Su Yao left the stifling arrogance of the studio dojo and stepped out into the mundane evening air.
The transition from the hidden cultivation world to bustling city streets was always a jolt. But tonight, it was a welcome one. She carried the signed contract in her backpack, a tangible ticket into the heart of the Luo family’s operation.
She pushed open the door to the apartment to find her aunt humming and folding laundry.
“I’m home,” Su Yao announced. Her voice held a note of genuine triumph she made little effort to fully conceal.
Her aunt looked up, smiling. “There you are! You were out late. Everything alright?”
“Better than alright,” Su Yao said, pulling the contract from her bag and handing it over. “I got the part. The lead sidekick role. It comes with a salary.”
Su Nuan Nuan’s eyes went wide. She took the papers. Her hands trembled slightly as she scanned the official-looking document from Golden Dragon Channel. “A-Ling! This is wonderful! So fast! I’m so proud of you!” She rushed over and pulled Su Yao into a tight hug, which Su Yao endured with minimal stiffness.
Then her aunt pulled back. A familiar worry creased her brow. “But, what about school? Your studies! This job, the filming, it’ll take so much time!”
Su Yao waved a dismissive hand, as if swatting away a gnat. “School won’t be a problem. The filming schedule is very accommodating.”
Her aunt looked skeptical. “Accommodating? How?”
A perfectly deadpan expression settled on Su Yao’s face. “The shootings mostly take place at night, Auntie. It’s in the contract. Standard industry practice for this genre.”
“At night? Why?”
“Because,” Su Yao explained, her tone implying this was the most obvious fact in the world, “spirits are polite. They have a deep, inherent respect for education. They understand the importance of a structured curriculum and uninterrupted study hours.”
She delivered the absurd explanation with such utter, unwavering sincerity that her aunt could only blink. “It’s a matter of basic spiritual etiquette. They rarely cause significant, film-worthy trouble during the school day. Evenings and weekends are their preferred window for dramatic activity.”
“Spirits… are polite?” Su Nuan Nuan repeated slowly, trying to process the logic.
“Exceptionally,” Su Yao confirmed, nodding gravely. “It’s one of the first things they teach you. So you see, there’s no conflict. I will attend school during the day, and perform my exorcism duties at night. It’s a perfectly balanced schedule.”
She took the contract back from her stunned aunt and headed toward her room.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to review my script. There’s a particularly troublesome Class-Four Apparition we’re scheduled to confront tomorrow evening, and I need to be prepared.”
She closed her bedroom door, leaving Su Nuan Nuan standing amidst the folded laundry, staring into space. She eventually just shook her head with a soft laugh. “Well,” she murmured to herself, picking up a towel to fold, “as long as she keeps her grades up.”
Classes at Duwang High passed with agonizing normality the next day. Su Yao endured lectures, took notes, and moved through the crowded hallways with the bored efficiency of a millennia-old being trapped in a teenager’s schedule.
The only flicker of interest came when Wong Lei tried to show her a new ‘advanced’ talisman she'd bought online, which Su Yao critiqued for its poor ink quality with such casual authority that Wong Lei left looking utterly crushed.
When the final bell rang, Su Yao packed her bag at an unhurried pace. Mei bounded over, chattering about weekend plans.
“Mei,” Su Yao interrupted. Her voice cut through the noise. “Watch Modern Exorcist tonight.”
Mei blinked. “Huh? That corny show? Why?”
“There’s a special guest appearance. It should be… interesting.”
Mei’s eyes lit up. “Ooooh! Is it Wong Lei? Did she finally get her exorcism license or whatever?”
“Just watch,” Su Yao said. A faint, knowing smile was on her lips.
At that moment, her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen.
Director Luo: EMERGENCY! Jian Feng has severe food poisoning! Can't keep anything down, let alone perform an exorcism! The segment tonight is live! You'll have to handle the Jiang Mansion case alone! Can you do it?!
Su Yao’s smile widened into something sharp and genuine.
Xiao Ling: Understood. I will handle it.
She looked back at Mei. “It seems the special guest will be taking a more leading role than anticipated. Don't miss it.”
She walked away, leaving a confused but intrigued Mei behind. The pieces had fallen into place perfectly. Jian Feng’s absence was a gift. The live broadcast was her stage alone. Just how she preferred it.
