who had just woken from sleep—yet the razor sharpness gleaming through them made anyone who met that gaze shudder involuntarily. It perched at the very pinnacle of the sky, while sunlight and white clouds, rain and thunder, all manner of food and creatures lay prostrate beneath its feet, as though they were humble servants venerating a god.

From a certain angle, the man seated in the black high-backed chair on the far side of the table appeared to sit at the very center of the great serpent’s body. Those extraordinary feathered wings seemed to grow from his own shoulders. Bright lights wove across his composed, austere face, and in that moment of illusion, there was something almost divine about his majesty…

1.

I took the large towel Zhao Gongzi handed me and vigorously rubbed the rain from my body.

Jiu Jue cradled a glass of whiskey and sat on the sofa watching television with perfect leisure.

But recently, every news broadcast seemed perpetually filled with the same things: torrential flooding here, mountain torrents cascading there, the death toll rising and rising again, from countryside to city, without a single piece of good news.

As far back as I could remember, no autumn had ever brought this much rain.

Zhao Gongzi stood beside me, hesitating in that way of wanting to ask something but not quite daring to.

“Stop staring at me. No news.” I sat down, somewhat wearily. “Let’s eat. I’ve flown several thousand kilometers and I’m starving.”

“You’ve worked hard, Boss Lady.” Zhao Gongzi made every effort to conceal his disappointment and quietly headed toward the kitchen.

“Getting this tired after just a few thousand kilometers—that tells me you haven’t been overworked at all. You’ve simply been pampered for far too long, sorely lacking in physical conditioning.” Jiu Jue glanced at me without a shred of sympathy.

“One of these days I’ll add you to Bu Ting’s permanent blacklist.” I moved the throw pillow aside and stretched out full-length on the sofa.

For the past month, I had expanded my search radius and rushed east and west, rarely spending more than a few days at Bu Ting. I had even paid those insatiably greedy bug-people their most generous rates, sending them out to track down any trace of those I sought. I had done everything within my power—yet not a single one of the commissioned bug-people had returned to report back to me, and my own sweeping ground-level searches had yielded nothing. Those figures had vanished like water vapor, popping out of existence in this world without a trace.

If Ao Chi was going to play his disappearing act for another twenty years, I couldn’t be certain what earthshattering act of violence I might commit against him. As for Chi Pian’er—that little demon—any random person could tear it to shreds. I had once solemnly promised a dear departed friend that I would look after Chi Pian’er well. If something truly happened to it, I would not only have broken my word to another, but I would hardly feel at peace with myself either. Hmph—if only it would come home safe and sound, I could even consider giving it a raise!

“I got into a fight on my way here,” Jiu Jue said with perfect seriousness.

“I thought you came to Bu Ting to bring more useful information. It’s not the first time you’ve picked a fight over a girl.” I said lazily. This fellow had become more and more outrageous. His former sole hobbies had been brewing wine and gossiping, but now he’d upgraded—he’d learned how to chase women. He hollered every day about settling down and finding a wife, though it was always all thunder and no rain. Rumor had it he’d gone through girlfriend after girlfriend; once he’d even come close to getting married, only to be dumped by the woman in the end, for reasons unknown. Come to think of it, that was hardly surprising. What decent woman would set her heart on someone who, inside and out, looked every inch the playboy?

“Do I need to chase them? One gentle, spring-breeze smile from me and the girls come in droves.” Jiu Jue appeared to have suffered a grievous insult—and then abruptly changed course: “My personal affairs are not on today’s agenda. I came to tell you: this world is starting to change.”

“The rain has certainly been excessive.” I looked out at the torrential downpour beyond the window, and realized I couldn’t quite remember when all this rain had begun to fall. It had been going on for too long. Throughout this entire period, rain had been falling on this world without ceasing. When I’d been weaving my way through the rain clouds, the raindrops striking my face had been so fierce I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and from time to time enormous serpentine bolts of lightning had cracked down, near and far alike. Those lightning strikes carried a desolate color—I can only describe them as desolate, because the red, blue, yellow, and green coiled within them bore no resemblance to the colors in a child’s crayon box, possessing none of that warmth or charm. Their brilliance was the blood that sprays when an executioner takes a head; the green gleam of hellish demons’ eyes; the blue tears wept by monsters in the depths of despair. Such lightning—crooked, not righteous—was a rare sight. Even a seasoned old demon such as myself regarded it with a measure of wariness, giving it wide berth wherever possible.

“It’s more than just the weather.” Jiu Jue sat up straight. “On my way here I passed a kindergarten. Several sparrow-demons were each carrying off a small child in their beaks, heading back to their nests. I got into a fight to rescue the children, not over any girl.” He extended his right arm heroically, pointing to a wound the size of a fingernail. “Look—I was even injured. The wretched sparrow-demons, when they couldn’t beat me, started jabbing at me with their beaks.”

“Sparrow-demons? That kind of minor demon has always fed on grass and insects. They never prey on humans.” I was taken aback. “Now that you mention it—before I came back, I spotted a swarm of three-legged insect creatures in another city. They swarmed in broad daylight, swaggering straight through a hospital. Several patients were frightened into fainting, and one was scared to death on the spot. When I moved to deal with them, they immediately scattered and dove underground, refusing to show themselves again. From the looks of it, they weren’t intent on actually harming humans—it seemed as though they wanted to be seen on purpose.”

“Could it be because 2012 is coming up, and the world is growing restless?” A white paper folding fan drifted into the space between Jiu Jue and me, making its point with great conviction.

“What the—what is that thing?!” Jiu Jue leaped off the sofa, pointing at the fan and asking me, “When did you pick up a fan demon?”

“My good sir, I am not a fan. I am merely a ghost who resides within this fan. My name is Bai Ju. My story is a long one, so I shall not tell it.”

I had been so busy lately I’d almost forgotten this fellow was still loitering about in Bu Ting. He had previously resisted with everything he had, absolutely refusing to be housed in a flyswatter. I let him off the hook, arranging a compromise and settling him into an ordinary paper folding fan, with orders to work at Bu Ting for one year to repay his debt—his job being to fan me and shoo mosquitoes. Everyone knows that autumn mosquitoes are the most ferocious.

“As far as I’m concerned, the only end of days is a day without money. As long as my gold is still there, this world remains a fine place.” I rubbed my faintly aching shoulders. “I’ve never believed in 2012. It’s nothing but a Mayan joke. Right now I only want to eat a good meal and then keep searching for that blasted wretch. If by year’s end he’s still nowhere to be found, I’ll unilaterally declare our bilateral relationship null and void—permanent dissolution, no reconciliation.”

Before the words were fully out of my mouth, everyone in the room heard a tremendous crash—very much like a heavy piece of timber thunderously hitting the ground.

Wait. That sounded awfully like someone had just kicked Bu Ting’s front door clean off its hinges.

For the past month, with my attention stretched thin in every direction, I’d hung a Temporarily Closed sign on Bu Ting’s front door. Who would dare be so unconscionably rude?!

I burst through the interior door to look—and sure enough, my front gate had been kicked in! Those two thick, heavy wooden doors lay in pieces, shattered and scattered across the courtyard. What kind of force, and what kind of grudge, would drive someone to do something this despicable?! And that door was made of premium timber—very expensive, thank you!

In the dim light, a wild tempest swept in through the gaping doorway. The powerful gale surged across the front courtyard, snapping every plant and flower in its path with the ferocity of something determined to raze everything to the roots, then came roaring straight at me—with such force that I, standing under the eaves, was shoved back two full steps.

Jiu Jue steadied me from behind, staring at the utterly destroyed gate. “One formidable demonic gale!”

At that very moment, a tiny white shadow came flying in from outside the doorway, stumbling and scrambling desperately into my arms.

This… this was Chi Pian’er! Had this little wretch finally decided to come home?!

Beneath our shocked and astonished gazes, Chi Pian’er raised its head and, in the tone of someone making a final confession, said haltingly: “Someone chasing… gambling den… bad people… male master didn’t come out…” It hadn’t finished speaking before the useless thing passed out cold.

I hadn’t understood most of it, but the part about pursuers was perfectly clear—and sure enough, they’d already come right to our doorstep. Two men in black suits, built so broadly they were nearly cubic in shape, came charging in through the gate, each riding a black snake as thick as a barrel, with murderous intent. The demonic wind that had snapped those plants was being expelled from the gaping mouths of those two black snakes. I had once heard that when snakes grow to a sufficient size, they need only open their mouths and release a fierce gust to sweep every small creature in the vicinity right down their throats. The claim, it seemed, was entirely credible.

But I was no small creature to be slaughtered at will. No one in Bu Ting was anyone else’s midnight snack.

“This is not the wild!” I turned, closed the door behind me, grabbed the clothes-drying pole propped against the wall, and leaped out in front of those two hideous monstrosities. “Give me a reason first. Then I’ll decide whether to lay hands on you.”

The cubic men had faces to match—flat, squat, dark, oozing savagery from their eyes. One jabbed a finger at me and spoke in a voice utterly devoid of intonation: “A deal is a deal! The customer lost an arm. We’ve come to collect. No payment, no mercy. Run as far as you like—we’ll chase as far as you run!”

This rotten child—what possessed you to learn gambling, of all things? I suppressed my fury and said, “Debts must be paid—that’s a universal truth, and I won’t send you away empty-handed. How about this: tell me what price you put on that arm, and I’ll pay double in gold. As for the gate you’ve destroyed, I won’t pursue the matter further. How does that sound?”

“The customer lost one arm. No arm, no deal!” The cubic men clenched their teeth and refused to budge. The two black snakes flicked their forked tongues at me provocatively.

“Non-negotiable?” I have never liked fighting in my own home, but these two had clearly placed me beneath their notice.

“One arm. No arm, no deal!” The mechanical drone of their voices grated on me, and evidently their patience ran out before mine did. The two great snakes had already launched themselves forward, lunging straight at me, the stench billowing from their wide-open mouths nearly strong enough to make me faint.

Slash, slash— several streaks of sharp light cut through the air, effortlessly cleaving the black snakes and their masters in two. Those massive bodies instantly contracted into two thin rectangles, drifting lightly to the ground where the heavy rain immediately drenched them through.

