The mist on Mount Qingming was alive.
At a quarter past three in the morning, the mist seeped through the mountain crevices and coiled around the eaves of the Cloudwatch Temple, like countless icy hands feeling along its vermilion pillars. Li Xuanqing's fingers turned white around the peachwood sword. The Seven Star talismans carved into its blade glimmered faintly in the fog, reflecting a cold glint in his eyes.
"Master, are you really going in?" Behind him, the woodcutter Wang Er shook like a sieve. The hatchet in his hand clanged against a rock, its sound especially grating in the dead silence of the mountain forest.
Li Xuanqing did not turn around. His voice was clear and cold as ice. "Your child has been possessed for three days. If we wait until dawn, his three souls will be gone, and even the gods won't be able to save him."
Wang Er swallowed and stared at the dark forest ahead. Three days earlier, his ten-year-old son, Gou Dan, had gone up the mountain to gather firewood. After returning, he had gone mad: sleeping through the day, then climbing out of bed at night to sob at the corner of the wall. His cries were too shrill to belong to a child, more like those of a wronged woman. The village shaman had performed rites for two nights, but nothing worked. Gou Dan had instead begun vomiting black blood, long threads of it hanging from the corners of his mouth, his vacant stare terrifying to behold.
Some said he had encountered the "Hanging Ghost" deep in Mount Qingming.
