Zhang Wei guided a wobbling Su Yao down the sterile hallway. Her arm was slung over his shoulder for support. Her steps were erratic, and she hummed a tuneless melody that seemed to annoy the very air around them.
“Almost there,” Zhang Wei said. His voice was tight with strain. He stopped before a nondescript door labeled ‘Guest Quarters B-7’ and tapped a code into the keypad. The door slid open with a soft hiss.
He helped her across the threshold into a simple, functional room containing a single bed, a metal desk, and a chair bolted to the floor. The door slid shut behind them with a definitive click.
Su Yao immediately broke away from him, stumbling toward the bed. She collapsed onto it with a groan, then rolled onto her back, looking at the ceiling.
“So, this is where you bring all your dates?” she mumbled. Her words were slurred.
Zhang Wei’s jaw tightened. “This is a secure holding room for guests.”
Su Yao propped herself up on her elbows. A slow, mischievous grin spread across her face. Her eyes, though glazed with alcohol, held a sharp glint. “Oh, I get it. This is one of those rooms, isn't it? The kind from the mortal dramas? Where the door won't open until the two people inside have consummated their relationship?”
She waggled her eyebrows. “Is that your government’s idea of team bonding?”
Zhang Wei’s face flushed a deep red. “That’s not! The door is just locked for security! It’s standard protocol!”
He strode to the door and punched his code into the keypad again. Nothing happened. He tried again, more forcefully. The keypad beeped an error message.
Su Yao let out a loud, drunken laugh. “See? I knew it! The universe agrees with me!” She flopped back onto the bed, kicking her feet in the air like a schoolgirl. “So, come on then, Agent Zhang. Don't be shy. Fulfill the prophecy.”
Zhang Wei spun around. His composure cracked. “Xiao Ling, stop this! The door is malfunctioning. I'll call for a tech.”
“Ooh, calling for help? How scandalous!” she giggled. “But what if they hear, noises?” She made a series of exaggerated, suggestive moans that echoed in the small room.
“Stop that!” Zhang Wei hissed. His ears burned. He tapped the comm unit on his wrist. “Control, this is Agent Zhang. I have a door malfunction in Guest Quarters B-7. Request immediate assistance.”
A static-filled voice replied, “Acknowledged, Agent Zhang. We show a system-wide lockdown in that sector. ETA for repair is, one hour.”
Su Yao’s giggles intensified. “One whole hour? Plenty of time!” She patted the space on the bed next to her. “Don't worry, I promise I'll be gentle. Well, mostly gentle.”
Zhang Wei leaned his forehead against the cool metal of the door, closing his eyes. “It’s going to be a long hour,” he muttered to himself.
Su Yao sighed dramatically. “Fine, be boring. But just so you know, this is the most action this room has probably ever seen.” She rolled over, facing the wall. Her voice grew quieter. “Wake me up when you're ready to be interesting.”
Within moments, her breathing evened out into the deep, rhythmic pattern of sleep. Zhang Wei slowly turned around, watching her for a long moment. The ancient, terrifying demon fox was now curled up like a child, softly snoring. He sighed again, this time with a mixture of exhaustion and something else he couldn't quite name.
Zhang Wei slid down the door to sit on the floor, preparing for a very long, very awkward wait.
The silence in the room lasted for all of three minutes before a muffled voice came from the bed.
“Hey, Zhang Wei.”
He stayed silent, hoping she would fall back asleep.
“Hic. I asked you a question.” She rolled over to face him. Her head was propped on her hand. Her eyes were heavy-lidded but intensely curious. “Are you a virgin?”
Zhang Wei, who had been mentally calculating the remaining minutes of the lockdown, choked on nothing. He stared at her. His composure shattered completely. “What? That is entirely inappropriate and none of your business!”
Su Yao’s grin was lazy and wicked. “So that’s a yes.” She nodded sagely. “It makes sense. All that repressed government agent energy. All that focus on ‘protocol’ and ‘duty’.” She flopped onto her back again, addressing the ceiling. “I should have known. You fight like someone who has never learned to properly release his tension.”
