Chapter 11
I opened my eyes and recognized the mist-blanketed bridge from my dream.
The path to the underworld. There was the undulating brick walkway tapering into the horizon and the sheer, unending drop on either side.
Humanoid shadows shuffled in the distance, silent and insubstantial.
The clouded sky was muted, more gray than blue.
This time, I stood at one end of the bridge, a silvery forest hemming me in from behind. And there, looking out over the parapet, was Baba, still marked by the inky veins crawling up his neck.
He smiled when our eyes met.
“Am I dead?” I asked immediately. “Are you dead?”
He chuckled. “Neither of us are yet. Your body is unconscious, and your soul has wandered here, like before.”
“I was in Jing Mansion,” I murmured, fingers brushing my brow. “I was being chased, and then I fell…”
“Chased?” Concern tugged down the corners of his mouth. “What trouble have you gotten into, daughter?”
I dropped my eyes, ashamed, remembering the cruel illusion I’d endured and the vengeful jiangshi hunting me. This all happened because I’d insisted on entering Yuyan’s lair. What nightmare was Ren experiencing? How would my failure affect my father?
“I’m sorry, Baba,” I murmured. “I fear I’ve overestimated myself, and I seem unable to make things right.”
“Oh, Siying.” He stepped toward me and placed a gentle hand on my head, a familiar gesture of comfort. “As humans, we’re all prone to mistakes. What matters is how you face them. You’ve made a choice; now you must be the brave girl I know you to be.”
“What if I’m not brave?” I asked, indirectly confessing one of my greatest fears—the fear that no matter how hard I fought, it would never be enough.
“What if I fail again? This problem”—I couldn’t name Yuyan, or else my father would worry—“is greater than I anticipated. What happens if I can’t overcome it? ”
Baba paused, considering my question seriously.
At last, he said, “We’re all born with our own paths, Siying.
Each path will come with its challenges and triumphs, and you may even become lost at times.
But remember this: Every path ends the same way.
That is a fact of mortality.” His hand cradled the side of my face, his palm rough and dry.
“The only question that matters is, how will you walk yours?”
“I … I want to walk it bravely,” I said. “But I’m still afraid.”
He patted my shoulder. “We all are. The good news is you don’t have to walk your path alone. You have your family, friends, community. You even have your mother by your side, guiding you.”
I glanced around, searching for my mother. Not the monstrous illusion that had attacked me, but the mother who’d stroked my hair and sung childish lullabies by candlelight. “Mama is here?”
“No,” my father said with a melancholic smile. He tapped my chest. “She is here, and she loves you more than you know. When you’re afraid, just remember that her strength lives on in you, a strength you can use to help yourself and others.”
I remembered the illusion’s anger, her accusations that I’d killed her. I knew I was innocent, and yet part of me still felt guilt for surviving when Mama hadn’t.
“What strength, Baba?” I clenched the fabric of my collar. Perhaps the illusion had been right to curse me. For all my stubbornness and self-assurance, I’d done little to make a difference in the lives of the people I loved most. “How do you see Mama’s strength in me?”
My father gently took my hands and held them palms up. “These hands can do more than carry a staff or write talismans in blood. They can offer support and tend wounds, perhaps even save a life. You need only call upon the strength inside you to do so.”
“Baba, I asked for an answer, not a proverb—”
My surroundings wavered, scattering my thoughts. My body was regaining consciousness.
“You must leave,” Baba said. “Whatever danger you’re in, you must wake and find safety.”
“What about you? Why are you still here, Baba?”
He shook his head. “There’s no time, Siying. Wake up. Be brave.”
“It isn’t that simple. Ren—”
Before I finished speaking, a black curtain overshadowed Baba and the bridge, swallowing my vision.
I woke to utter darkness. I lay on my back, a fractured floorboard digging into my left shoulder blade. The painful pressure was only a single part of the ache that seemed to encase my entire body. I’d become a human bruise, my pulse thumping from every inch of my being.
With a groan, I rolled over and pushed myself up, feeling the pricks of splintered wood and grit against my palms, still tender from my encounter with Chunhua.
I coughed from the dust that coated me inside and out.
Once I could breathe steadily, I examined my surroundings more closely. Or rather, attempted to.
I’d fallen through the storage room, down into a lower, windowless level. When my eyes adjusted, I could make out the hole overhead, the result of my weight on rotting floorboards.
I shoved myself to my feet. Miraculously, nothing seemed broken. Shuffling with my arms outstretched, I brushed against shelves bearing round, smooth jars. The Jings’ wine supply, I guessed. And if this was another storage room, that meant there had to be stairs leading outside.
I moved away from the shelves in search of the exit. My foot knocked into something solid, and soft ringing echoed through the pit. My staff. Relieved, I bent down to find it. Its familiar shape in my hand reminded me of Baba’s demand to find safety.
But I couldn’t escape Jing Mansion without Ren. I’d brought him here, and I refused to leave him behind. So, as I stumbled around the room, leaning on my staff for support, I mentally plotted out a plan for overcoming Yuyan and her army of jiangshi.
A simple offense wouldn’t suffice. I needed to match Yuyan’s craftiness.
Ren had been carrying the candles we’d purchased in Guangli, so the paper lanterns in my bag were useless. But I had matches, purification talismans, and sticky rice grains. All useful tools against an evil spirit. I just needed to use them wisely.
My shin bumped against a stone step. I gripped my staff and began to climb back to the ground level of Jing Mansion.
The dim moonlight revealed a deserted courtyard, with spoiled plums crushed and bleeding across the pavement.
But danger remained nearby. Yuyan’s laugh echoed from somewhere in the western wing, prompting me to hurry.