“Experience shows that the more ferocious and menacing they look, the smaller a role they actually play.” Jiu Jue landed beside me and tossed away the fruit knife in his hand. “Don’t use this knife anymore. It smells a bit foul now.”

I stepped forward for a closer look. Lying on the ground were two perfectly ordinary playing cards.

Jiu Jue and I each picked one up. We couldn’t find anything remarkable about them—only the backs of the cards were worth noting. Printed in the center was a great winged snake, encircled by four identical symbols oriented in different directions.

“Those four symbols beside the serpent…” I turned the card over and over.

“They look like the letter E—four E’s,” Jiu Jue interjected.

Four E’s?!

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard that name.

Wait—could someone please go fix the front gate first?!

2.

From the moment I made my decision to the moment I stepped across half the globe and sat down in the lobby of that hotel, fewer than six hours had passed.

I left Chi Pian’er at Bu Ting—it had been injured and was in no state to help—confident that Zhao Gongzi would look after it well. At the same time, to guard against further trouble, I quietly reached out to some acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a long time. If they were willing, I hoped they would watch over Bu Ting until I returned. Whoever dared destroy my front gate again would answer for it with their life.

According to Chi Pian’er’s account after it regained consciousness, it hadn’t intentionally run away from home. On that day, it had been out strolling and was on its way back when it spotted its male master lingering a few dozen meters from Bu Ting’s front gate, then taking two steps forward and stopping again. After a moment’s hesitation, he had inexplicably turned around and walked away. Consumed by its natural nosiness, Chi Pian’er was deeply puzzled and followed along after him. This little demon had no remarkable abilities to speak of, but its talent for tailing and spying was absolutely first-rate. What it hadn’t anticipated was that following him would lead it all the way to another country—Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula.

This place, pressed up against the Caribbean Sea, had been experiencing an extraordinary, once-in-a-century rainfall that had persisted for nearly two months. The locals were terrified, saying the Mayan prophecy was about to be fulfilled and that the rainstorm was a portent of the approaching apocalypse. Chi Pian’er didn’t know what had brought Ao Chi here; it only saw him head straight for a hotel near the ancient city of Chichén Itzá in the north. From the outside, the hotel called Heaven’s Apex looked old and run-down—merely three stories high, and you call yourself Heaven’s Apex—yet it had no shortage of guests; far more business than my Bu Ting. At first it assumed its male master was simply in a bad mood and had come here to clear his head. It slipped into his room, but found him spending his entire days inside, either staring blankly or sleeping. Only at nightfall did he stir from his room and step into the elevator. Seeing that the elevator was going up, and given that the hotel was only three floors with his room on the second floor, Chi Pian’er hurried up to the third floor to wait by the elevator—but then something inexplicable occurred. Over a distance of just one floor, when the elevator doors slid open, there was not a single person inside. In a panic, it ran into the elevator to look around—and at that moment the doors suddenly slid shut on their own, and then… there was no then. The creature remembered nothing after that. The only memory it retained was the sound of playing cards being shuffled, followed by a voice near its ear whispering, “Place your bets… so sorry, you’ve lost.” Finally there was a frantic run out of somewhere very dark, someone giving chase behind it, and Chi Pian’er, throwing caution to the wind, sprinting madly through the rain with the last breath in its body, fleeing tens of thousands of li back to Bu Ting.

Before I set out, Chi Pian’er said two things to me. First: it would never run off to wander around on its own again. Second: that hotel was a dangerous place.

Dangerous or not, I still had to go take a look. Ao Chi wouldn’t have gone to a place like that for no reason. Besides, by any normal logic, given his abilities, a place that even Chi Pian’er managed to escape from—he couldn’t possibly be unable to get out. Unless… he had found himself a beauty there and was happily ensconced, too content to think of returning?! Whatever the case, at least there was finally some word of this wretched ghost. I needed to see him alive or see his body—I did not approve of disappearing without notice.

“The girls in South America have truly remarkable figures!” The pair of lecherous eyes at my side had plastered themselves onto a stunning woman with bronzed skin and eye-catching curves. Jiu Jue nudged his sunglasses down his nose, and only after the beauty had walked out of the lobby did he turn back with the air of someone reluctantly tearing themselves away.

“You old libertine. Did you come here to find someone or to ogle women? Keep your eyes on the surroundings!” I sat in the sofa without looking up, leafing through a travel magazine while observing the situation around me.

Just as Chi Pian’er had described, this hotel was doing an extraordinary amount of business—the number of guests in a single day exceeded Bu Ting’s annual traffic by a wide margin. Setting aside my feelings of envy and indignation, I also noticed something curious: very few of the guests here wore smiles. Most of them looked fretful, or else wore blank, hollow expressions; some even faintly exuded an air of sorrow.

Strange—wasn’t travel supposed to be a joyful thing? What were all these long faces about?

Jiu Jue nudged me with his elbow. Following his gaze, I spotted a well-dressed middle-aged man on the sofa across from us, holding a copy of The History of the Dragon with a Chinese-character cover, his eyes fixed intently on me. Scanning the room, of all the guests currently waiting to check in, aside from us, he was the only other Chinese person—perhaps he was studying us with that fellow-countryman-in-a-foreign-land kind of feeling?

Looking more carefully: this man had both looks and build, somewhere in his mid-to-late thirties, impeccably turned out. Plain black trousers and black leather shoes, a pricey name-brand shirt with a few buttons casually left open, his toned chest muscles tantalizingly half-visible. Thick black hair grew abundantly to collar length, the ends naturally curling slightly, with a few silver-white strands drifting at his temples. A simple pair of black-framed glasses sat on his straight, prominent nose, giving him the aura of an insufferable yet oddly captivating literary type who was getting on in years.

“It looks like you’re this older gentleman’s type,” Jiu Jue smirked, earning himself a fierce pinch on the arm that left him grimacing.

I gave the man a polite nod. He offered no response whatsoever, dropping his eyes and turning back to his book.

How rude! I pursed my lips—and then couldn’t help stealing another glance at him. Not because of his appearance, but because I’d suddenly realized the look he’d given me just now was quite different from a normal fellow-countryman’s curiosity. How to put it? It was like a panel interviewer sizing up a candidate: serious and measured, with an unavoidable hint of condescension.

I was still lost in thought when—crash!—a small hand knocked a flower vase off the marble tea table. Water spilled across the whole surface. Jiu Jue quickly reached out to catch the vase before it could roll off the edge; I, in the same motion, steadied the little girl who’d sprawled across the table. The poor child had appeared from nowhere, been drawn to the flowers in the vase and reached out to pick one, only to slip on her feet and nearly come to grief.

I looked the little one over: four or five years old, blond-haired and blue-eyed, a white child. The round, innocent eyes she turned on you were enough to make any irritation evaporate entirely.

The young father behind her rushed over dragging a suitcase, snatching the child back from my arms but still politely thanking me in English before striding quickly toward the check-in counter. I heard him say to the little girl: “Don’t trust strangers! They’ve all come to take you away!” My English isn’t great, but I’m a demon—I can understand any human language. Please don’t teach your child that!

Still smarting from that, an elderly voice spoke up in stilted, halting Mandarin: “Excuse me, may we sit down?”

Jiu Jue and I turned. An old Chinese man in a floral shirt was supporting an elderly woman of similar age standing next to us, a small, deflated travel bag at their feet. One look at the old woman and you could tell her health was poor—her complexion pale, her eye sockets sunken, and she was wearing, of all things, thick cold-weather clothing. Yes, the storm outside was fierce and the temperature relatively low, but this was still the tropics.

We quickly rose to let them sit, afraid that if we moved a second too slowly the frail old woman would simply collapse.

The old man thanked us profusely and said, “The old woman’s health isn’t what it was—brought her here for a change of scenery. Ah, it’s been so long since we met anyone from the homeland. I was ten years old when I followed my parents across the sea to Mexico. Over fifty years now! I’ve always wanted to go back and have a look, but the opportunity never seemed to come!” As he spoke, his eyes actually grew a little moist.

Jiu Jue and I hastened to offer what comfort we could to that weathered, patriotic old heart, while privately marveling at what kind of strange magnetic field this hotel possessed to attract such an assortment of guests—besides Ao Chi, that infuriating scoundrel, there was a handsome, ill-mannered older man; a father who gave terrible lessons to his child; and now an elderly overseas Chinese man who’d brought his wife—who looked like a stiff breeze could knock her over—here to relax… they were all peculiar in their own way!

At this point, the front desk called my name. Even checking in required taking a number—just how brisk was business here! The local tourism board must be over the moon.

I walked toward the front desk, and from the corner of my eye I registered: as I passed the handsome older man, he looked up and measured me with that same inexplicable gaze again.

Heaven’s Apex Hotel. How very intriguing.

3.

Several months earlier. The East Sea. The Dragon Palace.

Two men in magnificent robes—imposing, bearing themselves with steady composure—were seeing a guest out.

The visitor was none other than Liao Yuan, the God of War, one of the Twelve Divine Gods of the Celestial Realm.

“On the last day of next month, the Heavenly Emperor will send a trusted envoy to retrieve this object. Please convey this to the Dragon King. Many thanks to the East Sea Dragon Clan for their years of guardianship! Farewell!”

“Thank you for making the journey, Divine Lord. Please.”

What appeared on the surface to be an ordinary courtesy visit left two Dragon Palace ministers with furrowed brows.

In the Dragon Palace’s spacious council chamber, the Dragon King’s most trusted ministers had assembled in full. The great doors were sealed shut; even their personal devices had been switched off. In the central seat sat their king.

He looked somewhat weary—leaning back in his chair, eyes half-closed, as though he had drifted off to sleep; yet his mouth opened: “What would you all like to say?”

The ministers were silent for a moment, then spoke one by one.

“Why does the Heavenly Emperor suddenly want to reclaim the object? All these years, we’ve been looking after it, and there has been no trouble.”

“Sending Liao Yuan himself—that shows how seriously he regards this matter. If we raise any objections, I’m afraid Liao Yuan might directly lead the Heavenly Emperor’s forces to pay us a ‘visit.'”

“When you think about it, there’s nothing to it. They want it, so we return it. It never belonged to the East Sea in the first place. Those things have been locked away in the Cold Abyss Current for so many years—frankly, I’ve always felt their presence was disrespectful to all the former Dragon Kings. The people from the Celestial Realm didn’t say anything for so long that I’d nearly forgotten about the whole matter.”

