Chapter 1: 1 Pagoda Life

◎Like a camellia: at the height of its bloom, the head falls◎

Pagoda Life, Pagoda Soul; beyond the Pagoda Palace, Pagoda City.

Pagoda City, Pagoda Ghost; beneath the Pagoda’s seat, Pagoda Life.

You Fusang was the seventeenth City Lord of Pagoda.

“—And she will be the last.”

So spoke the righteous cultivators before they besieged the palace of Pagoda City.

Their words were resolute, their victory assumed—for they knew the Devil Fiend had long since been ravaged by Technique Backlash, and her days were numbered.

“Every City Lord of Pagoda has practiced the Heretic Art, and every one has died by it. Today, at last, it is this You Fusang’s turn!”

One Daoist spoke with relish, gazing far toward the borders of Pagoda land before sighing: “Pagoda, Pagoda… a heretic and devil taking the name of the Buddha. How strange. How very strange.”

At once someone retorted, “Nothing strange about it. Only those with too many sins on their conscience need a Buddhist name to keep the ghosts down—otherwise wouldn’t they have met Heavenly Punishment long ago? Seventeen City Lords of Pagoda, each and every one drowning countless lives in misery. And this You Fusang worst of all—she treats human life as grass and feeds on human hearts… For such evil, a mere execution today is letting her off far too cheap!”

“—A Devil Fiend like that deserves death a thousand times over!”

Those eight words seemed to set the army’s morale alight, scorching the sun’s shadow and shackling the howling wind, raising the desolate vista of Pagoda higher and higher, louder and louder—

“A Devil Fiend like that deserves death a thousand times over!”

“A Devil Fiend like that deserves death a thousand times over!”

“A Devil Fiend like that…”

“………”

Amid such fervor, one among the leading Daoists remained silent.

That one was a Sword Cultivator. The winds and sand of Pagoda land raged, yet not a speck of dust clung to her snow-white Daoist robe; black hair, red lips, apricot eyes and graceful bearing—she had been born with a strikingly bold beauty, like a peony in the spring sun, too brilliant to look upon directly.

The only pity was the weariness that could not be hidden at the bottom of her eyes, and the hand gripping her sword, its knuckles gone white.

“Young Sect Master Yan…”

Someone called to her thus.

The Young Sect Master of the Yan Sect, Yan Rushi—a personage of the righteous path, famous throughout the land. Three years ago she had willingly offered her body to feed the devil, entering that den of poison alone as the righteous path’s informant.

Who knew what humiliations the Devil Fiend had subjected Young Sect Master Yan to, that the mere approach of Pagoda’s borders should leave her so weak with fear?

At this thought, someone sighed in sympathy: “Young Sect Master Yan, fear no longer. A Devil Fiend like this will be eliminated today, to comfort your honored mother’s spirit in heaven. These three years—you have suffered.”

Yan Rushi started, as if she had not heard, and did not turn around.

“Young Sect Master Yan,” the man pressed on, “in truth, from the day You Fusang betrayed the Yan Sect, the two of you have been enemies unto death. Martial Sisters of old; on today’s campaign against the devil, there is only righteousness and heresy between you.”

And righteousness and heresy could never coexist.

Yan Rushi’s mind went blank for an instant, a self-mockery pressing down beneath her eyes. A mist gathered at the long corners of her eyes, betraying, improbably, a thread of sorrow—of cold fate and colder fortune.

After a long while, she turned, bowed to the assembled company with a light smile:

“Since ancient times, only by cutting the rot from the bone can a wound be washed clean. Old affections are a cocoon; before the greater cause, they must all be severed. Rushi understands this principle. As for the three years imprisoned in Pagoda… for the greater cause of the world, Rushi bore it gladly.”

The greater cause of the world; bore it gladly—Yan Rushi found the words laughable even as she spoke them.

Thinking this, she lifted her eyes to gaze at Pagoda City in the distance, as if she might glimpse You Fusang within, sitting idle by the spring.

You Fusang, in brocade creased and worn, languid and wine-drunk in her beauty, yet lifting her face with a faint curve of smile in her eyes: “Junior Sister Yan, while the light is good before sunset, dance the Startled Swan Sword Art for me once more—the one Teacher-Mother taught.”

That was what You Fusang always said to her.

Senior Sister…

The first time Yan Rushi entered Pagoda City was in the early spring three years ago.

The skies of early spring are pale, without a trace of green, and the biting wind cuts to the bone.

