Xiao Nanhui blinked, letting the slightly damp dew fall from her eyelashes.

On a summer night in the mountains, a faint breeze still drifted. Soft grass on the hilltop pressed low, and as the wind passed through it, the vague outlines of three figures lying prone were just barely visible.

They had been crouching on this hilltop for half an hour. The view here was wide, offering a full sweep from the estuary flats along the Hunhe to the mountain hollow where the Shen clan had settled.

Yet when the darkness descended again over Heimu County, everything here seemed different somehow.

The deer had vanished from the estuary flats. In the moonlight, not even a single water bird could be seen on the smooth black sand.

Tonight, no one was setting out from the harbor. The river surface was exceptionally still — not a single boat — and trackers and boatmen were nowhere to be found.

Flames burned quietly in the depths of those stone caves. Seen from a distance, the mountains seemed to have grown red eyes, like the deity said in legends to be called the Sacrificial Horse, looking down coldly and indifferently on the creatures of the mortal world from the darkness.

Having been inside it before, it was not easy to perceive — but those stone caves were actually situated in a concave depression cradled by mountains on all sides, a naturally formed sinkhole. The bottom of the pit opened in all directions, with dense small paths threading between the mountains. Even from a height, it was difficult to tell where any given path led.

And in the very center of that hollow was a circular plaza paved with red rubble. The plaza was pitch-black — not a trace of firelight — and only by the moonlight could one steal a glimpse.

They had assumed the Shen family would make some kind of advance move — but they hadn’t expected a move quite this significant.

More than a hundred young men and women knelt in the center of the plaza, murmuring inaudible incantations. The oldest among them appeared no more than seventeen or eighteen. They were shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, forming an enormous circle. At the starting point of the circle — facing the first chamber of the western Beak constellation — stood Shen Shi’an, clothed in plain hemp garments.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Shen Shi’an finally moved.

She began at the starting point of the circle and walked slowly along the edge of the seated crowd, surveying as she went. She moved very slowly. When her gaze passed over those young faces, it carried a trace of gentle warmth, and those young men and women who received the blessing of that gaze all bowed deeply forward, none of them daring to look up at Shen Shi’an.

Every face wore an expression of total, willing submission. They were devoutly waiting for something, their expressions identical to those of people kneeling in temples to beseech the protection of the divine.

Xiao Nanhui watched with bewildered fascination, and nudged the man beside her lightly with her elbow, keeping her voice low.

“When you were selecting consorts, things weren’t quite this elaborate, were they?”

The question came out without much thought, and only when she’d already said it did she realize it was perhaps somewhat awkward. She was about to reconsider when he had already taken up the thread.

“No, they weren’t.” His voice was soft, carrying a barely perceptible hint of amusement. “Not in the past — and not in the future.”

Xiao Nanhui fell silent. She didn’t dare look back at the person lying beside her, and forced herself to focus her attention on Shen Shi’an in the distance.

At last, Shen Shi’an’s footsteps stopped. Her gaze settled on a figure in the crowd that was notably more round and plump than the others — she narrowed her eyes and studied the round head, short and stocky limbs, and the apricot pits scattered all over the ground.

Xiao Nanhui’s heart skipped an entire half a beat.

It was that child.

“Raise your head.”

Shen Shi’an’s tone was one of satisfaction.

But the girl child seemed to have been frightened. She did not move for quite a long time, her round body trembling like a sieve.

Shen Shi’an furrowed her brow. The old woman who had been standing not far behind stepped forward. She extended her hand, feeling the girl’s forehead, the top of her head, the back of her skull, nodding all the while.

“The Heavenly Center is full and rounded, the back mountain is level and smooth. Congratulations, family head — an excellent vessel has been found.”

Shen Shi’an stepped forward and took the child by the hand. The expression on her face held a childlike innocence and sweetness.

“Are you afraid?”

The girl child still said nothing, only trembled.

Shen Shi’an extended one hand toward the old woman, who reached into the bamboo basket on her back and drew out a piece of candy, placing it in Shen Shi’an’s hand.

Shen Shi’an pinched the candy and brought it close to the girl’s lips, her voice carrying a note of coaxing enchantment.

“Come now — have some candy. Once you eat the candy, you won’t be afraid anymore.”

