Months bled into one another with a strange, placid rhythm. Exams came and went. Su Yao aced them with minimal effort. Her ancient mind treated calculus and classical literature Xiao Ling once struggled with like child’s puzzles. The Spirit Magnet show continued its successful run, becoming just another comfortable, profitable part of her routine.
Then, graduation day arrived.
Parents, teachers, and students in identical caps and gowns packed the auditorium. Su Yao, the now undisputed top student, was slated to give the valedictorian speech. She stood at the podium, the bright lights hitting her face, looking out at a sea of eager, hopeful, and utterly transient faces.
She cleared her throat. The microphone amplified the sound into a soft thunderclap.
“Teachers, parents, fellow students,” she began. Her voice was calm and carrying. “They tell me this is an ending. A culmination. I disagree.”
A faint murmur rippled through the crowd. This was an unusual start.
“This ceremony is a checkpoint.” Her gaze swept over them. “You are being told you are now ‘adults,’ that your ‘real life’ begins. This is a convenient lie. Your real life began the day you were born. This is just the day you run out of mandated milestones for a while.”
She leaned slightly closer to the mic. “They will tell you to never stop learning. This is the only part of the standard advice that is correct. But they don’t tell you why.”
A faint, knowing smile touched her lips. “It is because the moment you stop learning, the moment you decide you know enough, you might as well be dead. Only the dead have all the answers. For the living, the test is never over. The final exam is always looming.”
Su Yao paused, letting the grim weight of her words settle. “It isn’t over until it’s over. And for you, it’s very, very far from over. There will be more tests. Some will be on paper. Most will not. Some will be pass or fail, and failing will have permanent consequences.”
In the front row, Mei smirked. Li Xiu looked thoughtful. Wong Lei nodded sagely, as if she understood the deep, esoteric meaning. Zhang Wei just looked confused.
“So, congratulations,” Su Yao concluded. Her tone shifted back to something resembling warmth. “You have successfully completed the tutorial level. The real game, with its permadeath feature, begins now. Good luck. You will need it.”
She stepped away from the podium to a wave of stunned, then increasingly enthusiastic, applause. It was the most memorable graduation speech Duwang High had ever seen, though no one was entirely sure if it was inspirational or terrifying.
As she walked back to her seat, the principal giving her a wide-eyed look, Su Yao allowed herself a private thought. Never stop learning. It was true. She’d been at it for millennia. And the most recent lesson? That mortal graduations were almost as tedious as celestial banquets, but with worse refreshments.
The ceremony ended. Caps were thrown into the air. Su Yao watched the colorful arc of falling mortarboards, a symbol of a future these children thought was just beginning.
For her, it was just another day. The learning, the tests, the constant, grinding effort of existence was never over. For an immortal nine-tailed fox stuffed into a graduation gown, that was either a curse or the only thing that made eternity bearable.
She suspected it was both.
The caps fell to the ground, and the formalities dissolved into the chaotic joy of a graduation party in the school courtyard. Amid the laughter and photos, Su Yao’s small circle of friends found a slightly quieter corner.
“So,” Mei said, bumping Su Yao’s shoulder with her own. “Seriously. No more school. What’s the grand plan, oh mighty valedictorian? World domination? Full-time superstar? You’ve got to have a plan.”
Li Xiu nodded. Her expression was earnest. “Yes! The network wants to sign you to a long-term contract. My family has connections in the business world. We could build something incredible!”
Even Wong Lei looked up from trying to read the aura of a graduation cupcake. “Your path must be glorious! A new saga begins!”
Zhang Wei lingered at the edge of the group, silent, waiting for her answer.
Su Yao took a small bite of the cupcake. It was dry and overly sweet. She swallowed before speaking. Her gaze was distant, as if looking past the celebrating crowds and into the annals of history.
“Plans,” she said. Her voice was flat and final. “Are a fantasy the weak tell themselves to feel in control.”
She looked at each of them in turn. “No plan survives contact with the enemy. And the enemy,” a faint, cold smile touched her lips, “is everything. Everything from a change in the weather, a sudden illness, to a bowl of badly made soup is an unknown variable you never anticipated. To make a rigid plan is to build a fortress of sand against the tide. It’s a waste of energy.”
