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Mesmerized by her striking beauty, Yang almost forgot to reply. He coughed nervously after realizing everyone was waiting for him. “Why did you fight for my army? We did not have a Miao group in our ranks.”

  The Miao girl looked up for the first time, her eyes steely. “The northern enemy killed countless of Miaos, many of whom were my relatives. I have dedicated myself since the death of my parents to study the dark power of witchcraft. It was the same power that gave Gu the ability to defeat your fifty solders. I can help capture her essence and use her dark power to you defeat your enemy. But we need her ashes to complete my study.”

  Yang shook his head. “I don’t want any of her ashes near us. Besides, Lao has taken her ashes back to his temple. That’s where her spirit resides, so no dark spells shall descend upon my innocent people again.”

  “Words lie, but the heart and actions don’t, my Lord,” Maylan replied. “Lao took the ashes so he could benefit as well.”

  Yang raised his brows. “Oh? How could Lao benefit from Gu’s ashes?”

  “I know, in fact, that the head monk is gravely ill. The head monk is Lao’s relative and he has terminal skin disease. He has tried every available medicine around the area—acupuncture, herbs, Tui Na; he even sent his pupils to my family looking for remedies, but so far, nothing has worked. That was how I knew Lao. Then they learned about Gu and her spell abilities. Someone inside my clan told Lao about Gu’s secrets and they wanted to use her power to cure the head monk. My aunt went to see the head monk and told him that unfortunately his disease was too advanced. But Lao and his pupils refused to believe the inevitable fate, and they still wanted to use Zi-Ling’s spirit to fight the disease.”

  “Why didn’t the head monk try to capture Gu himself and waited until we asked for help?” Lord raised his eyebrows.

  “It’s against their training to mingle with outside affairs, but I believe he had his own agenda,” Maylan cautiously replied.

  “Nonsense! I have known him for three years. He has always been loyal to me.” Yang looked deeply into the girl’s eyes. “If you were not a woman, I would order my guard to execute you on the spot!”

  “Lord, my only intent is to help you eradicate your enemies and to bring my family home. My grandmother’s last wish was to return to her birthplace one day.”

  “How do I know you are not a spy?” Yang still cast a cautious eye on this beautiful, but mysterious, young girl.

  “Lord, I belong to the Miao rebellion army that is fighting for you.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone that can lift a sword, let alone be of use in battles.”

  “Strength is not always the key to killing. Allow me to demonstrate—” Maylan moved swiftly behind a soldier and took out a sword before he could even lift his hand. She pointed the sword at the guard’s jaguar but didn’t break his skin.

  Yang's main guard stepped out and knelt in front of him. “Lord, forgive me for interrupting, but I heard about this girl—she is a hired assassin. I ask for your permission to sever her head before you.”

  Yang held his hand up and read her face carefully. “If she wanted me killed, she could have tried already.”

  Maylan explained, “If it pleases the Lord, our family’s fate lies with your enemies—our enemies. Please grant my wish to honor you with my blood and soul by fighting alongside you.”

  Even though her striking beauty was alluring, Yang was wary. He waved his hands dismissively at his guards. “I have heard enough. We’ll do a proper vetting.”

  Yang put her in a private jail and treated her with guarded respect. She was never touched or tortured, and she had all the privacy and amenities. Yang came to visit her once in a while but never stayed long. But as time went on, he was enchanted by her beauty and spell. And one night after his visit, he stayed.

  The war between Yang and his enemies flared in the ensuing months, and Yang received a tip from a reliable informant that the enemy’s oldest son was leading a secret scouting mission near the eastern border. Yang decided to mount a surprise attack to capture the enemy’s son, but it turned out to be a trap and half of his army perished; Yang was injured in the fight and was shot by an arrow in his right arm. The arrow was tipped with an unknown poison, and Yang’s arm suffered necrosis from the wound; much of the skin and muscle rotted away. He then experienced gangrene and fell gravely ill. The army doctor said he could only slow down the infection, but Yang could die in as little as a week.