The girl child hesitantly opened her mouth, and the candy went in. The old woman thereupon took the girl by one hand and Shen Shi’an by the other, and turned toward the stone caves glowing with red light. The crowd of young men and women all followed in close succession, entering the depths of the caves.

Xiao Nanhui stood up from her hiding place, the wind scattering some of the cold sweat on the back of her neck. She weighed her words carefully and spoke to the person beside her.

“I’ll go scout ahead. You stay here — let Ding Weixiang stay with you.” Feeling this wasn’t emphatic enough, she added several more earnest words. “This Shen family has danger lurking around every corner. When we went to see Shen Shi’an this morning, she had obvious designs on you, and it may well be that she deliberately staged all this to draw you in. And those caves are a closed space — easy to enter, hard to escape. If something unpredictable happens, the two of us moving alone would still make it easier for one person to get out—”

She was still going on and on, but the man had already gotten to his feet. He glanced at the woman before him with her earnest expression and asked lightly:

“Do you know the way?”

The words she’d been in the middle of came to an abrupt stop. Ding Weixiang’s laughter drifted over immediately, carrying in it a note of none-too-friendly mockery that made one quite annoyed.

Xiao Nanhui caught up with them.

“What are you laughing at?”

Ding Weixiang turned back, his upright face perfectly composed.

“Did I laugh? You must have misheard.”

She was about to press the matter when Su Wei also caught up. The path going down the mountain was somewhat steep, and the atmosphere gradually fell quiet.

After a moment, she finally couldn’t help speaking.

“They won’t actually do something to that child, will they?”

Su Wei’s figure wavered just ahead.

“If I haven’t guessed wrong, that girl is the vessel Shen Shi’an has selected for the next host.”

“What vessel?”

“The current head of the Shen family, Shen Shi’an, was born in the final years of the collapsing Niexuan dynasty, and would now be exactly one hundred and three years old — how could she possibly be a child who hasn’t yet reached the age of total maturity?”

Xiao Nanhui’s feet went still, and she instantly recalled what the old woman had said to her beneath the archway gate. At the time, she had taken the talk of straw dogs to be nothing more than a primitive and barbaric practice of living sacrifice, like the ancient villages of Bijiang. But here and now she finally understood, completely and entirely, the true purpose of those children.

They were less than offerings — they were nothing more than puppet garments on the road to immortality for an old and foolish one who held power.

“If the purpose is merely selecting a vessel to host the deity — why must it be a child? Wouldn’t it be faster and easier to simply select someone who is already grown?”

“The Xishen people believe that a human body contains a soul, just as a vessel of any shape contains water. A body can naturally hold only one soul. If something else were to force its way in, a conflict would arise due to incompatibility. The soul of a young man who has reached adulthood is far stronger and more steadfast than that of a child who has not yet reached that age — not easily shaken, and not easily expelled. Even if possession succeeded once or twice, it often wouldn’t last long. So to obtain a vessel that is lasting and unlikely to malfunction, one would perhaps need to begin cultivating it when the child is very young — destroying their mind, weakening their sense of self, reducing them to an utterly complete puppet.”

As though a thread had been drawn through the scattered fragments in her mind, connecting them one to another, Xiao Nanhui almost blurted out:

“I know what happened to Zou Sifang.” Her voice was somewhat urgent, her pace even faster than usual. “I always thought that Pu Huna knew you would bring out three jade seals at the Darkened Day Sacrifice, which was why they targeted Jiaosong County. But that night I encountered that strange palace servant in the traveling palace — it was clear that that person called Xu Rui was also going after me, or going after something. If it was not because they had sensed something, after discovering the secret seal on the Changmi Platform was a fake, they would never have risked sneaking back into the traveling palace.”

“If we say there was only one person within Pu Huna capable of sensing the secret seal’s presence — that person must have been the ‘Zou Sifang’ who appeared in Jiaosong County. Or rather: whoever was occupying Zou Sifang’s body at the time. Beyond this, the palace servant I encountered in the traveling palace that night was also very likely the same person. All of this seems absurd on the surface, yet there is a subtle connection running through it all. That connection being: Zou Sifang and the palace servant named Xu Rui had both already died before they reappeared.”

When a person’s soul leaves their body, but the body still lives — something else will come to occupy it.

But what exactly was that something?

The figure ahead paused. Su Wei half-turned his face toward her, his expression somewhat obscured in the night.

