Chapter 5

The handful of youths over there were green hands too, fresh out of the nest, every face taut with strain, and yet they held to their positions with strict discipline, guarding the Mo Residence and papering both the inside and outside of the hall thick with Exorcism Talismans. The servant A Tong had already been carried into the hall, and Lan Sizhui, his left hand at the man's wrist taking his pulse, his right pressed to the small of Mo Lady's back, could not tend to either side in time and was at his wits' end when, all of a sudden, A Tong scrambled up off the floor.

A Ding let out a cry. 'A Tong, you're awake!'

Before joy could so much as touch her face, she saw A Tong lift his left hand and clamp it around his own throat.

At the sight, Lan Sizhui struck three quick blows in succession across several of his acupoints. Wei Wuxian knew that, refined as these Lan men looked, there was nothing refined about the strength in their arms; a striking like that would leave anyone instantly unable to move. Yet A Tong seemed not to feel it at all, his left hand clenching tighter and tighter, his expression growing ever more contorted with agony. Lan Jingyi went to pry the left hand loose, only to find it like prying at a knot of iron, immovable by a hair. In no time at all there came a sharp crack, and A Tong's head lolled aslant, the hand at last releasing its grip. But the bones of his neck were already broken.

Before the eyes of the whole crowd, he had strangled himself to death with his own hand.

Seeing this, A Ding said in a trembling voice, '...A ghost! There's an unseen ghost here, and it made A Tong strangle himself to death!'

Her voice was thin and shrill, the cadence of it desolate enough to raise the hair on every neck, and at once the others believed her. Wei Wuxian's judgment, however, ran in exactly the opposite direction: it was no Fierce Ghost.

He had looked over the Exorcism Talismans these youths had chosen, all of the spirit-repelling sort, pasted so densely across the Eastern Hall that not a breath of air could pass; had it truly been a ghost, the moment it entered the Eastern Hall the talismans would have ignited of their own accord into green fire, rather than sitting as they did now, utterly still.

It was not that these young friends were slow to react, but that the thing which had come was simply too savage. The cultivation world held to a strict standard for the term 'Fierce Ghost': one killing a month, three months of unbroken haunting, and a thing could already be classed as one. Wei Wuxian had set that standard himself, and likely it was in use still. He was the master of dealing with such things, and by his reckoning, one killing every seven days already marked a Fierce Ghost that haunted with unusual frequency. Yet this thing had taken three lives, and at intervals so short that even a renowned cultivator would be hard pressed to devise a counter on the spot, let alone a band of juniors barely embarked on their first hunts.

He was thinking just this when the firelight flickered and a gust of cold, foul wind swept through. Throughout the whole courtyard and the Eastern Hall, every lantern and candle flame went out together, all at once.

In the instant the lights died, screams rose on every side, men and women shoving and jostling, falling and fleeing. Lan Jingyi shouted, 'Stand where you are, don't run wild! Whoever runs, I'll seize!'

This was no idle scaremongering. To make mischief under cover of dark, to fish in troubled waters, is the very nature of evil spirits; the more one wails and runs and flails, the easier it is to draw calamity onto oneself without ever knowing. To be cut off alone, or to lose one's nerve and order, is exceedingly dangerous at such a time. But every soul there was frightened out of its wits, and how were they to hear clearly, or to take the words to heart? In no time at all the Eastern Hall fell quiet, with nothing left but faint breathing and the small, choked sounds of weeping. There were likely few enough of them remaining.

In the darkness, a tongue of fire flared up abruptly: Lan Sizhui had kindled a Bright Flame Talisman.

The flame of a Bright Flame Talisman cannot be blown out by foul wind freighted with Malevolent Qi, and holding the burning talisman he relit the candles, while the few remaining youths went to calm the others. By that firelight, Wei Wuxian glanced offhandedly at his wrist and saw another wound had closed.

And in that glance, he abruptly noticed the count of the wounds was wrong.

Originally, on each of his wrists, left and right, there had been two wounds. Mo Ziyuan died, and one closed; Mo Ziyuan's father died, and another; the servant A Tong died, and another still. By that reckoning there should have been three closed, leaving only the last wound, the deepest in its cut and the deepest in its hatred.

