Shen Du’s spiritual platform was tested when he was eight and found to be “shattered,” so the Qingheng Mountain Sect turned him away. He spent the next eleven years following Old Zheng around the village roads, scraping together a living with his half-baked spirit-exorcism skills. He thought that was all his life would ever amount to.
Then, on a rainy night, a wandering wraith broke into the funeral hall. Old Zheng was gravely wounded and on the verge of death, and Shen Du’s left eye awakened in that desperate moment. In its gray-gold light, he saw that the wraith was no monster, but a mother who had drowned herself and her child in a pond, still smiling even in death.
He didn’t disperse her. He helped her pass on.
Then he discovered that after helping a departed soul pass on, he could use the strongest technique it had wielded in life.
He also discovered that his spiritual platform wasn’t shattered. It was empty.