“What you’ve said is not wrong — but you’ve missed one layer of connection. Zou Sifang had been on the verge of death from an unusual poison; Xu Rui, before he died, had been a sleeping-quarters official in the inner palace and had taken sick leave a few days before his attack. And it is very likely that both of these individuals had come into contact with the secret seal before exhibiting these signs.”

Right — she remembered. There had been a small, barely noticeable needle mark on Xu Rui’s body. She just didn’t know whether that mark had been left by contact with the secret seal—

“So — is this why you’ve been keeping that object off your person?”

Su Wei hadn’t yet had time to answer before Ding Weixiang’s hand signal cut them off.

Without noticing it, they had drawn close to the stone cave forest. To be safe, all three fell silent by unspoken agreement.

Yet the stone caves showed no sign of anyone beyond the firelight. Those young men and women, together with Shen Shi’an, seemed to have walked into some void — vanished into thin air.

Xiao Nanhui was not ready to give up. She searched carefully around the largest of the main caves, and ultimately discovered an inconspicuous opening.

The stone platform encircled by burning oil had a hollow beneath it — a dark, cave-like opening right there in the ground behind the platform’s back side. From the depths of the opening, faint firelight was visible, revealing a narrow and steep stone staircase.

Ding Weixiang looked at it, and something shifted across his expression.

“My lord and Miss Xiao, stay here — I’ll go down and scout.”

Xiao Nanhui let her gaze travel idly to one side.

“Do you know the way?”

What a delicious feeling, to turn someone else’s own words back on them.

Ding Weixiang faltered. Xiao Nanhui was sorely tempted to cross her arms, tilt her head back, and let out three great laughs. For the sake of getting along on the road ahead, she restrained herself.

“This opening looks rather narrow — with your build it might not be convenient. Let me go down and scout instead.”

Ding Weixiang was clearly unwilling and was about to voice his objection, when the man beside them finally spoke.

“How about you two go down, and I’ll stay up here and wait—”

“Absolutely not!”

This time, Xiao Nanhui and Ding Weixiang were finally of one mind.

Su Wei waved a hand and settled the matter.

“Then all three of us go together.”

The stone steps leading underground were steeper even than the mountain path they’d just descended. Ding Weixiang took point, Su Wei in the middle, and Xiao Nanhui brought up the rear. The three fell silent once more and made their way downward by the dim surrounding light.

After roughly the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the space around them suddenly opened up — they had entered an underground stone grotto. A spiral stone staircase wound down along the grotto’s stone walls, like a colossal serpent in winter dormancy, its head leading straight to what legend called the gates of hell.

Long-burning lamps lined the staircase, their flames illuminating ochre-colored murals on the stone walls, with many more symbols and patterns woven throughout.

Judging by the peeling and fading of the pigment, these paintings were far younger than those in the Seqiu Bie Meng cave — yet far inferior in artistry and depth. The brushwork was detailed but extremely rigid, and the use of color was monotonous. They seemed to have been painted as though fulfilling some kind of obligation.

Xiao Nanhui’s gaze swept hastily over the murals. With her mind on the vanished Shen Shi’an, she had no true heart to examine the content of the paintings in detail. But just as she was about to look away, something caught her attention.

It was an enormous mural that occupied nearly half a stone wall. More than half of it was blanketed in crimson flames, and within those flames what appeared to be countless heads surging. Standing at the center of the flames was a person with arms outstretched and palms open. Despite wearing monk’s robes, the face was terrifyingly hideous.

But none of this was what had made her stop in her tracks. What gave her pause was what was on the monk’s left wrist.

Though Buddhist prayer beads in this world differed little from one another, she somehow felt those prayer beads looked extremely familiar. Perhaps it was the varying sizes of the beads, or perhaps it was that rare and unusual color—

“That figure in the painting may be my teacher, Wu Min.”

Xiao Nanhui looked up in surprise, to find that he was also looking at the mural.

“Did your teacher actually look like that?”

Su Wei pondered for a moment, as though reaching into memory.

“When I took him as my teacher, he was already a very old man — but also certainly nothing like the figure in this painting. I expect the painter had something of a personal grievance against him.”

Something of a personal grievance? This would need to be a mortal enemy of unforgivable enmity to portray a monk in such a manner.

A powerful premonition rose up within her, then brought with it a surge of regret.