“That has nothing to do with anything!” he sputtered. His face was burning.
“It has everything to do with everything!” she countered. Her voice gained a drunken lecturer’s tone. “Cultivation, real cultivation, is about understanding all energies. The flow of battle, the flow of spirit, the flow of passion. You're blocked. No wonder you needed a seal from me to push you.”
“I am not having this conversation with you,” Zhang Wei stated firmly, turning his back to her and facing the door.
“Don't be embarrassed!” she crooned. “It’s adorable. The great government assassin, pure as the driven snow. It explains why you're so bad at flirting. All that ‘I can fix you’ nonsense.”
She sighed, a dramatic, world-weary sound. “If you're going to be stuck with me for an hour in a locked room, the least you could do is be entertaining. But no. You're just going to sit there and be a virgin.”
Zhang Wei squeezed his eyes shut, praying for the ground to swallow him whole.
“Fine,” Su Yao mumbled. Her voice was already drifting off again. “Your loss. I could have given you pointers. I've forgotten more about seduction than your entire species has ever learned, zzz.”
Her snoring resumed. Zhang Wei remained frozen against the door, utterly defeated.
The rhythmic snoring cut off abruptly. Su Yao’s head popped up from the pillow. She squinted at Zhang Wei’s back.
“Hey. Hic. Serious question this time.”
Zhang Wei tensed, bracing for impact.
“Breast or ass?” she slurred. Her tone was one of academic inquiry.
He let out a long, suffering sigh. “I am not answering that.”
“Come on! It’s a fundamental preference! A philosophical divide! Breast or ass? You have to pick one.”
“Personality,” he gritted out. The word was tight and defensive. “I would value someone’s character above physical attributes.”
Su Yao stared at him for a long, silent moment. A look of genuine, comical outrage spread across her face.
“That’s not fair!” she whined, slumping back onto the bed. “I can’t fix a personality! I can’t practice having a better one in front of a mirror! That’s an impossible standard!” She flailed an arm dramatically. “At least with breasts or a posterior, there are established techniques! Spiritual surgeries! But personality? Ugh. How are you supposed to optimize for that?”
Then, she went very still. Her head tilted. Her blurry gaze focused on some middle distance as a drunken realization dawned.
“Oh,” she breathed. The word was soft, filled with a strange, newfound clarity. “I see.”
She pushed herself up again, looking at his back with something akin to reverence. “Is this why you’re strong? Compared to all the other pathetic males I’ve eviscerated over the millennia?”
Zhang Wei risked a glance over his shoulder. Her expression was deadly serious.
“Is it because no woman has ever been able to domesticate you?” she whispered, as if unveiling a cosmic secret. “All that power, all that focus, it’s never been diluted. Never been compromised by distraction.”
She nodded slowly. “That’s it. That’s the secret. Your ultimate technique is celibacy.”
Before Zhang Wei could form a coherent response, a sharp clunk echoed from the door. The locking mechanism disengaged with a hydraulic hiss.
The door slid open, revealing a technician with a toolbox and a bored expression. “All clear, Agent Zhang. System glitch.”
Zhang Wei practically launched himself out of the room without looking back.
From the bed, Su Yao called out after him, her voice echoing down the hall, “Don’t worry! Your sacred vow of purity is safe with me!”
She then collapsed back onto the pillows. A triumphant, sleepy smile was on her face. She had finally figured him out.
The second day Su Yao reported for ‘work’ began with the discovery of a catastrophe.
Agent Lin, tasked with inventorying the spiritual artifacts vault, stood frozen in the doorway. His face was a mask of horror. The reinforced door was open.
Inside, the scene was one of surreal devastation. Not a single artifact, weapon, or relic was missing. But the ‘Ceremonial Vintages’ section was a ghost town. Empty jars and bottles lay scattered on the floor.
In the center of the vault, sitting on an upturned crate, was Su Yao.
She wore a simple, dark robe that seemed to drink the light. Her hair was loosely pinned up. In one hand, she held a delicate ceramic cup. In the other, a jar of “Void-Refined Starfall Nectar,” from which she was pouring a generous measure.
