Jiangcheng City, the Seventh Satellite City.
Inside a quiet little building on the outskirts, faint sobbing echoed. The sky had already darkened, and trees shrouded the place on all sides, lending the scene an unusually sinister air.
With a putter-putter of its motor, a white electric scooter pulled up below the building and parked neatly in an empty spot. The young man swung off it, took off his little helmet, and shook out his hair.
He wore finger-length shaggy hair, with bangs falling between a pair of sword-shaped brows — bangs that could not hide the high ridges of his brow, which set his eye sockets deep and his eyes bright as stars. Add a straight nose and smooth contours, and there was not a single flaw to be found in his features.
If handsomeness had cultivation realms, this man would be at least at the Yanzu Realm Great Perfection.
The young man looked up, saw a middle-aged man in a suit already waiting downstairs, and raised a hand in greeting. "Hello, boss. I'm Yue Wen, head of the Yue Cultivation Agency."
"Yue... Master Yue."
The middle-aged man was short, with a buzz cut thinning to a bald crown, a suit creased inside and out, and the weathered face of a lifelong workhorse.
After returning the greeting, he asked, a little doubtfully, "You can handle an evil entity all on your own?"
"Just call me Xiao Yue," the young man named Yue Wen said with a smile. "Our agency's fees are low, but our work is absolutely reliable. Leave it to me and rest easy."
"Good." The middle-aged man nodded, though he still had his private doubts.
He could hardly be blamed for worrying. This Yue Cultivation Agency charged far less than other Qi Refiner outfits — he had only tried calling after spotting a flyer on a telephone pole.
And the person they sent was an overly handsome young man — not the sort of face that wins a client's trust at first glance.
Still, Yue Wen looked entirely confident. He strolled casually up to the little building. "Things weren't made clear over the phone. Give me the details again, from the start."
"Uh, all right." The middle-aged man followed at his heels, glancing cautiously up at the building. "My surname is Chen. I'm a property manager at Sixty-Nine Classifieds."
"This building is a property our company just acquired. Companies don't usually buy on their own initiative — there's risk in it, after all — but the previous owner was desperate to sell at a low price, so I advised the company to buy it... The idea was to renovate and sell it off gradually; the profit would be much higher."
"Who'd have thought that when the renovation started, something turned out to be wrong — after nightfall, the building is haunted by an evil entity! I'd only ever come to view the property in daylight, so I never noticed a thing." Manager Chen wore a bitter look. "My superiors put the pressure on me. If this isn't solved within a week, I'm fired."
Yue Wen nodded. No wonder the man had come to him.
Apparently the higher-ups hadn't approved any budget.
The Yue Cultivation Agency had no name to speak of in Jiangcheng City, but it won on price — the first choice of working stiffs.
"The workers never got a clear look at the thing. All they know is that it comes without shadow and leaves without trace, appearing out of nowhere to attack people. If there hadn't been so many of them on site, someone might well have been hurt. But precisely because there have been no casualties yet, our case has to stand in line at the Supernatural Management Bureau — it might take a month before they get to it..."
"This place is nearly out by the wastelands, after all, and it doesn't count as a major supernatural case. The Bureau is swamped with work; a job like this would rank near the back." Yue Wen nodded and asked, "Did you canvass the neighbors nearby?"
Manager Chen pointed off into the distance. "Before we bought the property, it's our practice to go door to door and check for anything unusual. But the residents out here all live far apart, so the neighbors don't know much — and besides, we learned afterward that the previous owner had given everyone nearby a bit of fruit beforehand and asked them not to say anything bad."
"So it was the fruit-gifting technique, was it?" Yue Wen chuckled.
"But if none of the neighbors knew anything, that means this evil entity has been settled comfortably inside the house. It doesn't much resemble a demon — more likely a wraith." He turned his head. "We'll have to go in and look."
"I'm going in too?" Manager Chen jumped.
...
"In a moment I'll need the doors and windows shut tight. If you wait outside, I won't be able to look after you," Yue Wen said.
"Well..." Manager Chen stood at attention for a moment, then said weakly, "I'll... come in with you, then."
It was already dark. Standing alone downstairs would be plenty creepy in its own right. Who knew whether the evil entity might come outside?
He stepped up and unlocked the door with his key, then instantly darted behind Yue Wen.
Yue Wen, for his part, sauntered boldly in and looked over the furnishings — solid-wood furniture and relief carvings throughout, the whole place reeking of nouveau-riche taste from twenty years back.
"Close the door. Don't turn on the lights; it might startle it," Yue Wen said.
Manager Chen backed up against the wall and asked in a low voice, "How do you find an evil entity in the dark?"
Out of simple human instinct, he felt that blazing lights would have been far more reassuring.
"Don't worry." As he spoke, Yue Wen fished a pair of sunglasses out of his trouser pocket and put them on.
