Su Yan's mind churned with chaos. A boy who'd seen him had become an old man, while he remained unchanged.
But he only remembered recent years. Who was he in the missing time?
Was he even Su Yan?
Pain split his skull. He grasped for memories of Sujiaping, but every reach pulled up different faces, different voices, different parents. His mind overflowed.
"What are you?" the old man whispered.
Su Yan stared blankly. "Who am I?"
He collapsed. The old man collapsed beside him. The village erupted in panic.
* * *
When Su Yan woke, he lay in a woman's chamber. Dust covered everything. The bronze mirror on the dressing table had dulled with age.
A ghost girl peeked from the mirror. When she saw him watching, she hid. When he didn't move, she grew bolder. She combed her hair, then unscrewed her head and placed it on the table to brush more carefully.
Su Yan sat up. The ghost girl's head glared at him, blood streaming from seven orifices.
He rubbed the lump on his own head. "Did Seventh Lord and Lord Bell dump me in a haunted house?"
The ghost girl nodded from inside the mirror.
He stumbled outside. They were inside an ancient mountain—a small compound with crumbling halls and forgotten gardens. Below, he could see a mountain gate.
This had been a minor qi cultivation sect three thousand years ago. When the cultivators vanished, it emptied.
Su Yan exercised, sweating heavily. He circulated his qi, opened the Mud Pill and Crimson Palace vaults, and slowly returned to peak condition.
"Where are those two?" he muttered.
The great bell's voice boomed from outside, cursing. "I told you the Qinyan Cave wasn't a blessed land! You wouldn't listen! Now I'm covered in mud! And you left A-Ying with the ghost girl—"
"The ghost is harmless," Yuan Qi said. "She's trapped in the mirror. And the coffin girl said this is an ascension ground. There must be something special here!"
They found Su Yan awake. The bell rushed to him, delighted. "Finally! Let me absorb some qi. This serpent won't feed me. Says he feels like a ghost drained him three hundred times."
Su Yan waved him off. "I just woke up. Give me a few days."
He asked about the ghost. Yuan Qi explained they'd found her in the mirror and kept her as a guard while they explored.
"You two aren't human," Su Yan sighed. "I shouldn't expect human decency."
Two old oxen limped up the mountain path. Their bodies carried dozens of half-healed wounds.
Su Yan studied them. They looked familiar.
The oxen saw him and bellowed with joy, breaking into a run.
Yuan Qi's mouth watered. "Fresh beef!"
He charged forward. Recognition struck. "Wait—"
Black smoke erupted from the oxen. They transformed into Bull Demons, each wielding a bone Soul-Lashing Whip. They whipped Yuan Qi to the ground before Su Yan could intervene.
"Lord Bell," Su Yan said slowly. "Are these...?"
"The Bull Demons who followed you. There were five, though."
At the Shui Temple, five Bull Demons had pledged to Su Yan. They'd followed him to Mount Wuwang. When the mountain fell, some followed him back. They'd missed Zhou Qiyun's dragon carriage and been left behind.
Su Yan had assumed they'd given up. Instead, they'd crossed mountains and rivers, fought through the New Territory, and found him again.
Only two remained. The wounds told the rest of the story.
Su Yan's heart swelled. "From today, you're my first disciples. I'll teach you qi cultivation. We'll open the Six Secrets together."
Yuan Qi picked himself up. "They don't seem very bright. You've just opened your school, and your first students are idiots?"
The Bull Demons exchanged glances. One spoke, voice deep and measured. "We were mortal ox yao who cultivated to demon kinghood. We only pretended to be simple-minded to survive as underworld gods. Now that we've found a true master who grants us names, we need not pretend."
Su Yan stared. Yuan Qi gaped.
"They're not idiots," the great bell muttered. "You're the idiot."
Su Yan named them Niu Zhen and Niu Gan, after the I Ching hexagrams for Mount Wuwang.
The two Bull Demons bowed, hooves crossed at their chests. "Thank you, Master, for the names."