Mei grinned. “So, winging it? Cool. I can get behind that.”
Li Xiu looked horrified. “But you can’t just have no direction! How will you achieve anything?”
“Direction isn’t the same as a plan,” Su Yao corrected. “I have a direction. Forward. The method of travel will be determined by the obstacles I meet. Adaptability is the only true strategy.”
Wong Lei’s eyes shone with fanatical understanding. “So deep! Like water, flowing around the rocks!”
“Exactly,” Su Yao said. “Like water. Or a landslide. The effect is similar, but the landslide is more efficient.”
Zhang Wei finally spoke. His voice was quiet. “So, you really don’t know what you’re doing tomorrow?”
Su Yao turned her unnervingly calm eyes on him. “I know I will wake up. What happens after that will be determined by what happens after that. That is all anyone can ever truly know.”
She finished the cupcake and dusted the crumbs from her hands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, this celebration is lacking in quality desserts. My immediate, unplanned objective is to find a better source of sugar.”
With that, she walked away, leaving her friends standing in her wake: Mei amused, Li Xiu anxious, Wong Lei inspired, and Zhang Wei utterly bewildered.
The search for a quality dessert was, as Su Yao had discovered, a surprisingly complex endeavor in the modern world. Most confections were cloying and artificial. But she had developed a specialized palate.
“Ordinary sugar is inadequate,” she mused to herself, walking away from the graduation party. “The aftertaste is chemical. What I require is a purer sweetness.”
Her thoughts turned to spiritual energy. The essence of pure, virtuous spirits had a clean, sweet flavor, like the finest ambrosia. But consuming them directly was inelegant, like picking unripe fruit. It lacked complexity.
A cruel smile touched her lips. “But evil spirits who feast on innocence and light digest the sweetness, concentrate it, and infuse it with a delightful bitterness to make a refined vintage.”
Su Yao wasn't responsible for the good spirits being sweet any more than a wine connoisseur was responsible for grapes being juicy. She simply appreciated the final product.
Her senses, sharper than any bloodhound's, caught a tantalizing scent on the spiritual wind. It was a confluence of despair, corruption, and, underneath it all, that concentrated, stolen sweetness. A veritable feast of malevolent energy. She followed it, the mundane city streets blurring around her.
The scent led her to a dilapidated, gated compound on the city’s outskirts. Weeping willows draped over a rusted fence. The sign, hanging crookedly, read: Azure Dragon Orphanage.
Wong Lei’s words echoed in her mind. The same one Jian Feng was from.
Before she could investigate further, a frantic voice called out. “Xiao Ling! Wait!”
Wong Lei herself came running up. Her face was pale. She stared at the orphanage. Her body trembled. “This place, why are you here?”
“The spiritual energy is particularly pungent,” Su Yao replied. Her eyes scanned the building. “A congregation point for malevolent entities. I am here for a snack.”
“But this is where Jian Feng and I…” Wong Lei hugged herself, a haunted look in her eyes. “It’s always been a bad place. But it’s never felt like this. It’s hungry.”
“That is because something has drawn them here,” Su Yao said. Her gaze narrowed. The evil spirits were swarming, converging on a single point within the orphanage like flies to rotting meat. “A beacon. Or a trap.”
She pushed the creaking gate open. The air grew thick and cold. Shadows seemed to move with a life of their own. Whispers slithered from broken windows.
“Why would they gather here?” Wong Lei whispered, clinging to the doorway, too terrified to enter.
Su Yao stepped into the overgrown courtyard. Her every sense was alert. The pieces were there. An orphanage used as a farm for spiritually sensitive children. A star exorcist and a talisman-obsessed girl produced from it. And now, a sudden, massive gathering of evil spirits.
“They are being farmed,” Su Yao said. Her voice was low and certain. “This is a larder. And something is using the residual pain of this place as bait.”
She looked back at Wong Lei. Her eyes glowed faintly in the deepening gloom.
“Who left the door to the pantry open?”
Su Yao’s question hung in the frigid air, sharper than the wind cutting through the abandoned courtyard. She ignored the gathering darkness of the orphanage. Her entire focus was on Wong Lei, who was still trembling in the gateway.