“Since he appears in this painting, he must have known a great many of the Shen clan’s secrets. What a pity he is no longer here — the secrets in this painting are known to no one.”

“I’d say it’s not necessarily true that no one knows.” A certain someone’s voice had gone cold to the bottom of a valley, “It turns out all those years of donated incense money have been enough to teach even monks clinging to their mountain wilderness how to lie.”

In the main hall of the Yongye Temple, before nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine butter lamps.

The young abbot sneezed hard, then sniffled.

Strange — summer was well underway by now, and the time for catching a chill in the night had long since passed. Why did the back of his neck feel a little cold?

He glanced at the oil lamps he had only half finished lighting, and felt his monk’s robe growing heavier on his shoulders and the wrist holding the oil vessel growing sorer by the moment.

He cleared his throat.

“Zhu Yu?”

No one answered from outside the main hall.

Yikong glanced at the sky outside the hall. It was barely past the Unitary Hour — his lazy disciple’s hours for dozing off were getting earlier and earlier.

He steadied himself and cleared his throat again.

“Ping’er?”

Still no answer from outside.

Yikong fixed his eyes on the wooden fish before him, picked up the small gold-wrapped copper mallet beside it, and struck three solid blows.

“Bao San!”

After a moment, a small novice — half-sized, whittled thin as an umbrella handle — came stumbling and staggering to the hall’s doorway.

“Master — what is it?”

Yikong drew a deep breath, regained his composed bearing, and continued his performance of adjusting the oil lamps.

“A little while ago I heard someone ring the bell at the mountain gate — has anyone gone to check?”

Bao San, one hand clutching his waistband that was somewhat too large and one hand hiking up his half-slipped shoes, wriggled and squirmed in the doorway.

“It — it seems like Zhu Yu went. He — he hasn’t come back yet.”

The hand Yikong was using to add lamp oil paused.

“How long has he been gone?”

“Less — less than half an hour.”

A light breeze passed through, and the lamp that had just been lit suddenly went out.

Rubbing his fingers together, Yikong lifted his monk’s robe and got to his feet.

“Just recalled — today seems to be the birthday of the Hucheer’gu Buddha.”

The Hucheer’gu Buddha? What kind of Buddha was that? He’d never heard of it before.

The small novice surreptitiously scratched his head, worrying his ignorance would be seen through by the abbot. But the abbot opened his mouth again.

“Let’s skip evening prayers for today. Go gather everyone to the main hall to keep watch through the night. Make sure the hall doors are closed — no one goes out until daylight.”

Bao San’s face fell. He clearly felt this punishment was more than a little severe.

“Mas — master — I — I think—”

Yikong stepped a little closer to him and suddenly reached out to knock on the small novice’s head. Not one less, not one more — exactly three times.

“Quickly now.”

Bao San was startled into silence. He clasped his hands together and acknowledged the order, then turned and ran off — noticeably more agile than when he’d arrived.

Two or three courtyards away from the main hall, in the food preparation kitchen, another figure was moving furtively along the base of the wall.

Hao Bai had three sesame flatbreads tucked against his chest and four or five eggs bundled in his front lapel, and moved like the wind, his face radiant with the satisfaction of the harvest.

He was a seasoned hand at covert operations in enemy territory. Back in the day, he had spent two or three months in that den of bandits in Bijiang, and had stolen more eggs and sheared more wool than he could count. A mere desolate temple in the wilderness — what could possibly stand in his way?

Three turns and four turns out of the firewood-stacked rear courtyard, he made straight for the sutra repository. Thinking of how he would soon be able to bake himself some fresh egg flatbreads, he felt his mouth water with anticipation.

Yet the moment he stepped over the threshold, he sensed something was wrong.

His work area, though cluttered, was always one in which he kept the placement of things perfectly clear in his mind. The scene before him was definitely not as it should have been.

A sound of ransacking came from inside the hall — unhurried, unmasked, radiating an air of impatience and urgency.

The candles inside had been nearly burned down to a stub when he’d left, and were now fully extinguished. He could only light a fresh oil lamp and look ahead.

This time, he could clearly see the narrow soft sword belted at that person’s waist — strangely familiar.

But those eyes of his, long accustomed to studying medical texts in the dark, were now somewhat dim, and he couldn’t quite be sure of what he saw.