But now his wrists were empty, bare, not a single mark remaining.

Wei Wuxian was certain that among the targets of Mo Xuanyu's revenge, Mo Lady could not be absent. That longest, deepest wound had been kept for her. And yet it, too, had vanished.

Had Mo Xuanyu suddenly let go, abandoned his rancor? That was impossible. His soul had long since been offered up as the price for summoning Wei Wuxian. For that wound to close, Mo Lady would have to be dead.

His gaze slid slowly away, coming to rest on Mo Lady, but lately woken, hemmed in by the crowd at the center, her face white as paper.

Unless she was already a dead woman.

Wei Wuxian could be sure of it: something had already fastened itself onto Mo Lady. And if that something was not a soul-body, then what in the world could it be?

Suddenly A Ding cried out, 'The hand... the hand, A Tong's left hand!'

Lan Sizhui moved the Bright Flame Talisman above A Tong's corpse. Sure enough, his left hand too had vanished.

The left hand!

In a flash like flint on steel, everything before Wei Wuxian's eyes turned bright as snow: the thing that haunted, the vanished left arms, drawn into a single line. He suddenly burst out laughing. Lan Jingyi said angrily, 'This fool, still able to laugh at a time like this!' But then again, he thought, since the man was a fool to begin with, what was the use of holding it against him?

Wei Wuxian, however, caught hold of his sleeve and shook his head. 'No, no!'

Irritably, Lan Jingyi tried to pull his sleeve back. 'No what? Not a fool? Stop your nonsense. No one has time for you.'

Wei Wuxian pointed at the corpses of Mo's father and A Tong on the floor. 'These aren't them.'

Lan Sizhui checked Lan Jingyi, who was about to flare up, and asked, 'You say these aren't them. What do you mean by that?'

Wei Wuxian said gravely, 'This one isn't Mo Ziyuan's father, and that one isn't A Tong either.'

On that powdered and painted face of his, the graver the look, the more it convinced one that he really was unwell. Yet spoken in the dim, wavering candlelight, the words sent a chill crawling along the spine. Lan Sizhui was taken aback, and could not help pressing, 'Why?'

Wei Wuxian said with pride, 'The hands. They aren't left-handed, you see. They always used the right when they hit me. That much I do know.'

Lan Jingyi, beyond all forbearance, spat, 'What is there to be proud of? Listen to you, so pleased with yourself!'

But Lan Sizhui broke into a faint cold sweat. Casting his mind back: A Tong, strangling himself, had used his left hand. And Mo Lady's husband, when he had thrust his wife to the ground, had also used his left hand.

Yet that day, when Mo Xuanyu made his scene in the Eastern Hall, those two had scrambled to grab and drive him out, and both had habitually used the right. Surely it could not be that both men had suddenly turned left-handed in the moments before their deaths.

Though the cause of it eluded him, if one wished to uncover what thing was doing the haunting, one would have to begin from the 'left hand.' Working this through, Lan Sizhui felt a flicker of alarm and doubt, glanced at Wei Wuxian, and could not help thinking: 'For him to come out with that, all at once, it really is... hardly a coincidence.'

Wei Wuxian only kept up his shameless grin. He knew the hint had been laid on too thick, but there was no help for it. Luckily Lan Sizhui did not pursue it, thinking, 'However it is, since this Master Mo is willing to give me a warning, he likely bears no ill intent.' And so he drew his eyes off the man, swept past A Ding, who had just wept herself into a faint, and let them settle on Mo Lady.

His gaze traveled down from that face of hers, all the way to her two hands. Her arms hung straight at her sides, the greater part hidden in her sleeves, only the smaller part of the fingers showing. The fingers of the right hand were snow-white, slender, the very hands of a woman cosseted in comfort and unburdened by labor.

And yet the fingers of her left hand were somewhat longer than those of the right, and somewhat thicker. The knuckles curled, charged with force.

This was no hand that ought to grow on a woman at all — it was plainly the hand of a man!

Lan Sizhui shouted, 'Hold her down!'