The Jiang Mansion was a decaying relic on the outskirts of the city, a perfect set piece for a live television event. Production vans and light rigs surrounded the property, creating an island of harsh light in the oppressive darkness. The air itself was thick and cold, heavy with a resentment that the microphones couldn't pick up but that Su Yao could taste like old blood.
It wasn’t Beijing’s infamous Chaonei No. 81, the haunted house everyone whispered about. But it was still a place with its own quiet malice. Long before the cameras and cables arrived, Jiang Jishie, the military commander who had once led China against the Japanese invasion had lived here.
And whatever he left behind hadn’t learned how to leave.
Director Luo rushed up to her. His face was pale with panic. “Xiao Ling! Thank the heavens you’re here! The readings are off the charts! This is a Category Five! Jian Feng always handled the Fives! The script—”
“Where is the focal point of the activity?” Su Yao interrupted. Her voice was calm, cutting through his hysteria.
“The… the master bedroom on the second floor. The crew set up cameras in there, but they all glitched out. The audio is just… screaming. We’re broadcasting from the van outside.”
“Good. Stay here,” Su Yao commanded, already walking toward the mansion’s gaping front door. She ignored the boom mic operator who tried to follow her. “I work better alone. The spirit is easily agitated by too many living presences.”
She stepped inside. The door slammed shut behind her with a force that shook the cameras outside.
Inside, the air was a physical pressure. The resentment was old, a bitter grudge held for decades. In the master bedroom, a woman’s spirit hung in the center of the room. Her form was twisting and screaming silently. Her anguish was a vortex of dark energy that lashed out at everything around her.
She was powerful, for a modern ghost. A worthy opponent for their “Jade Purity Maiden.”
A camera on a tripod in the corner, its lens cracked, somehow flickered back to life. Its red light blinked. The live feed to the outside broadcast van stabilized, showing Su Yao standing calmly in the doorway.
In the van, Director Luo gripped the console. “She’s in! We’re live! Go to her, camera three!”
Su Yao took a step into the room. The spirit shrieked. A wave of freezing energy shot toward her, enough to flash-freeze a mortal solid.
In response, Su Yao raised a hand and performed a simple open-palmed gesture, as if telling the energy to stop.
It did. The wave of frost halted inches from her skin, shimmering in the air before dissipating like mist.
The spirit recoiled, confused.
In the broadcast van, the crew gasped. “How did she do that? No incantation! Nothing!”
Su Yao began to speak. Her voice was clear and steady, perfectly pitched for the microphones picking it up.
“Lost soul,” she intoned. Her words were layered with a compulsion that was anything but righteous. “Your pain is known. Your anger is understood. But this world is no longer your place.”
The spirit screamed again, hurling a dresser at her with telekinetic fury.
Only for the dresser to stop mid-air, shuddered, and then gently set itself down on the floor as if placed by invisible hands.
“You can’t win,” Su Yao said. Her voice took on a harder edge. She began walking toward the spirit. Each step was measured. “Your power is a flickering candle. Mine is the sun.”
She raised both hands. To the viewers, it looked like she was beginning a complex, powerful banishing ritual. In reality, she was simply reaching out with her will.
“By the authority vested in the righteous path,” she chanted for the benefit of the audience, “I return you to the cycle!”
She made a grasping motion in the air.
The spirit’s silent scream became a true, audible wail of sheer, primal terror as it felt an ancient, dreadful power seize it. It was a power that promised absolute obliteration.
Su Yao squeezed, containing its entire furious energy into a tiny, compressed ball of light no larger than a marble. She held it up for a moment, a glittering trophy, before making a show of closing her hand around it. When she opened her hand, it was gone. Purified.
An oppressive weight that had filled the mansion suddenly lifted, letting the air return to its normal temperature. Even the cracked camera lens seemed to smooth over and repair itself, as if nothing had happened.
Silence. Then, cheers erupted from the broadcast van.
Su Yao turned to the camera and gave a small, tired, but triumphant smile. “The disturbance has been purified. The Jiang Mansion is safe.”
She walked out of the mansion to a hero’s welcome. Director Luo was weeping with joy, babbling about ratings gold.
On her phone, a text came through from Mei.
Mei: OMG LING LING THAT WAS YOU?! YOU WERE AMAZING!!! THAT WAS SO REAL!
Su Yao looked back at the now-quiet mansion. Real, she thought. You have no idea.