He sat quietly and listened to his ministers speak. When Liao Yuan had come, he had claimed illness as an excuse not to receive him. The East Sea Dragon King did not receive visitors simply because they wished to be received; besides, he had no fondness for the people of the Celestial Realm. The East Sea Dragon Clan had always held a status equal to the gods, free from the Celestial Realm’s jurisdiction, and ordinarily the two sides had little contact. Had it not been for a certain friendship between his ancestors and the previous Heavenly Emperor, these objects would never have been sent to the East Sea in the first place.

“Your Majesty, what is your view on how this matter should be handled?” one of the ministers ventured carefully.

“A minor matter. I have my own ideas.” He opened his eyes, as though waking from sleep. “Has Ao Chi returned yet?”

“He has. He’s eating at the moment.”

The Dragon King shot to his feet and slapped the table with a resounding crack. “More and more without discipline! He comes back and doesn’t report to me first—just sits there and eats!”

The ministers didn’t dare speak. They wanted to laugh but didn’t dare laugh. Among all the East Sea, the only one bold enough to show such disregard for the Dragon King was his own direct grandson. The Dragon King’s foul temper was legendary—and this grandson’s temper surpassed even that, having been unruly and ungovernable since childhood, heeding no rules or restrictions whatsoever. To him, rules were nothing but hollow words. Not even the East Sea’s most secure ice prison could hold him, repeatedly driving his grandfather to bouts of high blood pressure. This grandfather and grandson truly bore out the old saying: only a villain can grind down another villain.

In the bright dining hall, Ao Chi gripped a roasted chicken wing, wiped the shiny grease from his mouth, and asked without looking back: “What’s the rush, calling me back? You’re not planning to find yourself a new grandmother, are you?”

A large hand swept toward the back of his head. He ducked his neck to dodge it and spun around, furious: “Hitting me again! All the supplements and tender loving care I’ve been sending back—wasted!”

“Crude-mouthed, disrespectful—if you weren’t my one and only wretch of a grandson, I would’ve ordered you strung up, skinned, and tossed into a filth-river long ago, to let the little fish and shrimp relieve themselves on your head!” The Dragon King ground his teeth.

Ao Chi slung his arm around his grandfather’s shoulder and yawned. “Old man, who are we to each other? After all these years we know each other inside and out—spare me the tough talk. Why did you call me back?”

“To catch a thief.”

Ao Chi blinked. He let out a burp. “You have so many enforcers under you—just send a small squad and that’s that. Besides, you’re so wealthy, losing a thing or two should count as charity.”

The Dragon King drew a long breath and let out a cold smile: “This thief—in all the East Sea, no one but you and I could bring them to heel. Come with me.”

Ao Chi had his ear grabbed and was dragged out of the Dragon Palace. The Dragon King summoned a great golden whale with a wave of his hand. They mounted its back, and he commanded the creature to head west of the Dragon Palace.

The whale’s speed was extraordinary—not moving horizontally forward, but descending along a slanted trajectory, steadily heading deeper into the East Sea. The deep blue, enchanting waters parted obediently before it. At first there were still wondrous rays of light and the water held a gentle warmth; gradually it darkened and grew cold. Aside from themselves, no living creature could be seen anywhere around them. Countless silver-grey shards of ice drifted upward from below. The deeper they went, the larger the ice fragments became, and the whale had to beat them aside with its tail to continue descending.

Goosebumps rose over Ao Chi’s entire body. It was bitterly cold.

“If I’m not mistaken, the seabed to the west of the Dragon Palace is the Cold Abyss Current. Old man, don’t tell me you’ve dragged me out here to have tea with the old ones buried down there!” Ao Chi focused his gaze—this direction was unmistakably heading for the Dragon Clan’s most forbidden ground: the Dragon Tomb, where the Dragon Kings of every generation rested in eternal sleep.

The Dragon King gave no answer. The whale continued its descent, finally settling on a stretch of solid ice. Its own light barely illuminated the surrounding ten meters or so; beyond that, the darkness was absolute—not a finger’s width visible. Aside from one’s own heartbeat, no sound reached the ears in this place.

The Dragon King leaped off the whale’s back and walked to the center of the ice floor. He drew his ceremonial blade and pressed it to his palm. Blood welled up—but did not fall. With a flick of his fingers, he dipped into the dragon blood and drew a strange symbol in the air before him, then breathed out: “Open!”

A vermillion gate materialized from nothing upon the ice floor and swung open on its own.

Passing through the gate, there was no lantern or flame, yet a field of five-colored sacred light drifted within. Ao Chi spotted them at once—dozens of enormous ice pillars standing in this otherworldly space, each one containing a sleeping dragon coiled within. After every Dragon King’s death, the body would be sealed into the Cold Abyss Current, there at the deepest part of the East Sea to forever watch over their descendants in a different form.

Though it was his first time here, sharp-eyed Ao Chi quickly noticed that the ice pillars housing those ancient Dragon Kings’ remains bore many strange marks—very much like the traces left behind after a clash of blades and weapons.

Now that was interesting. Who would dare brawl at the most sacred site of the East Sea Dragon Clan, leaving all those former Dragon Kings no peace even in death?

The Dragon King kept walking until he stopped before a perfectly circular ice platform. This platform, raised three chi above the ground, was divided into twelve equal sections. Floating above each section was a square black wooden coffin, roughly three chi on each side. Every face of every coffin was inscribed in bold, sweeping brushstrokes with a phoenix bathed in fire—emanating a spiritual presence and dignified power from deep within.

Ao Chi approached, studying the twelve coffins with a degree of astonishment. Somewhat uncertain, he asked: “Are these… the Twelve Spirit Phoenix Coffins that have been kept here with us?”

He’d heard elders mention this before: within the Cold Abyss Current’s Dragon Tomb, in addition to the ice coffins of every generation of Dragon Kings, there were also twelve sets of coffins with no connection whatsoever to the East Sea—known as the Twelve Spirit Phoenix Coffins. According to what was said, these twelve objects had been placed here tens of thousands of years ago, like useless furniture with no explanation or apparent purpose.

“These were placed here by the second Heavenly Emperor of the Celestial Realm,” the Dragon King said. “In those days, the Dragon King of that era and the Celestial Realm were on somewhat friendly terms—so he agreed to keep this object in our most concealed location, to be guarded by generation after generation, until the Celestial Realm came to reclaim it.”

Ao Chi frowned. “When I came back, the attendants mentioned that Liao Yuan had been here. From what I understand, that man is currently the Heavenly Emperor’s most favored servant. Him coming to find us—is that him passing along the message on the old man’s behalf, coming to take back these useless coffins?”

“Useful or not, I cannot hand them over.” The Dragon King gazed at those twelve softly hovering coffins and shook his head.

Ao Chi was taken aback. He looked at the circular platform, puzzled, and counted. “Twelve. None missing—aren’t they all here?”

“Look at the phoenix’s eyes.”

“The phoenix’s eyes?” Ao Chi looked closely—and only then saw it: on the lid of every coffin, where the phoenix’s eyes should have gleamed with flowing light, only one eye remained. Where the other eye should have been, there was only an ugly black hollow.

“The true coffin isn’t the wooden box. It’s the one phoenix eye on each box—an ancient relic the size of a thumbnail: green amber.” The Dragon King turned and looked steadily at Ao Chi. “Right now, only you and I in the entire East Sea know that the Twelve Spirit Phoenix Coffins have already been stolen. Only empty shells remain.”

Ao Chi thought briefly. “These things have been sitting here untouched for so long—who could have broken through the Dragon King’s seal to cause trouble in the Dragon Tomb? And what were these wretched coffins supposed to contain? Why would the Celestial Realm’s things be stored on our East Sea ground?”

The Dragon King let out a long sigh, and after a lengthy silence, said with a grave expression: “If I told you I don’t know what lies within these coffins, would you believe me?”

“Old man, don’t play games with your one and only grandson.” Ao Chi’s eyes widened.

“Even my grandfather didn’t know.” The Dragon King smiled bitterly. “Most likely the ancestor who accepted the commission didn’t know either. It was simply a small item entrusted by a friend—nobody ever looked into it closely. For years they lay here in utter silence, with no sense of their own existence.”

“All right—I have no interest in those coffins either. The gist of why you’ve called me back is: the owner wants to take back their own things but we can’t find them, and this can’t be allowed to get out.” He stepped in front of his grandfather and pointed at himself. “You’re planning to dump this problem on me?”

“That’s exactly the idea.” The Dragon King nodded. “I must hold down the Dragon Palace; my freedom is limited. You, my unfilial descendant—what’s wrong with making a little contribution to the East Sea?!”

“I once contributed twenty years to the East Sea! At the end of the year before last, I nearly lost my life! And you have the nerve to call me unfilial!” Ao Chi burned with indignation and spoke his rebuke at full volume.

“Don’t you raise your voice at me!” The Dragon King cast him a glance, a meaningful look in his eyes. “It’s not as though I’m any better off than you. I bear no small responsibility for what has happened. I’ve never had any interest in knowing what was in those coffins, and when the current Heavenly Emperor suddenly wanted them back, we were too lazy to care—we were only ever simple custodians. But now that the objects are gone, we’re the ones who’ll face the consequences.” He paused for a long moment, then added, “The one thing I can tell you is who took them.”

“Who?” Ao Chi’s eyes lit up. Knowing the mastermind’s identity—then everything else would be easy.

“I’ve almost forgotten the name he used to have.” The Dragon King looked at Ao Chi, who was waiting anxiously for the answer. “But the name he goes by now is… the Feathered Serpent God.”

4.

“It’s the Feathered Serpent God—come, come, pay your respects!”

In the corridor on the hotel’s second floor, I was pulled along by the old overseas Chinese man. Not wishing to dampen his enthusiasm, I went along with him, pressed my palms together, closed my eyes, and kowtowed several times at the small table set up at the end of the corridor. Upon the table sat a gleaming gold-lacquered statue of a great serpent, its wings spread arrogantly behind it, with various foods arranged as offerings before it.

