Zhu Li's first morning in Chang'an began with a chicken.
Not a rooster crowing — it was the hen belonging to the guest next door, chasing a servant boy down the corridor at the crack of dawn, feathers and profanity flying in equal measure. He lay on the hard plank bed staring at the ceiling for a while, confirmed he was not in fact having a nightmare about being hunted by poultry, and slowly sat up.
The inn was cheap. The price of cheap was walls thin enough to hear the guest next door tossing, snoring, and conducting his full-scale argument with the hen.
He splashed water on his face and glanced at his blurred reflection in the copper basin. The face in the water was pale, with faint dark circles under the eyes. Same as yesterday. Same as the day before. Same as every day for the past four years.
From his cloth bundle he took out talisman paper and cinnabar and checked them carefully — this was his habit, the way some people count their coins three times before leaving the house. Twelve blank talisman sheets, half a bottle of cinnabar, an ink stick he'd used for four years and still hadn't finished (his master claimed it was made from century-old pine soot mixed with powdered demon bone — he'd always been half-skeptical), and a thumb-sized jade pendant, old and worn.
The pendant was of poor quality, chipped at several corners. The only thing of note was the symbol carved on its back. The same symbol he'd seen on the alley wall last night.
He turned the pendant over, then turned it back, like studying a riddle that would never yield its answer.
Finally he packed everything away, tied the Illusion-Breaking Bell back at his waist, and went downstairs.
The hen had been recaptured. The servant boy crouched behind the counter, plucking its feathers in revenge.
"Breakfast, sir?" the innkeeper called out with a grin.
Zhu Li shook his head and was about to walk out —
"That won't be necessary. It's on me."
The voice came from the doorway.
Zhu Li turned and saw a man sitting at a table in the corner of the hall. Or rather, a man who appeared to have been sitting there for quite some time — there was a cup of tea before him, the brew long gone cold, condensation beaded along the rim. That meant he'd been here at least an hour.
The man looked about thirty-five or thirty-six, dressed in a pale moon-white robe, holding a folding fan. His expression was mild as a temple bodhisattva's — though more human than any bodhisattva, probably because of the smile at the corner of his mouth. It was too composed, that smile. So composed it seemed less like a man waiting for someone and more like a man watching a play.
"Zhu Li?" He stood, snapped the fan shut, and gave a slight bow. "A pleasure. My name is Pei Du. I have a favor to ask."
Zhu Li didn't move.
His first thought wasn't *Who is this man?* but *How does he know my name?*
"How did you —"
"Breakfast first." Pei Du pulled out the opposite chair, his tone like an elder who would brook no refusal but was perfectly gracious about it. "We'll talk while we eat. Chang'an's flatbread is worth trying."
Zhu Li wanted to say he wasn't hungry. But his stomach betrayed him with an audible growl.
He sat down across from Pei Du.
---
The flatbread was, in fact, excellent. Sesame seeds toasted to a golden crisp, stuffed with lamb and pepper, every bite dripping with oil. Zhu Li ate with restraint — one small bite at a time, chewing carefully, as though counting sesame seeds.
Pei Du watched him eat, smiled faintly, and didn't rush him. He drank his tea at leisure.
"I'm the deputy director of a special division under the Court of Judicial Review," Pei Du introduced himself in the tone one might use to discuss the weather. "The division is called the Bureau of Strange Tales. Sounds like some idle post for compiling books and records. In reality — not so idle."
"What does it do?"
"Handles matters that... ordinary methods can't resolve." Pei Du tapped his folding fan lightly on the table. "The sort of thing you saw in that alley last night, for instance."
Zhu Li's hand stopped.
The flatbread in his mouth suddenly lost its savor.
"You've been following me?"
"I wouldn't call it following." Pei Du's smile was perfectly candid. "You came north from the Sword South Circuit, and along the way you performed exorcisms in seven towns — clean talismanic technique, steady hand, solid results, more than sufficient against low-grade haunts. We know all of this."
