"Goddammit!" Edelweiss and I swore together. The doors grew wider and only then I fully noticed how different was the tenth floor this side to the tenth floor of the real world! The scene outside the elevator doors gave way to a black, empty space. The sprawl of office cubicles that stretched far carried webs of fissures and clefts that coursed jaggedly along the broken tiles on the floor and through them, one could see what laid underneath: a deep, black chasm of nothingness. So were the walls, I realized. Craggy cracks climbed the walls like vines and the same black hole of oblivion peeked from outside. It appeared as though the entire tenth floor of the Fog World was suspended in the midst of outer space.
And right outside the elevator doors, some distance away from the office floor in the middle of this Lovecraftian dimension, was a gap. That was where Na San had plunged into!
Edelweiss and I shared a grave look. The gap was easily more than fifty meter
We stood at the fork, not knowing how we should go. Should we go take the exit due left, or should I take the turn right and head for the opened door? And Na San on my shoulder was hardly the ideal companion I could rely upon for opinions. If only Chongxi is here, I began to wonder.Just when we dithered with ambivalence and doubt, a shadowy figure resembling Edelweiss appeared and vanished like a ghost into the darkened left fork. "Edelweiss!" I shouted and I dragged Na San along to give chase.We hurried through the intersection into the left way where I thought I saw Edelweiss's silhouette only to find a door after some ways. A closed door that appeared to be undisturbed and there was no one! Was I seeing things? I asked myself quietly. Then the unwieldy sense of deja vu rose in me as I recalled the many times how somebody would so easily be led astray just like I did in movies. Scoffing at my own silliness, I carried Na San back to where we came from, c
I doubt anyone would feel pleased to find themselves in such a snag! Not anyone sane, at any rate! There was no time to think who this woman could be and with my fingers still held in the Seal of the Sword, I beckoned for my sword and it freed itself from the ground, zipping back to me in a swift, deadly arc and stopped right at the woman's throat.Then the impossible took place. My ordinary sword hovered dangerously close to the woman, just above her shoulder. Then something strange happened to her shoulder; the white fabric of her dress fluttered awkwardly as if she was smoke and fume drifting in an unnatural wind for a brief split-second and she, her pace hardly stopping, came nearer with every step as if she had not noticed the inexplicable phenomenon! Na San stepped courageously forward, shielding me but he did nothing else. He did not know how he should react too.Seeing Na San placing himself in front of me, the woman in ancient garb shuddered again
Cold sweat immediately broke out as I grimaced quietly in the dimness. Dammit!? What the hell?! That painting... the character in it is missing?! Is this the same like just now? Oh, Gods in Heaven... the characters in the paintings are...Then something flashed by my peripheral visions. I wheeled around frantically. There! Another painting, now empty too! And before I knew it, every figure in every painting around me convulsed and came to life! They moved slowly at first, as if their joints were stiff or painful, and suddenly, they leaped sideways out of view and disappeared like monsters fleeing from their two-dimensional prisons!Gods help us! I groaned to myself in the dark as my sword-hand raised warily in anticipation of an ambush, There're at least twenty portraits around here!In a mere matter of seconds, every single canvas on the wall became blank, leaving only the bare fields of colors and other backgrounds that backdropped the empty
Na San might have been badly weakened, but he had recovered much of his consciousness then. As soon as I began to rise, he caught hold of my ankles. Just in time, Na San managed to keep me from flying away! Frowning, I leaned down, giving him my hand to pull him up. Only more sparks jumped from my outstretched hand and exploded, sending Na San careening off before falling unconscious once more.I punched my thigh in frustration. What the hell?! But there was better than this to be anguished. With a flick of my fingers, my sword heeded my summon and flew under Na San and with another flick of my Seal of the Sword, my sword grew larger again like it did before and it lifted Na San up like a hovering stretcher. What fortune, I mused, Without this spell, I would have trouble bringing Na San with me.We began walking back to the sculpture wing of the gallery where the breaking noise came from with my sword hovering beside me with Na San on it. Imagine my exhalat
The revelation of hit me with the flashes of the poor ghosts dissipating into nothingness just now and I lurched with incredulity. Oh, my God... those poor things... these are all kinsmen of Tribe Nine Li! What savagery is this... To forcibly mesh the Souls of Heaven and Earth of others with the Mortal Soul of another man... That's just abomination...As mentioned before, the ghosts of humans consist of three Souls and seven Spirits in Chinese esotericism and the three Souls are the Heaven, Earth, and Mortal Soul respectively. From the Mortal Soul, the seven Spirits that characterized each and everyone's personality and individualism were derived. But due to the stronger Heaven and Earth Souls forcibly meshed with the native Mortal Soul, Mr. Huang's infernal witchcraft could render his subject cold and impassive, having lost all their former personalities and behavior."That's a quaint and useful trick," I chuckled and said, "But don't you realize that your
Astral projection. I knew that feeling. The feeling of the Core Spirit of my soul leaving my body. I experienced the same sensation as this when Master Six sent me back through time, back to the final years of the Ming Dynasty and as I left my physical body behind, I lost all ability to control myself, floating into the air like a helpless mist.I passed through the space in the Fog World, out and up to the sky where I looked down and saw a glittering expanse of lighted beads and radiantly speckled lines beneath my feet. But the pretty cityscape down beneath did little to assuage my anxiety. What's happening to me?! What's going on?! A strange voice reverberated in my mind. A voice that sounded oddly familiar even though I could not understand what the voice was saying. It sounded more like a song. A chanting song sang in a tongue I could not recognize.The voice went on and one, growing louder and faster like a klaxon inside my head and so was the speed I
"YOU! IMPOSSIBLE! YOU! THE IMMACULATE COMMUNION?!" With blood squirting uncontrollably from his severed wrists, Mr. Huang howled with pain and agony in his voice. "You really haven't placed much thought into my one-week disappearance, have you?"The question left a shocked Mr. Huang wordless. Shang Pei's ice guandao hissed and sizzled, and in a puff of vapor, it disappeared. He formed up beside me, wearing a proud smile. "Well, I see there's no need for old men like me here any longer!" With that, he wheeled around and walked back to Old Men Xie and Chen, and just beside them, Zhu Mei cried loudly with glee, "Good job, my dear boy! Now destroy him!"With my sword-hand lowered but the Shiyan Blade still firmly in my grasp, I approached Mr. Huang. "Spirit of the Heirloom Axe," I addressed, "Through millennia, you and I have been nemeses. Well, I don't know what methods you've used to assume human form, but it appears you cannot become one with your weapon. So
Mr. Huang rose up amidst the dust and splinters of wood like a phoenix rising from its ashes, reborn and renewed. Patting the dust off his clothes, he sniggered. "Did you really expect that I'd be defeated so easily?! I created this Real and Fog World. This is my domain. Mine and only mine! So long as ghosts still wander here, they can be sustenance to me!"So this is what he's after?! I gasped, Sergeant Zhan was trying to buy him time! Gods, we've been thoughtless about that! This dimensional Real and Fog Worlds was created by Mr. Huang, the Spirit of the Heirloom Axe, and they were filled with damaged ghosts missing parts of their Souls. If Mr. Huang could easily dabble with modifications of their Souls, then it should only be expected that he was highly skilled in the manipulation of Souls and that would mean he could just as handily consume any of the damaged ghosts to heal himself and the time that Sergeant Zhan had bought him had allowed him to do just that!