[Supernatural Resurgence + Rules-Based Horror + Subverting Expectations + Doesn't Kill Demons, Only Collects Their Remains]
His master said: "Most demons have a path left unfinished by the person they once were."
On the day Lin Yan came down from the mountain, his master gave him an ownerless purple gourd, thirty-six talismans, and an old ledger.
He also gave him three rules:
First, don't fight people for food.
Second, when you see a demon, look at the person first, then the demon.
Third, if you can't reason with it, walk away.
He traveled on, encountering demons along the way.
Other people killed demons on sight.
Lin Yan didn't kill them.
He sat down, listened to them finish speaking, called them by name, and then collected them in his gourd.
The gourd grew more and more crowded: a lamp, a mass that answered when spoken to, an old comb, dozens of names, and a patch of darkness where a whole world had opened up.
And a packet of malt candy that had never been opened.
But three more things lived in the deepest part of the gourd.
Greed. Anger. Delusion.
They were his master's Three Corpses. They had followed his master for two hundred years before being scattered by a single sword strike sixty years ago. Now they were waiting to return home.
And home meant his master's body.
His master would have to die.
Lin Yan did the math:
He would repay the temple for what his master owed it.
He would repay his master for what he owed him.
After the two debts canceled each other out, he would have eight years left.
So he carried the gourd back up the mountain.
"I accept."
