'Heaven and Earth tremble; the land lies foursquare. When I seek a person, Heaven shows the way.'
Standing before the amusement park, I held a luopan compass and recited the incantation.
Its needle began to turn. I had already burned a strand of Uncle Qiu's hair over the compass.
I had found it in his room. To find him, I needed something to guide me.
Otherwise, searching for one person in a park this large would be difficult indeed. He was probably in danger already.
After arriving, I attached protective talismans all over my body.
But the moment I entered through the side gate, the talismans burst into flame.
'What?' I started, thinking some unclean thing was there.
A careful look around revealed nothing. Everything was as quiet as before. No such thing had appeared.
Yet the talismans had burned of their own accord. The yin energy here must be overwhelming.
That made sense. Even without the amusement park, Heiyao Mountain would have been strange and sinister enough.
And dozens of people had died here besides.
If all those restless souls emerged at once, they would be hard to deal with.
Without my protective talismans, I gritted my teeth and went on. Uncle Qiu might be inside. I could not abandon him.
A carousel stood nearby. Beyond it was an enormous Ferris wheel.
By the faint moonlight, I could just make out my surroundings.
I set fire to a light talisman. It had no special purpose beyond lighting the way ahead.
Though it was only a sheet of paper, its flame was as bright as a torch. Such was the subtlety of Daoist talismans.
There were countless kinds, each with its own use.
Some drove off yao, creatures with supernatural power; others drove off ghosts. Many kinds protected life. There were also minor talismans of less obvious value.
The light talisman and the finding talisman were among these lesser charms.
Most practitioners studied the powerful talismans and spared little thought for such small things.
I was different. In idle moments, I liked to puzzle over odd little arts. Years of dealing with unclean things had also taught me how much they favored the dark.
Any modern electronic light could be made to fail by their interference.
After all, in scientific terms, they were themselves magnetic fields.
I looked up toward the Ferris wheel. It was a huge dark shape.
That must have been its frame.
The compass needle swung wildly toward one direction. I had no time to attend to anything else. I attached two swift-stride talismans to my feet.
My body grew light as a swallow, as though a divine force aided me. With the slightest touch of my toes to the ground, I skimmed forward like a dragonfly over water.
As I passed a carousel, two shadows rushed out.
I had been ready for something like this.
The instant their yin energy appeared, I was alert.
I sent the two copper coins in my hand flying in separate directions at the shadows.
Piercing screams rang through the darkness.
I turned to look. Two children, about six or seven years old, had each been struck between the brows by a coin that passed straight through.
White smoke rose from their wounds as they screamed.
I knew they were restless souls who had died in the park. Pitiful as they were, I could not afford to show mercy.
Not long after I began studying the Daoist arts, I had nearly been killed by a restless soul because I felt sorry for it. Fortunately, Grandfather had taken me there.
He had stood by to protect me while I practiced, hoping to strengthen both my courage and my skill.
Without him, my life would have ended at that age.
I went over and retrieved the coins. Each was a precious ritual implement. Losing even one would have pained me for a long time.
Not every object was fit to become a ritual implement. The peachwood sword on my back, for instance, had been made from lightning-struck wood.
We had found it in the hills behind our village. One night, thunder had suddenly cracked out of nowhere. The next day, Grandfather took me up the mountain and found a great tree charred by lightning.
He stroked the burnt trunk, lamenting its loss. It had been on the verge of attaining the Dao, he said. But it had perished under a Heavenly Tribulation, failing to pass that final threshold.
It must once have been a thick tree. The lightning had destroyed almost two-thirds of it, and what remained was still burning fiercely.
Grandfather brought the charred tree home and made a peachwood sword, several strings of wooden wrist beads, and a few wooden plaques.
Lightning-struck wood carried pure yang energy. This tree had also cultivated spiritual power. Together, those qualities gave the wood a potency that could not be taken lightly.
Before I knew it, I had reached the depths of the park. I discovered that its far end led further into Heiyao Mountain.
I did not know how far those mountains extended. According to the driver, the area had originally been a primeval forest. Even now, only the outermost part was gradually being developed; the middle and the far reaches remained wild forest.
Many backpackers came each year to explore it. Few returned, and most of those had lost their minds. Hikers had come to call it the Mountains of Death.
The amusement park's history lent it an even deeper mystery, making it all the more alluring.
It was like a venomous snake: beautiful markings to draw the eye, but deadly all the same.
I stopped as the compass needle directed me. I had found Uncle Qiu. He was suspended from the Ferris wheel.
Something bound his hands and feet. Straining my eyes, I saw that the bindings were strange tentacles.
They were pitch-black and covered with sharp spines, more like vines.
They had cut into his wrists and ankles, drawing blood. He was unconscious and looked as though he had been wounded in a fight.
Who could be so powerful that even Uncle Qiu had fallen to them?