"..."
"Don't be alarmed. We're not some secret police outfit. It's just that talent like yours — comes with his own ritual tools, works clean, and still young — it's a waste to leave in the countryside."
Zhu Li slowly set down the flatbread. He studied Pei Du, trying to read something more from that jade-smooth face. But Pei Du's expression was like a finely polished bronze mirror — all you saw was what he wanted you to see.
"I didn't come to Chang'an looking for a position —"
"You came looking for your master." Pei Du said it calmly.
Zhu Li's breath caught for an instant.
This man knew far too much.
Pei Du noticed the wariness in his eyes and didn't press further. He simply set the fan on the table and leaned forward slightly. "I don't know where your master is. That much is the truth. But I can tell you this — the things he left you: the talismanic arts, the ink stick, and that bell at your waist — their origins are deeply connected to our division."
His gaze fell on the Illusion-Breaking Bell, and something flickered across his eyes — too quick for Zhu Li to catch what emotion it was.
"Come have a look. Afterward, whether you stay or go — that's your decision."
---
Pei Du led him to a street Zhu Li would never have wandered down on his own.
The street sat in the southeastern corner of Chang'an, wedged between two temples — the side wall of Jianfu Monastery on the left, the rear courtyard of Xingshan Monastery on the right. It was short, perhaps a hundred paces, and every shop on both sides sold the same category of goods: funeral supplies. Coffin makers, burial garment shops, elegy-banner writers, incense and candle dealers... The air hung thick with the ashen smell of burning spirit money and the cloying sweetness of cheap sandalwood.
The last place any living person would choose to visit.
Pei Du stopped before one particular shopfront. The sign above the lintel was half-faded: **Wu's Paper Effigies**.
The shop was packed with paper funeral figures — paper servants, paper horses, paper sedan chairs, paper ingots, even an exquisite miniature paper courtyard complete with paper furniture and a paper kitchen maid. Most striking of all were two life-sized paper boys standing behind the counter, frozen mid-smile, their eyes hollow and blank. Unsettling no matter how you looked at them.
"We're here," Pei Du said.
Zhu Li looked at him, then at the two paper boys.
"...Here?"
"Mm."
"You run your offices out of a funeral shop?"
"Hardly." Pei Du smiled, circled behind the counter, and gave the paper kitchen maid's head a gentle twist — *click* — the floor of the miniature courtyard flipped open, revealing a staircase leading down. "The shop is a front. The business of the living happens up here. The business the living can't handle — that's downstairs."
Zhu Li: "..."
"Don't give me that look." Pei Du glanced back at him. "Think about it. Where's the best place to hide a government office that deals with ghosts and demons?"
Zhu Li considered: mourners coming and going, the foot traffic unremarkable. The air perpetually thick with incense smoke and paper ash, enough to mask the trace of talismanic work. Temples on both sides, lending their own suppressive power. And — no one browsed a funeral supply shop for entertainment.
An excellent location, in truth.
Just a touch morbid.
They descended the stairs and passed through a short tunnel — then the steps led upward again.
The exit was an unremarkable little door. He pushed it open, and the view opened wide.
A two-courtyard residence. Grey brick, white walls, dark tiles with upswept eaves — to all appearances no different from any middling household in Chang'an. Except the perimeter walls stood twice the usual height, sealing out the noise of the streets. No sound escaped from within, either. Copper studs were set into the wall tops at intervals, inconspicuous unless you knew what to look for — Zhu Li recognized the pattern of a warding array. His master had taught him.
But the scale of the wards here dwarfed anything he'd ever seen.
Above was true open sky. Afternoon sunlight fell into the courtyard, warm and drowsy.
In the center grew a scholar tree — an ancient, enormous thing whose canopy shaded half the yard. Beneath it sat a few bamboo chairs, draped with talisman papers left out to dry and not yet gathered in.