Several of the youths had already pinned Mo Lady, and Lan Sizhui, with a murmured 'Forgive me,' turned his hand to bring an Exorcism Talisman down upon her, when Mo Lady's left hand twisted round at an impossible angle and clawed for his throat.

For a living person's arm to twist so, the bone would have to be snapped. And her strike was lightning quick, the throat all but in her grasp. At that instant Lan Jingyi gave a yelp and flung himself in front of Lan Sizhui, taking the grasping hand in his stead.

In a flash of firelight, the moment that arm seized Lan Jingyi's shoulder, clusters of green flame leapt up along it and the five fingers sprang open at once. Lan Sizhui had escaped a calamity, and was just about to thank Lan Jingyi for the body he'd thrown into the breach, when he saw that half of the latter's Blue Clan Uniform had been burnt to ash, leaving him in a thoroughly sorry state. Stripping off the other surviving half, Lan Jingyi rounded on him and cursed in a fury, 'What did you kick me for, you mad wretch, are you trying to get me killed?!'

Wei Wuxian fled with his head in his hands. 'I didn't kick you!'

He had most certainly kicked him. The inner side of a Blue Clan Uniform's outer robe was embroidered all over, in fine thread of the same color, with dense incantations of true power, possessed of a marvelous protective, life-saving virtue. But against something this formidable, a single use rendered it void. In the press of the moment, all he could do was kick Lan Jingyi to make him shield Lan Sizhui's throat with his own body. Lan Jingyi was still cursing when Mo Lady toppled to the floor, the flesh of her face sucked away until only a thin layer of skin clung to a skull. The man's arm that did not belong to her dropped from her left shoulder, the five fingers still flexing and curling freely, as if working the joints loose, the throb of blood and the pulse of the veins along it perfectly plain to see.

This thing was the evil thing the Soul-Calling Banner had called over.

To be dismembered, hacked limb from limb, is precisely the standard form of a wretched death — a touch more dignified than the manner of Wei Wuxian's own death, though not by very much. Unlike one ground to powder, a severed limb takes on a portion of the dead one's rancor, longing to return to the rest of the body, longing to die whole; and so it will scheme by every means to find the body's other parts. Should it find them, perhaps it will be satisfied at last and rest; perhaps it will only rage the harder. And should it fail to find them, then this limb can only settle for second best.

And how does it settle for second best? It makes do with a living person's body.

Just as this left hand did: it devours a living person's left hand and takes its place, and once it has drained that living person of essence and breath and blood and flesh, it casts the body aside and goes on seeking the next host vessel, until it has gathered all the other parts of its corpse.

The instant this arm fastened to a body, the one it parasitized died on the spot; yet until the flesh of the whole body had been sucked dry, that one could still walk about as ever under its control, seeming to live still. After it was summoned, the first vessel it sought out was Mo Ziyuan. The second vessel was Mo Ziyuan's father. When Mo Lady had ordered her husband to get out, he had, against all his custom, struck back and shoved her; Wei Wuxian had supposed at first that this was a man grieving for his son, weary too of his wife's overbearing ways. But thinking on it now, that had been nothing like the bearing proper to a father who had just lost his son. It had not been the numbness of a heart turned to ash, but a deathly stillness — the silence of the dead.

The third vessel was A Tong. The fourth vessel was Mo Lady. Taking advantage of the confusion just now when the lights died, the ghost hand had shifted onto her. And in the moment Mo Lady perished, the last wound on Wei Wuxian's wrist had vanished along with her.

Seeing that the Exorcism Talismans were of no use, while their robes were, the Lan youths together loosed their outer garments and flung them out, smothering the left hand, layer upon layer wrapping it like a thick white cocoon. A moment later this bundle of white robes whooshed into flame, green fire blazing uncannily toward the sky. It worked for a time, but before long the uniforms would burn away and the hand would break out of the embers all the same. While no one was watching, Wei Wuxian made straight for the West Courtyard.

