Instead of sleeping, Su Yao immersed herself in the role. She studied clips of the show with the intense focus of a predator learning the patterns of its prey. Her smile was a sharp, secret thing in the blue glow of the screen.
By the time the morning sun hit her window, she was ready. She set out for the studios. The promise of delicious irony was a thrill humming just beneath her skin.
The Golden Dragon Channel’s studios were plain and brightly lit. Su Yao, wearing Xiao Ling’s most earnest-looking sweater, sat in a plastic chair among two dozen other girls. All of them nervously muttered lines about “righteous fury” and “demonic scourges.”
It was pathetic. She almost felt nostalgic.
A harried assistant with a headset called out numbers. When Su Yao’s turn came, she walked into the audition room with the placid demeanor of a perfectly normal, slightly ambitious human girl.
The room was sparse. A lone camera faced a table of three producers, the woman tied to the chair positioned squarely between them.
Su Yao’s steps faltered for a microsecond.
The woman was bound in earnest. Her bindings told the truth.
They were thick ropes knotted with complex, though sloppy, spiritual seals. The woman herself was drooling. Her eyes rolled back in her head. A low, continuous growl rumbled from her chest. The air around her prickled with a familiar, chaotic energy.
Actual demonic possession. A minor one, but real.
One of the producers, a man with a thinning hairline and a tired expression, spoke without looking up from his clipboard. “Number 42. The scene is a simple exorcism. Demonstrate your technique. Begin when ready.”
Su Yao stared. They were screening for actual, freelance exorcists. This cheap television studio was a front for a desperate, modern-day cultivation clan outsourcing their dirty work.
The irony was so exquisite it took all her willpower not to laugh aloud.
She schooled her features into a mask of determined concern. “I… I see. The poor woman.”
She approached the possessed woman, who snarled and strained against her bonds. The producers watched, bored. They’d seen dozens of girls fail already.
Su Yao raised her hands, mimicking the mudras she’d seen a thousand times. She channeled the barest whisper of her own demonic aura, shaped and inverted to feel vaguely “holy.” It was the spiritual equivalent of using a nuclear reactor to power a flashlight.
“By the… uh… heavens,” she intoned, putting a dramatic tremble in her voice. “I command you, foul spirit, to begone!”
She pressed two fingers against the woman’s forehead.
The effect was instantaneous and overwhelming.
The possessed woman jolted as if electrocuted. A wisp of black smoke shot from her mouth with a sound like a shriek being sucked into a vacuum. The woman slumped forward, unconscious but breathing evenly. The oppressive energy in the room was gone without a trace.
The producers, for the first time all day, were dead silent. Their clipboards were forgotten. They stared at Su Yao, then at the now-purified woman, then back at Su Yao.
The head producer slowly stood up. “How… how did you do that?” he stammered. “The cleansing was… total. Instantaneous. We’ve been trying to contain that thing for days!”
Su Yao clasped her hands demurely in front of her sweater. “I just… really believed in the power of righteousness?” she offered, pouring on the wide-eyed innocence.
The producers exchanged stunned, ecstatic looks. They’d found their “actress.”
“Unbelievable! The role is yours! The purity of your spirit is palpable!” the head producer gushed, grabbing a contract. “We’ll need you to start immediately! The forces of darkness are relentless!”
Su Yao smiled sweetly. “I am ready to serve the light.”
Inside, her ancient spirit was cackling. They wanted a righteous exorcist? She’d give them the most effective one they’d ever seen. She would “purify” everything in her path, all while standing right under their noses.
It seemed her new day job would be far more entertaining than she’d anticipated. The only downside was the nagging thought that she might have to tone it down; a truly perfect performance might arouse suspicion. Being this good at righteousness was terribly inconvenient.
The head producer, who introduced himself as Director Luo, ushered Su Yao into a small, soundproofed office. The glee on his face was visible. He poured two cups of tea with trembling hands.
“Xiao Ling, was it? Sit, sit!” he said, beaming. “What you did out there… astonishing! Truly a natural gift!”
Su Yao accepted the tea. Her expression was one of modest curiosity. “Thank you, Director. I just did what felt right.”
“Precisely! And that’s what we need!” He leaned forward. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think it’s time you understood what’s really going on here. The show, it’s a front.”
