"The qi in your body isn't demonic, so I can only use fire chi to cast a few special little tricks."
The Holy Lord's earlier words ring clearly in Su Tang's mind.
Perhaps he hadn't failed.
He simply hadn't supplied the energy to start it!
Su Tang's eyes brighten; the light called "hope" rekindles.
He sets the successful copied sheet before him and takes a deep breath.
A lick of flame buds at his fingertip.
Using fire chi to cast magic isn't easy—at least not for Su Tang right now. A slight mistake and the whole paper can go up in flames.
Like this time.
The flame runs along the strokes of the characters, then… ignites the page.
He grabs the water cup on the desk and douses it. Instead of giving up, he eagerly pulls out a fresh sheet and begins tracing from the first strokes again.
He can feel it—his line of thought is right. The approach is viable.
What's lacking is only proficiency!
Copy, burn; copy, burn…
The Tiger Talisman enhances Su Tang's control over his own abilities; the Rooster Talisman gives him precision at the finest scales.
His fire chi extends and is applied again and again. The flame that sprang out at first shrinks to a small flame, then to heat, and finally to no visible change at all.
And as it walks the lines on paper, every rise, turn, and close of a stroke goes from early missteps—where the chi drifted off—to silky pivots that mesh perfectly with the characters, without the slightest deviation.
Also, because Su Tang drew the characters out, he doesn't know their exact stroke order. He can only try again and again.
At last, when a pale fish-belly white shows at the horizon and dawn arrives, he can run the entire fire-chi sequence to completion!
He exhales.
Surveying the floor of ash and wastepaper, Su Tang rubs his brow, pats his cheeks, and tries to keep himself in a decent state.
Then he gathers his fire chi at his fingertip.
No paper this time—he traces the runes in midair!
Faint, reddish traces flow from his fingertip and hang in the air, fixed yet unfading.
One stroke, another, and another.
The runes gradually glow.
Holding his breath and suppressing his excitement, Su Tang is about to write the final stroke when sudden insight hits.
To complete the spell, he still needs a transparent medium!
Transparent…
He frowns and scans the room.
Desk—no.
Bed—no.
Wall—no.
Full-length mirror… yes!
His eyes light. He writes the last stroke in a flash.
The fiery characters that had been floating flare with light!
A strange power ripples, bearing the string of runes to the full-length mirror—where they pour in and vanish.
Su Tang immediately feels the fire chi in his body being rapidly drained.
Corresponding to that, a scene suddenly appears in the mirror.
A dark red world.
Empty, desolate, horrifying, barren…
A surge of negative emotion spreads from the mirror; the joy of success evaporates in an instant.
His brows knit tight. This scene gives him a familiar feeling.
He's seen it somewhere. And it was only recently, on 23rd Street…
!
Su Tang's pupils blow wide!
He remembers!
This nauseating palette, this space saturated with despair—this is…
Hell!
The image in the mirror seems to drift into a new region: like an asteroid belt in space, with brown slabs of rock of all sizes floating everywhere.
No purpose, no direction, no coordinates…
All measures of human perception seem meaningless here.
Just looking at it, Su Tang feels an extreme torsion wring his brain—like riding a giant pendulum a dozen times in a single second. Dizzying, disorienting—no east, west, south, north.
He immediately peels off a wisp of fire chi to coil around his head.
Only then does the grindstone-crushing-his-wits feeling ease a little.
Now he can study the details in the mirror.
The broken stones, the grain in the rock, the gaps around them—and a flash of pale black slipping through a gap.
Pale black?
Su Tang startles—and in less than a tenth of a second, he hears a soft, intrigued "Hm?"
The picture in the mirror zooms in, fast!
He sees that pale black figure arrow back toward him!
From an eye-speck of black to clear claws, tail, and vast bat wings in… one-fifth of a breath?!
Su Tang's overtaxed brain labors. He can sense this is something important, but his thoughts seize up like a jammed gear. Forced, he withdraws the fire chi circling his head for a moment.
Then his breath stops cold.
Got it! That shape… that iconic shape…!
It's the demon who stands with the Holy Lord as one of the Eight—
—the Sky Devil, Ximu!
Fuck! This is the hell where the other seven demons are bound!
Realizing this, Su Tang frantically tries to stop the spell—but to his despair, he doesn't know how!
Another wingbeat in the scene.
Two enormous blood-red eyes fill the center of the mirror!
"Fire chi…? Is it the Holy Lord…"
"Huff… huff…"
Su Tang pants, blood running from his mouth, nose, and ears.