On the doorframe hung a pair of Spring Festival couplets that looked well past their prime — *"Fortune and joy at every step"* — written in a scrawl so atrocious it could only be the masterwork of someone with no talent for calligraphy whatsoever.
"Chu Ci wrote those," Pei Du remarked, noticing Zhu Li's gaze. "Put them up last year. No one's found the courage to take them down."
The corner of Zhu Li's mouth twitched.
He was about to examine the runes on the wall more closely when —
The side gate on the east side of the courtyard crashed open.
"Out of the way, out of the way, *out of the way* —!"
A man came stumbling backward through the door, his clothes half torn off, a sword in his left hand, half a shattered chain in his right, his face streaked with claw marks. Behind him rushed something — Zhu Li couldn't make it out at first, because the thing moved too fast, like a knot of wind wrapped in black fog.
"Director Pei!" The man caught sight of Pei Du and his voice cracked with relief. "The one in Cell Eight got loose again! Bit clean through the iron cage this time!"
Pei Du's expression, for once, was not a smile. He frowned, snapped the fan open with a sharp *crack*, and swept it through the air in an arc — a streak of talismanic light flew from the fan's surface and wove itself into a translucent barrier across the middle of the courtyard.
The black fog slammed into the barrier with a shrill, piercing shriek and was hurled back.
Only then could Zhu Li see what it was — a cat. Or rather, what had once been a cat. It had the outline of a cat, but its body had swollen to the size of a young calf, its fur bristling, black as ink, its eyes a ghastly green. Most wrong of all was its tail — split into two, thrashing back and forth in agitation.
A twin-tailed cat demon.
After the barrier knocked it back, it did not attack again. It huddled against the wall, spine arched, a deep rumbling in its throat — not a threat, Zhu Li realized.
It was trembling.
It was shaking.
The cat demon's green eyes darted wildly, as though searching for something — or fleeing from something. Its body was shrinking rapidly, from calf-sized back down to an ordinary cat, the black fog dissolving to reveal what lay beneath. A very thin cat, so thin every rib stood out in sharp relief, its back marked with several deep gashes where the flesh had split open, as if something sharp had sliced across it.
"That's not right," Zhu Li said.
Pei Du glanced at him.
"It's not attacking. It's running." Zhu Li crouched down, meeting the cowering cat demon at eye level. "It's terrified."
As he spoke, the Illusion-Breaking Bell shifted slightly at his waist. It did not ring.
That meant the cat demon wasn't casting any sorcery. Its rampage had not been aggression — it was a fear response, pure panic.
The man who'd been chased caught his breath and started to draw his sword —
"Wait." Zhu Li took a talisman from inside his robe, bit the tip of his right index finger, and swiftly drew three strokes on the paper in blood. This was no offensive talisman — it was a soul-calming charm his master had taught him, meant to soothe frightened spirits.
He set the talisman on the ground and slid it gently toward the cat demon.
The cinnabar-and-blood sigil glowed briefly, releasing a soft, warm light. The cat demon's green eyes fixed on the glow. Its slit pupils slowly rounded, and the trembling in its body eased, little by little.
It lay down. Then it let out a single, barely audible *mew*.
The courtyard went quiet for several seconds.
"...Well, wonderful. I get chased halfway across the yard like an idiot, and one piece of paper does the trick."
The voice came from behind Zhu Li. He turned —
A tall, powerfully built young man stood at the entrance to the training ground, an absurdly oversized sword in his right hand, his left hand on his hip, his face a complicated mix of *I refuse to accept this* and *but I have to*. He looked about twenty-two or twenty-three, with bold brows and bright eyes, a flash of white teeth when he grinned, a copper ring in his right ear, and his clothes covered in the yellow dust of the training yard.
"Chu Ci," Pei Du said, his smile restored, his tone as easy as ever. "Swordsman. Your new partner."