  The Lord’s soldiers went to Lao for help, but Lao said that the poison had already taken root inside his heart. There was nothing they could do to reverse the course of events.

  Out of desperation, the men turned to local Miao people. One Miao member they met was Maylan’s aunt. She examined Yang’s wound and said that the poison had already reached Yang’s heart. But she said if they allowed Maylan to help, she could use spells to neutralize the poison. The soldiers relayed the suggestion to Yang’s advisers. After extended deliberation, the council decided to have Maylan try to save Yang.

  Heavy guards brought Maylan to Yang’s bed. She closely evaluated Yang’s wounds and said the wound’s poison was from a special fungus that had no known cure, but that she knew of a way to call upon the dead to neutralize the poison, but she would need the witch’s ash boxes.

  The advisers sent Maylan and his men to the temple for the ash boxes, but Lao refused to hand them over, stating that it would only breed more death and sufferings. They forced their way into the temple, ransacked the place, but did not find anything.

  That night, Maylan returned alone. While surveying around the land outside, she uncovered an old sewage tunnel that led to inside the temple. She made it inside the temple and located the Dao monk’s study. She watched as the monk cleaned up his room and opened a hidden drawer behind a Buddha statue. Inside that drawer was the golden box. She stayed until the monk went to sleep and released a worm jing into the room. The worm burrowed into the monk’s mouth and paralyzed him. Maylan searched the room but could not find the other boxes. She went inside the monk’s mind to search for clues, but the monk refused to give up where he hid the other boxes. Out of frustration, Maylan had the jing take over the monk’s body and took him along with her. On her way back, she cast a spell and changed the monk’s body into a six-foot-long giant worm. It dug underground and followed Maylan’s orders. Maylan called it the Lão Chóng (old worm).

  When Maylan returned with Gu, they secluded her in a secret room where she could communicate with the queen’s spirit. She first asked for a slave child, then she brought the child close to her lap and inserted an inch-long white centipede into the child’s ear. The child thrashed and struggled in her hand. She released the child and the child whipped around in circles as if possessed by a demonic spirit. The child flapped its arms furiously until the life drained from its body. Maylan approached the dead child gently; she took out a stone knife and cut into the neck to let the blood flow into a bowl. She then sliced her palm to make her blood flow into the same container. She mixed the two bloods with a dark crystal, and the blood congealed into a thick ball. Maylan then began to chant; she repeated the chanting until she was induced into a trance.

  Her trance called upon the demons from the underworld; their voices started as a whisper, but slowly, they grew to a high-pitched fervor; loud chatters filled the room by thousands of souls seeking to possess the weak.

  Maylan clapped her hands three times, and the chatters suddenly stopped. All of the lurking souls ebbed, except for one. Maylan opened her eyes, her vision blurry, but she could almost make out the Zi-Ling’s shape before her. Her form was half-human and half-insect, like that of a spider.

  The spirit cried out to Maylan and told her that the monk had separated her ashes into six different boxes, each trapping a part of the witch’s body: the four different limbs, the head, and the body. The spirit explained that she needed all of the ashes in order to reincarnate herself.

  Under a silvery autumn moonlight, Maylan went back to the
temple but found the temple deserted. The entire monastery had left, but someone left a note:

  In this temple you shall only find emptiness; it is a new start for us all. How you fill it requires wisdom deep within your own heart.

  Maylan wanted to exact revenge by setting the temple ablaze, but the guards stopped her. They told her that doing so would certainly bring bad luck to the village.

  Milan used Gu’s dark power to heal Yang’s poison; the story spread and Yang’s informant learned that Maylan was Zi-Ling’s sister. But instead of executing Maylan, Yang became even more enchanted by the girl. Against his closest advisers’ protests, he made a promise to Maylan that he would help her recover the lost boxes if she helped him defeat his enemies and restore his health. But after Yang was killed in an enemy ambush, Maylan and the golden box disappeared. Without a leader, Yang’s army collapsed under infighting and was ultimately defeated by the northern Wei’s troops.

