The dead of midnight — the hour when Yin energy reigns supreme.

Neither Lang Jiuchuan nor Gong Qi had expected that the moment they stepped out from the Yin path, they would find a group of fellow cultivators caught in the grip of some illusory realm — wailing and howling, some even turning on one another.

“Gong Shiliu.”

A half-grown young man was throttling his own neck with both hands, the veins on the backs of his hands standing out starkly — it was clear he was using every ounce of his strength. When Gong Qi caught a clear look at the boy’s face, his expression shifted dramatically. He charged forward and wrenched the young man’s hands apart with force.

Lang Jiuchuan’s expression grew slightly grave. She glanced up at the canopy of black pressing overhead, at the dense, inky Yin mist, and felt a bone-piercing cold close in on her from all sides, as though countless ghost hands were reaching toward her. In her ears, ten thousand wronged souls were keening, wailing, rattling her composure and seeding her heart with a creeping, venomous resentment.

She seemed to see the original soul standing before her, reaching toward her in agony and desperation — that hopelessness, that terror, transmitted with stark reality, kindling a murderous fury within her.

Awooooo.

Jiangche leapt out from nowhere, letting out a ferocious, domineering tiger’s roar. A savage, killing energy surged from its spiritual consciousness, transforming into sharp invisible needles that pierced the eardrums of everyone present.

Thud.

A slender, frail-looking Daoist priest spat out a mouthful of dark blood. He covered his ears, stared blankly at the people around him — and then saw the fellow Daoist beside him about to gouge out his own eyes. The shock hit him like cold water, his mind snapping clear. He lunged forward in a panic. “Fellow Daoist He — absolutely not!”

Jiangche let out another tiger’s roar, shaking accumulated snow from the treetops in great cascading falls.

Lang Jiuchuan blinked, unhooked the Dizhong bell from her waist, and began to strike it. A deep, resonant tolling rang out — like a sound carried down from an ancient temple through a thousand years — and spread through the air, settling into the souls of all present. In an instant, the illusory realm before their eyes was as though split apart by the sound wave, and everything returned to what it truly was.

Everyone wore the same dazed expression.

Gong Qi let out a long breath. The look he turned on Lang Jiuchuan held both admiration and shame.

People said he was born with a natural affinity for cultivation — gifted, with exceptional comprehension and innate spiritual aptitude. He had once been proud of that. There had even been a time when he looked down on others with the silent conviction that everyone else was inferior and only he had any worth.

But through this whole ordeal with the jiangshi, he had come to realize how laughable his former self truly was. He had simply been flattered by those around him — and had never once faced anything of the wider world.

And these days of toil and effort had amounted to nothing but running in circles, without ever finding solid footing — compared to Lang Jiuchuan, all his previous smugness looked even more childish, even more absurd.

There is always a mountain higher than the one you stand on. There is always someone more capable than you.

He understood that now, truly, for the very first time.

Lang Jiuchuan said: “What are you staring at? Where is Gong Si?”

Gong Qi came back to himself and immediately went to ask Gong Shiliu. The younger boy, upon seeing him, reacted as though divine soldiers had descended from the heavens to rescue him. He flung his arms around Gong Qi and cried: “I knew perfectly well it was an illusion! In my mind I kept telling my hands to let go, but those treacherous hands had a mind of their own and just wanted to strangle me. Thank goodness you came, seventh brother — only you could pull me out of fire and water like this, uwuwu—”

Gong Shiliu’s mouth was clamped shut mid-sentence. He struggled frantically. Why was seventh brother telling him to be quiet?

Gong Qi patted his shoulder firmly several times and murmured: “Shut up. Now.”

Taking credit for someone else’s work — could he be any more humiliating?

He glanced over at Lang Jiuchuan and gave a sheepish smile. “Little brat from the clan. A chatterbox — hasn’t even finished growing up yet. Don’t pay him any mind.”

Gong Shiliu: “?”

What an outrage. He had most certainly finished growing up, thank you very much.

But in the midst of this distraction, he finally noticed Lang Jiuchuan. She looked so delicate it seemed a single finger could knock her over, and in this frigid, frozen weather she did not even have a cloak to her name.

Wait — who was this woman, exactly?

Gong Shiliu stared at Lang Jiuchuan with open curiosity. In the absence of any firelight, all he had to go by was the reflected glow off the snow, so he couldn’t make her out clearly at all. A sharp pain suddenly shot through the top of his head, and he hissed with a yelp: “Seventh brother!”

