The central council pavilion beneath the ancient spirit willow was lit up by the soft, honey-colored light of hanging paper lanterns. Fragrant mountain night breezes rustled through the massive emerald canopy overhead. He carried the clean, herbal scent of flowering healing roots and moist loam.
Kneeling upon the polished cedar floorboards, eight elite scouts of the Blood Sea Demonic Sect were shaking so wildly that their teeth clicked like wooden dice in a leather cup.
Their shadow-leech robes were damp with cold sweat, their cursed bone daggers and compasses taken away. Their limbs released from the blue jelly cocoons. Yet not one of them dared make a sudden move. Across the terrace railing, resting on his massive black glass paws, lay Xiao Hei. The wolf king’s ruby eyes were fixed on the back of Deacon Xue San’s neck with cold, hungry calm distance, a low, deep rumble shaking deep within his chest.
Xue San pressed his palms against the cedar boards. His heart hammered against his ribs in wild, panicked rhythms.
In the Blood Sea Demonic Sect, the protocol for captured spies was well established. First came the Bone-Flaying Chisels, peeling the skin from the hands and feet to expose the raw spirit veins. Then came the Corpse-Worm Cruet, where flesh-burrowing parasites were poured into the ears to gnaw at the spiritual sea until the prisoner screamed out every secret he had ever known. Finally, the broken shell was tossed into the offering pits to be rendered into blood-oil.
Xue San closed his eyes, bracing his soul for the first blow of the flaying knife. He had swallowed a cyanide pill beneath his molar fifteen years ago for this very eventuality. Only to find, with sinking horror, that the blue slime had dissolved the poison capsule from his jaw hours ago during the jelly wrap.
Clink.
The gentle, musical chime of fine china meeting polished wood broke the terrifying silence.
Xue San flinched, opening his eyes.
There was no headsman standing above him with iron pincers. There were no blood-vats or iron racks.
Instead, kneeling gracefully across a low sandalwood table was Su Ling’er. Her vermilion and cream robes draped around her like lotus petals, her three snowy fox tails resting tidily against the floorboards. With delicate, poised fingers, she lifted a heavy copper kettle. She poured steaming pale-amber liquid into eight white baked-clay teacups.
A crisp, sweet aroma of sun-dried peach leaves, wild mountain mint, and honeyed spring water rose with the steam, banishing the metal tang of fear from the terrace.
Beside the tea set sat a wide, woven bamboo steamer. Su Ling’er lifted the lid, unleashing a cloud of fragrant, yeasty vapor that revealed a dozen plump, snow-white steamed vegetable buns, their soft dough stuffed with braised wild cabbage, diced shiitake mushrooms, and savory mountain tofu.
Sitting upon a plush velvet cushion at the center of the table was Lin Xiao. The two-foot-wide sapphire slime gave a cheerful, rubbery wiggle, his curved white eyes crinkling into friendly crescents.
“Drink up while it’s hot, everyone,” Lin Xiao’s mental voice rang warmly in their minds, carrying the easygoing comfort of an elder brother inviting guests in out of the rain. “You’ve been sneaking through damp ravines for hours. Then you hung upside-down in the cold bamboo grove. If you don’t warm up your stomachs, you’ll catch a terrible chest chill.”
Xue San stared at the steaming teacup sitting two inches from his shaking fingers. His mind felt as if it were spinning across a bottomless deep pit.
“A trap,” Xue San’s inner voice screamed in terror. “It’s the Soul-Melting Corpse Broth! They brew it with sweet herbs to mask the scent of five-poison rot! The moment I drink, my intestines will dissolve into red grease!”
Beside him, the younger scout, Gu She, was in a far worse state. The young student had grown up as an orphaned street urchin in the southern commanderies before being sold to the Blood Sea Sect at age ten. For eight years, he had eaten only rancid corpse-broth and raw beast meat sprinkled with blood-salts to fuel his demonic arts. His stomach had been cramping painfully from hunger and terror since noon.
The sweet, rich scent of the steamed vegetable buns drifting from the bamboo basket was a painful torment.
“Drink, little brother,” Su Ling’er encouraged gently, her amber fox eyes softening with genuine pity. “Our Master personally boiled the kettle. There’s no poison in this hall.”
Gu She looked at Xue San, then at the steaming cup, his breath ragged. In his exhausted, freezing state, the terror of immediate execution seemed almost preferable to this slow, psychological torture.
“If I’m to die... Let me die with a warm throat,” Gu She whimpered.
With trembling hands, the young scout snatched the white fine china cup and brought it to his lips, gulping down the steaming amber tea in three desperate swallows.
Xue San shut his eyes, bracing for Gu She’s chest to burst open in a fountain of corrupted black blood.