Her posture was one of relaxed, sovereign ownership. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes held a warm, hazy glow. She was, quite clearly, and intended to remain, magnificently, gloriously drunk.
“Ah, you're late,” she slurred, spotting Agent Lin. She gestured with the cup, sloshing nectar that sizzled on the floor. “The welcoming committee was lacking, so I started the festivities without you. Do try the Starfall Nectar. The aftertaste is like swallowing a supernova. Quite invigorating.”
“Th, that’s a Class-A Controlled Spiritual Substance!” Lin stammered.
“Is it?” Su Yao took a slow sip. Her eyes fluttered shut in pleasure. “It’s now a Class-A Party Favor.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Don't just stand there. You have two hands. Make yourself useful and open that cask of ‘Molten Phoenix Tears’. I'm feeling nostalgic.”
By the time Zhang Wei and Director Hao were alerted and stormed into the vault, Su Yao had migrated to the main operations center.
She had perched herself on the edge of the central command console. One leg was swinging idly. Her cup was now refilled with a deep crimson liquid that smoked with latent power.
“The Hostess of the Jade Mountain is back,” she announced to the stunned room. Her voice was a resonant, drunken purr that cut across the soft mechanical noise of computers. “And her new establishment is quaint. The decor is lacking, but the clientele is entertainingly tense.”
She raised her cup. “A toast to my new staff! May your vital signs be stable and your panic responses amusing.”
Everyone stood frozen.
She took a long drink, then pointed her cup at a junior analyst. “You. You look stressed. Your aura is knotted tighter than a mortal’s shoelace. Have a drink.” She flicked her wrist, and a single, perfect droplet of the Molten Phoenix Tears shot through the air and splashed onto the analyst’s lips.
The analyst gasped. His eyes shot wide open as a surge of pure, unrefined spiritual power coursed through him.
“See?” Su Yao beamed. “Much better.”
Her gaze swept the room. “Don't be shy! The Hostess does not like a silent banquet hall. Someone find some music! And you!” Her eyes landed on Zhang Wei. “My favorite mortal tool! You're late. Your punishment is to be my tasting partner. This one,” she gestured to the cask, “has a bit of a kick. I need a second opinion.”
Director Hao took in the scene. He slowly turned to Zhang Wei. His voice was a dead monotone. “Agent Zhang. Your primary duty, effective immediately, is to keep our consultant away from the rest of the strategic fuel reserve.”
Zhang Wei closed his eyes, taking a deep, steadying breath. It was going to be a very, very long eternity.
The warm, hazy glow in Su Yao’s eyes sharpened into points of ice. The swinging of her leg stopped. The drunken Hostess persona was still there, but now a General was looking out from behind it.
“You are all,” she announced. Her slurring voice cut through the room’s stunned silence. “terrible at prioritizing.” She took a slow sip from her cup of Molten Phoenix Tears. “All your energy is wasted watching me. Constantly fretting over my alcohol consumption and holding meetings about my ‘behavioral assessment.’”
She slammed the cup down on the console. The entire structure groaned in protest.
“Meanwhile,” she continued. Her voice dropped to a deadly, conversational tone. “the real threat, the Yamato, successfully placed a spy in your midst. He was mopping your floors as a janitor while listening to your every secret. And you were all too busy being terrified of me to notice the actual rot in your own house.”
Her gaze swept across the faces of the agents. Her expression was one of disappointment. “Pathetic.”
Then, she smiled. It was a wide, terrifying, and utterly cheerful smile.
“Luckily for you,” she purred, “the Hostess is excellent at quality control.”
Su Yao hopped off the console, landing with a slight wobble that somehow did little to diminish her menace. She sauntered up to the nearest agent, a woman with a severe bun. Before the woman could react, Su Yao leaned in and, licked a stripe up the side of her face.
The agent recoiled with a gasp, wiping her face in disgust. Around her, the room froze, every witness staring in shock.
