Chapter Text
The inn was shut up for the night, though it shouldn’t have been.
It should have been bustling with customers. Not so long ago, it had been one of the most popular, elegant, and prosperous establishments in the area – airy and spacious, with a fine situation overlooking the river.
However, that was before the innkeeper’s son passed away and the innkeeper himself plunged headlong into grief, dotage, and decrepitude, following his child into death within the year. Soon after that, the building began to crumble with shocking speed, assuming an unwholesome air and an inauspicious reputation. Customers who could afford other options began to drink elsewhere.
People talked in pitying tones about the innkeeper’s dutiful widow – how bravely she dealt with the loss of her family, how diligent she was to keep things pottering along, and what a shame it was that the business had fallen off so much and none of her staff ever stuck around for any length of time.
If the innkeeper’s widow overheard any of this talk, she kept her opinions close to her chest and went about her days with a smooth, blank expression on her face.
She might not have a husband or all that many customers anymore, but what did that matter? The Zhenniao had come to her door, whispering of a Guild built in the shadows for people like them, who had been wronged and kept powerless all their lives, and were working to seize that power for themselves.
She was fiercely proud when her inn was chosen by the Zhenniao for her headquarters. The strength of the Guild, the fear it inspired – ah, it was a headier draught than any liquor she had ever poured.
Some of the guild-members might once have known the innkeeper’s widow by name, but they had made it the foremost rule amongst themselves: never to speak of real names. None of them ever addressed her as anything other than the Gharial – cold-blooded, silent, watchful – and most of them tried not to address her directly at all.
***
It was chŏu shí, and the stars shone chilly and remote overhead.
The Gharial tallied the guild-members as they slipped into her overgrown courtyard, one by one. There were no guests – none living, that is – in any of the inn’s bedrooms, so there was no-one to peep out of the windows and mark their presence. Still, the guild-members kept to the shadows and concealed their faces under black veils. Having received a sign from the Gharial, and given the proper counter-sign in return, one by one they descended through a hidden trapdoor and went down into the inn’s damp, rambling cellar.
Ordinarily, the full membership of their organization met only twice a year. It was dangerous for the far-flung network of demonic cultivators to gather frequently, or linger in one place for too long. However, the Zhenniao had called an emergency gathering, and it was most unwise to ignore her summons.
Once they had assembled, the Gharial joined the group and closed the trapdoor behind her. As usual, the Toad was talking too much and giggling at inappropriate moments. The Viper and the Cobra were whispering together in a corner. And, the Gharial noted sourly, the Centipede was still apparently determined to keep the Spider within reach of his meaty hand at every moment of the day… he followed the young man jealously as they all shuffled awkwardly around the cellar, waiting – and waiting – and waiting – for the Zhenniao to arrive.
Finally, after what seemed like a very long time, the trapdoor opened and shut once again. Narrow feet padded unevenly down the steps, and a walking stick tapped. Ragged black robes swished around bony ankles as the Zhenniao stalked to her place at the front of the room. The murmur of conversation, already low and desultory, petered out almost at once.
“The Hornet is lost,” the Zhenniao announced without preamble. “She was captured last night while attempting to summon the Yiling Patriarch.”
The Scorpion gasped, making her black veil ripple gently, and the Gharial shot a quick sidelong glance towards the girl. She knew perfectly well that the Scorpion and the Hornet had been debt-bonded to the same brothel, but if news of the Hornet’s fall could prompt such a blatant display of emotion, the two must have been closer friends than she thought.
The Zhenniao locked eyes with the Scorpion, and her gaze was frigid. The Scorpion held herself unnaturally still, but the Gharial could see the batting of her eyelashes and the bobbing of her throat as she swallowed.
“The Hornet was stupid and overconfident,” the older woman went on, with cruel contempt. “When the Yunmeng disciples attacked, she was only able to raise two corpse puppets, and they collapsed like wet paper at the merest touch of a sword. According to my crows’ report, Jiang-zongzhu was able to capture the little fool while her dizi was still in her hand. Were it not for my timely intervention, she would already be enjoying his… hospitality at Lotus Pier. Fortunately for us all, her mouth has been stopped for good.”
The guild’s meeting-room was already dank and chill, thanks to the dampness weeping from the cellar’s stone walls and the residue of resentful energy thick in the air – but it seemed that the temperature dropped precipitously at the Zhenniao’s words. Everyone knew the stories that had been bandied about in the tea houses and taverns over the past three years: any demonic cultivators who passed beneath the Lotus Gate would never emerge again. It was widely assumed that they yearned for death long before the whip-wielding Jiang Wanyin had finished paring the flesh from their bones.