This sculpture was identical to the figure on the back of the playing cards. What I knew was this: the ancient Maya had revered this feathered serpent as a divine being. They believed the so-called Feathered Serpent God could bestow upon them everything they needed, and he was the greatest existence in their hearts. But I had always assumed this “god” was simply a spiritual comfort fabricated by the Maya from totems and the like—the kind of thing that exists in many forms across the world, and not everything deserving of that name can truly be called a god. Moreover, no matter how I looked at this divine image, all I could see in the Feathered Serpent God’s eyes was menace—no compassion whatsoever.

“O God, I ask for nothing else—only let Xiao Yu remain by my side!” The old overseas Chinese man who had given his surname as Huang murmured devoutly for a long while. I caught fragments of it here and there.

Afterward, I supported his wife by the arm, Jiu Jue picked up their luggage, and we escorted them all the way to their room.

As it turned out, the old couple’s room was right next door to ours.

“Xiao Sha, thank you so much!” Old Huang stood in the doorway, holding Jiu Jue and me in place with unceasing gratitude. At last he looked us both over and said with deep feeling, “Don’t let an old man’s rambling bother you—it’s not easy for two people to find each other. Cherish it. Youth passes in the blink of an eye. Look at the two of you now—how wonderful!”

Elderly people do tend to chatter. Jiu Jue and I kept our smiles in place as we made our way to our own room. No wonder Old Huang had taken us for a couple—we were, after all, posing as husband and wife, primarily to save on the cost of a second room.

Just as I was getting out the key card, a small head peeked out from the room across and slightly down the hall, calling timidly for me to be her “big sister.” I turned—it was the little girl from earlier. Before I could even respond, her father had already pulled her back inside and slammed the door shut.

I’d barely turned around when something unidentified came hurtling toward my face—Jiu Jue very thoughtfully caught it just before that hand-phone reached my nose.

“Found it on the sofa.” The handsome older man swept past us like a gust of wind, not deigning to give us so much as a proper glance, heading straight for room 208—three doors down from ours—where he opened the door, went in, closed it, and gave no further sign of life.

My eyes darted. I took the phone, walked over to room 208, and rapped on the door.

The door opened a crack. The man’s strikingly handsome, dead-fish face appeared in the gap, regarding me in wordless contempt.

I held up the phone and gave it a little wave. “Nothing much—just saying thank you.”

“Careless and scattered, not an ounce of composure.” The man banged the door shut.

What did I ever do to him? From his expression, you’d think he was itching to smash a brick over my head.

Back in our room, my first words were: “Something feels very off about this place.”

“The only thing on my mind right now is making sure the wayward little dragon doesn’t find out we’re playing married couple,” Jiu Jue said, settling into the room’s single recliner and pulling out his flask to sip at his leisure. “That would be the truly problematic development.”

Perhaps on account of the heavy rain, it had grown dark unusually early, with no sign of the weather improving at all. Through the curtain of rain, I could faintly make out below in the garden outside the hotel a natural cenote being used as a swimming pool—its water surface, several dozen meters wide, encircled by rock and vines. The Yucatán Peninsula was home to many such natural cenotes: on the surface they looked like nothing more than ordinary small ponds, yet every one of them was unfathomably deep. What’s more, these cenotes were largely connected underground, forming vast underwater passageways—a paradise for adventurers.

Adventure held no appeal for me, but I couldn’t stop staring at that cenote, watching the rain fall into it and send up endless ripples. A faint layer of grey-white mist hung above the surface—perfectly normal. And yet—why was there a trace of green vapor faintly visible within that mist?

“I can breathe again! Nearly suffocated in there!” The zipper on my backpack was tugged open by Bai Ju, who squeezed his way out and fluttered to hover in front of me.

This fellow had insisted on tagging along, claiming his small size made him easy to carry, and that his familiarity with South America made him perfect as a tour guide—on the condition that once this guiding job was complete, his debt to me would be considered settled. I had yet to find this guide of any practical use, however.

Jiu Jue had found a brand-new deck of playing cards in the bedside drawer—identical to the ones used by the two card assassins who had come after us.

He toyed with the cards in his hands. “Such foul weather and yet the hotel is still packed, and most of the guests look thoroughly miserable… very puzzling.”

“This reminds me of something.” Bai Ju gave a sudden shiver. “I used to circulate around South America, and I recall hearing from a local acquaintance back then that on the Yucatán Peninsula there was a hotel that specifically received people with nowhere left to turn. They said anyone who stayed there would ultimately escape from their troubles. A friend of his had spent years in wretched poverty, hounded by creditors and forced to hide wherever he could. Then one day he suddenly reappeared—well-dressed, as if he’d struck it rich, living lavishly, buying properties and cars. When asked how he’d come into money so suddenly, he couldn’t explain it himself. All he could say was that he’d been at his wit’s end and was about to throw himself into a river, when his most beloved elder sister pulled him back—then brought him to a nearby hotel and even paid his room fees. After that his memories become hazy. He only remembered entering the elevator together with his sister, and it seemed he’d also gambled with someone; when he came to at dawn he was lying in a field somewhere, with a full bag of diamonds stuffed in his pocket. He went back to find that hotel and couldn’t find it—couldn’t even remember the name. But the remarkable part isn’t the diamonds!” Bai Ju paused deliberately, milking the suspense.

“Are you going to broadcast this in nine installments?” I grabbed Bai Ju. “Say it all at once—no cliffhangers!”

“Gently, gently! I am an elder of several hundred years!” Bai Ju coughed twice. “The remarkable part was this: only after he’d fully sobered up did he suddenly realize that the elder sister—the only person in the world who had ever cared for him—had died in a car accident two years prior.”

“So friends in South America also enjoy ghost stories,” Jiu Jue said, taking a swig of wine with a laugh. “A departed sister’s boundless love, saving her wayward younger brother from the brink. And then?”

“The man came into money and lived very comfortably—but a little over a month later, he vanished. The police found only a single playing card on the surface of his bed, the Feathered Serpent God printed on its back. That was all.” Bai Ju flew over to him. “My friend also mentioned that the legend of this hotel seems to have spread within just the past few decades. Some say the hotel is a doorway to the feet of the great Feathered Serpent God—step through it, and the god will grant your every wish. Later, plenty of hotel owners tried to use this as a selling point, claiming their hotel was the miraculous wish-granting hotel—until eventually everyone simply treated the whole thing as a joke. Even the words of that man who disappeared were written off as nonsense: people assumed he’d made his money through illegal dealings and made up the story because he couldn’t admit to it. As for his disappearance—surely he’d gone into hiding from his creditors again.” Bai Ju finished in one breath.

I didn’t respond. Whatever the truth of this rumor, the information Chi Pian’er had brought back had also clearly mentioned gambling. Yet this small hotel, from its first floor to its third floor and all around—there wasn’t the slightest trace of any gambling establishment.

“Look over there.” I pointed toward the cenote outside the window, with its faint green vapor. “Vapor like that—it can’t be caused by chemical pollution, can it? A little pond that looks perfectly innocuous has an entirely different world beneath its surface. For all we know it connects to all the water sources in the human realm.”

But beyond that green vapor, I had a nagging feeling there was something else wrong I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“That green vapor isn’t resentful energy or death energy. It looks like it’s actually getting denser.” Jiu Jue narrowed his eyes and gave an exaggerated sniff. “No smell whatsoever, but—” He turned his head and pressed a hand to his chest. “Don’t you feel your mood sinking a little?”

Now that he mentioned it, I felt it too—a subtle shift in my own emotional state. My worry and agitation over Ao Chi and Chi Pian’er were always there; arriving here had added curiosity, suspicion, and wariness to the mix. But despondency had been entirely absent. I believed Ao Chi would be all right. I believed the rain would stop, the sun would come back out, and everything would be fine. Yet the longer I spent in this hotel, the weaker that conviction grew.

Something strange was at work here—subtly, imperceptibly influencing us.

“Let’s go take a look.” I grabbed him and we jumped directly off the balcony.

5.

From the highest observation platform, he raised a stemmed glass and sipped slowly. The liquid swirling inside—an emerald green—was the exact same color as his right eye.

Below the platform, dozens of gambling tables were crowded with people. Every gambler’s face was contorted: some smiling in ways that were frightening, others weeping in ways that were frightening, hope and despair finding their fullest expression within the shortest spans of time.

In a corner, an enormous hourglass ran its steady course. Two coiling stone-carved serpents clung to either side, ferocious and faithful, standing sentinel over time itself.

The fine grains of sand accumulated in the hourglass’s lower half, while the number of people in the gambling hall grew fewer and fewer. Not by leaving—but because at the conclusion of each round, the loser would vanish in plain sight of all present, leaving behind a Feathered Serpent playing card in the space where they had stood.

Such scenes were not without their horror: living people, gone in the blink of an eye, become a playing card. Yet those who remained—the temporary winners—not one flinched or retreated at the sight. On the contrary, they threw themselves with even greater fervor into the next round.

He surveyed his kingdom below with deep satisfaction, the green hue in his eyes reflecting the gamblers’ madness.

When the wine in his glass still held a small measure, a young man in green robes, face veiled in gauze, groomed more flamboyantly than most women, came in unhurried through a door at the rear, carrying an exquisite wine pot, and refilled his glass.

“I thought the dragons from the East Sea would be formidable,” the man in green said, standing at his side with a faint, contemptuous laugh. “Yet they’ve become a playing card too, haven’t they? My Divine Lord—once you’re here, who could ever be more formidable than you?”

“How go the preparations for the new stock in the wine pools?” He was long accustomed to flattery; his expression didn’t shift in the slightest.

“The new stock this time is extremely abundant. If all of it goes into the wine pool, we can produce at least twelve completed bottles.” The man in green was jubilant. “Thanks entirely to the Divine Lord’s outstanding leadership in attracting so many guests. Our 4E’s strength grows mightier by the day.” His lips curved slightly upward as he raised a hand. “Relay my orders—take all that new stock and…”

Before he could finish, the hand holding the wine glass clenched suddenly with such force that the glass itself shattered.

“Divine Lord! Are you—” The man in green went pale with fright.

He squeezed his fist shut and said: “That dragon. Leave it for now.”

The man in green’s eyes darted quickly. “Yes, my lord. I’ll see to it at once.”