“Clean,” Su Yao declared, moving on to the next agent, a young man who froze like a deer in headlights. She gave his neck a quick, appraising lick. “A little salty, but clean.”
She moved through the operations center like a sommelier tasting wine, licking hands, necks, cheeks. Agents flinched, sputtered, and stared in stunned humiliation.
Su Yao stopped in front of a middle-aged man who had been quietly monitoring a communications feed. He looked utterly ordinary. “You,” she said.
The man looked up. “Consultant?”
Su Yao leaned in slowly. Her eyes were locked on his. She sniffed the air around him. “There it’s again, that reek.”
She then darted her head forward and licked the back of his hand. She recoiled, making a dramatic gagging sound. “Ugh! Yes! Definitely Yamato! The flavor profile is unmistakable!”
The man’s neutral mask shattered into panic. He scrambled backwards. His chair clattered to the floor. “This is an outrage! Director Hao! I protest!”
“Protest all you want,” Su Yao said. Her cheerfulness returned. “The palate does not lie.”
She prevented him from having a chance to draw a weapon or activate a suicide pill. In one fluid motion, she grabbed the front of his suit, spun on her heel, and, with the casual strength of someone tossing a bag of trash, hurled him directly through the reinforced polymer window.
The sound was a colossal CRASH-BANG-TINKLE of shattering material, followed by a rapidly fading scream that ended with a distant, definitive thud.
Silence returned, deeper than before. Cold wind whistled through the new, gaping hole in the wall.
Su Yao brushed her hands together, picked up her cup of Molten Phoenix Tears, and took a satisfied sip.
“See?” she said to the frozen room. “That is a real threat. Now that we've taken out the trash, perhaps we can focus on the rest of them?” She beamed at Director Hao. “My consultancy fee, by the way, now includes window repair.”
The wind whistled through the shattered window, the only sound in the utterly silent operations center. All eyes were fixed on Su Yao, who calmly took another sip from her cup.
“You see,” she began. Her voice lost some of its theatrical slur, gaining a sharper, more analytical edge. “You think of the Yamato as scavengers, parasites. And on the surface, they are. They leech power, they steal talent. But you have failed to ask the most important question: What for?”
She paced slowly in front of the broken window.
“All this energy they siphon, all these spiritually sensitive children they take from the orphanage are part of a larger design.” She stopped and turned. Her eyes glowed red. “It is a eugenics experiment. They are trying to engineer a leader.”
A ripple of shocked murmurs went through the room.
“Their own spiritual traditions are stagnant, derivative,” Su Yao continued. A note of contempt was in her voice. “They lack a truly transcendent figure, a sovereign to unite their scattered, spiteful factions. So they have come here, to land with deeper, older roots, to steal our potential to create one for them.”
Su Yao gestured vaguely with her cup. “They pit strong spirits and cultivators against each other, like we witnessed on the plain. Talented children are harvested, tested, and pushed. It’s a brutal, Darwinian process.”
Her voice dropped, heavy with contempt. “They are trying to forge a supreme being in a crucible of conflict and stolen power into a single, perfect vessel strong enough to command the demonic and human realms, loyal only to Yamato.”
“What?” She looked at their stunned faces. “You thought they just wanted to be a nuisance? They are playing a long game. They want to crown a king. Or a queen.”
Her gaze landed on Zhang Wei. For a fleeting second, it was utterly sober and completely serious.
“And if they succeed, the carefully maintained ‘status quo’ your government is so obsessed with will shatter into dust. You will be facing a unified, militant empire with a figurehead of immense power at its helm. An empire born from the children you failed to protect.”
She drained her cup.
“So you can continue to worry about my drinking habits,” she said. Her voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “Or you can start focusing on how to dismantle a factory for building gods. Just shut up and bet everything on me.”
She tossed the empty cup to Zhang Wei, who caught it on reflex. “The Hostess has spoken. This briefing is over. Now,” she said. Her cheerful drunken demeanor snapped back into place like a mask. “someone get me a map of all their known facilities. I feel like going on a field trip. And I need a new drink.”