Entering Pagoda alone, Yan Rushi was of course captured as a spy. Though the Young Sect Master of the Yan Sect had respectable cultivation, Pagoda had no shortage of ways to make righteous cultivators suffer. She was thrown into the palace, her gold-woven clothing torn to ruin, in a sorry state indeed.

Yan Rushi was to the Pagoda Palace what a pampered canary was to the boundary of life and death—the mere Devil Qi suffusing the hall was enough to disorder her breathing.

In the Pagoda Palace, You Fusang reclined on a jade daybed, flowing-gold sleeves trailing, their hems embroidered with a Three-Legged Golden Crow that flickered like Devil Tattoos. Beneath the magnificence spread a dead-silent eeriness.

She cradled a small incense burner to warm her hands; its smoke dispersed through the air like a miasma of devil-qi that never dispersed, without a breath of true fragrance to be found.

Such a smoke-fouled burner would have suited no one else, but with You Fusang it was a perfect match.

Upon the Pagoda’s seat coiled a crimson-eyed dragon throne, a phoenix overlooking the Nine Heavens, in sweeping strokes as if to encompass heaven and earth since time immemorial—yet all that drunken splendor of ornament could not match one point of luxury on You Fusang’s face.

The woman: willow brows, cinnabar lips, golden pupils, listless yet faintly tilted eyes, a narrow streak of cinnabar between her brows, charm like drifting cloud, her hair a strange deep gray the color of mist, lending that devastatingly beautiful face a touch of the sinister.

If Yan Rushi was a peony blooming to its precise height in midsummer, You Fusang was a winter’s-end camellia intoxicated on its own crimson. Too much of a good thing—like the camellia flower, which at the very peak of its beauty falls, calyx and corolla dropping from the branch together, like a human head hitting the ground; with one desolate sound, it should no longer exist in this world.

Hands bound behind her, kneeling in the hall, Yan Rushi looked up at her and thought, for no reason at all: Senior Sister never used to be like this.

Lightning-fast, a thread of formless Devil Qi closed in. Yan Rushi heard only a sizzling crackle, and the ruined Daoist robe on her back dissolved like paper in acid, gone in an instant.

And so at her back—the fine web of scars, together with her snow-white shoulders, stood bared to the air.

Before Yan Rushi could react, You Fusang abruptly drew near. Inches apart, those golden eyes fixed on her, burning as if with a cluster of open flame.

It was the look of a hunter. But when she spoke, her voice was gentle.

“Did I frighten you?” You Fusang said softly. “Forgive me. I only wished to see Junior Sister Yan’s wounds.”

In all the vast Pagoda Palace, everywhere was astonishment. The heretic attendants were shocked by the word “forgive”; Yan Rushi was shocked by the act itself.

See her wounds? True or not, half-shed clothing was already humiliation. In Yan Rushi’s heart, this was no different from stripping her bare for a public spectacle.

She stood frozen a moment, then shakily pulled her robes tight, though they could not cover everything beneath. Her eye rims reddened with fury; she forcibly held back tears, her whole body trembling, unable to produce a single word for a long while.

You Fusang glanced at her, did not come closer, only studied those fine scattered scars. A long silence, and then: “Forget it. You may go.”

“—Venerable Lord!” Among the attendants a young girl leapt up suddenly, raven hair hanging in twin knots, two small Spirit Bells threaded into her hair. “You can’t just let her go! These righteous types are the most two-faced, sanctimonious creatures alive—she’s broken into who knows how many places; who’s to say she didn’t steal something!”

You Fusang said flatly, “Geng Ying. Silence.” Then, to Yan Rushi: “We were Martial Sisters once. I will not hold this against you, nor inquire into why you came. Young Sect Master of the Yan Sect—go.”

Yan Rushi, dazed, did not answer before a cloak of flowing gold settled over her.

You Fusang had not approached; she had driven the cloak with her Devil Qi to drape it squarely over Yan Rushi’s shoulders. “Wear it. Then leave Pagoda.”

The words fell, and You Fusang turned as if to leave.

But her steps halted at the sound of a woman’s fragile voice.

“I beg the Venerable Lord…”

Yan Rushi’s lips were pale and trembling, tears streaming—whether from fear or humiliation—but her back stayed ramrod straight, drilled into her by her mother since childhood.

Through tear-blurred eyes she said: “I beg the Venerable Lord… to take me in.”