The Walking Corpses the youths had captured stood in silence in the courtyard, ten of them at least. On the ground was drawn the incantation that sealed them, and Wei Wuxian kicked one of its characters, breaking the whole array, then clapped his hands twice. The Walking Corpses shuddered, the whites of their eyes rolling up all at once, as though startled awake by a clap of thunder.

Wei Wuxian said, 'Up. Time to work!'

In driving corpse-puppets he had never needed any elaborate incantation or summoning chant; the plainest, most direct command was all it took. The Walking Corpse standing in front shuddered and struggled and edged forward a few steps, and yet, the moment it drew near Wei Wuxian, it seemed to go weak in the legs from fright, and like a living man it sprawled flat on the ground.

Wei Wuxian did not know whether to laugh or cry, and clapped twice more, far more gently this time. But this lot of walking corpses had likely been born in Mo Family Village and died in Mo Family Village, never having seen much of the world; by instinct they would obey the summoner's command, and yet for some reason they were terrified beyond measure of the one who issued it, cowering on the ground, whimpering, not daring to rise.

The more savage the evil thing, the more deftly Wei Wuxian could bend it to his hand. These Walking Corpses had never been trained by him and could not bear his direct control, and he had no materials on hand to fashion some softening implement on the spot — not even a rough makeshift would do. Watching the green flames towering over the East Courtyard slowly dim, Wei Wuxian's mind suddenly lit up.

If one wanted the dead with rancor at its heaviest, savage and venomous, why go out hunting for them at all?

There were such in the Eastern Hall already — and more than one!

He flashed back to the Eastern Courtyard. Lan Sizhui, one stratagem all but spent, had set another in motion: each of them had drawn his long sword and driven it into the ground to form a fence of blades, and the ghost hand was hurling itself about within. Bearing down on the hilts to keep it from breaking out took every ounce of their strength, and they had no leisure at all to mark who came and went. Wei Wuxian strode into the Eastern Hall, hauled up the corpses of Mo Lady and Mo Ziyuan, one in each hand, and rasped low, 'Still won't wake!'

One call uttered, and the souls returned at once!

An instant later the whites of Mo Lady's and Mo Ziyuan's eyes rolled up, and from their mouths came the sharp, shrilling cry peculiar to a fierce ghost whose soul has just returned.

Amid those shrieks, one high, one low, a third corpse trembled its way up off the ground as well, joining in with a thin, faint cry as low as it could be — Mo Lady's husband.

The cries were loud enough, the Malevolent Qi full enough. Well satisfied, Wei Wuxian smiled. 'Recognize that hand out there?'

He gave the command. 'Tear it apart.'

The three of the Mo household swept out like three streaks of black wind, gone in an instant.

That left arm had snapped one of the long swords and was just breaking through the fence. The moment it emerged, the three Malevolent Corpse figures, each missing a left arm, hurled themselves upon it together.

Beyond not daring to defy Wei Wuxian's command, these three of one household bore a fierce rancor toward the thing that had killed them, and vented all their fury on that ghost hand. The chief slayer was beyond doubt Mo Lady; a woman's corpse, once it suffers Corpse Mutation, is often savage past all others. Hair flying loose, the whites of her eyes threaded with blood, her five nails grown several times their length, white foam hissing at the corners of her mouth, her shrieks nearly lifting the roof off, she was utterly mad. Mo Ziyuan kept close at his mother's side, joining her in tearing and biting both at once, while his father followed behind, filling the gaps between the other two corpses' attacks. The few youths who had earlier struggled so hard to hold on were struck dumb.

They had only ever heard of such a clash of Malevolent Corpse figures in miscellaneous books and hearsay, and seeing for the first time with their own eyes a spectacle of flying flesh and blood like this, they gaped and stared, unable to tear their gaze away, feeling only that... it was magnificent!

The three corpses and the one hand fought on in earnest when, suddenly, Mo Ziyuan shrieked and twisted aside. His belly had been raked open by that hand, a few coils of gut spilling free. At the sight, Mo Lady roared without cease, shielding her son behind her, her clawing fiercer still, her nails splitting the air with the menace of steel blades and iron swords. Yet Wei Wuxian could see that she was, little by little, already coming to the edge of what she could withstand.

