Inside the abandoned tea shack, the heat plunged like a stone dropped down a flooded mine shaft.
Within ten heartbeats, the puddle of tea and thawed mud on the floor froze solid. That turned into a gray mirror of cloudy ice.
A web of needle-like frost raced up the rotting pine pillars, crackling like dry parchment as it coated the timber walls in white rime.
The two uninjured bandits collapsed onto their stomachs, their teeth chattering so wildly that flecks of bloody foam sprayed from their lips.
“It’s here...” the spearman whimpered, clawing at his chest with purple, frostbitten fingers. “The grandmother of the mountain is here...”
Even the burly leader had forgotten the agony of his crushed collarbone.
He lay curled against the broken clay stove. His eyes were wide and vacant with primal terror.
Lu Chen stood motionless in the center of the earthen floor.
The surrounding cold was no longer natural alpine weather.
It was a choking, dense Yin-chill that bypassed clothing entirely, seeking out the marrow of living bones to snuff out human Yang life-force.
Against his ribs, the Asura Crucible roared in response.
His blood heat spiked from forty-eight to forty-nine degrees, his heart pumping thick, white-hot blood through his blood network.
Across his neck and forearms, the charcoal melted rock waste-veins flared with a dull reddish glow beneath his slate-gray skin.
Yet along with the freezing air came a heavy, intoxicating psychic weight.
A faint smell of burnt sandalwood and sweet plum wine drifted through the broken doorway, thick enough to coat his tongue with grease.
In the corners of his vision, the shadows along the timber walls began to warp.
He saw the fluttering hems of red silk skirts. He heard the soft, wet giggle of a young woman whispering into his left ear.
Come into the snow, traveler...
The bridal bed is cold without a husband...
Lu Chen kept his gaze steady, ignoring the siren whisper.
He reached into his left sleeve and drew out the four-inch unpolished iron bone awl.
Without breaking his rhythm, he pressed the square iron point against the thick callous of his left palm and drove it downward half an inch.
Squelch.
A sharp, searing spike of pure physical pain lanced through his median nerve, exploding in his forebrain like a flash of lightning.
Dark crimson blood welled around the cold iron shank, sizzling as it hit the frozen air.
The whispering voice shrieked in frustration and dissolved into the howling wind.
“Flesh breathes; blood resists; anchor checked.”
Lu Chen muttered the words under his breath, his voice steady as iron.
The reality seam locked back into place.
The amber tracking data box shattered and faded from his vision.
He pulled the bone awl from his palm, wiped the hot blood across his trousers. Then he slid the tool back into his sleeve.
The puncture wound on his palm was already heat-sealing shut. It was sealed by the extreme heat of his blood.
Outside, the mountain canyon went dead silent.
The roaring blizzard wind ceased in an instant, cut off as cleanly as if cut by a butcher’s cleaver.
In the unnatural empty pocket, sound carried across the limestone cliffs with razor sharpness.
Weee-eee-aaah!
The high-pitched wail of a brass suona horn tore through the frozen fog, splitting the night air with a jagged, sorrowful screech.
It wasn’t a tune of joy.
It was a wedding song played with the tempo and rhythm of a funeral dirge. He dragged its high notes out until they sounded like a dying woman weeping into silk.
CLANG!
A heavy brass gong struck once. Its deep ring shook through the flat stone slabs beneath Lu Chen’s boots.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Dull, hollow drumbeats followed, rhythmic and wet, like wooden mallets pounding against stretched pig hide.
“The coins! Throw the coins!” the wounded bandit leader screamed, dragging himself across the floor toward the doorway.
The axeman was already wildly biting the tip of his own thumb until blood spurted over his knuckles.
He smeared the fresh crimson fluid across nine discs of yellow funeral paper. He muttered broken prayers with every breath.
“Bride takes the road, mortal yields the track!” the axeman chanted, his voice cracking into high hysterics. “Bride drinks the wine, spare the living soul!”
He hurled the bloodied paper money through the broken doorframe into the snow.
The yellow discs fluttered into the fog, disappearing into the white darkness.
Lu Chen walked past the begging on their knees bandits, stepped across the frozen threshold. Then he emerged onto the open mountain path.
The world outside was sunk in a thick, curdled fog that glowed with a faint, sickly scarlet soft glow.
The trail here had been carved during the height of the Great Yong Dynasty—a narrow path of ancient limestone slabs laid along the edge of the deep pit.
On the left was a sheer rock wall rising into the clouds. On the right was a drop of three thousand feet into the mist-choked canyon.
The stone slabs were swept clean of snow by an unseen force, black and slick with glaze ice.
On either side of the paved slabs, the fresh mountain snow lay three feet deep, powdery and undisturbed.
The warning box flickered against the crimson fog.
Lu Chen planted his boots firmly in the center of the limestone slabs.
He didn’t touch the snowdrifts on either flank.
Twenty paces ahead, through the churning scarlet mist, the source of the lanterns became visible.
Two pairs of crimson paper lanterns floated four feet off the ground. It glowed with cold, green-tinged flames that cast long, dancing shadows across the crags.
Beneath the lanterns marched the musicians.
Four figures clad in pleated mourning robes of raw, unwhitened hemp, blowing into long brass suona horns with sunken, gray cheeks.
Their eyes were closed. Their feet didn’t touch the stone.
Behind the musicians came the sedan.
It was a huge palanquin, carved from lacquered cedar and draped in layers of heavy scarlet silk that dripped with fresh, wet moisture.
The silk curtains were stitched with golden phoenixes. But the phoenixes had human skulls for heads and weeping eyes sewn with black thread.
Carrying the sedan were eight bearers.
They weren’t living men, nor were they rotting corpses.
They were life-sized paper dolls.
Their bodies were fashioned from split bamboo ribs covered in painted white parchment, dressed in bright green and red burial jackets.
On their flat, circular paper faces, two crimson circles were painted as cheeks, and wide, jagged mouths were curved upward into eternal, painted grins.
Their jointed paper legs moved in perfect, silent all at once.
The heavy crimson sedan hovered six inches above the limestone trail, carried forward without a single creak of wood or strain of rope.
The suona horns wailed louder, the brass bells shaking so wildly that loose pebbles tumbled down the limestone cliff into the gorge.
The procession was moving straight down the center of the stone path.
Towards the tea shack.
Towards Lu Chen.
The air grew so cold that the sweat on Lu Chen’s eyebrows froze into white needles of frost.
The eight paper-doll bearers fixed their painted, unblinking eyes directly upon him.
Their painted red mouths didn’t move. But a chorus of hollow, rustling voices echoed from their hollow paper bellies.
“A guest stands on the road...”
“The bride needs a friend...”
Lu Chen reached back with his right hand and drew the twelve-pound notched ox-bone cleaver.
The heavy forged iron blade emerged from its leather sheath with a clean, metal rasp.
He rested the flat spine against his shoulder, his fire stoking white-hot within his ribs.
Across his neck and arms, the black glass melted rock waste-veins pulsed like molten embers in the dark.
“I’m standing on the stones,” Lu Chen said quietly into the wailing fog.
The procession didn’t halt.
The crimson bridal sedan glided forward across the path. He closed the distance ten paces at a time as frost exploded beneath its weightless frame.
Ten paces ahead, the eight paper bearers turned their painted faces toward him all at once, their red-slit mouths tearing wider as the smell of fresh blood reached them.