He knitted his brows tightly; only after a prolonged period did he recover from a state of extreme discomfort. He sank back against his chair, breathing in great heaving gasps—then broke into a deeply peculiar smile and murmured to himself: “Stir all you like. You haven’t many chances left.”

He had a fresh glass brought and continued drinking appreciatively as he surveyed the scene. The people at the gambling tables were growing fewer and fewer.

A moment later, the man in green came sprinting back, drenched in cold sweat and wearing a panicked expression: “My Divine Lord… the wine pool…”

“What is it?” He didn’t so much as glance over, continuing to drink.

The man in green leaned in close and whispered: “That dragon has disappeared! And all the new stock this time—it’s vanished as well!”

He finished the last sip with perfect composure: “Find them.”

“Yes!” The man in green departed swiftly.

“The dragon of the East Sea…” He lifted his head and smiled darkly at some point in the empty air. “But this is not the East Sea.”

6.

I finally identified what was wrong with this “natural cenote”—the rainwater on its surface was flowing upward. Yet just beyond that boundary, the rain was falling in perfectly normal fashion. At a glance, it was nearly impossible to distinguish whether it was the rain from above falling into the pond, or the water from the pond turning to rain and ascending into the sky. Within the same space, two streams of rain were flowing in opposite directions. The law of gravity had apparently taken leave of absence.

“Ha! How amusing—rain falling upward!” Jiu Jue, already soaked to the bone like a drowned rat, crouched at the edge of the cenote, managing to find it delightful. “Look at this green vapor—it’s plainly clinging to that reversed rain and climbing toward the sky.”

I wiped the rain from my eyes and looked up carefully. Sure enough: the green vapor seeping up from the water’s depths was winding itself like vines around the upward-falling rain, flowing ceaselessly into the sky above—showing no sign of dispersing, as though intent on climbing as high as it could.

Jiu Jue stared at this wildly bizarre sight and suddenly asked: “You said all the cenotes here are interconnected?”

“Yes. National Geographic has said as much.” I answered with certainty.

“How many such cenotes could there be in total?” he asked again.

“Only heaven knows.” I gave him a sideways look. “But they say there are a great many. People describe them as ‘the Maya’s underground world’—think about what quantity would be needed to form an entire world.”

“Is that so…” Jiu Jue stroked his chin, falling into some kind of contemplation.

But he hadn’t had more than a few seconds of contemplation before a pattering burst of footsteps interrupted him. I looked back and immediately spotted a small figure stumbling out from the hotel’s side door—the recognizable little floral skirt vivid even in the rainy night.

“Help! I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go!” The little girl with the strange father came sprinting toward us in tears, and seeing us she changed direction to run straight at us with no regard for her own safety, crashing into my arms and wrapping her hands around my waist with no intention of letting go. The poor child had been frightened into this state by something unknown, sobbing so pitifully it made one’s heart ache.

Before we could even ask what was wrong, the thundering shout of someone incensed beyond measure came rolling toward us: “Lisa! Get back here! Lisa!”

Jiu Jue stepped in front of me and little Lisa, cutting off the strange father who looked ready to pounce and devour someone, firing off a volley of fluent English: “Calm down and talk. Don’t frighten a child and a lady.”

Lady? I gave that man a fierce mental kick.

“Get out of my way! What are you trying to do?!” The strange father looked ready to fight Jiu Jue to the death. “Lisa! Come here!”

“I don’t want to go in the elevator! I don’t like it in there!” Lisa hid behind me.

The elevator. Chi Pian’er had said the last place it saw Ao Chi was also the elevator.

The strange father struggled visibly to calm himself, crouching down and extending his hand toward his daughter. “Come to Daddy. You have to stay with Daddy to be safe—only Daddy can protect you. Be a good girl—we won’t go to the elevator. We’ll go back to the room and sleep.”

“We won’t go?” Lisa asked timidly.

“We won’t go.” The father nodded with great emphasis.

Lisa looked at him, thought it over, and then wiped her eyes and walked over to her father.

He pulled Lisa close at once, shot us one extremely unfriendly glare, and turned to leave.

A glare never hurt anyone. Still uneasy, I fell into step behind him with a smile. The hotel’s side entrance led into a narrow corridor; midway through was a staircase leading directly to the second and third floors, and at the far end was a half-open fire door—pass through it and you reached the first-floor guest room passage and the elevator.

We were walking along when the strange father suddenly broke into a full sprint, making straight for the elevator at rabbit-like speed. And as he ran, when passing through the fire door, he took the thoughtful precaution of locking it from the other side—shutting Jiu Jue and me outside.

Through the gap in the door came Lisa’s screaming and her father’s yelling: “We cannot be separated!”

As if an ordinary fire door could stop us—that would be stranger still. Jiu Jue blew a breath at the lock, and the two doors swung open obediently.

When we rushed in, father and daughter had already entered the elevator, and the corridor was empty. With a ding, the elevator doors closed a step ahead of us—but thankfully not entirely. A crack half an inch wide remained—Bai Ju, acting with great heroism, lay flat across the gap between the elevator doors, buying us precious seconds in which to pry them open with our fingers.

A slight application of force and the doors parted in Jiu Jue’s hands. We slipped inside, only to find the elevator held not just the father and daughter but some dozen other guests as well—yet not one of them spared us a proper glance; they seemed entirely indifferent to our entry. Some stared down at their feet, some gazed up at the ceiling murmuring to themselves, some kept their eyes closed with crosses clutched tightly in their hands.

Bai Ju sprang up from the floor and landed in my hand as the elevator doors slid shut.

“That counts as meritorious service—one month knocked off your working time.” I tucked the fan casually into my trouser pocket.

“Two months,” Bai Ju bounced inside the pocket, bargaining in a voice as thin as a mosquito’s. I gave him a sharp pinch and he went silent.

Jiu Jue pulled me to stand on the left side of the elevator. A quick survey located Lisa and her father in the corner directly across from us, the father turned partly sideways, shielding his daughter closely behind him, occasionally sweeping us with venomous looks.

“Oh, you came too?”

That familiar, halting Mandarin—slight, elderly Mr. Huang squeezed his head out from behind a tall, sturdy Black woman and greeted us cheerfully.

I tilted my head for a look. His other hand was gripping his wife’s firmly.

“Move your foot, please!” came a voice of great displeasure from somewhere beside me.

As if I couldn’t recognize that voice—I drew in my foot, turned my head, and caught the handsome older man directing his expression of disdain squarely at me.

Honestly, being this thoroughly disliked by someone was a genuinely novel experience. The key point being that I hadn’t done anything to him.

Well. One small elevator, and all the unusual characters had assembled.

Jiu Jue nudged me and murmured: “Look at the floor indicator.”

I stood on tiptoe, my gaze leaping over a tall man who was blocking me, and landed on the light that flickered incessantly.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again—and couldn’t help wanting to applaud. What a creative joke: a three-story hotel, and the display in the elevator showed us soaring steadily upward, bound for the 99th floor. I hadn’t misread—floor ninety-nine!

Suddenly I understood why Lisa had refused at all costs to enter this elevator. Children have a kind of innate sensitivity to certain forms of malevolent presence; she must have received some kind of frightening “signal” from this place.

No wonder Chi Pian’er had waited and waited without seeing Ao Chi come out. You were waiting for him on the third floor while he’d long since shot up to the 99th!

Jiu Jue and I exchanged a glance, conveying everything in a single look—the show was about to begin.

7.

In all my life, I had never set foot in a gambling establishment!

And yet—from the moment the elevator doors slid open and I stepped out with the crowd—I knew I had come to exactly the right place. How did I know? I simply did. Every instinct I possessed, from the sixth to the seventh, eighth, and ninth, was telling me: I had to be here.

What awaited us outside the elevator was a single towering door, thrown open without ceremony. Four men in black suits, thin as bamboo poles and looking as though a stiff breeze could topple them, stood guard at the entrance. Inside and out there were no prominent signs; only a perfectly ordinary welcome board to the right of the door, bearing the simple inscription Entrance with a directional arrow.

Looking both ways, I found only walls—no way out in either direction. Peering in through the open door, I could see rows of round tables arranged in neat lines, something resembling playing cards laid out on each. No other people were visible; only three or four small hunchbacked figures dressed as custodians, sweeping between the tables with brooms and dustpans, gliding without their feet touching the ground, sweeping up hats, shoes, and even dentures into their dustpans with evident satisfaction, humming as they worked.

The Black woman, growing impatient, started to go in first—but was stopped by one of the suited men. One of them stepped forward, gave us all a courteous bow, and said with a smile: “Welcome, honored guests, to Heaven’s Apex Casino. We are currently cleaning. Please wait a moment.”

Which meant that before our group had come up, there had already been guests here. But where were they? Had they left through an exit? Left in such haste they’d forgotten their dentures? Who would believe that!

Jiu Jue rubbed his palms together and grinned. “Haven’t set foot in a casino in ages! Can’t wait to absolutely clean house!”

“I knew you had a fondness for wine, but I hadn’t heard gambling was among your vices.” I cast him a sideways glance.

“Hmph—when I used to wander around Chang’an back in the day, I’d drop into gambling dens out of boredom. They called me the White-Faced Young Master Who Only Won and Never Lost. But glory days are glory days.” He winked at me. “The thing is—in those days, what I gambled was money. In this casino, what they wager is probably something rather less simple than gold and silver.”

At this moment, one of the custodian figures went to report to the black-suited men, jabbering something unintelligible to the rest of us.

The suited man nodded. One of them turned to us with a smile and a bow: “You may enter now. We hope you enjoy yourselves. Please.”

The crowd filed in. A few of the more eager ones even broke into a little trot—like starving people eyeing a Christmas feast, desperate not to miss the last chicken leg. The strange father’s eyes were practically alight; he plowed forward clutching Lisa and elbowed me in the process, all semblance of restraint utterly gone.

Jiu Jue, the handsome older man, and I were the last to enter. The older man’s gaze was sharp and precise, scanning in every direction.

A strange, chilly wind swept past me from behind. On pure instinct I turned—and found that the entrance door had vanished. In its place was nothing but a wall covered in dark-patterned designs, blending seamlessly with the surrounding walls of the casino. The door we had just walked through seemed as though it had been nothing but a shared illusion.