“A more pressing question,” Su Yao said. Her voice was devoid of any concern, pure cold analysis. “Why are you here, Wong Lei? I followed a spiritual stench. You followed me. This isn’t a coincidence.”
Wong Lei flinched. Her eyes were wide with a fear that wasn’t entirely about the haunted building. She hugged herself tighter. “I, I felt a pull. A bad feeling. After you left the party, I had this nightmare about this place. I knew I had to come.”
“A nightmare,” Su Yao repeated. The word was a flat, disbelieving statement.
She took a step closer. The oppressive aura of the orphanage seemed to part around her. “You expect me to believe that a ‘bad feeling’ led you across the city to the exact location I independently tracked through advanced spiritual perception?”
Wong Lei’s breath hitched. Her hand flew to the small pouch she always carried and used as a talisman bag. “It’s the truth! Maybe, maybe because I grew up here, I’m still connected to it! My sensitivity—”
“Your sensitivity is negligible,” Su Yao interrupted. Her gaze dropped to the talisman bag. “Unless activated by an external focus.” Her eyes narrowed. “Show me what is in the bag.”
“What? No, they’re just my protections—”
“Now.”
The command was absolute. Wong Lei, under the weight of that gaze, fumbled with the pouch’s drawstring with shaking hands. She upturned it.
Out fell the usual assortment of cheaply printed talismans, and one that was different. It was older, drawn on faded parchment with ink that seemed to absorb the faint light. A complex, spiraling symbol glowed with a sickly purple light.
Su Yao plucked it from the ground. The moment her fingers touched it, she felt a distinct, pulsing connection straight into the heart of the orphanage.
“A beacon,” Su Yao stated, holding up the glowing talisman. “A lure. You were summoned. This talisman has been resonating with whatever is inside, calling you home.”
She crushed the parchment in her fist. The purple light died with a faint hiss. “Who gave this to you? And when did they weave it into your collection?”
Wong Lei stared at the crumpled remains. Her face was a mask of utter betrayal and confusion. “I, I don’t know! I buy them online, from street vendors, anyone! It could have been anyone!”
Su Yao dropped the ashes. “Then it seems we are both answering a call. Yours was simply more obvious.” She turned back to the decaying building. “Come. Let us see who, or what, is so eager for a family reunion.”
She strode toward the main entrance. Wong Lei was left with the chilling realization that her entire life and obsession might have been a carefully laid trail of breadcrumbs, leading her right back to the place where it all began.
The moment the ancient beacon talisman crumbled to ash in Su Yao’s fist, the atmosphere around the Azure Dragon Orphanage shifted. The hungry whispers from within sharpened into a chorus of frustrated, ravenous hisses. The door to the larder had been slammed shut.
“Whatever wants you inside,” Su Yao said, her voice cutting through the psychic static, “will not have you. I decide what is consumed, and when.”
She unmade the orphanage’s heavy, rotten front door in a single, dismissive gesture. The wood splintered into a thousand pieces with a sound like a thunderclap. The fragments disintegrated into dust before they hit the ground.
Wong Lei screamed, covering her face. When she lowered her hands, she saw a gaping maw where the door had been, leading into absolute darkness.
“Stay here,” Su Yao commanded, and stepped through.
The interior was a nightmare made manifest. The walls bled a thick, black sludge. Dozens of twisted, shadowy forms swarmed through the hallways, recoiling from the new presence that had entered their den. They pressed themselves against the weeping walls, hissing in terror.
Su Yao ignored them. They were merely the flies. She was after the spider.
She followed the thinning trail of the beacon’s energy, a path of concentrated malice that led deeper into the heart of the building, toward the old director’s office. The door here was different. It was heavy, metal, and sealed with glowing, modern spiritual wards.
Her hand settled against the cold metal. The wards flared, attempting to repel her. They sizzled and died against her skin without so much as a flicker of effort on her part. She pushed. The metal door bent inward with a shriek of tortured steel and tore clean off its hinges, clattering into the room beyond.
Inside, the office was pristine. It was clean, modern, and lit by the soft glow of computer monitors showing security feeds of the city. Sitting behind the large oak desk was a man Wong Lei would have recognized instantly.
