The Ghost Gate had been a legend of the deep Netherworld — a gateway standing at the boundary between life and death. And here it was, in the living world.
The fog finally made sense. It was not made by men. It was the natural condensation of heaven and earth, because the Netherworld and the Azure Sky never met. A Ghost Gate in the living world required concealment.
And so did the ghosts.
They came in numbers far beyond anything Little Grove Town had ever held. Drifting toward the archway on blind instinct — no mind behind it. Every unquiet soul in the whole Maple City region must have gathered here. And as long as the Ghost Gate stood, they would only grow more numerous, and stronger.
But how had the Ghost Gate come here?
Wei Feng understood the words the instant he saw them. Without hesitation, he pulled a crimson stick of incense from his robes — old-fashioned, strangely wrought — and shoved it at Zhao Lang. "Quick!"
He carried a flint, of course, and knew fire arts well enough himself. But Zhao Lang was faster.
Years of partnership needed no words. The moment the crimson incense reached him, Zhao Lang snapped his fingers. A tongue of flame licked the stick and consumed it in a heartbeat.
Only then did his face darken. "That was your only Red Incense."
The army's alarm incense came in three colors: black, red, yellow. Only men of rank carried it; it was a strategic resource. Black Incense burned meant the whole state fought to the death — few in Zhuang had the right to light it. Yellow Incense meant the burner was trapped in a death situation.
Between them lay the Red Incense: the peril of a fallen city, a lost land.
Red Incense lit, and all Maple City would shake. It would reach Wei Lin himself.
The City Guard and the Punishment Bureau were stretched thin across the region. Wei Lin sat at the city lord's manor, one thread in a web where pulling him loose risked everything. Was a town with no enemy but ghosts worth the city lord's personal arrival? And if Wei Feng was wrong — if Maple City suffered because Wei Lin had left — could he bear that weight?
None of it mattered. Not against those three characters.
The Ghost Gate. A myth older than memory, a shard of the age of gods.
The moment the crimson phantom of the incense rose, Wei Lin, city lord of Maple City, did not hesitate. He launched into the sky, wrapped in a howling gale, and screamed toward Little Grove Town.
At nearly the same instant, Dean Dong's eyes snapped open. Someone of his level had to sit at Maple City's heart at all times. Wei Lin had gone; Dong could not follow.
He did not move, but his voice carried through the walls, heavy with authority. "Send word to every disciple who can be reached. Whatever task they run, whatever cultivation they practice — stop at once. Return to Maple City!"
The Academy raised the hope of Zhuang, and that meant a long road of growth. But when the land was in peril, every hand was needed at the wall.
In the Academy, the vice dean, Song Qifang, sat cross-legged before a furnace, gently fanning the flame with a palm leaf. A low, low sigh. "Old, aren't I?"
* * *
In Little Grove Town, Wei Feng did not pause after lighting the incense. His saber lashed out in a horizontal arc — a blade-light that nearly split the air itself. It struck the archway and vanished.
Vanished. No ripple, no echo, as if it had never been.
Every following attack fared the same. Fire, wind — any art they hurled sank like a stone. Ling Chuan even threw his own sword, and watched it disappear without a trace.
As if the thing did not exist. As if anything that touched it did not exist either.
Huang Azhan paced before the Ghost Gate for a long time, torn. He had a stubborn faith in his own boyhood urine. But after watching Ling Chuan's sword vanish, he gave up the idea with real regret.
"This vortex... it must connect to the Netherworld. With all these wronged dead feeding it..." Wang Hao frowned, working it through. "Our attacks fall into the Netherworld, not the living world. What we see before us is only the Ghost Gate's reflection. And even the reflection hasn't fully formed."
Not fully formed?
Jiang Chen knew that script on the plaque. He had seen it in the Ethereal Realm: Dao script, writing that voiced the laws of heaven and earth. He had been turning the Ghost Gate over in his mind since they arrived. Now, at Wang Hao's words, a chill ran through him.
Then when would the true reflection condense? How? And what would it bring to this place?
They got their answer soon enough.
The ghosts that had swarmed Little Grove Town — the ones they had killed by the hundred, that never seemed to thin — suddenly surged as one, all rushing for the center.
The party had no time to think. Old trick: fall back, draw a ring of fire with fire arts, and defend within it.
From above, through the fog, an observer would have seen a river of ghosts — numberless, driven by some pull, pouring toward the vortex like a hundred streams into the sea.
And the disciples of Maple City Academy, with Wei Feng and Zhao Lang, were the bitter rocks the river ground against.
They could not move. They could not fight back. They could not see an end.
"Every unquiet soul in the Maple City region is being drawn here. Perhaps we die here today." Wang Hao gave a wry smile.
The ghosts were weak alone. Earlier, the party had cut through them easily — but that was when they drifted mindless and only struck at the living on instinct. Now they pooled in one place, and the party stood in their way.
Too many. Endless.
As far as Wang Hao could see through the gaps he forced in the wind, there was no end to them.
They could not know the truth: earlier, only Little Grove Town's own dead had gathered, with a few distant souls drifting in. Now every lingering spirit of the entire Maple City region was racing here, at speeds far beyond their own ability.
Lines of ghosts laced the sky, a spider's web of the dead that any expert in the realm would have shuddered to see.
"They won't die here." Wei Feng's voice was cold; so was his heart. "The city lord is coming."
No one knew how much he had hated lighting that incense. Hated the thought of that man seeing him weak, begging for help. But he could not do otherwise. Before a legend like the Ghost Gate, he would not stake Maple City's safety on his own pride.
Jiang Chen watched the souls stream past the "rocks," howl toward the archway, and be swallowed the instant they touched it. His heart was a knot he could not untie.
These souls had no mind left. No struggle, no screaming. No regret, it seemed. No pain.
But they had all been living people. Souls that should have rested.
Somewhere in that river — someone he had brushed past in a street. Someone he had known. A neighbor. His grandparents. His father.
He stared into the swarm, straining to find the man who had died in his bed. The man who had never been tall, yet had held up the whole sky over Jiang Chen's head.
The souls flashed by like lightning. Every direction at once. He fixed his eyes on the road from Phoenix Creek Town until they burned red — and still he could not see them all.
He had lived alone, unwilling to show weakness. Then he had An'an to raise, and he needed to be strong for her. He had almost never said it. But gods, he missed him.
He wanted to see his father one more time. He was terrified of seeing him.
Terrified of standing helpless before the Ghost Gate.
* * *
Then, as if some threshold had been crossed, the river of souls emptied in a single instant. And the reflection above the vortex sharpened — solid, clear, unmistakable.
In the next breath, Wei Lin dropped out of the sky in a coil of wind.
The Ghost Gate flickered — and was gone.
For a moment Jiang Chen felt a wisp of breeze pass his cheek. He blinked.
The vast vortex was gone. The fog over Little Grove Town parted and scattered.
Everything had dissolved. The Netherworld and the Azure Sky had never met.