Five seconds passed.
Ten seconds.
Gu She didn’t scream. His chest didn’t explode.
Instead, the young scout’s pale, waxy face flushed with a healthy, vibrant rosiness. The soothing, honeyed warmth of the peach leaves flowed down his throat like a river of gentle light, spreading into his frozen stomach and streaming outward through his stiff spirit veins. For the first time in eight years, the dull, gnawing pain in his spleen—the unending torment of demonic blood parasites—subsided into a gentle, painless calm.
Gu She looked down at his empty cup, then reached forward with shaking claws, grabbed a steaming vegetable bun, and shoved half of it into his mouth.
The soft, pillowy dough gave way to savory braised mushrooms, tender cabbage, and the warm richness of sesame-toasted tofu. The flavor was so pure, so wholesome, and so utterly devoid of the copper stench of demonic blood that Gu She choked on a sob.
He swallowed the mouthful, dropped his face into his calloused hands, and burst into uncontrollable, racking sobs, his tears dripping onto the cedar boards.
“It’s... It’s just tea...” Gu She cried, his shoulders heaving. “It’s just hot tea and buns... They didn’t poison us... They gave us food...”
Xue San watched his subordinate weeping on the floorboards, his own rigid demonic worldview shattering into brittle splinters.
In the Blood Sea Sect, weakness was punished by public dismemberment. Failure meant being fed to corpse beetles. Yet here, in the heart of the “demon beast den,” a terrifying sovereign entity of boundless power was watching them with patient, kindly eyes, nudging the bamboo steamer closer with a gentle blue slime arm.
“Take your time, son,” Lin Xiao said softly, his voice full of warmth. “Eat another bun. When a person is scared and starving, the brain plays awful tricks. Eat your fill, and then we can talk.”
Xue San slowly reached out with his own trembling fingers, lifting his teacup. He took a hesitant sip.
The warm, honeyed peach liquid washed over his tongue. It was like stepping from a freezing, pitch-black dungeon into the gentle morning sunshine. The cold malice that had gripped his heart for twenty years seemed suddenly small, pathetic, and utterly exhausted.
A heavy tear rolled down Xue San’s scarred cheek. He set the cup down, placed both palms flat against the wood. Then he knocked his forehead against the floorboards with a dull, hollow thud.
“Grand Sovereign...” Xue San choked out, his voice cracked with guilt. “We’re unworthy of this hospitality. We came as thieves and murderers to mark your home for slaughter.”
“I know why you came,” Lin Xiao replied calmly, bobbing gently on his velvet cushion. “You carry blood-bright light needles to guide an army. Now tell me: who sent you, how many are coming, and what are they after?”
Xue San didn’t hesitate. The fanatical loyalty drilled into him through years of blood-cult terror had dissolved fully under the warmth of a single cup of tea.
“It’s Elder Han Gu,” Xue San confessed, his voice shaking with urgency. “He has mobilized everything. In the underground strongholds across the southern barrens, he has spent three years corrupting the wild beasts with demonic blood-parasite crystals. An army of one hundred thousand corrupted beasts—armored rhinos, razor-tusk boars, venom apes, and iron-bone wolves—stands poised at the southern ridge!”
Su Ling’er’s fox ears twitched, her amber eyes widening. “One hundred thousand?”
“Yes, Chief Minister!” Xue San cried, eager to reveal every detail to atone for his trespass. “Han Gu has unearthed the old family treasure of our sect: the Nine-Ghost Blood Soul Cauldron! He intends to drive the beast horde into this valley, butcher every living creature—beast, human, and spirit—and refine their blood and souls into the cooking pot to break through into the mid-Nascent Soul realm!”
Xiao Hei let out a low, menacing growl that rattled the teacups on the table, his black glass fur bristling with murderous intent.
Lin Xiao, however, didn’t panic. He extended a slime arm, casually picking up a sesame bun and taking a contemplative bite.
“A hundred thousand beasts, driven by parasite crystals,” Lin Xiao mused, his mind processing the logistics. “And a five-hundred-foot bronze cooking pot meant to boil everything into red soup. That’s a terrible waste of good livestock, and bronze cooking pots are meant for making hotpot, not killing people.”
Lin Xiao turned his curved eyes back toward the trembling scouts.
“You eight have eaten our tea and buns,” Lin Xiao said, his tone turning crisp and decisive. “Which means you’re under the protection of the Myriad Spirit Safe hall. But that demonic elder wants to ruin our valley. Are you willing to help us stop him?”
Xue San and the seven scouts pressed their heads against the floorboards all at once.
“We’ll do anything, Sovereign!” Xue San cried. “Command us, and we shall obey!”