A subtle shiver swept through the guild’s assembled membership. On a reflex, the Gharial touched the tip of her thumb to the tip of her index finger. The Zhenniao turned her back on the Scorpion with a scoff, releasing the girl from the thrall of her piercing dark eyes.
“Stupid and overconfident the Hornet may have been,” the Zhenniao continued, “but I think I need hardly remind you all that only three weeks ago, we lost the Krait under very similar circumstances – though at least she was smart enough to avoid being taken alive. I have investigated the situation, masters and ladies, and arrived at the only possible conclusion.”
She paused. The silence in the cellar was so absolute that it seemed to press in upon their ears.
“We have a traitor among us.”
From somewhere among them another stifled gasp – no, not even that, only the merest indrawn breath – sounded from the guilty party, whoever they were.
The guild members darted accusatory, suspicious looks at each other from behind the drab fabric of their black face coverings. Whatever they saw in their compatriots’ eyes caused them to fall back, drawing apart from their fellows, uncertain and distrustful. The Zhenniao’s keen gaze swept them all, missing nothing.
“I will not go into the details of how I discovered the traitor,” the Zhenniao said, after a tense moment of silence. “Suffice it to say that there has been great carelessness and laxity, which shall be rooted out at once.”
And with that, the Zhenniao raised her staff. A coil of resentful energy surged from the shadows around her feet, shooting forward with the speed and unerring aim that had earned her the sobriquet.
All the guild members flinched instinctively, but to the Gharial’s great surprise it was the Centipede who took the hit, right in the gut. It knocked him clean off his feet, and he landed on his back with a heavy thud and a faint jingling noise, the sound of too many silver coins crammed into his purse. The resentful energy began twining around him in a leisurely, satiated fashion, spreading over him like an oily black net. The other demonic cultivators backed away from him in horror as it pinned his legs to the floor and captured his hands at his sides.
“No! It isn’t me,” the Centipede wheezed desperately. He was a big, thick-set man, and he’d fallen hard. “It isn’t me! I am loyal, Lady Zhenniao, I swear it!”
“Silence, fool, or I will stop your mouth as well,” said the Zhenniao icily. Resentful energy crept up towards the Centipede’s face, clotting over his mouth and teasing around his nostrils, until he whined fearfully and lay still. Sweat beaded heavily on his brow.
“Your loyalty means nothing to me,” the Zhenniao went on, glaring down at the wretched man. “Not when it was your ineptitude, and your greed, that allowed the traitor to come amongst us in the first place.”
“But who is it, then?” shrilled the Toad, nearly bouncing on his toes, unable to bear the tension. “Who is it? Who’s the traitor?”
The Zhenniao’s dark eyes gleamed red above her veil as she said, “Spider, step forward.”
The Gharial couldn’t help herself. It was her turn to gasp.
***
It was a constant source of shame to the Gharial that she was the only member of the guild who had never been able to manipulate resentful energy herself. But, as the Zhenniao pointed out, like her namesake the Gharial possessed a bottomless store of patience and an ambush predator’s eye for vulnerability. Years spent quietly cooking, cleaning, and waiting on the inn’s patrons had honed her skills to a nicety, and she took enormous pride in her ability to evaluate a man with a single glance.
No, the Gharial might not have been able to wield resentful energy, but as the guild’s lookout for future recruits – or future fierce corpses – she was nevertheless invaluable. Nine times out of ten, the drunkards and drifters who made up her clientele turned out to be far more useful dead than alive (which at least gave the other demonic cultivators a good supply of raw materials to practice on) but one day – ah, one day – the Spider had come stumbling through her door.
She’d spotted his potential immediately.
The boy threw down money enough for a month-long stay, put away an ungodly amount of Emperor’s Smile, and then proceeded to pick a series of fights with everyone else in the inn. Having kicked all her other customers out of various doors and thrown them out of various windows, he’d slumped bonelessly back down in his seat and talked the Gharial’s ear off for a whole shichen before he fell asleep right there at his table, with his head pillowed on his folded arms.
From the young master’s maudlin ramblings, the Gharial gleaned that he was a cultivator, albeit one who had been betrayed, beaten, and denounced as unrighteous; one who had lost everything – his family, his sect, his self-respect, everything, right down to his spiritual sword. He felt utterly alone, aggrieved, and at odds with the entire cultivation world. He possessed a hair-trigger temper and would lash out ferociously at any slight, real or imagined, but beneath all his fury and bitterness lay a fathomless reservoir of grief that threatened to swallow him whole.
He was, in other words, utterly and entirely perfect.
