Liming looked directly at him. “It was a Hybrid who saved me that night.”
“A Hybrid?” Yiran shook his head in disbelief. “Even if that’s true, you can’t throw away the lives of the rest of humanity because of one Hybrid. Maybe she was after your spiritual energy and—”
Liming’s glare was so cutting, Yiran shut his mouth. But there was something else in his father’s anger.
Sadness.
“The Hybrid was a child,” Liming said, in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “A young girl, hardly older than Noah.”
An image of Noah’s crumpled form flashed in Yiran’s mind, and he trembled, trying to erase the memory.
“She was astonishing, in control of her weapons and completely human in the way she looked,” Liming said with hushed awe. “Perfect, like she was touched by a higher power. The girl knew it was my job as an Exorcist to kill her, but she still wanted to help, and she said she would stay with me until some of my strength returned in case more Revenants came. She also told me something that shocked me—she couldcontrolher hunger for yangqi.”
Like Yuki, Yiran thought. Was that why Liming took him in?
“I was her enemy,” Liming continued, “but she extended a hand. It made me think that maybe itwaspossible to have an alliance, that there were other ways that people with magic—different kinds of magic—could live together without strife. She gave me hope that the world I envisioned stood a chance. But my comrades found us.” Bitterness distorted his features as his hands curled into fists. “I assured them the Hybrid girl meant no harm and that she’d saved me. That she could help us vanquish the Revenants despite possessing yinqi.”
Liming stopped, as if the memory caused him pain.
“What happened next?” Yiran couldn’t help but ask, engrossed in Song Liming’s narration. He hated to admit it, but there was a charisma about the man. When he spoke, you listened. Yiran felt this way with his grandfather, and to a certain extent, with Ash. He was beginning to understand why a bunch of ragtag half humans might follow someone who, as far as Yiran could tell, had remained completely human.
“They killed her.”
Yiran could feel the pain in Song Liming’s voice, see it in his eyes.
“She tried to tell them—Itried to tell them, but they attacked anyway. My former mentees, people I thought I knew well, people I thought I’d trained well. One of them was a fellow Captain I respected. They did not listen. They killed her out of fear. Murdered her even though she was a child, even though she made no move to defend herself—even though there was something so clearlyhumanabout her.”
Liming turned away from Yiran. “I’m not proud of what I did next, but I did it because I had to.”
He didn’t have to spell it out.He killed his team, Yiran realized in horror. He set the fire himself.
“And then you decided to fake your death instead of telling the truth?” Yiran demanded, his voice shaking. “Why didn’t you come clean with the Council? Why not tell them about what happened with the Hybrid girl?”
“Do you think they would have believed me?” Liming scoffed. “Thatthey would believe a Hybrid like that existed? One who would fight alongside us? Besides, I had no evidence; her body turned to ash. And evenifthe Guild believed me, would they have stopped hunting the Hybrids? I had friends I cared about who suffered greatly because of the Guild, people the Council wanted to control because they feared what they were capable of. I couldn’t trust the Council.”
Friends who had suffered because of the Guild?Was he talking about Matthias Lin? Was the Guild Council the reason why Matthias never graduated from the Academy? And why he seemed like a shell of a man now?
“I knew how the Guild operated—I was part of it.” Liming studied a stunned Yiran intently. “Youknow your grandfather, so you tell me what he would’ve done if I’d gone to him with the so-called truth.”
Yiran didn’t respond. His brain was still piecing together information he’d just heard and what Matthias had shared with him at the cemetery. There were gaps in what he knew, but one thing was indisputable: Song Wei and the Guild Council had a pattern of wanting to control the narrative and discarding those who doubted their story. Song Liming was no hero, but neither was the Council.
“That night at the seaport changed the trajectory of my life’s purpose,” Liming said. “I knew there had to be more Hybrids like that girl. More importantly, I knew the Guild had to be torn down. There is no reasoning with indoctrination. Closed minds are formed, not born. If I cannot get rid of the root of humanity’s problem, if the Blight itself cannot be destroyed, then there are two courses of action. One, we find a way to immunize every human against a Revenant attack—”
“But how?” Yiran cut in.
“By mixing yang and yin. If a person possesses yinqi, it theoretically decreases the chances of them being a Revenant’s prey. Two, by making sure even normies can defend themselves against the Revenants. There aren’t enough people who are born capable, with naturally strong spirit cores and the ability to wield magic.”
“What are you saying?” Yiran asked, even more disturbed by what he was hearing.
“Don’t you see?” There was a fervor in Liming’s eyes. “The Hybrid girl who saved me opened my eyes to possibilities.Shewas someone who possessed those two qualities.”
It took several moments for his words to sink in.
They’ve been experimenting with a new spell that’ssimilar tothe one the girl cast on you....The spell worked, and the kid transformed....This new talisman can be used again and again....
There aren’t enough people who are born capable, with naturally strong spirit cores and the ability to wield magic.
His father wanted to transform normies intoHybridsin some warped attempt to save them.
