Lin Mancang squats under a crooked old elm tree, the blue glow of his phone lighting his chin. Huang Sangu's floral padded jacket flutters in the night breeze like a ball of ghost fire, and ice crystals cling to the wound where half of Golden Hair's tail is missing.
"The first step in scientific ghost-busting..." He deliberately cranks his bootleg phone's speaker to the max. The melody of "Above the Moon" rattles the snow from the treetops. "Know what infrasonic resonance is? This racket is enough to shake every rat's nest right out of your cave!"
Huang Sangu's beady eyes suddenly turn amber. A chill creeps over the back of Lin Mancang's neck as memories of the autumn equinox ten years ago surge back. Back then, he was just a clueless kid, holding up an IV bottle to pee in a cornfield. He had no idea he'd soaked the spirit-summoning banner outside the Yellow Immortal's cave.
"You little brat!" Huang Sangu's shrill voice echoes, making his eardrums ache. "Your little boy's piss burned thirty years of your auntie's cultivation back then, and now you come here acting all tough?" Her floral jacket swells with no wind, and several strings of plum-blossom paw prints appear out of nowhere in the snow.
Lin Mancang catches sight of the blue lotus tattoo on the web of his left hand starting to burn. The mark appeared suddenly last year while he was getting scrubbed at the town bathhouse. Old Liu, the bath attendant, dropped his vinegar bucket on the spot. In the Northeast, a blue lotus mark is a sign that shamanic blood is awakening.
Suddenly, the sound of chains dragging comes from the old well at the village entrance.
"Hear that?" Huang Sangu rests her claw on his shoulder, cold as a frozen iron weight. "The Widow Wang's black dog was raised on raw meat. Right now, down at the bottom of the well..."
