The Nine Yin Manual: The Daoist Scripture and the Calamity of Fire

In the second year of Xuanhe, Bianliang was alive with music and revelry every night along the Bian River, while Emperor Huizong was obsessed with the Flower and Stone Tribute. Huang Shang, a proofreader at the Hanlin Academy who had spent twenty years poring over Daoist scriptures, received an imperial edict beneath the dim lights of the Imperial City Division: he was to travel to western Zhejiang and exterminate the Manichaeans, branded as “vegetarian demons.” He knew no martial arts and had no understanding of military strategy. All he had was the copy of the Yellow Emperor's Scripture of the Hidden Talisman in his arms, its pages covered in annotations. In the deep southeastern mountains, the fog was thick as a miasma. The Manichaeans' stone formations, soul-stealing songs, and fire-worshipping sorcery brought three thousand imperial guards to a standstill. At the brink of life and death, Huang Shang closed his eyes and stilled his mind, entering a mysterious state of serenity. His senses grew clear; with a sweep of his sleeve, he brushed aside a stone, and with one finger, he drove back the enemy. That night, a faint but unyielding stream of warmth stirred in his dantian. Yet what he discovered in a cavern beneath Qingxu Temple made the words “suppress the bandits” seem both absurd and cruel. Charred bones, suspended corpses, the entrails of “saints” enshrined in jars, and a roll of names written in blood on the wall: behind every name lay ordinary people driven to ruin by the Flower and Stone Tribute. Dogsheng, a young Manichaean he had rescued, wept as he said, “Sir, my elder sister was dragged away by a stone-transport boat. My little brother starved to death. The Holy Duke gave us food, and when we die, we can meet the Venerable Light...” On one side was the court's harsh order to “crush them by the deadline”; on the other, an endless stream of Dogshengs. On one side were the benevolence and righteousness of the sages' books; on the other, humanity twisted by blood and fire. Huang Shang stood between them, his hand trembling around the brush. He remembered what his wife had said softly before he left the capital: “At the market yesterday, a traveling merchant said an old man in Muzhou hanged himself from a mulberry tree because a tribute bird had once rested on it.” He remembered the annotation he had written beside a line in the Scripture of the Hidden Talisman: “When man stirs the urge to kill, Heaven and Earth turn upside down.”