“Lieutenant Lu?”

He called out tentatively. The person’s movements stopped, yet they didn’t turn around.

Hao Bai swallowed, held up the oil lamp, and took a few more steps closer.

The yellow candlelight fell on the dense, fine-scaled armor of the Black Feather battalion, reflecting a sheen like the shell of an insect — as though slicked with oil, or with blood.

Hao Bai stopped abruptly. The flatbreads and eggs tumbled from his arms, clattering and crashing, as though they were his own shattering courage and nerve.

The man finally turned around. He looked unmistakably like Lu Songping — yet the expression on that face was strangely rigid, as though someone wearing a poorly made human-skin mask were speaking to him.

“Where — did you put the thing?”

Hao Bai blinked. His two legs, already somewhat unsteady from missing supper, quietly shuffled backward.

“What thing?”

The ‘Lu Songping’ said nothing, and with a sharp ‘shk’ drew the sword at his side.

Hao Bai immediately had a thunderclap of realization, and his voice — trembling — rose somewhat.

“Ah! I remember now — I remember! Right over there!”

He gesticulated vaguely toward the area between the old bookshelves. The other party didn’t move, but extended the sword tip forward, like a silver serpent flicking its tongue.

“You go get it.”

Hao Bai stiffened, his eyes fixed on that gleaming sword tip, and slowly shuffled in the direction of the bookshelves.

The old bookshelves, three or four tiers high, were thick with dust. Only the lowest tier had been cleared to store something — now covered with a piece of dark black cloth, the object beneath invisible.

“Hurry.”

The ‘Lu Songping’ began to urge him on. He swallowed, one hand reaching for the half-covering cloth, the other withdrawing something from his sleeve. Then he drew a deep breath, yanked the cloth aside in one swift motion, and at the same time flung everything from his sleeve out in a burst.

A plume of thin smoke wrapped in the black cloth came down over the ‘Lu Songping’s’ head. Hao Bai’s heart leaped with delight — but before he could celebrate for even two breaths, a flash of silver split downward from above, cleaving that black cloth in two.

He managed to pull back only half a step before he felt a cold sensation at his left shoulder — half his sleeve had already separated from his garment.

The white-robed physician was terrified to the point of going weak in the legs, crawling across the floor and mumbling.

“Help, murder—”

He’d barely whimpered out two syllables before he heard a heavy thud from behind him. He trembled and turned — to see the young monk standing at the doorway, chest heaving.

A large wooden fish rolled and rolled and finally came to a stop on the ground. And the ‘Lu Songping’ lay face-down on the floor, motionless — whether the stupefying smoke had taken effect or the wooden fish deserved the credit was unclear.

“Yi — Yikong?”

Still rattled, Hao Bai took a long moment before clambering up from the floor, his clothes rumpled and his dignity in shambles.

The clear-eyed young monk glanced at him, but was clearly more concerned with something else.

“Is the thing still there?”

Hao Bai nodded and moved quickly to the brazier used for decocting medicines, feeling around inside until he found the square, neat object, and immediately tucked it into his front robes.

Yikong waved his sleeve, trying to disperse the thin smoke still hanging in the air, though he still coughed twice when he opened his mouth.

“Has Benefactor Hao made great progress in these past days — developed some kind of decisive secret remedy?”

Hao Bai paused, then replied with unruffled composure:

“A family recipe — most effective.”

Superfluous to explain.

It was a numbing compound he had specially formulated for stealing chickens. For a single chicken, two gian was normally more than sufficient. He had brought eight liang, intending to lift quite a few — and had used it all just now. Knocking out ten people would have been no problem.

His gaze fell on the large wooden fish lying on the ground.

“Was what the abbot just deployed the temple’s treasured sacred weapon — specially crafted to subdue demons and evil spirits?”

Yikong also paused, then calmly replied:

“A relic of the temple — imbued with some blessings.”

Naturally.

That wooden fish had been packed with the incense donations he’d accumulated over six months — at least twenty or thirty taels per month, so well over a hundred taels in six months. At that weight, striking an ordinary person would likely result in death or serious injury.

Old grievances seemed to dissolve in an instant. The white-robed physician and the young monk fell into silence, then by unspoken agreement each took a step forward and carefully looked at the unconscious Lu Songping. A sudden wordless understanding passed between them.

“What do we do now?”