"Partner?" Chu Ci's eyes lit up. He crossed the distance in three long strides, planted himself in front of Zhu Li, looked him up and down, and clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to sting. "So you're the one Director Pei was talking about — 'exceptional talismanic talent, steady temperament, low-key and dependable'?"
"...He said all that?"
"No. He said 'someone new's coming tomorrow.' I made up the rest." Chu Ci broke into a wide grin. "Come on, I'll show you around!"
Without waiting for an answer, he slung an arm around Zhu Li's shoulders and steered him inside. Zhu Li visibly stiffened — he was not accustomed to that degree of physical contact. But he didn't pull away.
"Were you chasing that cat too?" Zhu Li asked.
"Three laps." Chu Ci held up three fingers. "The thing's usually well-behaved. Don't know what got into it today — the Watchman went in to feed it on the night watch, and the moment he cracked the cage it went berserk. By the time I ran out from the training ground, it had already shredded the Watchman's coat. Didn't actually hurt him though — just scared him half to death."
"What about the wounds on it?"
Chu Ci blinked. "What wounds?"
"On its back. At least three or four old scars, deep ones. They don't look like scratches — more like knife cuts."
Chu Ci tilted his head, his expression growing more serious. "I honestly never noticed. That cat was brought in last month from a ward in the west of the city. Apparently it ate offerings off someone's ancestral altar and that's what triggered its transformation. Since then it's been locked in Cell Eight, waiting for its threat assessment —"
"Threat assessment?"
"You know... they determine whether it's dangerous. If it is, they deal with it. If not, they log it in the records and release it. Most low-grade demons don't mean any harm — they're just alarming to look at." Chu Ci's voice dropped a note. "But lately, I don't know what's going on. Several of the ones we've got locked up have been restless. Like they can sense something."
Zhu Li glanced back across the courtyard. Pei Du was crouched beside the cat demon, his palm resting on its back — not sealing it, but channeling spiritual energy into it, steadying its condition. His expression was intent, entirely different from the effortless composure of before.
The cat demon's green eyes were half-closed, and it seemed at last to have found some measure of calm. But its gaze wasn't on Pei Du — it was looking into the distance. Staring past the courtyard wall at some unseen point, the sky reflected in its pupils.
Pei Du rose, brushed the dust from his knees, and walked over to Zhu Li.
"Your judgment was accurate," he said. "Most people see a demon in a frenzy and their first instinct is to draw a sword. You looked at its eyes first."
"My master taught me — don't look at the claws and fangs first. Look at the eyes. The eyes will tell you what it intends."
Pei Du gave a slight nod, his gaze settling on the now-quiet cat demon.
"Do you know what *Siheng* means?"
Zhu Li shook his head. He'd heard the title before — on the road, people sometimes used it for traveling exorcists — but he'd always assumed it was just folk parlance.
"*Heng* is the beam of a scale. *Siheng* — the keeper of the balance." Pei Du's voice was unhurried, as though telling a very old story. "The Bureau's formal name is the Bureau of Strange Tales, and outsiders think we simply clean up demons for the court. But in truth, the Bureau doesn't exist to kill demons. Killing is only... the last resort."
"Then what is it for?"
"For balance." Pei Du turned, his gaze sweeping across the whole of the underground compound. "The mortal world and the demon realm are two faces of the same coin — one side engraved with characters, the other cast with patterns. Together they make a single, whole coin. The Veil separates the two, but separation does not mean opposition."
He paused.
"Cracks form in the Veil, and demons slip through — some by accident, some with intent, some because they had no choice. If the cracks are left to widen, both realms fall out of balance and devour each other. But if you were to weld every crack shut..."
"Then the two realms would be cut off completely." Zhu Li finished the thought.
"Worse than that." Pei Du shook his head. "Seal the Veil entirely, and the demon realm suffocates — but the mortal world also loses something you might call vital essence. Flowers without their guardian sprites wither faster. Mountains without their ancient spirits age sooner. Half the living energy of all things comes from the side you cannot see. The two realms prosper together and decline together."