“The owner of this casino certainly has an imposing flair,” Jiu Jue murmured with a low laugh in my ear. “The setup of this entrance is perfectly designed to ensure guests arrive but never leave.”

“If they won’t let us leave, we’ll stay and eat them out of house and home.” I blinked slowly, and then it suddenly struck me: if Ao Chi had also come here—with his record of losing at even checkers against me—by now he’d surely have gambled away the shirt off his back… I rapidly played out in my mind a series of comedic scenarios of Ao Chi in dire straits, entirely devoid of the anxious dignity that should have marked a wife searching for her husband.

The gamblers had spread out across the room. The space was enormous, and the faces of those present were all alive with uncontainable excitement. Overhead, blazing light poured down from every direction, illuminating the square gambling hall as brightly as full daylight. In a corner, the enormous stone-carved serpent hourglass sat perfectly still, its sand suspended motionless within.

Yet the casino, aside from our group, held no one else—not a single croupier on the other side of any table.

While everyone exchanged bewildered looks, uncertain what to do next, a seductive female voice came from all four directions at once: “Welcome, all guests, to Heaven’s Apex Casino. Before the competition begins, you have five minutes to read the rules and regulations of this casino. Please retrieve your copy from the red box on your table. In five minutes, the 3,650th competition of Heaven’s Apex Casino will officially commence. Before the hourglass begins to run, withdrawal from the competition will be accepted for any participant who requests it. Those who wish to withdraw, please return the way you came. End of announcement. Good luck to you all.”

Competition? Jiu Jue and I looked at each other. Surely this wasn’t going to be some clichéd “God of Gamblers Tournament”—were we in a film?

Everyone rushed to pull from the red box on their respective table a thin booklet, its cover printed with the image of the Feathered Serpent God and the 4E insignia.

I reached over and took one from the nearest table. Inside was just a single folded sheet of thick glossy card—like a greeting card. It bore only five lines:

1. When the hourglass stops, the competition ends.

2. Any wager that a guest possesses and can pay will be accepted.

3. In the first round, each participant plays at a separate table; winners advance to the middle round.

4. The middle round is conducted among remaining participants together; the winner advances to the final round.

5. A bet made is a debt owed. Do not blame fate for your losses.

Beneath it, the seal of Heaven’s Apex Casino, accompanied by a Feathered Serpent God stamp.

The temperature in the casino was actually quite comfortable—neither cold nor warm. Yet somehow the line “A bet made is a debt owed. Do not blame fate for your losses” made me feel as though the air around me was growing colder.

I closed the booklet and looked left and right at the others. With the exception of Jiu Jue, myself, and the handsome older man—whose faces had grown somewhat grave—none of the others seemed to take the rules to heart at all. No one showed any intention of withdrawing; every single one of them was flexing their knuckles eagerly, looking as though they feared the competition might fail to start on time.

Five minutes passed in an instant. The broadcast came again: “No withdrawal requests received. First round: fourteen participants total. Competition begins in three seconds. Those who withdraw after this point will be severely penalized.”

Fourteen? I rapidly counted every person in the casino—and felt a chill run down my spine. They had actually counted Lisa among the participants. Which meant she too had to take part in this so-called “competition.”

This was unconscionable. She was just a child—for all we knew she couldn’t even tell all the playing cards apart!

The hourglass began its work. Fine yellow sand started flowing toward the lower half.

Fourteen young women in white blouses and miniskirts appeared from thin air at the far side of fourteen tables, their faces lovely, their smiling eyes gleaming. Unsettlingly, all fourteen beauties looked exactly identical—produced on an assembly line.

“This way, please, Miss Sha Xiaoshu.”

The croupier who had materialized behind me called out the name I had registered under with my forged documents. Another croupier called Jiu Jue’s alias—it seemed every croupier had been assigned a designated guest in advance, each prepared to provide one-on-one service.

Lisa clutched her father’s leg and refused, no matter what, to move toward the croupier calling her name.

If it weren’t for the fact that I hadn’t yet figured out the full situation and couldn’t afford to draw too much attention, the first thing I would have done right then was go over there and beat Lisa’s father half to death. Knowing there was potential danger here and still dragging your daughter along—what had this man done to his brain?

As Jiu Jue passed me on his way to his designated croupier, he fired a rapid sentence into my ear: “There’s a demonic presence above us. If something happens, save the child first—don’t worry about anything else.”

Demonic presence? Once Jiu Jue said it, I faintly sensed it too: an extremely faint demonic aura hovering above the casino. Unless you paid close attention, it was nearly impossible to detect. As an old demon capable of distinguishing even the subtlest differences among thousands of wine fragrances, I readily acknowledged that no one was better than Jiu Jue when it came to detecting such emanations.

I looked up. My gaze settled on the upper left of the casino’s ceiling—a protruding area resembling the kind of elevated private box found in an old-style theater. Too far away and the angle was too oblique for me to make out what was inside. But there was someone up there watching us, of that I was absolutely certain.

“Miss Sha, we can begin now.” My croupier reminded me sweetly.

I looked at the playing cards she held in her hands. “Begin what?”

She smiled: “Miss Sha, what a sense of humor! Every guest who comes to our hotel has only one purpose—to win. And to win, one must gamble. Isn’t that exactly what we’re about to begin?”

“How do we gamble?” I was actually a little uncertain inside. I rarely played card games; I couldn’t even manage a basic game of Dou Di Zhu.

“Very simple.” She spread out her palm, gave it a light toss—and the entire deck of playing cards levitated in the air between us, fanning out, arranging and fitting together, cards pressed tightly face-inward, spinning in a funnel formation that made the eyes swim.

After several seconds, all the cards stopped spinning and dropped downward, landing in a neat pile on the table.

“Each draws one card and compares values. Higher wins. On a tie, suit order is: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs. Best of three.” The croupier made an inviting gesture.

Simple enough—I could manage that.

“Fine—I’ll play along.” I nodded. “But I want to cut the deck first.”

“Of course.” The croupier’s smile was even warmer than a spring breeze.

I casually picked up half the deck and placed it beneath the other half.

The croupier gave a clap, and the cards automatically fanned out flat on the table. Then she did something that made my eyes light up: from a box at the table’s edge she produced a flawless diamond that by my estimate was no less than twenty carats. Its perfect brilliance was very nearly enough to draw out my drool.

“This is my wager for the first round. And yours, Miss Sha?”

That sentence yanked me straight from paradise back into the pit. I had come here in a rush from the cenote—I had nothing on me. What could I possibly use as a wager?!

“Per rule number two, we accept any form of wager—not only money and valuables.” The croupier noticed my predicament at once and helpfully explained.

Not just money?

On instinct I reached into my trouser pocket and pulled out the paper fan. Inside the fan, Bai Ju was practically in tears.

“A fan alone isn’t quite enough.” The other party had seen through my scheming thoughts before I could act on them, waving her hand with a smile.

I frowned: “That’s all I have on me. Oh—do you want my phone? And the necklace around my neck—pure gold, guaranteed!”

She continued waving her hand.

“This won’t do, that won’t do either.” I lost patience and raised my right fist. “What—do you want to take my fist as the wager?”

“Deal!”

This young woman’s reflexes were remarkably quick… I hadn’t even done anything yet, and somehow a right hand had just been staked. Just like that?

“Wait—that’s not what I meant.” I quickly clarified. “Let’s swap it for something else.”

“A word given is a debt incurred, and a hand raised cannot be recalled. We have already accepted your wager: one right hand.” The croupier’s voice was delightfully melodic. “Per the rules, the guest draws first.”

Outright robbery. An absolute den of robbers. Fine—let’s see whether you have what it takes to actually take one of my hands. The Boss Lady has her own rules. Rule number one: you dare take my hand, I’ll take your head.

My fingers slid across the cards, stopped at one in the middle, drew it out, and held it before my eyes—and then I wanted to die. Two of spades! The croupier drew a card with composed elegance, flipped it over—and my expression of surface composure concealed an internal leap of joy. You think you’re unlucky? There’s always someone more unlucky than you. Her two of hearts proved this phenomenon beautifully.

“Round one. You win.” She pushed the diamond over to my side.

I pocketed the diamond with serene ease and patted it in place, smiling: “Why, thank you!”

At that moment, the sensation of being locked in someone’s gaze crept over me again. I looked up toward that “private box.”

“Miss Sha. Round two—please draw!”

8.

The alluringly dressed man in green appeared again from behind him, wiping cold sweat as he said, “My Divine Lord, there is no news yet. Your servant has already deployed a large search team on all fronts. If that dragon attempts to forcibly break through the Four-Wing Boundary, it will sustain damage. Without sufficient strength, it will quickly be trapped to death within the underground realm.”

“Green Yao.” He seemed not to have heard a word of this, and crooked a finger.

The man whose very name was extravagantly seductive inched over with an anxious air: “Divine Lord, what is your command?”

The man smiled and pointed to certain individuals below the platform: “The Chinese woman with the long curly hair, the man with the lake-blue hair, and that tall one in the white shirt with the expressionless face—among this group, those three are the most likely to win through to the end.”

“Oh?” Green Yao, relieved the matter wasn’t a reprimand, said, “Does the Divine Lord believe they have exceptional luck, or exceptional skill?”

“Those who refuse to gamble cannot lose.” He smiled slightly. “Those three haven’t come here for the gambling at all.”

“Not for the gambling?” Green Yao was startled. “Why do you say so?”

“They don’t carry the scent of people at the end of their rope—just like Ao Chi.” He waved a hand. “Go investigate—who gave them a ‘key’ to get in.”

“Yes!” Green Yao hurried off. In no time at all, this loyal errand-runner returned to his side with the efficient efficiency, looking as though he were facing a grave threat: “My Divine Lord, I checked the records—these three people were not brought in by any of our people. They came on their own!”

“Very well. I know.” He stood, glanced down at the floor below, and smiled. “Since you’ve come—don’t go.”

He turned and walked away; Green Yao quickly fell into step behind him.

“My Divine Lord, what shall we do? Should we dispatch troops and have them—” Green Yao made a slashing gesture at his own neck. “This situation is too irregular; we cannot afford to be careless! No one has ever been able to find the hotel’s entrance without a ‘key.’ While they haven’t yet made any large moves—why not catch them off guard?”