The celebrations in the broadcast van were deafening. Crew members clapped Su Yao on the back, babbling about ratings spikes and viral moments. Director Luo was on the phone. His voice was shrill with excitement, already negotiating sponsorship deals. Su Yao endured it with a mask of modest exhaustion, accepting a bottle of water someone thrust into her hand.
Once the initial frenzy died down, Director Luo pulled her aside. His expression shifted from jubilant to uncharacteristically grim.
“Xiao Ling, what you did in there,” he began. His voice was low. “It was instinctual. Pure. It confirms what we've been fearing.”
Su Yao took a sip of water. “Fearing, Director?”
“The spiritual unrest isn’t random. It’s growing stronger, more frequent. The entities we’re facing, they’re agitated. Like sharks smelling blood in the water.” He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper. “We believe something powerful is awakening. Something that calls to them, stirs them from their slumber.”
He studied her face, looking for a reaction. Su Yao kept her expression politely curious. “Awakening? Like what?”
“The texts we've managed to preserve, the oldest family records, they speak of a cataclysm. A demon sovereign of unimaginable power who once plunged the world into an age of darkness. She was known as the Crimson Calamity Queen.”
Su Yao’s mind raced, flipping through the archives of her long memory. The title meant nothing to her. She had known many demon kings and queens, but none by that epithet. “The Crimson Calamity Queen? I've never heard of her.”
“Of course you haven't,” Director Luo said. His voice was grave. “After her defeat, the victors scrubbed her from history. Erased her from all records. It was deemed too dangerous for even her name to survive. The ignorant masses know nothing of her existence. Only a few ancient cultivation families, like ours, preserve the truth in fragments.”
He looked around nervously, as if saying the name too loud might summon her. “The signs we’re seeing now, they mirror the descriptions of the time just before her first rise. We fear she is returning.”
Director Luo looked at Su Yao. His eyes were full of a desperate hope. “Your power, Xiao Ling, it emerged now, at this precise time. Don't you see? You might be the heaven-sent answer to this threat! Our righteous blade against the coming darkness!”
Su Yao listened. Her face was a perfect mask of solemn concern.
Inside, she was reeling. A demon queen erased from history? Plunged the world into darkness? It sounded grandiose and vaguely familiar, yet the details aligned with no one she knew. It was like hearing a distorted legend of herself, but with the facts all wrong.
She nodded slowly, absorbing his words. “I see. The responsibility is immense.”
“It is!” Director Luo agreed, gripping her shoulders. “But with you, we have hope! We will redouble our efforts! We must prepare!”
“Of course, Director,” Su Yao said. Her voice was soft but steady. “I will not fail.”
As he rushed off to spread both the celebratory news and the dire warning to the rest of the family, Su Yao stood alone.
Crimson Calamity Queen, she mused. The name felt foreign yet intriguing. Who were you? And why does your legend sound so much like a bad copy of my own?
The adrenaline from the live broadcast faded, leaving behind the mundane reality of a city bus ride home. Su Yao replayed Director Luo’s words about the “Crimson Calamity Queen” in her mind. The mystery was a pleasant distraction from the rattling of the bus. She stepped off at her stop. The night air was cool against her skin.
She took a shortcut through a commercial district lined with upscale cafes and boutiques. That was when she saw them.
There, seated by the window of an expensive, softly lit cafe, was Jian Feng. He looked perfectly healthy, sipping an espresso. His earlier “severe food poisoning” was evidently cured by a miraculous recovery. Sitting across from him, laughing at something he said, was Li Xiu.
Su Yao stopped dead. A date?
Her eyes narrowed. This was too coincidental. Jian Feng bails on a dangerous, live exorcism, and hours later is cozying up to the heiress of the Li family? The same Li family supposedly cursed, with women who were spirit bait?
She melted into the shadows of a building across the street. Her presence vanished from the awareness of the mortals passing by. She watched. Her senses sharpened.
Jian Feng reached across the small table and took Li Xiu’s hand. Li Xiu smiled. A faint blush was on her cheeks. Then Jian Feng said something, and Li Xiu’s smile became strained. She nodded, looking down at her tea.
Su Yao’s sharp ears caught the tail end of his sentence. “…just a formality, of course. Our families have been aligned for generations. It’s expected.”
Li Xiu nodded again. “I know. It’s what my grandfather wants.”
Su Yao’s mind connected the dots with lightning speed. The alignment had existed for generations. It was expected. The Luo family of mediocre exorcists and the Li family of cursed billionaires had formed an alliance, sealed by marriage.