It was the former director of the orphanage. The man hadn't aged a day. He looked up from his screens. His expression was one of weary expectation.
“Ah,” he said. His voice was smooth and cultured. “The variable I could not account for. Xiao Ling. Or should I say, the Nine-Tailed Fox who has been meddling in my operations.”
Su Yao stepped into the room. The darkness of the hallway receded as if afraid to follow her. “Your operations. The orphanage. The Luo family. The spirit farming. It was all you.”
“Of course,” the director said, steepling his fingers. “The Luo are useful idiots. They believe they are preserving tradition. They are simply pruning the orchard for me, identifying the ripe fruit. Like young Wong Lei. Her sensitivity was always weak, but her connection to this place, her lingering trauma, made her a perfect key. A perfect anchor to amplify the signal.”
He smiled, a cold, predatory thing. “And you, Great Fox? What are you but a glutton who stumbled into the pantry? You have been eating my livestock.”
Su Yao’s smile was even colder. “Your livestock is unlicensed. I am confiscating the entire operation for consumption.”
The director sighed, as if dealing with a troublesome child. “You are powerful. But you are also a relic. The world has rules now. Systems. You can’t just—”
He never finished his sentence. Su Yao was across the room in a blur of motion. Her hand was around his throat, lifting him from his chair.
“Rules?” she whispered. Her eyes glowed with ancient fire. “I am the only rule that matters in this room.”
She squeezed. Instead of bone cracking, the director’s form began to flicker, to distort. His face melted, revealing a swirling vortex of dark energy held together by a brilliant, captured core of light from a pure, powerful spirit he had consumed and was using as a battery.
“A puppet,” Su Yao mused, unimpressed. “A clever one. But still a puppet.” She tightened her grip, beginning to crush the energy vortex. “Where is your true self?”
The puppet-director grinned with its dissolving face. “Closer than you think, Su Yao.”
The use of her true name, here and now, made her pause for a fraction of a second.
It was all the opening the puppet needed. It exploded in a blast of dark energy meant to annihilate everything in the room.
The blast washed over Su Yao. It vaporized the desk, the monitors, and the walls. When the light faded, she stood untouched. Her hand was still outstretched, a few motes of dark energy fizzling out around her fingers.
The room was gone. The orphanage around her groaned. Its foundational evil was now leaderless and beginning to unravel.
She walked back out through the devastation. Wong Lei was still standing where she'd been left, shaking.
“The director,” Wong Lei stammered. Her voice was a thin reed against the building’s death rattle. “I, I couldn't hear what you two were saying in there. It was all just screaming and then that explosion! What did he say? What did he want?”
Su Yao’s clothes were pristine. She looked at Wong Lei. Her expression was unreadable. “He was a puppet. His words were his master's. And his master is irrelevant to you now.”
She looked at the terrified girl. “Your purpose has been served. You are no longer useful to him.” It was the closest thing to reassurance she could offer.
The immediate threat was neutralized and the pantry closed. But the enemy had a name for her. Now, she needed one for him.
The groaning of the orphanage intensified, a death rattle of rotting wood and concentrated malice. Wong Lei stared past Su Yao into the gaping, dust-choked hole where the office had been. “A puppet? Then who, what was he working for?”
“An entity with enough knowledge to create a sophisticated spiritual puppet and enough power to fuel it,” Su Yao said.
Her gaze swept over the collapsing hallways. The evil spirits, their anchor gone, were now writhing in confusion, some dissipating, others turning on each other in a frenzy. “And one who has been monitoring the city. Those screens were live feeds.”
She turned and began walking back toward the entrance. The unstable structure trembled around her.
“The immediate concern is that this building is about to complete its collapse. The secondary concern is that while your usefulness may have expired, your value as a witness has not. You are now a liability to him. And therefore, a temporary asset to me.”
Wong Lei scrambled after her, tripping over debris. “What does that mean? What do we do?”
“We do nothing. I act. You survive.” Su Yao emerged into the courtyard just as the central roof of the orphanage caved in with a monumental crash, sending a plume of dust and dark energy billowing into the sky.