  Away in a remote spot, Maylan developed her own spell-casting powers under the tutelage of Gu’s spirit; Maylan developed a way to keep Gu alive by infecting humans with spells they grew from Lão Chóng; they used some of the infected as helpers, others as morsels. Lão Chõng followed them as a defender, a scout, and a soul catcher as they made their way across the vast continent, looking for her remaining ashes. Eventually, Maylan could not escape her mortal fate. Gu’s helpers buried Maylan’s body under a willow tree next to the Yangtze River and set her soul free. Not wanting to leave, her spirit lingered. The water around Maylan’s grave turned blood red the next day, and the stain lasted an entire month. It was said that Maylan’s spirit would wake every year on the same day and turn the river water red.

  After Maylan’s death, Gu abandoned her enslaved name and renamed herself as Queen (后). She continued the search for the remaining boxes throughout Asia. The search, over hundreds of years, drove her insane. She started to enslave humans, including her own family’s descendants, to locate her ashes. As she recovered the boxes, her power grew. She cultivated new abilities to create Ripples and capture Echoes in the chi. She used it to search for the remaining boxes as well as to track down the descendants. Finally, she arrived in the United States in 1868 for the two remaining boxes: the Weep and the Angel.

  The search continued to this day…

  Part I

  Blood Children and the Fly

  Where there is blood, there is fly

  1

  Ripples in Time

  Chicago, May, 1983. A six-year-old Chinese boy was with his dad at a Toys-R-Us. The little boy wanted to play with the toy cars in the playpen, but the place was packed with kids. He stood behind three kids, all lined up for their turn to play.

  “Ian, be patient. It will be your turn soon.” The dad smiled at his boy with one hand holding his book.

  Ian turned to see his dad and asked, “How long?”

  The dad shrugged his shoulders and pointed him back at the pen. “Stay here. I need to go to the bathroom. Promise me, don’t leave.”

  “Okay,” said Ian. He turned and waited.

  Two minutes later, someone pushed him aside.

  “Hey!” Ian protested. He looked up and saw a towering boy staring down at him.

  “You are in my way,” said the big boy.

  “No, you are!” Ian pushed the big boy away, then kicked his shin.

  The big boy grabbed Ian by the shirt and pushed him to the ground. “Go away.”

  The big boy’s mother came over and pulled the big boy aside. “Gary, this is not how we share toys.”

  “But he kicked me,” said Gary. “He was in the way.”

  “No, you come with me.” The mother pulled on Gary’s collar.

  “I don’t want to wait anymore. He can have my spot,” said Ian. He turned to see where his dad was, but he had gone to the men’s room.

  Ian wandered away and found the toys aisle. He passed many car toys and dinosaurs figures, but nothing really caught his fancy.

  He heard someone whispered to him, “Maria.” It sounded like someone from the next aisle.

  He looked he saw an old lady carrying a bag moving around in the next aisle. She looked like a ragged homeless person, but no-one at the store appeared to be bothered by her appearance. She was placing toys onto the shelf. Ian followed and went to the aisle, but when he got there, the lady was gone. He looked and saw several action figures that were sitting on the shelf. He picked one up that looked like a warrior, but there was no price tags. The figure looked like it was made from ivory and was painted with intricate details. Ian stared at the figure’s face, and its eyes moved.

  Ian dropped the action figure and stepped back, but the action figure started to grow into an adult, wearing an ancient Chinese war suit.

  The ancient warrior had a full set of beards with a ruddy, wide face, and thick eyebrows. His eyes glistened like lighting. He stretched, turned and stared at Ian.

  Ian was too scared to move or scream.

  It was Zhang Fei, one of the most famous warriors during the period of Three Kingdoms in Chinese history. He turned, grabbed Ian, and locked him in a prisoner’s chain. Zhang Fei then swung his right arm in the air, and both vanished, leaving the action figure tumbling on the ground.

  Ian’s father soon realized his kid was missing, and he frantically looked for him, passing the aisle and stepping on the action figure, but Ian was gone.