He paused for dramatic effect. Su Yao took a sip of tea, waiting.
“Most people think Modern Exorcist is just entertainment,” he continued. His eyes gleamed. “They are wrong! It’s a recruitment tool and a public service! Here, we find cases of genuine spiritual disturbance like poor Mrs. Lin out there and handle them on camera! We show the masses that the old ways still work, that there are still heroes fighting the darkness!”
He spread his hands wide. “And you, my dear, with your pure spirit and raw talent, you could be one of our greatest heroes! The Luo family has been safeguarding this knowledge for generations. My grandfather started this operation. My father grew it. And now, I’m modernizing it!” He said this with immense pride.
“The Luo family?” Su Yao asked, feigning ignorance.
“Yes! We’re all family here! Everyone working the spiritual side of the show is a cousin, an uncle, a distant nephew! We keep the true art within the bloodline! And now…” He reached across the desk and patted her hand. “You’re a part of that family! Welcome!”
Su Yao looked at his hand on hers, then back at his earnest, proud face. The sheer, staggering delusion of it was breathtaking.
This man, this Luo family, thought they were preserving some sacred tradition. They were a fading clan of mediocre cultivators using television ratings to fund their pitiful ghost-hunting service. And they thought she was a precious, righteous recruit.
It was the most hilarious thing she'd heard in centuries.
She manufactured a look of tearful gratitude. Her eyes shone with manufactured awe. “A family? I’ve always felt so alone. To be part of something so important, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
Director Luo’s chest swelled with pride. “We take care of our own! You’ll have a salary and benefits, with the added satisfaction of serving the greater good! Together, we will expose the darkness to the light of day!”
“Together,” Su Yao repeated. Her voice was a soft, devoted whisper.
Inside, the Nine-Tailed Fox was howling with laughter. They had just invited a natural disaster into their ‘family’ and were praising it for the weather. She couldn't have planned it better herself. She was in.
Director Luo immediately channeled his enthusiasm into action. He practically vibrated with excitement as he led Su Yao away from the garish studio sets, descending into a stark, concrete basement level that hummed with a different kind of energy. The air grew cooler, smelling of old incense. This was clearly where the ‘real’ work happened.
He ushered her into a training room where a severe-looking woman in her fifties, introduced as Auntie Zhu, was putting a young man through his paces. The man was sweating. His face was a mask of concentration as he tried to steady a flickering candle flame with his spiritual energy. It was sputtering wildly.
Auntie Zhu’s critical eyes snapped from the failing student to Su Yao. Director Luo whispered excitedly in her ear. Her stern expression remained, but a glint of sharp interest appeared in her eyes.
“Leave her with me,” Auntie Zhu said. Her voice was like grinding stone.
Director Luo practically skipped away.
Auntie Zhu dismissed the exhausted young man with a wave of her hand and turned her full attention to Su Yao. “Luo says you have a natural gift. We shall see. The first and most fundamental step for any true exorcist is to permanently open the Six Senses so you can see the spirit world as clearly as you see this room.”
She gestured to the barren training hall. “For an ordinary person, this takes decades of meditation and spiritual accumulation. We don’t have decades. The spiritual disturbances are increasing in frequency and strength. We are under siege. We no longer have the luxury of training novices from scratch.”
Her gaze was intense, probing. “That is why the audition was real. We are recruiting soldiers who are already on the battlefield, whether they knew it or not. We find those who are already Sensitive. The talented and capable.”
Looking down at Su Yao, she took a step closer. “Director Luo believes you are one of them. Show me.”
She pointed to the far corner of the room. “What do you see there?”
Su Yao followed her gaze. In the shadowy corner, a faint, wispy spirit was present: the ghost of a former janitor who was trying to remember how to clean a stain that hadn't been there for thirty years.
Su Yao tilted her head, putting on a show of mild confusion that slowly cleared into wonder. “I… I see a faint light. A man? He looks… sad. And he has a mop.”
Auntie Zhu’s stern facade cracked. A look of utter shock flashed across her face before she quickly schooled it back into neutrality. She had expected, at best, a description of a cold spot or a feeling of unease.
