In the palace gardens, Zen had met the soul of an immortal beneath a red-leafed maple, its branches reaching to the sunset skies like a spiderweb. The immortal had been looking intently at a tangle of leaves, the veins on their surface golden and jagged.
I know what you are here for.Her voice had been the cool brush of river water. Shapes, swirls of qì that were souls, perhaps, eddied beyond them, skirting past the tree with faint whispers.You wish for history not to repeat. You wish for the tragedy of your ancestors not to befall you.
Zen had fallen to his knees and pressed his brow to the clouds that swirled on the ground. “Please,” he’d croaked. “I want to do the right thing for this kingdom. I only need the strength.”
I see it in your soul. You need not tell me.The immortal turned, her face at once youthful yet ancient and lined with lifetimes, eras, of knowledge.Pass through the Ghost Gates and you shall see a river of death composed solely of yin, balanced by flowers of life composed only of yáng.
Zen looked again at the pái’fang’s illustration of lotuses growing from the silent river. In Hin culture, they were symbols of life and clarity. “ ‘Flowers of life,’ ” he whispered to himself, “ ‘composed only of yáng.’ ”
At their hearts,the immortal had whispered,grow the Seeds of Clarity.
The immortal had heard his deepest and most desperate desire that night: to protect his mind from his Demon God’s influence. The imperial line had consulted the Four many dynasties past, and they had found a way: the Seeds of Clarity.
Zen hesitated, the immortal’s last words—a warning—following like an unwanted shadow.
Yet beware, for the Seeds of Clarity are at once a cure and a curse…a double-edged sword, just like the power you hold.
But he was drained hollow from dancing at the knife’s edge for the past weeks, always one step away from losing his mind. Zen did not think there could be anything that would stop him from taking a Seed of Clarity.
He walked through the gate.
Nothing. Mist curled around his ankles, but no mysterious realm opened, there was no Boundary Seal, and no lost ghouls attacked him. He merely stood on the other side, near the edge of the cliff above the dry riverbed.
Frowning, Zen circled the pái’fang, examining every inch. The stone slate under the tiled roof—where the place name would usually have been inscribed—was blank, but Zen could sense the faint traces of the Seal he’d picked up earlier. It was as though the pái’fang conspired to hide something.
It was broken, Zen realized with surprise when he focused his attention on it. He carefully parsed through the currents of qì woven together, so faint with time that it was like attempting to puzzle out a dusty fingerprint.
Zen knew better than to attempt to re-create a Seal he could not read. The Hin storybooks were full of practitioners who had wandered into traps by dabbling in unknown magic, out of greed or desperation. The stories had all seemed so illogical and far away when he’d read them growing up in the relative safety of the school.
None of those practitioners were losing their minds to aDemon God. None of them had nearly hurt one of their own friends as a result.
Zen gritted his teeth and pulled on his own qì, flaring it as much as he could to drown out the other. Blinking away the black edges in his eyes, he focused on each stroke in the unknown Seal carved onto the pái’fang. Several times, he thought he sensed the characters pulling together to summon something. And all the while, he thought of Lan and the possibility that he might never see her again.
His grief poured out in torrents, forming the final, circular stroke that completed the Seal.
Somewhere in the mountains, a ghostly bell sounded. The fog around him began to sift into the open arch of the pái’fang, faster and faster as the chimes multiplied. The air shook with their notes, which grew so loud that Zen reached up to cover his ears. The fog that had gathered in the arch now rendered its opening completely opaque, blotting out the cliffs and sky on the other side.
Within the archway, a shadow moved.
Zen’s right hand went to Nightfire’s hilt, his other held before him in preparation for defensive Seals. The screaming of the bells was now all-encompassing, rattling the mountains around him and drilling through his skull.
All of a sudden, it stopped.
A demon exploded from the arch.
Zen cursed as he leapt into the air, propelling himself backward to avoid the lash of the demon’s tail. Through the fog came more attacks: a flash of teeth above his head, a glint of scales beneath his feet—impossibly fast, as though more than one creature surrounded him.
Zen twisted into the air and flung a fú, which wrought daggers out of wind, cutting against teeth and scales. He landedon solid ground and stumbled back—only to feel a sharp pain in his shoulder as teeth punctured his tendons, lodging in bone.
His vision blanked. When he blinked again, he was kneeling on the mountain a dozen steps from the pái’fang, blood slicking his hands and the stone beneath.
XAN TEMUREZEN.The Black Tortoise’s voice sounded closer than it had ever been. More real, as though it were a part of him and ringing through the mountains at once. He imagined a dark glee in its tone.DO NOT RESIST ME, SHOULD YOU VALUE YOUR MORTAL LIFE.
Zen looked up, blinking pain from his eyes.
A serpent the size of a mountain towered over the pái’fang. Its neck split into nine, and instead of heads, each ended in a skull that appeared a cross between snake and man. Fangs gleamed with what might have been poison, and the slivers of rotten tongues flicked out as all nine skulls beheld him.
This was no demon. This fell into the classification of supernatural spirits known as guài. A monster.
