“Auntie, I’m home!”
Su Yao pushed open the apartment door. Her usual cram school exhaustion was a practiced performance. It vanished the instant she saw what waited inside.
The small living area lay in disarray. A chair was overturned and a vase lay shattered on the floor, its flowers were trampled. The faint, acrid scent of discharged talismans hung in the air. They mingled with the aroma of stir-fried vegetables, evidence of a recent confrontation interrupted by an ordinary meal.
Her aunt was on her knees, calmly sweeping up pieces of porcelain into a dustpan. She looked up as Su Yao entered. Her expression was that of mild irritation.
“Oh, you’re back,” her aunt said, as if Su Yao had just returned from the store. “Some weirdos showed up and made a mess.”
Su Yao’s eyes scanned the room. Near the doorway, a scorch mark marred the linoleum floor, distinctly shaped like a broken containment seal. On the wall, a faint, shimmering residue of spiritual energy was slowly dissipating.
“Cultivators,” Su Yao stated. Her voice was flat.
Her aunt nodded, dumping the broken pieces into the trash. “They kept yelling about a ‘demon fox lair’ and ‘residual aura’ nonsense. Must be on drugs.”
She picked up a steaming cup of tea from the counter and took a sip, utterly unbothered. “They were surprisingly weak, though. One good smack with the wok sent the first one through the door. The other one tripped over the rug trying to get his little paper sword out.”
With a thumb jerked toward the open doorway, she added. “I called an ambulance. But not for me, of course. The paramedics looked very confused.”
Su Yao walked further in. Her gaze was analytical. She nudged a discarded talisman with her foot. The craftsmanship was shoddy. Within it, the spiritual power was feeble and impure. These were indeed cultivators, but they were pathetic.
She looked at her aunt, who was now righting the chair with a grunt. This was a woman who worried over bills and made her egg sandwiches. A woman who had just sent trained cultivators packing with a kitchen implement.
Are cultivators these days so weak? The thought was both amusing and concerning. If this was the level of opposition, then the tales of mighty sects and soaring immortals had truly fallen into legend. The age of cultivation must have ended in a whimper.
A slow smile spread across Su Yao’s face. It was an unkind smile.
“Did they say which sect they were from?” Su Yao asked. Her tone was light, conversational.
Her aunt waved a dismissive hand. “Who listens to that crazy talk? Something about a ‘Vanishing Moon’ something or other. Sounded made up.”
“Vanishing Moon Pavilion,” Su Yao corrected softly. The name surfaced from a deep well of memory. A third-rate sect even in her time, known for its arrogance and lack of actual accomplishment. They’d survived by being too insignificant to be wiped out.
“How embarrassing for them,” Su Yao mused, picking up the discarded talisman. It crumbled to dust in her fingers. “To be defeated by a mortal woman with a wok.”
Her aunt finally paused her cleaning, looking at Su Yao with a strange expression. “You know an awful lot about these crazy people all of a sudden, A-Ling.”
Su Yao met her gaze. The ancient fox looked out from behind the teenage girl’s eyes. “I’ve been paying more attention in history class, Auntie.”
Her aunt righted the final chair and brushed her hands together. “Thank the heavens some things are built to last,” she muttered, reaching for the remote and clicking on the small TV mounted on the wall.
The screen flickered to life, unharmed by the earlier scuffle. “Unlike those delicate idiots. This old thing? Survived a falling bookshelf last year. Just like the fridge.”
She glanced at the refrigerator. Its chipped enamel still showed a metal badge that read Made in Yugoslavia.
“That’s a Gorenje,” Su Yao said.
“Of course it is. World’s number-one refrigerator brand. It’s always on, never off, for as long as I can remember. Reliable. Next door’s got a Hitachi. You know how many times I’ve had to hear them whining about it? That thing’s broken more times than their doorbell.”
Her aunt reached for the remote again, thumb tapping the button with practiced impatience as another advertisement droned on. The channel changed, the screen flashing white for a moment before settling.
A brightly lit set designed to look like a traditional, haunted house filled the display. On it, a man in overly ornate Daoist robes waved a peachwood sword at a shimmering, translucent figure wreathed in cheap-looking blue CGI mist.