“You see his form? His implement?” she asked. Her voice was tight with controlled excitement.
“Yes,” Su Yao said softly, widening her eyes just so. “Is that… not normal?”
Auntie Zhu let out a slow, stunned breath. “Normal? Child, what you possess is a once-in-a-generation gift. You didn't need us to open your senses. They were never closed.”
She looked at Su Yao as a priceless weapon that had just fallen into her lap instead of a student.
“The others here,” she gestured vaguely to where the young man had been, “they must strain to perceive a faint shadow. You… you see in high definition.”
She clasped her hands together. A rare smile touched her lips. “Good. Very good. The training will be about teaching you to control what you already have. And how to fight what you see.”
Su Yao nodded. Her face was a perfect mask of earnest determination. “I’m ready to learn, Auntie Zhu.”
Inside, she was marveling at their desperation. They were so weak, so starved for power, that they mistook her ancient, boundless perception for a “gift.” This was going to be even easier than she thought.
Auntie Zhu’s training regimen was, from her perspective, brutally intensive. For Su Yao, it was like a master calligrapher being asked to trace kindergarten letters.
The first lesson was “Spiritual Sensitivity Drills.” Auntie Zhu led her to a table where a rusted locket lay beside a cracked teacup, a child’s hair ribbon draped carelessly nearby.
“Each object holds a residual echo of its owner’s energy,” Auntie Zhu intoned gravely. “A true exorcist can read these echoes. Feel the emotions. Discern the history. It’s the first step in understanding a haunting. Now, try. Take the locket.”
Su Yao picked up the locket. Her senses, which could taste the ambition in a demon king’s breath from a thousand li away, were instantly flooded with the trivial echoes of a mortal girl’s petty heartbreak from fifty years ago.
She furrowed her brow, pretending to concentrate. “I feel… sadness. A young woman’s lost love?” She inflected her voice to sound uncertain, like discovery.
Auntie Zhu’s eyes bulged. “Already? It took me three months to get even a cold feeling from my first object! Extraordinary! Now, the ribbon!”
Su Yao touched the ribbon. “A child with a fever? She didn’t survive.” The echo was faint and tragic.
“Correct!” Auntie Zhu was practically vibrating. “And the teacup!”
Su Yao’s finger brushed the porcelain. “An old man. He was drinking tea when he read a letter. Bad news. His heart gave out.” She delivered the lines with somber gravitas.
Auntie Zhu looked like she was about to have a heart attack herself from excitement. “Precisely! Your clarity is unheard of! We will move to active containment!”
The next lesson was in a warded circle chalked on the floor. A small, irritable nature spirit, a wisp of angry energy from a potted plant that had been neglected, was contained within.
“The goal is to soothe and redirect,” Auntie Zhu instructed. “Project calm. Project peace. Ease its turmoil.”
Su Yao knelt. The nature spirit, a being of pure instinct, sensed the oceanic depth of power hidden beneath the human shell and immediately stopped its frantic buzzing. It huddled in the center of the circle, perfectly still.
Auntie Zhu gasped. “You… you pacified it instantly! How?”
“I just… thought peaceful thoughts,” Su Yao said, blinking innocently.
The final test was a practical application. They were taken to a soundstage where a minor, slovenly gluttony spirit was haunting the craft services table, making all the sandwiches taste like regret.
“Demonstrate a basic banishing ritual,” Auntie Zhu commanded. “The Seal of the Seven Stars is standard.”
Su Yao nodded. She began the motions. Her hands moved with a grace that seemed both practiced and utterly natural. She channeled a minuscule, almost imperceptible fraction of her power, enough to make the lights on the set flicker. She spoke the words of the ritual. Her voice layered with an echo that sounded ancient and authoritative.
The gluttony spirit looked at her, let out a tiny squeak of terror, then unraveled itself from existence in a panic to escape her presence.
The crew, who had seen countless exorcisms, stared in stunned silence. The banishing was cleaner, more absolute, than any they had ever witnessed. It was artistic.
Auntie Zhu simply stood there. Her clipboard hung limply at her side. She turned to Director Luo, who had come to watch the final test.
“Director,” she said. Her voice was hushed with reverence and shock. “We have found a once-in-a-millennium genius.” She looked at Su Yao, who was now politely asking a stunned PA if the banishing was sufficient.