I slunk past the inner courtyard to the main house.
Then I pulled out my pouch of glutinous rice and got to work.
A few minutes later, I stood in the reception hall, back pressed up against an empty altar.
My right hand gripped my staff while my left held a small, flickering candle I’d found in the cupboards.
Through the paper panels of the door across the room, humanoid shadows emerged and stretched into view.
Deathly moans hummed through the wood, making me shudder.
Be brave.
The doors flung open.
Yuyan floated gracefully inside, flanked by her possessed former household. The slice across her throat looked as horrifying as ever, gaping and raw. She smirked as her eyes landed on my candle.
“You’ll need more light than that to ward me off,” she said with an amused laugh.
I lifted my chin. “What have you done to Ren?”
“You should worry more about yourself, little priestess. The Sian king can afford to lose one of his sons. In fact, we’d all be better off.” Yuyan waved her finger. “Grab her.”
The jiangshi poured past their mistress, charging forward with startling speed.
In the candlelight, I could see them more clearly than before.
It seemed Yuyan’s vanity extended only to her own corpse.
The bodies of the Jing household were in less attractive conditions.
Drying brown flesh clung to skeletons for some, while others suffered from bloated, waxen faces wriggling with maggots.
The foul odor of rot and human waste flooded the room, choking my throat.
I couldn’t let them touch me. As they drew closer, I flung a wave of purification talismans at their foreheads, rang my bells, and recited the incantation in a single breath. The jiangshi in front collapsed to the floor, small orbs of pure white qi rising from their bodies.
Yuyan shrieked, watching a group of jiangshi stumble over their fallen comrades. Taking advantage, I purified them too. It seemed a waste to watch qi fade back into the earth, but Ren wasn’t around to claim it.
Ren. Heavens, I prayed he was still alive.
I shifted to avoid a jiangshi that had come from my left.
At the same time, my heel hooked on a lifeless arm, and I tumbled backward, landing hard on my tailbone.
I was about to pick myself up when a hand grabbed my wrist. I turned and stared into the filmy, sunken eyes of a maidservant, my skin going numb beneath the jiangshi’s hold.
The flesh of her rotten fingers ripped open.
Writhing white maggots burst from the gash, a few falling onto my arm.
The maidservant’s face cracked as her lips widened, her smirk all too similar to Yuyan’s.
I whacked her hand with my peach staff, freeing myself, and spun to face the horde of jiangshi closing in. There were too many. I couldn’t purify them all.
I ran.
Swinging my staff in front of me, I fought my way through the jiangshi and raced for the open door. I was nearly there when I felt something clutch my braid and yank me back. My staff clattered to the floor.
Icy fingers crept across my bare throat, the scent of blood and incense filling my nostrils once more, making me dizzy. Or perhaps it was the hand around my neck, absorbing my life force, that was weakening my senses.
I fumbled for my bag as Yuyan’s chilling whisper brushed against my ear. “You lose.”
The numbness in my throat intensified, and I envisioned my skin turning to ice. It was a miracle I hadn’t fainted already, considering how powerful Yuyan was.
But I wouldn’t die here.
I gasped, “Where. Is. Ren?”
Yuyan clucked her tongue. “You really must stop asking—”
I slapped a purification talisman on her forehead, too fast for her to prevent it. Then I stretched out my foot and kicked my staff, the incantation already flowing from my lips, the words meeting the chime of my bells.
Yuyan’s hand fell from my throat, her scream dying as she crumpled to the ground.
The other jiangshi, momentarily frozen, met my gaze and rushed forward once more.
I didn’t hesitate. In one swift movement, I reached into my bag and tossed a handful of sticky rice grains at the onslaught.
The jiangshi reared back from the purifying rice, giving me time to snatch my staff off the floor and leap over the threshold.
Once outside, I removed a ceramic bottle from my bag—the perfume I’d purchased for Lilan in Xiuxi. With a cry, I smashed the bottle on the floor of the reception hall, the liquid splattering across the room. Then I struck a match and pitched it inside.
The room erupted into flames.
As the fire spread, and the jiangshi thrashed within the heat, I scattered the rest of my rice across the threshold and slammed the doors shut. The smell of smoke and flowers clung to me as I ran down the steps into the courtyard, heart slamming in my chest.
I’d done it. I’d defeated Yuyan.
Now all that was left was to find Ren, so we could leave this cursed place. As for the qi we’d come for, we’d just have to obtain it somewhere else. I’d figure out an alternative solution. I always did.
The mansion was quiet, save for the creak of the main house’s walls. I anticipated a lengthy search through the estate to locate Ren. But I’d hardly taken ten steps across the courtyard when I glimpsed a dark figure running toward me.
“Ren?” My eyes narrowed. “Is that you?”
“Siying!”
At the sound of his voice, all the tension seeped out of my body. I flew forward to meet him, surprising us both by flinging my arms around his neck and squeezing as if he might disappear again.
“What happened to you?” I asked, leaning back to look at him. He appeared unhurt, his face showing no new injuries. “I was worried sick!”
He smirked. “You were worried about me?”
“Well … yes.” I bit my lip. “Of course I was.”
He chuckled. “Then you shouldn’t have lost me.”
Frost crept over my heart. I realized then that he wasn’t wearing his Fu talisman, that it wasn’t even pinned back on his head. He’d also called me by my first name, something he’d never done before except, perhaps, in Yuyan’s illusion.
And most alarming—his smile didn’t suit him. It was too unnatural. Too cruel.
Too awfully familiar.
I shoved myself out of his arms, springing backward to put distance between us. I couldn’t hide the dismay in my voice as I recognized the person before me.
“Yuyan.”