“Ugh, this show again,” her aunt sighed, taking a sip of her tea. “Modern Exorcist. It’s all fake. That ‘exorcist’ is an actor. I think he was in a shampoo commercial last week. And the ghost is just computer graphics. So dramatic.”
Su Yao’s eyes, however, were locked on the “CGI” spirit.
The figure was gaunt. Its form flickered with a genuine, subtle anguish that no special effect could capture. It wore the tattered remnants of robes from the Tang Dynasty. Across its spectral chest was a familiar scar, a wound from a celestial hound’s bite earned during a particularly raucous drinking contest.
“Old Man Peng,” Su Yao whispered. The name left her lips before she could stop it.
This was a genuine spirit. The one being theatrically ‘exorcised’ on national television was one of her old drinking buddies from the Jade Mountain Banquet. A minor wind spirit who’d always been terrible at holding his liquor but told the best stories.
Her aunt chuckled. “You know the actor’s name? You kids really follow all these celebrities.”
A cold fury began to simmer in her veins. Her comrade, a being who had once soared on the winds between mountains, was reduced to a parlor trick for mortals to gawk at over their dinners.
The actor on screen shouted a garbled, nonsensical mantra and thrust his prop sword. A flash of fake light erupted, and the spirit of Old Man Peng let out a silent scream before his image distorted and vanished from the screen, presumably “purified.”
The studio audience applauded.
“See? All fake,” her aunt said, changing the channel to a cooking show.
Su Yao stared at the now-blank space where her old friend’s image had been. The pieces clicked into place. Weak cultivators. Televised exorcisms.
The spirit world had been packaged. It was tamed and turned into entertainment for a world that no longer believed in it, while the few true cultivators left were pathetic shadows of their predecessors.
A slow, dangerous smile touched her lips. The mortal world had just become infinitely more interesting.
“I need to find out which network produces this ‘show,'” Su Yao said. Her voice was deceptively calm.
Her aunt blinked at the sudden intensity in Su Yao’s question about the TV show. “Hm? Oh, Modern Exorcist? Yeah, that’s on Golden Dragon Channel. I actually did some temp work there when I was younger, before I settled into accounting. Filed paperwork for their reality shows.”
She chuckled, getting up and rummaging through an old box in the closet. “Hold on, I think I still have my old staff ID somewhere… ah, here!”
A moment later, a faded plastic card on a lanyard flew toward Su Yao. “See? Nothing exciting. Just a boring office job.”
Su Yao caught it. The plastic was old and slightly warped. The photo showed a younger version of her aunt, smiling brightly, her eyes full of simple, uncomplicated joy. Printed below the photo, in clear letters, was the name: Su Nuan Nuan.
She stared at the name and looked up at her aunt who was now humming and picking up a dustpan to finish cleaning. A content, slightly silly smile was on her face as she thought about her youth.
The resemblance was undeniable. She had the same eyes and jawline. But the expression was all wrong.
Su Nuan Nuan. ‘Warm Warm Su.’ A name that sounded soft and utterly stupid.
This can’t be my descendant, Su Yao thought. A wave of disgust washed over her. This woman who fights off cultivators with a wok and smiles at memories of filing paperwork... This simpleton.
The noble, fierce blood of the Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox could not have possibly diluted into this being of pure, unadulterated mundane contentment.
The last shred of belief in that insipid “alternate ending” novel draft evaporated. There was no way she had willingly married that sanctimonious traveler and borne a line of descendants that culminated in a woman named Nuan Nuan who was proud of her temp work.
Her logic was irrefutable. The timeline was absolute. Su Yao must have truly died after drinking the Enlightenment Brew. Her spirit must have been completely scattered, immediately hurled into the cycle of reincarnation without any legacy, any continuation.
The Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox had no descendants. This woman, Su Nuan Nuan, was just a random mortal whose face happened to share a coincidental similarity. A cosmic joke.
She tossed the ID card back on the table as if it were contaminated.
“Auntie,” Su Yao said, her voice perfectly even. “I’m going to my room to study.”
“Alright, dear! Don’t stay up too late!”
Su Yao walked into her room and closed the door, leaning against it. She looked at her own hands in the dim light.
Good. It was better this way. She was unburdened. There was no legacy to uphold, no familial duty to consider.