Jian Feng was sharing the evening with his fiancée.
A cold, amused smile spread across Su Yao’s face. So that was it. Jian Feng’s sudden “illness” was calculated. Why risk his neck on a Category Five haunting when his future and his access to the Li family fortune was secure? He was protecting his investment.
She watched as Jian Feng paid the bill. His posture oozed smug superiority. He helped Li Xiu with her jacket. His touch was proprietary. Li Xiu accepted it with a quiet resignation that spoke of a lifetime of duty.
As they stepped out of the cafe and began walking down the street, Su Yao emerged from the shadows and fell into step behind them. Her footsteps were silent.
“Quite a rapid recovery, Senior Jian,” she said. Her voice cut through the evening quiet.
The couple froze and spun around. Jian Feng’s face went from surprise to annoyance, then to a flicker of guilt quickly masked by arrogance. Li Xiu looked startled and then embarrassed, as if caught doing something wrong.
“Xiao Ling!” Jian Feng snapped, stepping slightly in front of Li Xiu. “What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be resting after your… performance?”
“Performance requires an audience. You left me to perform for both of us,” Su Yao said. Her gaze flicked to Li Xiu. “Miss Li. I wasn't aware you and my senior colleague were… acquainted.”
Li Xiu looked down, flustered. “We… that is…”
“It’s none of your business,” Jian Feng cut in. His voice was cold. “My private life doesn't concern you.”
“Of course not,” Su Yao agreed smoothly. “I was just concerned for your health. Food poisoning can be so… debilitating. It’s a miracle you're well enough for espresso. And for… securing alliances.”
“Junior, you dare?” Jian Feng’s eyes narrowed dangerously. He understood the threat perfectly. “Watch your tone. You're still replaceable.”
“Am I?” Su Yao asked. Her smile never wavered. “After tonight’s ratings? I doubt even a fiancé of the Li family has that much pull.” She let the word hang in the air between them.
Li Xiu gasped softly. Her eyes widened. Jian Feng’s jaw tightened. The secret was out.
“Stay out of things you don't understand,” he growled, taking Li Xiu’s arm and pulling her away. “Come on, Yan’er.”
Su Yao stood there, watching them go.
How interesting, she mused. The righteous Luo family is tied by marriage to the cursed Li family. And the so-called star exorcist is a cowardly social climber.
The encounter with Jian Feng and Li Xiu left a lingering curiosity. Jian Feng’s arrogance was one thing, but his connection to the Li family was a thread Su Yao couldn’t ignore. The next day, under the guise of “getting to know her senior better for on-screen chemistry,” she casually pumped the Luo family’s more gossipy members for information.
The answers were disappointingly uniform at first: Jian Feng was a prodigy, the pride of their family, a natural-born exorcist.
It was her aunt who unknowingly provided the key. Over a dinner of stir-fried vegetables, she was reminiscing about her temp days.
“…and the charity events the channel used to run for this old orphanage… what was it called? Azure Dragon Orphanage? I think they even did a segment on it years ago. The director was a real piece of work, always angling for more airtime…”
The name ‘Azure Dragon Orphanage’ snagged Su Yao’s attention. She finished her meal and retreated to her room. Her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Su Yao dug through old news archives, charity event photos, and blurry local news segments. She found it: a five-year-old puff piece from Golden Dragon Channel about supporting the Azure Dragon Orphanage.
There, in a group photo of children, was a young, sullen-looking Jian Feng. His eyes already held that familiar arrogance.
She cross-referenced the orphanage’s name with the city’s social records, a task made easier by the Luo family’s surprisingly lax digital security.
A list of former wards scrolled down the screen. Most names meant nothing.
Then one jumped out.
Wong Lei.
Su Yao leaned back in her chair. The pieces clicked into place with a satisfying mental snap.
Jian Feng was adopted. Plucked from an orphanage and groomed to be their handsome, marketable star. And Wong Lei, the talisman-waving, exorcism-obsessed girl from her class, had come from the exact same place.
Coincidence? In her experience, coincidences were just patterns waiting to be understood.
A slow, intrigued smile spread across her face. The Azure Dragon Orphanage was clearly a nexus, a connection point. Jian Feng. Wong Lei. Who else had they produced?
She closed the laptop. It seemed she needed to have a little chat with Wong Lei. The girl was bound to be more talkative than any ancient text.