  The dad ran out into the parking lot, yelling his boy’s name, “Ian! Where are you?”

  “Maria…”

  Dad heard a whisper; he turned. A gust of wind brushed over his face with a lingering trace of Ian’s scent.

  2

  Slaves

  August, 1983. Shrouded under the towering canopy of the Olympic National Park in Washington, Manfred stopped and sniffed the biting air hanging in the night. Even though the forest was nearly pitch-black, he could still see the footprints that belonged to the girl he called June. An aging man that appeared to be in his late fifties, he was surprisingly agile as a fox, but he was still not fast enough to catch June. His dark olive skin appeared black at night, and his thinning grey hair pointed one way into the sky. Drips of sweat climbed down his square face as he caught his breath. His party had been pursuing June for over an hour, and he knew they were getting close. His bright eyes were the only thing visible to those that had the magic at night.

  There was a blood trail, and he sensed June was nearby. The closer he got to June, the faster his heart raced. Manfred had no choice––the queen demanded that June be tracked down and killed. But it was easier said than done. He wondered if June would still recognize him. If she did, it would make their ensuing battle more painful. The rest of the hunting parties were nearby, but he wondered if there were enough of them left; half of them had already lost track of June a mile back in their first skirmish. The next battle would probably be their last. June was nearby; the scent never lied.

  Manfred had cast a spell on June to slow her down during the first skirmish. Without the spell, they would have no chance of tracking her in the deep forest. A tall silhouette approached and stopped a few feet behind him. Manfred could hear the whizzing sound venting from the brooding figure’s jaws.

  Go!” Manfred ordered the tall shadow.

  The zombie’s agitated body leaped ten feet into the air then disappeared into the darkness. A smaller shadow crawled on all fours, sniffing the footprints. It then raised its head and darted into the forest. Manfred took a deep breath and followed the trail. They followed the scent but stayed a good distance when she was out of sight. Her scent had changed since the start, a clue that she had evolved, so she could now do a lot of damage. Manfred checked the ground and saw more footprints, and now blood.

  The blood was a reminder to Manfred of his own fragile existence. He checked his internal voice and heard the queen’s whispers––she was always there. He wondered if June could still hear the queen’s voice. If not, she would go mad without the queen, and her body would deteriorate
into a jing.

  Manfred frantically checked for signs of her tracks. It took a few seconds before he found June’s footprints again––there it is. He knew in a few minutes, the tracking spell on her would wear off, and he could completely lose her in the dense forest. Manfred gave the order to split up the two remaining zombies––one to the left, the other to the right to surround June. The two zombies made a break for the girl and disappeared into the darkness before Manfred. He jogged up the trail behind the zombies, trying to keep up, but he was falling behind. The forest fell into silence for a few minutes; then a loud growl echoed in the near distance.

  One of the zombies charged June. It reached forward with its long arms, aiming for June’s head.

  June waited until the zombie’s nails touched her skin, then she leaned sideways and hammer-fisted the zombie’s stomach with her hands. The impact lifted the zombie into the air and snapped its back.

  The second and third zombies attacked June from behind.

  June shifted her body, then swung a long blade at the zombies. The blade sliced through the cold air with a whistle; the zombies’ headless bodies lurched forward and collapsed.

  Manfred lost his vision of the zombies. “Shit!” He hurried up the hill, but a wall of blackberry bushes blocked the path. As he approached the bush, he accelerated and thought of a word in his mind. His body turned into a massive beast, and he rammed through the bush, uprooting everything in his path. Once cleared, Manfred returned to human form. He made a left turn and ran towards June’s last location. But she was gone.

  The queen’s chilling voice pierced the forest air, “Where is that half-breed miscreant? I treat her like a pure blood child and this is how she repays me? Stealing my box!”

  Manfred gripped his head as the queen’s shrill tone filled his mind. He took several steps to the left and rested his foot on a loose rock. The rock rolled under Manfred’s weight, and he fell into a bed of branches. He caught his left foot between two rocks, and it snapped as his body tumbled over.