She was alone. Just as she had always been.
A slow, cold smile spread across her face. It was a smile far more suited to her features than the one on that ID card.
Perfect.
The phone buzzed on her desk, shattering the quiet. It was a text from Zhang Wei.
Zhang Wei: Hey. Any plans for this weekend? Maybe we can…
Annoyance flickered through her. The mortal boy was persistent, she’d give him that. Her fingers, moving on autopilot, tapped the camera icon to take a picture of the math textbook she was supposedly studying. It was meant to be a bland, dismissive response.
But her thumb slipped. Instead of the rear camera, it activated the front-facing one.
The phone clicked.
In that instant, the screen captured the unguarded, ancient smile of Su Yao. It was a cold, predatory expression full of ancient knowledge and terrifying amusement. Her eyes glowed with a faint, unnatural light in the dim room.
Her thumb, still fumbling, hit send.
The image whooshed away instantly.
Su Yao blinked, looking down at the phone. She saw the preview of the sent image in the chat. Her own true face stared back at her from the tiny screen.
Zhang Wei: …
Zhang Wei: …
Zhang Wei: What the hell is that?
Zhang Wei: Ling Ling?
Zhang Wei: That’s not funny. What filter is that?
Zhang Wei: It looks… real.
She could almost smell his fear through the phone. Just as she was about to type a dismissive reply, to claim it was a new filter, his next message came through.
Zhang Wei: My phone is getting really hot. The screen is glitching out. Did you send me a virus?!
Before she could respond, her own phone screen flickered violently. The image of her smile distorted into a mess of corrupted pixels before the device abruptly powered down with a faint sizzle.
Su Yao stared at the black, dead screen. It seemed even modern technology couldn't handle a direct, unfiltered glimpse of her true nature. A low chuckle escaped her. Served him right.
Then her aunt’s landline phone in the living room began to ring shrilly.
A moment later, her aunt called out, her voice puzzled. “A-Ling? Phone for you! It’s Zhang Wei’s mother? She sounds… upset. Something about you sending a disturbing picture that broke her son’s phone? And that he’s locked himself in his room and won’t stop screaming?”
Su Yao sighed. Mortals areso fragile.
She opened her bedroom door, her face a perfect mask of innocent confusion. “A disturbing picture? I just sent a selfie. Zhang Wei must have gotten a virus from one of those pirated games sites he visits. His phone probably overheated and shocked him.”
Her aunt looked skeptical but relayed the message into the phone. “She says it was just a selfie… Yes, I’m sure it was a shock…”
As her aunt tried to calm the frantic woman on the phone, Su Yao’s sharp ears caught another sound from the TV, which was still on low volume in the background. A news bulletin.
“…repeating our top story. Li Xuejian, patriarch of the Li family conglomerate, has been rushed to the hospital following a sudden collapse. The family requests privacy during this difficult time…”
Su Yao’s head snapped toward the screen. The Li family, the traveler’s possible descendants.
A true, genuine smile spread across her face. The Zhang Wei nuisance was already forgotten.
It seemed her weekend plans had just been made for her. A visit to the hospital was in order.
The days until the weekend stretched before Su Yao with the thrilling prospect of quadratic equations and history lectures. Boredom, an emotion she hadn't truly felt in millennia, was a unique form of torture.
She found a hobby.
The school, like all places built on old land, was lousy with weak, lingering spirits. Most were too faint to even notice; their presence was just a chill in the air or a flicker of light. But to Su Yao’s senses, they were like gnats buzzing in her periphery.
Annoying.
During a particularly dull literature class, a faint sobbing echoed from the girls’ bathroom on the third floor from a spirit forever mourning a failed exam from 1987. Su Yao, asking to be excused, strolled in. Talismans or chants was unnecessary. All she had to do was walk up to the third stall and, with a glare at the shivering, translucent form, snap her fingers.
Pop.
The spirit vanished with a sound like a soap bubble bursting. With it gone, the oppressive sadness in the room lifted instantly. Warmth returned to the bathroom by at least five degrees.
In the dusty storage closet near the gym, a jock who’d died bench-pressing too much in the 90s still haunted the weight rack, endlessly trying to complete his final rep. Su Yao opened the door and pointed at the barbell. “It’s not going anywhere. You should.”