“She requires no training. She needs guidance. And a starring role. Immediately.”
“Good, good, good!” Director Luo’s face split into a beatific grin. “The public will adore her! The ratings will be astronomical! Our righteous Xiao Qing!”
Su Yao offered them a modest, humble smile.
This, she thought, is even more fun than hosting a banquet.
The sheer, utter farce of it all was the finest entertainment she'd had in ages. They were giving her a script and a costume, complete with a built-in cheering section, to be herself, all while believing she was their holy warrior.
It was perfect.
The buzz around Su Yao’s “natural talent” reached a fever pitch within the Luo family’s operation. Director Luo could barely contain himself, already drafting press releases about their newfound “Jade Purity Maiden.” Auntie Zhu regarded her with a mixture of stern pride and near-reverence.
It was time for the final piece of the puzzle. Director Luo, practically bouncing with excitement, guided Su Yao to a private dojo deep within the studio’s sub-levels.
“Your performance has been… unprecedented,” he said. His voice was hushed with importance. “But our work is a team effort. It’s time you met your senior. The public face of our operation. The star of Modern Exorcist.”
He pushed open a heavy door. Inside, a young man was practicing forms with a gleaming silver sword. He moved with a fluid, practiced grace that was aesthetically pleasing for a mortal. He was handsome in a sharp, severe way. His brow was furrowed in concentration. This was Jian Feng, the actor she’d seen on TV.
He finished his sequence with a flourish and turned. His expression of bored arrogance instantly curdled upon seeing Director Luo’s eager face and the unknown girl beside him.
“Jian Feng!” Director Luo announced. “Meet our new discovery! Your new on-screen partner and off-screen support, Xiao Ling! Her sensitivity is off the charts! Auntie Zhu is calling her a generational talent!”
Jian Feng’s eyes swept over Su Yao, taking in her modest sweater and ordinary appearance. His lip curled almost imperceptibly. He sheathed his sword with a dismissive shing.
“A ‘generational talent’?” he repeated. His voice was a low, condescending drawl. “Another one? The last ‘talent’ wet herself when a Class-Two Apparition hissed at her.” He walked closer, looking down his nose at her. “The screen loves my face, Director. I don’t need a sidekick slowing me down and ruining the shot with amateur flailing.”
He stopped directly in front of Su Yao. His gaze was challenging. “Can you even hold a talisman without setting yourself on fire, little girl?”
Director Luo looked nervously between them. “Now, Jian Feng, her abilities are truly—”
Su Yao looked past Jian Feng, at a faint, cold spot forming in the corner of the dojo. It was a minor gloom spirit, attracted by his arrogance and negativity.
She pointed a single finger. “You have a leak.”
Jian Feng frowned. “What?”
“In the northwest corner. A minor gloom spirit. Third-tier. It’s leaching the warmth from the room, drawn by unresolved pride and insecurity. You might want to have that looked at.” Her voice was calm, factual, utterly devoid of theatrics.
Jian Feng’s arrogant mask slipped into stunned confusion. He spun around, focusing his senses. Only then did he feel the faint, cold pull she had pinpointed with casual ease. His face flushed.
“I was aware of it,” he blustered, recovering quickly. “I was allowing it to fester to practice a new containment technique later.”
“Of course you were,” Su Yao said. Her tone was perfectly neutral. She finally looked at him, offering a small, polite smile that barely reach her eyes. “I look forward to learning from your vast experience, Senior Jian. I’m sure there is much you can teach me about… presentation.”
The barb was so subtle it was almost invisible, wrapped in a layer of perfect deference.
Jian Feng’s eye twitched. He knew he’d been shown up, but he couldn’t prove it was intentional. He glared at her. The air crackled with a new, competitive hostility.
Director Luo, oblivious to the undercurrents, clapped his hands together. “Excellent! See? Instant rapport! The chemistry is already there! You’ll be a perfect team!”
Jian Feng turned on his heel. His robes swirled dramatically. “We’ll see,” he muttered, stalking out of the dojo. “Don’t get in my way.”
Su Yao watched him go. Her expression was serene.
This, she thought, is going to be delightful.