The Gharial had draped the boy’s arm across her shoulders, lugged him up the inn’s rickety staircase, and rolled him into a bed, noticing all the while how his body maintained a desperate tension even when sodden with alcohol. It was as if he was only holding himself together, barely, through sheer force of will.
She expected to be kept awake that night, and she was, but not by the young man’s drunken snoring. Instead, the inn echoed with his miserable moans and cries; he was haunted even in his dreams by some horror from his past that goaded him unceasingly, sharper than any knife and more ferocious than any whip. He dragged himself out of bed every morning looking even worse than he had the night before, yet he hung on grimly from one day to the next, seemingly determined to survive on nothing but liquor, spite, and the occasional bowl of soup.
The Gharial put on a few maternal airs – a word of sympathy here, a flash of warmth there – and set herself to the work of breaking him.
Even when drunk, the young man remained rather cagey, especially when their talk turned to his origins. Eventually, however, he let slip that he’d recently passed through Lanling, which made the Gharial’s ears prick right up. It wasn’t spoken of openly, but everybody had heard the whispers: if you were willing to pay, and pay handsomely, you could find pretty much anything you wanted in the back alleys of Lanling – up to and including the secrets of demonic cultivation.
The guild members had all wondered about that, in the first year or two after the Siege of the Burial Mounds – Lanling was a fair distance from Yiling, after all. The mystery had eventually been solved by one of the Centipede’s many trading contacts, who informed him that Jin Guangshan had impounded the Patriarch’s personal effects in the wake of his bloody downfall, claiming them as xuè zhài for his slain son and daughter-in-law.
Emboldened, the Centipede made his own journey to Lanling. Upon his return, he smoothed down the obnoxiously bright golden brocade of his new robes and pompously assured the other guild members that both Jin-zongzhu and his newly-legitimized son, Lianfang-zun, were eminently reasonable men, quite pragmatic when it came to matters of money and power. They were willing to turn a blind eye to various unorthodox practices, the Centipede reported, so long as they didn’t draw too much attention, and Lianfang-zun was even amenable to letting a select few get a glimpse of the Yiling Patriarch’s papers, provided the price was right. All in all, the Centipede concluded, the Jin Sect leaders were a refreshing contrast to their stiff-necked, stuck-up counterparts among the Lan and Nie.
(None of them – not the Centipede, nor even the Zhenniao – ever mentioned the Jiang unless they absolutely had to.)
In any case, the Gharial had practically licked her chops over the wayward boy.
Unfortunately, it made her careless. She made the mistake of bragging about her new prospect to the Toad, and the Toad – that little shit – had promptly carried her tale to the Centipede, who was always remarkably quick to muscle in and throw his weight around when there was any kind of prize to be claimed. The Centipede had swooped down on the boy shortly thereafter, all avuncular concern and lingering pats on his shoulder, and the young man had practically melted under his ministrations.
The Gharial silently ground her teeth when the Centipede whisked the boy away and installed him in his own household, even going so far as to claim him as a long-lost relative. She ground them harder when the Centipede brought the boy before the Zhenniao (in remarkably short order, too) and presented him as a possible candidate for membership in the guild.
The Gharial only found out later how the young man had earned his place. He might not have possessed a sword or an instrument, but he did have several other interesting and useful things squirreled away in a ragged qiankun pouch. During the Zhenniao’s evaluation, he was able to demonstrate how altering certain radicals could negate the beneficent effects of protective talismans, such that they began generating resentful energy instead. He produced a tattered flag covered in atrocious handwriting, painted with sigils that would attract, rather than banish, evil spirits. Best of all, he had some kind of compass-like device – blackened and fire-damaged, though it still worked like a charm – that could point the bearer towards any nearby sources of resentful energy. The Zhenniao’s eyes had gleamed covetously at the sight of it, and the boy had been inducted into the guild soon afterwards, choosing the Spider for his namesake.
Well. The Centipede could preen and strut about all he wanted, but the Gharial had found the Spider first. She secretly considered him a bit of a feather in her cap. She’d been proud of him.
Until now, of course.
***
The demonic cultivators stared at the Spider with confusion and hatred as he lifted his chin like a challenge and began making his way towards the Zhenniao. The Centipede whined again, and squirmed frantically, but the young man stalked past without sparing him a single glance.
When he reached the front of the room, the Spider set his shoulders and faced the Zhenniao squarely.
“Remove your veil,” the Zhenniao commanded, and the boy reached behind his head to untie the strings of his face covering. The black fabric fluttered down to the floor.