Three Malevolent Corpse figures, freshly and wrongfully dead, joined in force — and even they could not pin down this one arm!

Wei Wuxian watched the fight with fixed attention, the tip of his tongue curling slightly, a sharp whistle pressed back behind his lips, poised between sounding and silence. Loosed, that whistle could rouse a greater savagery in the Malevolent Corpse figures he drove and might well turn the tide — but then there was no assuring that no one would catch on that he was the one stirring the pot. In the blink of an eye, the hand moved swift as lightning and, hard and unerring, snapped the bones of Mo Lady's neck.

Seeing the three of the Mo household falling back step by step, Wei Wuxian was on the very point of loosing the long whistle pressed beneath his tongue when, at that instant, from beyond the world there came two clear, ringing strokes of a string.

The two notes seemed plucked by an idle hand, ethereal and limpid, carrying a cold, clear chill like wind through the pines. The whole knot of demons and ghouls fighting fiercely in the courtyard heard it and froze, every one of them.

In an instant, the youths of the Gusu Lan Sect looked radiant, as if reborn. Lan Sizhui wiped the blood from his face, looked up sharply, and said, his voice full of joy, 'Hanguang-jun!' The Lan Clan disciples stood tall, their presence renewed.

The moment he heard those two strokes of the qin from beyond the world, Wei Wuxian turned and walked away.

Another note rang out, the pitch slightly higher this time, piercing the clouds and rending the air with a hint of killing intent. The three Malevolent Corpse figures recoiled, clutching their ears with their right hands. Yet, how could the Barrier-Breaking Qin Melody of the Gusu Lan Sect be warded off so easily? Before they had retreated more than a few steps, a faint sound of bursting erupted from within their skulls.

And that left arm, just come through a savage fight, hearing the strings again, abruptly dropped to the ground. Though the fingers still flexed and curled, the arm lay silent and would not rise.

After a brief silence, the youths could not hold back and broke into loud cheers. In those cheers was all the wild joy of having survived a catastrophe; a night to stop the heart had been weathered through, and the family's reinforcements had come at last — even if they were later to be sternly punished on the charge of 'unseemly clamor that shames the house's good name,' they could no longer bring themselves to care.

Waving toward the moon for a while, Lan Sizhui abruptly noticed that someone was missing. He tugged at Lan Jingyi. 'Where's the man?'

Lan Jingyi was wholly given over to his delight. 'Who? Which one?'

Lan Sizhui said, 'That Master Mo.'

Lan Jingyi said, 'Eh? What do you want that madman for? Afraid I'd hit him, no doubt, and run off who knows where.'

'...' Lan Sizhui knew Lan Jingyi to be careless and blunt of heart, never one to think a thing through or harbor much suspicion, and he thought to himself that it would be better to wait for Hanguang-jun to come and tell him of this man and this matter all at once.

Mo Family Village still lay in slumber — though whether a true slumber or a feigned one, who could say. Even with corpses fighting in the east and west courtyards of the Mo Family until the bloody froth flew, no one would crawl out at dead of night or first light to look. Even spectacle must be chosen with care. A spectacle of unbroken screaming is best left unseen.

In a few swift motions Wei Wuxian destroyed every lingering trace of the Soul Offering Formation in Mo Xuanyu's room, wiping out all evidence, and rushed out the door.

As ill luck would have it, the ones who had come were the Lan; and worse than ill luck, the one who had come was Lan Wangji!

This was one of those he had both had dealings with and fought with — best to withdraw, and quickly. Hurrying to find himself a mount, he passed a courtyard where there stood a great millstone, harnessed to a mottled donkey working its lips in an idle chew. Seeing him come tearing up in such a rush, it seemed somewhat taken aback, and, for all the world like a living thing, eyed him askance. Wei Wuxian met its gaze for an instant and was at once won over by the flicker of contempt in its eye.

He went forward, took hold of the rope, and began to haul it out, and the mottled donkey bawled and complained at him loudly. With a mix of coaxing and dragging, by hook and by crook, Wei Wuxian wheedled it onto the road, and over the pale fish-belly white of breaking dawn, off they went clip-clopping up the great highway.