Manager Chen stared, dumbfounded. The room was already pitch-dark, and this kid was putting on sunglasses? What was he, a rapper?
"These may look like sunglasses, but they are really a demon-revealing mirror," Yue Wen explained. "In darkness they can read an evil entity's aura and see through its origins, leaving it nowhere to hide."
The moment Manager Chen heard it was a magic implement, the look in his eyes turned to awe.
Every window in the house was hung with thick curtains. Once the door closed, not a shred of daylight remained — pitch-black and dead silent.
Once Yue Wen put on the "demon-revealing mirror," the entire ground-floor hall began, in his vision, to seethe with fog. He walked slowly toward its depths; everywhere his gaze reached was suffused with gray vapor like heavy mist.
Manager Chen stayed at the doorway, not daring to advance. He couldn't see the gray fog around him, and only cried out in alarm, "Where is it?"
"No telling yet," Yue Wen said, shaking his head. "This is a wraith with rather strong mental force — its yin energy is everywhere."
"Then what do we do?" Manager Chen said in a panic.
"Don't worry." Yue Wen raised his left hand, baring the watch on his wrist. "This may look like a watch, but it is actually a spirit-pointing needle, able to track fluctuations of spirituality. As long as that wraith stirs anywhere in this house, I can lock onto its position!"
With that, he seemed to activate the watch; a thin sheen of light rose from its face. Amid the hazy glow, the needle began to spin at speed.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—
After several revolutions the needle pointed at the stairway entrance, then swept rapidly around again, turning toward the front door.
"You know where the evil entity is?" Manager Chen asked, his voice quavering.
"I do." Yue Wen glanced at him and answered, "Behind you."
"Huh?" Manager Chen's mind went blank.
The next instant, a mass of black shadow suddenly burst out beside him, extending several tentacle-like limbs in a flash that clamped around Manager Chen's body and neck.
Bang!
His throat was locked in an instant, and his whole body was hauled off the ground. Choking, his limbs began thrashing wildly, his right hand waving frantically toward Yue Wen. "Save... save me..."
"Heh. Don't worry." Yue Wen flashed a roguish grin and revealed the silver bracelet on his right wrist. "This may look like a bracelet, but it is in fact a flying sword — it cuts down demons and monsters like slicing melons. Now that this evil entity has shown its true form, it won't escape."
"You..." The veins on Manager Chen's neck bulged, and a few words squeezed out of his throat: "Hurry... the hell... up."
"Sword-heart as guide, spirit commands the nine heavens!"
Yue Wen pointed forward with his right hand, and the bracelet turned into a streak of silver light, whistling away through the air!
Shhk—
The hall was spacious, but to sword-light at that speed it was only an instant's distance. The black shadow gripping Manager Chen had no time to react before the keen light punched clean through it.
"Aaah—" It shrieked in agony; the ink-black glow around it burst apart, dimly revealing the silhouette of a tree spreading a hundred-odd vines.
The true body showed itself for a moment, then blew apart.
Boom!
"So it was a century-old tree. Just as it was on the verge of taking form, construction began on this plot and it was felled. No wonder its grudge ran so deep — its lingering mental force congealed into a wraith this strong."
Yue Wen had seen clean through the evil entity's origins, and delivered this verdict at his leisure.
Manager Chen, meanwhile, crashed down with a thud, landing flat on his face, and weakly stretched out a hand. "Call... an ambulance... for me."
"Don't worry." Yue Wen stepped up, hauled him up, and walked out the door to his little electric scooter.
"This may look like an electric scooter, but it was refined from the skeleton of a spirit beast, the White Dragon Steed. At full power it runs like the wind — it'll have you at the nearest hospital in under five minutes."
"And even if we don't make it in time, you can still rest easy."
"I know an excellent funeral-supplies shop — fine goods at fair prices. They'll guarantee you one-stop service, all the way through."
Summary: In Jiangcheng City's seventh satellite city, Yue Wen, the young head of the budget-priced Yue Cultivation Agency, takes a case from Chen, a property manager at Sixty-Nine Classifieds: a building the company just bought is haunted after dark by an evil entity that attacks renovation workers, and Chen will be fired if it is not resolved within a week. The Supernatural Management Bureau would take about a month since there are no casualties yet, and the previous owner had given neighboring households fruit to keep them from speaking ill of the property. Inside the darkened house, Yue Wen uses disguised implements — sunglasses that are a demon-revealing mirror, a watch that is a spirit-pointing needle, and a bracelet that is a flying sword — to locate and destroy the creature. It proves to be a wraith born from the lingering mental force of a century-old tree that was felled just as it was on the verge of taking form. Yue Wen then hauls the strangled Chen to the hospital on a scooter refined from the skeleton of the spirit beast White Dragon Steed, adding that if they fail to make it in time, he knows a cheap funeral-supplies shop offering one-stop service.