“What’s there to panic about? Working for 4E, the one thing you should never do is panic.” He walked through a doorway, into a broad stone corridor carved all over with strange patterns. At intervals along the corridor hung serpent-shaped wall lamps, emanating a dim green light that cast shifting shadows of light and dark across his face. “A casino is, after all, a place of entertainment. Let’s set killing aside for the moment.”

“Yes!” Green Yao murmured in servile agreement. “Truly no need for any countermeasures?”

“My very existence is the best countermeasure.”

9.

The sand in the hourglass had fallen by nearly half.

I hadn’t let down the folks back home. My pocket now held four large diamonds, bulging so heavily they were nearly stretching the fabric. My opponent had staked three diamonds against my two hands in the second round—bold, to be sure. But unfortunately, her luck had fallen just short of mine at every turn.

By their rules—best of three—I had already won the first round. I could choose to play a third round or end the match here and wait for the middle round to begin.

Staking my own original body parts against someone else’s diamonds was a truly terrible feeling. I chose to end the match. Four diamonds was more than enough—heh!

The moment I called the match, my poor unfortunate croupier dissolved like a wisp of smoke. Something small and black and slender slithered across the floor so fast I couldn’t quite make it out, and in the blink of an eye it disappeared into the marble floor below.

Though I’d had my eyes on the diamonds, my peripheral vision hadn’t been idle. That slender black thing that had slipped so nimbly through the floor looked very much like a small black snake.

I looked back. The others were still going at it at their tables.

There was no rule in the casino’s regulations against someone who’d finished early going over to watch the others.

In front of Jiu Jue were no less than ten diamonds piled up. This insufferably lucky young master, who truly only won and never lost, had swept both rounds and was still unsatisfied, his lecherous eyes glued to the croupier’s impressive figure, saying in honeyed tones: “Come now—for the pleasure of your company a little longer, one more round! But this time you have to stake ten diamonds before I’ll agree to wager my head!”

What utter shamelessness—no dignity and no sense of self-preservation!

“Quit while you’re ahead. I can’t carry your corpse.” I drifted past him and stepped firmly on his foot.

A circuit of observation: depraved Jiu Jue and the steady-as-a-mountain handsome older man had both won all three rounds and called it quits. Slow, cautious Old Huang had only just reached his second round, wiping sweat as he drew his cards. His wife had finished faster—three rounds complete, one loss and two wins. The father who’d split his outcome was staring at his third card as though ready to crumple it in his grip. I was most concerned about Lisa—this little girl who understood nothing of the game had decent luck, having won two rounds, and was slumped sobbing on the floor.

I hurried over and lifted her up, asking what she’d used as her stake. She said the beautiful lady had told her she could bet her pretty little face.

A cold sweat broke out in my palm. If Lisa had lost—would they actually have taken her face?

“I want to go back!” Lisa clutched me as her tears fell in great drops. “I don’t want my mummy anymore. I’ll be very good. Even if Daddy hits me I won’t cry. Even staying home alone I won’t cry!”

What kind of life had this child been living?! Wait—my gaze snapped backward. Something wasn’t right. Several people were missing.

Counting more carefully: only nine people remained in the casino. At each of their places on the floor before the tables where they’d stood, there was now only a single playing card. Those people had vanished, unnoticed, without a trace?!

Cheers rang out nearby. Lisa’s father and Old Huang had both won. But among the winners who’d lost a round, some were missing an arm, others an eye. These mad people had been staking their own bodies—and losing them.

Lisa’s father pushed me aside and snatched his daughter back. His expression was one of wild elation; he held her close and kissed her repeatedly. He had lost one round himself, yet appeared completely intact on all fronts. I was curious what he’d used as his wager. And Old Huang’s wife—she’d lost a round too, yet she also seemed to be missing nothing. Could it be that their stakes were gems even more valuable than the diamonds? If they were that wealthy, why come to a casino at all? I couldn’t work it out.

At this point, the broadcast sounded again: “First round concluded. Nine winners. The middle round begins in five minutes. Participants, please take your seats at Table Thirteen.”

At the largest table in the center of the casino, a young man who had appeared at some unknown moment stood waiting—shirt and trousers, cravat, shoulder-length hair tied at the back of his head in a bundle, dark tinted glasses on his face, the corner of his mouth curled slightly upward, beckoning us with a gesture.

10.

Nine people, seated around a table. The gleaming surface reflected the overhead lights in a way that made the eyes water.

The man’s voice was resonant and unhurried as he announced the middle round to all of us. It was simple: from a shuffled deck of 52 cards, one was drawn at random and placed in a box where no one could see it. The remaining cards were dealt out to everyone in turn; once dealt, players sorted their hands. Regardless of suit—any two cards of matching value formed a pair, and paired cards were set aside. When the sorting was done, someone might find their hand already empty; they were the first winner. Those with cards remaining would, starting with the first player, draw one card clockwise from the player to their left. If the drawn card matched something in hand, it formed a pair and could be set aside; if not, the card had to be kept, and the next player would draw from that player—and so on down the line. Anyone who ran out of cards was a winner. But there would inevitably be one person left with one card that could not be paired—that card, together with the card hidden in the box, completed a pair. The player holding that card was the loser.

“Isn’t this just Old Maid?” Jiu Jue leaned toward me. “A game children play.”

“Yes—in some places this game is indeed called Old Maid.” The man smiled at us both and casually drew a card. “Whoever draws this card is the Old Maid.” He paused and looked around at everyone. “One loser per round, and the last guest remaining at the table is the winner of the middle round. Let’s begin.”

I had played this card game before—back at Bu Ting, Ao Chi used to love rounding up the whole household to play. Light and simple.

And yet, the simpler the trap, the harder it is to guard against. By these rules, only one of the nine of us would survive to the end.

“Don’t be the Old Maid!” Jiu Jue reminded me cheerfully.

“I’ve never once lost at this.” I answered him, though my eyes were on the man dealing the cards. He was looking at me too, and said: “Best of luck.”

This man was nothing at all like the beautiful croupiers before him.

Lost and found again. Found, and lost once more. A towering tree draws the wind; where can peace be found?

His appearance carried a strange force that seemed to strike at something deep within me—and without knowing why, I found myself suddenly recalling the words that old fortune-teller had muttered while reading my palm.

Lost and found, found and lost—didn’t that sort of thing happen most often at a gambling table?!

I was distracted for two or three seconds; by then the man had finished dealing the cards.

Good fortune favored me—the four cards in my hand formed two complete pairs. No further work required; I was already a winner.

Not ten minutes later, the first round ended. The tall, sturdy Black woman held a single card and screamed. Her empty left eye socket—just a patch of grey-black—showed no sign she was in any pain. From the moment she’d lost that eye to this moment now, all her attention had been on the game and on winning or losing, as though the missing eye simply wasn’t hers.

“I’m afraid you’ve lost.” The man retrieved the pre-drawn card from the box and displayed it for all to see. The Black woman shot to her feet, screaming a furious profanity, flung her card onto the table, and turned to go.

The man’s finger gave the faintest flutter. The card the Black woman had thrown leaped silently from the table—like a moth drawn to flame, it pressed itself to her back, and in an instant that woman, nearly 180 centimeters of solid build, crumbled from head to foot into a puddle of black ash, sucked with a whoosh into the playing card, which then fell to the floor.

“A bet made is a debt owed.” The man snapped his fingers. Thin sheets of paper drifted down from the air to land before each of us remaining. “This cheque may be filled in for any amount; any bank will honor it. Congratulations to the winners.”

Lisa sat frozen in her seat, too terrified to even cry. Her father showed precious little of the joy of a victor—he stuffed the cheque carelessly into his pocket without a glance at his daughter’s face, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the man: “Quickly! Second round!”

Old Huang, though shaken, kept hold of his wife’s hand, reassuring her: “It’s all right—it’ll be over soon!”

His wife turned to him with a wan smile and patted his vein-mapped old hand.

The most composed, naturally, were the handsome older man and the incorrigible Jiu Jue. Jiu Jue had the audacity to kiss his cheque and actually thank the man for it.

The Black woman wasn’t dead—signs of “life” still registered within that card. The same must be true of all who had disappeared—held captive by some kind of sealing technique. For every one of these cards to possess such formidable power, the one who had crafted them was not to be taken lightly.

At this moment, the Japanese man who had lost an arm went ashen-faced and mumbled frantically: “Enough, enough—I’ve won plenty! I’m done!” And with that he snatched his cheque and turned to flee.

A playing card flew out. The man said, smiling from behind him: “Withdrawal is not accepted before the competition concludes.”

The losses were mounting fast. Now only seven of us remained.

“Second round. Begin.” He started shuffling the cards.

He’d only dealt one circuit when Old Huang suddenly went wrong—clutching his head and crying out in pain, toppling from his chair. Jiu Jue beside him rushed to catch him. But his wife, seated on his other side, merely watched him, showing no alarm at all—on the contrary, she wore an expression of relief.

Before long, Old Huang’s head pain vanished. He got back into his chair as though he had no recollection of what had just happened, looked blankly around him, and said: “Begin!”

The conclusion of this round was a tense affair: only father and daughter remained, with three cards between them—daughter holding two, father holding one.

If the father drew the matching card, then Lisa would be the final loser.

By any ordinary logic, when faced with danger, parents instinctively act to protect their child’s safety. But I was deeply uneasy.

The father’s fingers hovered over his daughter’s two cards, hesitating.

Lisa’s tear-filled eyes looked at her father with total helplessness.

“Do you think that person is worrying about himself, or about his daughter?” Jiu Jue leaned over. Our expectations of this father were both very low.

“Either way, I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.” I’d already made up my mind—if necessary I’d make a scene and flip the table. I had my diamonds, I had my cheque, so be it.

At this moment, the man walked over to Lisa’s father, leaned down and murmured something in his ear, then patted him on the shoulder and walked away.

Something felt wrong. I rose and strode quickly to the man’s side, pulling him back. “What did you say to him?” I asked quietly.

He didn’t hide it from me. He pointed toward the hourglass and said: “Every round has a time limit. If the round hasn’t concluded when time is up, everyone will be judged to have lost. I find this session’s participants all quite interesting, so I was simply trying to give you a hand.” He courteously removed my hand and lowered his voice at my ear with a smile: “I only told that father the card on the left is his matching card.”