“Where is your fourth brother?”

Gong Shiliu snapped back to the matter at hand and said hastily: “What time is it now? Fourth brother took a few people and went ahead to scout the path.”

“Just past midnight.” Lang Jiuchuan answered in a single sentence.

Everyone paused.

“Past midnight?” Gong Shiliu’s eyes went wide. “Fourth brother and the others went deep ahead to scout before the second watch — and they still haven’t come back? Not a single message sent through?”

Lang Jiuchuan frowned. By that reckoning, two full hours had already passed. Scouting a path shouldn’t take this long — not a single sound transmission back. Something must have gone wrong.

Gong Qi arrived at the same conclusion. He and Lang Jiuchuan exchanged a glance. He took out a sound-transmission talisman, burned it, and waited — but no response came from Gong Si.

“Could they have gotten lost in the miasma-filled forest? I did say, there was no need to rush. Waiting until daybreak to enter would have been perfectly fine — but no, they had to go scouting.” Daoist Zhang, the elder of the Rong Family who went by that title, said with a furrowed brow.

“That’s youth for you — no patience.” Daoist Zhao, too, shook his head in disapproval.

Gong Shiliu heard this and shot to his feet, furious. “Both of you, shut your mouths. Did those pills eat through your faces? Nothing comes out of them but cold remarks. You think this forest has been peaceful? If not for my seventh brother just now, how many of us would have made it out of that illusion?”

Gong Qi was about to say it wasn’t his own doing, but Lang Jiuchuan gave him a small shake of her head, and he held his tongue.

“You — is this how the Gong Family behaves? No respect for one’s elders whatsoever?” Daoist Zhang’s face went red with outrage.

“I spit on that!” Gong Shiliu hawked and spat on the ground. “You’re the ones who threw away your own dignity first — and now you blame me? My fourth brother — my fourth senior brother — said we should not simply wait for the hexagram to unfold. We should locate the jiangshi early and destroy it. Even Senior Kong Xu Zi said the same. It was you, out of cowardice, who talked about darkness and rough paths, about miasma and Yin energy. And yet what happened? We sat here ‘safely’ and still got caught by the Yin energy and pulled into the illusion. And who among you actually broke free on your own? Now, with my senior brother’s life hanging in the balance, you offer not a single useful suggestion and still have the nerve to make snide remarks and call yourselves elders? Why don’t you rip the Buddha statue down from the temple and sit yourself up there while you’re at it? You’ve got the nerve.”

Lang Jiuchuan and Jiangche turned to stare at the young man blazing like a lit coal — filthy-mouthed, ready to fight, and absolutely devastating. Beautifully done. This one is completely after my own heart.

The other Gong clan members launched into the fray as well, all talking over one another in rapid-fire verbal attack. Gong Qi pieced the whole sequence of events together in his mind and fixed a cold, level gaze on Daoist Zhang and the others. “Now is not the time to argue over whether entering the forest was right or wrong. The only thing that matters is finding people. If Senior Kong Xu Zi and my senior brother have truly met with misfortune, then do any of us believe we can face that jiangshi alone? This Yin energy illusion — we don’t even understand yet how it came to be!”

Shame crossed many faces in the crowd.

Suddenly someone cried out, pointing at the ground where the fire had melted the snow. There, two skeletons lay stacked together — as though one person had died holding another, sitting upright in a kind of seated passing, and the figure beneath appeared to be the remains of a small child.

Everyone went pale. The crowd moved forward. When they saw clearly what those remains looked like, some recoiled in horror, others retched.

Nearby, a few more dry, desiccated corpses lay scattered about — not a single one had died a natural death; all had been drained of their blood essence.

Had they run into the jiangshi?

A gust of Yin wind swept through from some unknown direction, carrying with it a stench that defied description. Someone shuddered and, overcome by creeping dread, took an involuntary step back.

Lang Jiuchuan had already slipped into the shadows again. She listened as Gong Si’s voice relayed the full account of what had happened to them. As he spoke, everything became clear.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them, formed a hand seal, and reopened her spiritual sight. Clusters of Yin energy could be seen converging toward this location. She spoke quietly: “The Yin energy is gathering. It is not safe to linger here. All Gong clan disciples, heed my word — follow me.”