“Tch,” said the Zhenniao scornfully, scanning his soft features and round, rosy cheeks. “Well, I knew the Centipede had a weakness for pretty little sluts, but I suppose now everyone can see for themselves why he wanted you so badly.”
At these words, the boy’s face twisted into a vitriolic sneer, and the Zhenniao’s forehead suddenly creased into a narrow, suspicious frown.
She leaned forward into the silence and scrutinized the Spider’s features as the boy glared right back at her, fearlessly. Another excruciating moment passed as the Zhenniao examined the Spider’s face with growing intensity, staring into the boy’s eyes – large, adularescent gray eyes – as if intending to peer straight through to the back of his head. Eventually, the Zhenniao stepped back and straightened up, tension now evident in every muscle of her body.
“Are you wearing a glamour?” the Zhenniao demanded, and another tremor shook the demonic cultivators, like a chill wind rattling through a dry field.
The boy bared his teeth in a grin, and she struck him once, hard, across the face. The Spider didn’t even wince.
“Take it off, at once,” the Zhenniao ordered. Two angry little spots of color flamed high on her cheeks.
Seeing this, the boy threw her another arrogant smirk and reached up again, this time feeling behind his ear and down the line of his jaw.
The guild members muttered with agitation as the boy carefully peeled away a layer of some thin, flexible material that covered his entire face like a close-fitting mask. Removing the gauze seemed to break some kind of enchantment; it sparked wildly as the spell on it burned out and faded from existence. The Spider shook the smoldering scraps carelessly from his fingers as his true features suddenly came into focus.
Everything about the boy’s face that had been sweet and gentle and pleasing was now honed to a razor-sharp beauty. Those startling gray eyes now gleamed fiercely beneath slashing black brows, drawn down in a scowl over a proud, aquiline nose. The keen angles of his jaw and chin and cheekbones emerged, standing in stark contrast to his supple, expressive mouth – though his lips were currently pressed into a thin line of utmost disdain.
A babble of angry cries rose from the demonic cultivators, until the Zhenniao cut them off with a sharp gesture.
“Who are you, truly, besides a liar and a betrayer?”
“Say that again, if you dare,” the boy spat back, hot and fierce. “I haven’t told a single falsehood, not one, and I won’t let the likes of you insult my honor.”
“You said you were a disgraced cultivator,” the Zhenniao hissed, and the boy raised his chin haughtily.
“I’ve been called such.”
“You said your family had all been killed!”
“They were.”
“You said you had been struck with your own Sect’s Discipline Whip!”
“I was.”
“You said you’d lost everything, that you’d been abandoned by the person you loved best in the world,” she cried furiously, and the boy’s eyes flashed with hatred.
“I was!”
The Zhenniao gritted her teeth, and tendrils of resentful energy rose around her, writhing with agitation. By this point, the other demonic cultivators were pressed all the way back against the cellar walls, seemingly unsure as to which of the two they were cowering from.
“Who are you, you damnable boy?”
He laughed right in her face, high and mocking and devoid of humor.
“Do you think yourself worthy to speak to me, woman? You and your lot are nothing, just a bunch of vicious, ignorant fools, fucking with things you’re too stupid to understand.”
She flung at coil of resentful energy towards him, but despite its killing speed, the boy was far quicker. He dodged the attack with insulting ease, leaping away with the lightness of a bird in flight. As his body spun through the air, his long tapering fingers flew through a complicated series of hand-seals faster than the eye could follow.
Over the thrumming and muttering of resentful energy came a sudden crashing noise, as of splintering wood. The guild members looked up just in time to see a slender blade slice through the hinges of the trap-door overhead; it fell open with a loud bang and an ornate sword came swooping down through the hole. It came to hover in front of the boy, eager as a hunting-dog summoned to the chase, and he sighed with almost voluptuous pleasure as he plucked it from the air. The silver-ornamented snakeskin hilt settled into his hand as if it had been shaped specifically for it.
“You said your spiritual sword had been taken from you,” the Zhenniao shrieked, sounding almost indignant.
“It was,” the boy said. “You should have asked if I ever got it back.”
The sword shone coldly in his grasp now, its blade limned with an indigo gleam so dark that it strained the eye.
“And then,” he added, just as coldly, “you should have asked what I did to the Wen-dogs that took it from me.”
“Oh shit,” blurted the Toad, from the corner where he was crouched behind an old crate. “Lady Zhenniao, that’s – that sword is Sandu.”
“Fucking finally somebody gets it,” the boy said, his voice dripping with contempt. “I am Jiang Cheng, courtesy Wanyin, Sect Leader of Yunmeng Jiang, and you are all – fucking – dead.”