The ghost stared, then looked down at its ethereal hands. With a sigh of relief, it dissolved into motes of light.
Mei, who had started following her around like a confused puppy, shivered each time. “Ling Ling, is it just me, or is the school feeling… less creepy lately?”
“Coincidence,” Su Yao said, casually wiping a faint residue of spiritual energy from her fingers after dispersing a particularly clingy ghost from the chemistry lab. “Maybe they finally fixed the heating.”
By Friday, the school was spiritually spotless. The last ghost, a petty bureaucrat from the land office who still haunted the principal’s filing cabinet, was exorcised with a single, dismissive flick of Su Yao’s wrist.
“There,” she muttered to herself, surveying the now spiritually sterile hallway. “Much better.”
Mei hugged her textbooks tighter, looking around with wide eyes. “It feels… empty.”
“It feels peaceful,” Su Yao corrected. She glanced out the window. The weekend was finally here. The tedious distraction was over.
Now, it was time for the main event. The hospital awaited. And with it, hopefully, some real answers.
The sterile white halls of the city’s best private hospital were a far cry from the shattered peaks of the Azure Mist Mountains, but the air was just as thick with tension. Su Yao found the right room without needing to ask for directions. She just followed the concentrated aura of worry and expensive perfume.
Li Xiu was sitting on a plush chair outside the room. Her usually bright eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. She looked up as Su Yao approached. Surprise cut through her grief.
“Xiao Ling?” she whispered, hastily wiping her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“I heard about your grandfather,” Su Yao said. Her voice was flat. She peered through the glass window into the room where the old man, Li Xuejian, lay surrounded by beeping machines and hushed doctors. “What happened?”
Li Xiu swallowed hard. A fresh wave of tears welled up. “They don’t know. He was fine, then he just… collapsed. His energy just vanished. The doctors say it’s a sudden, total systemic failure. They can’t explain it.”
She twisted her hands in her lap. “It’s the family… I think… I think we’re cursed.”
Su Yao’s eyebrow twitched. “Cursed?”
“You must think I’m crazy,” Li Xiu said with a wet, miserable laugh. “But it’s true. Great-grandfather died the same way. So did his brother. It always happens suddenly with no warning. The men in the family never live past a certain age. There’s no medical reason. It has to be a curse.”
Su Yao looked from the dying patriarch back to the distraught heiress. A slow, internal smile spread across her ancient soul. A curse. How poetic and utterly predictable for a ‘righteous’ bloodline to view a built-in expiration date as a malicious external force.
She placed a hand on Li Xiu’s shoulder. The gesture was meant to look comforting, but there was no warmth in it.
“There’s no such thing as curses,” Su Yao stated. Her tone left no room for argument. Then, after a brief pause, she added casually, almost clinically, “Are you sure it isn’t something simpler?”
Li Xiu blinked at her.
“Like the H3N2 super flu,” Su Yao continued. “Subclade K has been circulating heavily in Southeast Asia this year. Didn’t your grandfather visit your aunt in Singapore last month?”
Li Xiu looked up, shocked by the certainty. “But—”
“What you call a ‘curse,'” Su Yao interrupted, her voice low. “is just a law of nature you don’t yet understand like gravity or entropy. You don’t call an apple falling from a tree a ‘curse,’ do you? Unless, of course, you think Newton was a sorcerer who invented gravity.”
Newton hadn’t invented gravity. And he certainly wasn’t a mage like Crowley. If he’d discovered it under a durian tree, history might remember him as Isaac Tangis instead.
She wouldn't explain that so-called ‘curses’ and ‘blessings’ were two sides of the same coin. It was simply the predetermined ebb and flow of fate and power, often woven into a bloodline at its inception. To call it a curse was a matter of perspective, a label applied by those who suffered from it.
Li Xiu stared at her, utterly bewildered. The simple, brutal logic was more unsettling than any superstitious belief. “A… law of nature?”
“Exactly,” Su Yao said, patting her shoulder once before removing her hand. “So stop wasting energy fearing a fairy tale. You’re asking the wrong thing. The real question is,” her gaze drifted back to the dying man, glinting with cold interest. “what is the natural law affecting your family… and where did it come from?”