Zen lifted a hand. “Stand back.” He traced a Seal in the air, fingers moving neatly and quickly; Lan caught the characters for wood, split down the center with metal. The energies around them shifted. There was the sound of something snapping inside the walls, and then, as though pulled back by ghostly attendants, the great red doors swung open.
And the music stopped.
In death, both body and soul rejoin the natural course of qì in this world and the next. It is a matter of unspeakable sorrow for a soul to remain trapped in this world as an echo, imprisoned by an unfinished will yet powerless to complete it.
—Lím Sù’jí, Imperial Spirit Summoner,Classic of Death
The courtyard was a cesspool of spiritual energies. Zen sensed them, lingering in the shadows and festering in hidden corners, as soon as he stepped over the doorsill. This was the reason yin had garnered fear amongst the common folk—and for very valid reasons. The makeup of demonic and other spiritual energies was strictly and only yin, resulting in yin energy’s synonymity with the dark and occult side of magic over time.
There came the faintest stir of qì from somewhere before them—subtle as the brush of a finger against a string, but Zen felt it. He narrowed his eyes, willing his gaze to penetrate the lines of weeping willows bending and moaning in the evening draft.
The courtyard was empty, but there was something here.
“In there,” Lan said. She pointed at the main house across the yard.
Overhead, the moon and stars were covered by clouds. Hesensed Lan suppressing a shiver behind him. Zen had the urge to reach for her.
Instead, he raised his hand and said, very quietly, “Stay behind me.”
He began to walk in the direction of the main house.
A cold wind sent autumn leaves scuttling across the great yard, their dried bones rattling as they scraped against tile. Strangely enough, the place appeared pristine, as though time and conquest had left it unsullied. Zen shifted his head. He had the nagging feeling that there was something he was missing, just out of sight. Something was out of place, something odd…
He found it not seconds later: a single bamboo chair set out before the doors to the main house, beneath a line of dove trees. It was empty, yet the shadows pooling there seemed blacker than the rest, as though something unseen sat in it. Watching them.
It was so dark that he almost—almost—missed the fú.
Zen flung out an arm. “Stop,” he said, but too late. Lan had been walking close to him; she stumbled, catching herself—but not before one of her toes stubbed over the faded line of blood in which the Seal had been written.
Zen grasped her shoulder and flung her back, but the damage was done. Where her foot had come into contact with the fú, a crimson glow began to wind over the strokes on the ground, catching like fire.
The air in the courtyard instantly shifted. Frost cracked over windowsills, and ice crept up their boots. A sudden gale rose, howling and plunging toward them like a pack of invisible wolves. Zen heard Lan’s scream; he reached for her and drew her behind him. His other hand plunged into his black silk pouch and whipped out his own fú. The written Seal activated with a spark of his qì, paper slip shredding in a flare ofdark flames. They sliced through the incoming wind, which parted with an inhuman scream before dying down.
When the flames cleared, the chair across the courtyard was no longer empty.
A silhouette was slowly forming over it: shadows gathering from the crannies and corners of the yard and seeping upward to delineate a head, a torso, arms, and legs. Within moments, a humanlike shape rose from the chair, turning to face them. It was skeletal in appearance, desiccated bluish skin draping over bones. Eye sockets sagged into darkness, in which yellowed eyeballs stared ahead without movement or expression. Strands of loose black hair hung over a gaunt face, and the long sleeves and skirts of its hàn’fú billowed about it.
This time, there was no uncertainty.
Mó. Demon. The most terrifying and rare classification of supernatural creatures. Practitioners in the days of old had hunted them down, yet Zen’s training had taken place post-Conquest, when priorities for any practitioners surviving had rapidly shifted. Even more…Zen eyed the fú that had trapped them, the school of practitioning they stood in, and felt his gut tighten.
Mó born of common folk were already exceptionally difficult to deal with, yet this…this might be a mó born of a practitioner’s soul. One that had held greater command over qì, that had spent a lifetime cultivating its power.
This was the second time in his life he faced a mó—and the first time he would have to fight one.
Zen drew his sword and held his right hand before him, qì pooling at the tips of his fingers. “Stay back,” he commanded Lan over his shoulder.
The mó charged, and Zen sprang to meet it.
To defeat a mó, one first had to understand the principles behind its makeup: an excess of yin energies, comprisingwrath, ruin, and a will that was unfinished in life. Coupled with a powerful being already versed in wielding qì—most often a practitioner—and those energies would rot the core of the being into something dangerous, something demonic.
To destroy a mó was to undo it by meeting its yin energies with yáng energies: an injection of qì consisting solely of yáng.
Zen drew a Dispelment Seal as he ran, pulling on the qì around him. The yáng energies of the elements woven in harmony—and sharpened to blades in the center to strike and pierce. He had studied this in the art of Seals, as well as the principles of the supernatural creatures; he knew, in theory, the step-by-step to dispelling a mó.
The Seal he’d created blazed at the tips of his fingers; this time, instead of releasing it, Zen pressed it onto his sword. Unlike the yao he’d dispatched in the forest, mó were sentient, intelligent beings. They knew how to fight back.
Without proper placement, his Seal would be deflected.