Rotten scoundrel!

I looked back—the father was actually reaching out and pinching the left card, about to draw it.

Never mind anything else—I lunged forward in a single step, snatched the cards out of both father’s and daughter’s hands, and stepped back.

But I immediately realized the man had lied: the card on Lisa’s left was not her father’s matching card at all.

What was this man trying to do?

I tore the playing cards to pieces and told the room full of astonished faces: “I apologize—this round has no winner or loser. And on that note—everyone who should be heading back, head back now!”

The man only smiled and said nothing.

It was Old Huang and Lisa’s father who reacted—surging toward me, one after the other. Old Huang stumbled frantically to his knees in front of me, grabbing my arm: “It can’t end yet! I have to make it to the last round! I have to see the god! Please, don’t cause trouble!” The other man simply picked up a chair and hurled it at me, roaring like a wild animal: “You die!”

Jiu Jue punched Lisa’s father flat on his back and shook out his hand: “Told you not to frighten children and ladies.”

Old Huang clung to my leg and wouldn’t let go: “I’m begging you—the gambling must go on!”

“Why does it have to go on?” I looked at his face, slick with snot and tears.

“I… I need to see the god! The great… the great Feathered Serpent God! Only the last winner gets to see him! Only he can help me!” Old Huang was in hysterics.

“What do you need him to help you with?”

“I…” Old Huang went suddenly rigid, as though struck over the head with a club. His hands, clinging to my arms, loosened abruptly. “What did I need him to help me with?” He beat his own head with his fists. “What was it? Why can’t I remember?”

The situation descended into chaos. Lisa cowered under the table. Old Huang’s wife remained sitting exactly as she had been, her eyes faintly red, and she didn’t so much as look at her own husband. The handsome older man seemed even more of an outsider than ever, playing with his cards to himself with perfect self-containment.

“Not a single god would use such a wicked, cruel method to treat his own believers!” I gripped Old Huang’s shoulders hard. “There has never been any Feathered Serpent God! He was simply a source of spiritual comfort invented by desperate people long ago! This is absolutely not a place you should have come!”

The man’s laughter suddenly rang out. He opened his palm—the two playing cards that had “swallowed” two people floated up from the floor and came to rest between his fingers. “On the contrary—this is precisely where they should be. And quite possibly, where you should be as well.”

“You’re the one who owns this ridiculous casino, aren’t you.” I left Old Huang and walked to stand before the man. I gave him a brilliant smile. “And you were the one crouching up there watching through a peephole the whole time. No wonder you like playing Old Maid with your guests.”

“If you say I own it, then I own it.” The man shrugged. “But there is no turtle in the world as handsome as I am.”

That look on his face—lives treated as mere playing pieces, and not the slightest care about it—the more I stared at it the more I wanted to take a shoe sole to it. I let my smile drop, and the reflection of my face in his tinted lenses was cold enough to frost over: “Turning your hotel into a graveyard—that I take issue with.”

“A hotel has always been a place for people to rest. I provide my guests with permanent rest—I see nothing wrong with that.” He circled around me once and sniffed. “Ah—I believe I’ve caught the scent of an angry demon.”

Leave this place! Go up!

A faint voice—not slipping into my ear but landing directly against my heart, only for the briefest instant. Before I’d even had the pride of knowing whether it was real or imagined, it was gone.

That voice didn’t belong to anyone I knew.

“There is a certain professional rivalry between us, I suppose, esteemed colleague.” Jiu Jue strolled up beside the man and pointed at me with a conspiratorial air. “Our Boss Lady also runs a hotel—smaller scale, admittedly. Business this grand? She’ll be positively green with envy and rage! Why don’t we all sit down and exchange some professional insights? Share a few of your techniques for drawing customers?”

Before the words had fully left his mouth, from the right hand he had positioned behind the man, a streak of white light shot out. Jiu Jue dodged to the side. A snow-white miniature porcelain wine cup—looking oddly familiar—arrested itself above the man’s head, then enlarged enormously in an instant. Opening downward, it came crashing over the man, encasing him completely within. Rings of light circled the cup’s exterior, cycling from bottom to top in a continuous loop, so tightly sealed that not even a mosquito could slip through.

“One of my specialty wine cups—holds any quantity of liquid without overflow.” Jiu Jue stepped forward and struck the enormous cup with a ding. “Solid as bedrock, watertight. Any time the Boss Lady has need, I can fill it with water, toss in snakes and rats—if the occupant still wants to cause trouble, sulfuric acid is also an option. Premier instrument for detention and interrogation—don’t let it go to waste!”

Old Huang and Lisa’s father collapsed to the floor. Old Huang stared at the scene before him and murmured hollowly: “It’s over. I can’t see the god anymore. It’s all over.” Lisa ran to her father and pressed herself into his arms, weeping. Old Huang’s wife remained seated, coughing repeatedly.

From inside the wine cup came a laugh of perfect composure: “I like clear-headed people—and I most dislike clear-headed people. If the world were full of them, my business would suffer.”

“Business? As fellow industry professionals, poaching clients is unavoidable.” I walked up to the wine cup. “Rest, as I see it, is the foundation for going further—that is the philosophy of my establishment. Since you’re a competitor, every single one of your guests, I intend to take away. All of them.”

“Are you certain?” he asked. “Even if they are already dead—will you take them too?”

A jolt went through me.

“When a person places something as precious as their own life on a card as worthless as a playing piece, they are already dead. Beyond this place, they have nowhere left to stand in this world.” He said, “And there’s one thing you were wrong about just now.”

“What?”

“The Feathered Serpent God exists.”

“Oh?”

“I truly wish you had never come here. But now that you have—don’t go.”

A thunderous crack—Jiu Jue’s treasured cup shattered without warning into two halves. Light blazed from within, blinding enough to scorch the eyes, with a force powerful enough to tear apart everything around it. That energy was unlike anything an ordinary immortal or demon possessed: however formidable an immortal, the power they radiated never carried this kind of ferocious, murderous edge. An ordinary demon could never possess this kind of overwhelming, destructive force.

I was genuinely afraid that one more second of staring into that light would make my eyes bleed.

And yet I could not look away—

A great serpent, its entire body radiating purple light, spread its snow-white wings and soared out from within, shooting upward into the air like an arrow.

A violent gale swept in from all sides. Gambling tables, chairs, people—everything, including the surrounding walls—was caught up and warped together, tumbling in the center of a whirlwind-like tempest, utterly beyond control.

This creature was clearly no god—yet with its true form now revealed, why could I still barely sense any demonic aura? Could its demonic energy be suppressed by something, preventing its full release?

My vision was pure chaos. The world was like meat chopped apart and thrown into a blender, with solid objects slamming into my body at intervals—very painful.

When the chaos finally subsided and the distorted vision gradually dispersed, my body—which had been suspended in midair—felt as though a lead weight had been placed upon it. With a thud, I plunged into ice-cold water. Strange-tasting liquid instantly rushed into my eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

· Epilogue ·

I fought to open my eyes, but could see no one. Whatever gambling den, whatever hotel—it had all dissolved into froth and shadow. I had landed in an unidentifiable body of water. I struggled, yet couldn’t rise to the surface; I couldn’t even manage to turn over. All I could do was watch helplessly as I sank face-downward, gripped by an invisible hand that held me fast.

The water stung my eyes with every current. Dimly, very deep below, a stretch of shifting, undulating outlines embedded with tiny points of light drew steadily closer.

The tightness in my chest grew and grew. The water that had rushed in not only filled me with nausea—but with grief. That was truly strange. Swallowing water could provoke panic, but how could water make a person more and more heartbroken with every mouthful?

Oh. What were those? Rising up from the depths—one after another, small translucent creatures with wings. I strained to see clearly and found they had already reached me, surrounding me as though by prior arrangement.

Were they that monster? They looked rather like it—only smaller, and more transparent. No, wait—why did they each have a woman’s face on their head, bobbing this way and that, too blurred to make out clearly?

“Sha Luo, you came too early for Ao Chi, eh.”

The shrill voice was the epitome of a gossiping busybody from a television drama—every word delivered in an affected, drawn-out tone, piercing the eardrums, sounding like a human voice but not quite.

Nonsense—did you think I came here on holiday to gamble?! My heart spoke back involuntarily.

“Ao Chi is gone!”

Hmm?

“You thought he couldn’t die, didn’t you? But he did. He died without seeing you one last time.”

What?!

I reached out to grab at those insufferable little creatures, but couldn’t touch them no matter how I tried.

They grew more and more animated—

“He didn’t win the bet—he lost. He’s dead!”

“You finally got married, so what? You found him again, so what? You only had these two years of fate together!”

“What’s so great about being the Boss Lady of Bu Ting? In the end you have nothing. Zi Miao didn’t want you; Ao Chi doesn’t want you either. No one needs you.”

“Lost and found again, found and lost once more. You’ve lost him forever! Hee hee hee hee!”

Go to hell with your ill omens! I wanted to scream but couldn’t open my mouth.

The more I tried to curse those creatures, the more grief-stricken I became—the more I felt that what they were saying might be true…

And then I understood why I was so full of grief.

Lost and found, found and lost…

Found, and lost once more—it was speaking of Ao Chi all along.

My head ached. My heart ached. Every part of my body ached, and I could no longer even struggle.

Those loathsome little creatures continued taunting me, cackling and clamouring at my side—their numbers seeming to multiply with every passing moment.

Was this to be my end of the world, arrived ahead of schedule?

Boom!

Just as I drifted in and out of consciousness, on the very edge of losing awareness entirely—a burst of powerful bubbles came rushing toward me from somewhere. Their force was tremendous: it scattered and sent those little creatures tumbling in all directions, breaking them apart, and jolted me back to full clarity.

An immense shadow cut a perfect, sweeping arc through the murky water and came rushing toward me.

The crushing weight that had pressed me down lifted all at once. Beneath me, something enormous had raised me entirely onto its back.

I sprawled there, exhausted as a toad, and could not see clearly what this creature truly looked like. Beneath my palms, I felt only immense, ice-cold scales—a touch that was somehow deeply familiar, like—

A dragon?!