He looked at Zhu Li, his gaze warm but serious. "So the duty of a Keeper has never been to *rid the world of every demon* — it is to hold the point of balance. When a demon harms people, we intervene. When a demon is innocent, we protect it too. That cat — it stole offerings from an altar, and that triggered its transformation. By law it should be punished. But punishment is not the same as death. You used a calming charm to soothe it rather than a sealing talisman to destroy it — that is what a Keeper ought to do."
Zhu Li was silent for a time.
He thought of the way the cat demon had stared into the distance — not watching anything in particular, but sensing something. A look of dread that said *something is coming, and I don't know what*.
He had seen that look in many demons' eyes. On the road to Chang'an, the minor spirits in the villages along the way had all been behaving strangely of late. Tree spirits that had always hidden peacefully inside old trunks groaned for no reason. Water ghosts in the streams surfaced in broad daylight — they weren't causing trouble. They were uneasy.
Like ants before a storm.
If there truly was a Keeper's scale somewhere in the world, it was swaying now.
"That scale," he asked. "Is it steady?"
Pei Du did not answer at once. His fan tapped softly against his palm. The smile at the corner of his mouth dimmed by a degree.
"If it were," he said, "I wouldn't have been in such a hurry to find you."
---
Chu Ci was still rattling off a tour of the Bureau's various sections — the front courtyard for offices and receiving visitors, the rear courtyard for living quarters and the kitchen, the training ground in the middle. As for the talisman array chamber, the archives, the containment cells, and the fabled Lantern Hall — those were all underground, accessed through a hidden door in the western corner of the yard. His words came out like popping beans, each one chasing the next with scarcely a gap between them. But Zhu Li noticed an interesting detail: Chu Ci never looked at the person he was talking to. His eyes swept constantly over their surroundings, like a horse always ready for a fight.
All chatter and no pauses — but the vigilance never let up. Interesting.
"— Oh, and there!" Chu Ci suddenly dropped his voice and stopped before a door.
It was a door of black iron set into a wall of grey brick, like a patch. There was no handle — only a keyhole. The iron face was covered in dense, tiny runes, most worn smooth by the years, though a careful eye could still make them out: a containment array.
At the center of the door was a single character.
*Lantern.*
Chu Ci's voice, for once, went quiet. "What's in there... I've only been down once. How do I put it — impressive, but also unsettling. You'll have to wait for Director Pei to take you down. My clearance doesn't reach that far."
"What's inside?"
Chu Ci thought for a moment, as though choosing his words. "Do you know how many kinds of demons there are in Chang'an?"
"No."
Chu Ci held up one finger and pointed upward with an air of mystery. "You'll find out when you go down. Far more than you'd imagine. And you'll learn one more thing."
"What?"
"We're not just exorcising demons." Chu Ci looked at the door, his tone turning uncharacteristically grave for an instant. "We're keeping watch over something."
The iron door stood in silence. Through the hairline gap between door and frame seeped a faint thread of light, its color impossible to name — perhaps blue-green, perhaps crimson, perhaps a hue that had never existed under the sun.
Zhu Li stared at the character *Lantern* for a long moment.
The Illusion-Breaking Bell at his waist turned half a revolution on its own, as though drawn by something.
Then it went still.
He suddenly remembered his master's words.
*Do not light that lantern.*
Whatever lay behind that iron door — was it connected to those words?
He didn't know. But his instinct — that instinct honed since childhood at his master's side, sharpened through countless exorcisms — was telling him: what lay behind that door was far more important than he imagined.
And far more dangerous.
"Zhu Li?" Chu Ci called from beside him. "What are you spacing out for? Come on, let's go see your room. Director Pei says you can rest today. Tomorrow —"
"Tomorrow what?"
Chu Ci's grin returned, bright and distinctly ominous:
"Tomorrow you get your first assignment."