He stares at the mirror reflecting his own image; horror and aftershock flash in his eyes.
Unable to find a way to stop it, he'd only been able to sever the supply of fire chi, starving the spell of energy and forcing it to cease.
He took a certain amount of backlash for that.
But it was worth it.
Anyone who hasn't lived it couldn't possibly understand—especially when those blood eyes fix on you. It truly feels like the sky is collapsing and a black cloud is smothering you!
An extreme oppression and terror!
It's different from what the Holy Lord exudes. If the Holy Lord feels like the savagery of flame, then Ximu feels like boundless suffocation!
It takes your breath away!
Staggering, he throws the window open and leans out, drinking the fresh air outside.
Only when his body feels somewhat better does he sit on the bed and lean against the wall.
"This magic…"
He lifts a scrapped page from the floor with telekinesis and brings it before him.
The characters on it are complex, eerie, and crabbed.
His brows knot; he says nothing.
"I didn't expect the one dark-chi spell I wrung out with all I had… to be this one…"
He remembers it.
It's a spell shown in the original Jackie Chan Adventures.
After possessing Valmont, the Holy Lord used it to "cordially communicate" with the other seven demons in hell.
Very useful… and very useless.
He sighs and tosses the page aside.
He'd rather it be the most common, lowest-prestige cantrip—Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, whatever—than end up with something this dangerous.
With the former, at least he could taste a mage's joy.
With the latter…
It only brings trouble and fear.
Facing the Eight Demons demands immense courage. Su Tang doesn't consider himself brave. As he said when Makima asked him to debut as a hero: he is greedy, ignorant, shortsighted, ambitious but inept.
So this sort of magic should be put on the shelf.
Shaking his head, he sweeps all the wastepaper and ash into the trash with telekinesis. Outside, the sun is up. He stifles a yawn.
He replays yesterday morning's battle.
It was a fight wholly different from his past devil hunts. The enemies were strong—and far more cunning than devils. Long prepared.
So problems were exposed.
Others aside—himself first.
He lacks a sharp instrument for precise strikes.
Whether flames or telekinesis, half-dragon form or shadow ninja—they don't suit spearheading a charge. They're more like bywords for suppressive fire.
Put another way: he lacks a spearpoint.
The fix is simple enough.
Talismans.
The Ox and the Rabbit don't bear mentioning—one gives brute, miraculous strength; the other lets him slip in and out through seven gates without impediment.
The Snake gives invisibility for a surprise; the Dragon gives blasting power to crack a point by force.
Of course, those are unknowns yet—where they are, how to get them, he's groping in the dark. But there's one talisman whose location Su Tang already knows.
The Pig Talisman—
Electro-Optic Eyes!
With a thought, he pulls his gaze back.
He takes the four-sided dragon head hanging from his neck and lifts it high.
To pay the price for the power he just used.
East, West, South, North.
The dragon eyes don't light.
Hmm…
He puts away the seeker, goes to the desk, and opens the computer.
He has a hunch—though the dragon eyes didn't glow this time, it should be soon. Maybe next time, or the time after that.
Worth noting: the emergence of talismans is interesting. No matter where you are, if a talisman is about to appear, you will, for all kinds of reasons, arrive near it—or it will, for all kinds of reasons, come near you.
So don't worry about range or the seeker's detection radius.
His fingers dance over the keyboard as he tries to search for information on that chocolate factory.
But perhaps because it isn't famous, he searches for a long time, swaps out many keywords, and still finds nothing relevant.
He shakes his head and closes the laptop.
It was just a passing thought anyway—prepping some intel for the next talisman hunt. If he can't find it, forget it.
Back to the bed. He draws the curtains and returns the room to darkness.
A whole night of dark-chi research has bled his mind and body dry. With the excitement gone, fatigue floods in and he's asleep the moment his head touches the pillow.
He sleeps until noon.
"Mm."
He opens his door, rubbing sleepy eyes.
The hospital's second floor is empty—he's the only one. Denji and Power seem to have been called back to Public Safety.
He means to throw something together to eat. But when he steps into the kitchen, he finds a lunchbox already set out on the table—with an orange sticky note beside it.
The writing is crooked—clearly a beginner's hand.
Denji left it.
"Mr. Su Tang, Power and I had to leave for something. You weren't awake yet, so I made you some noodles and put them in the thermos lunchbox. Um… I just learned how—don't know if it'll suit your taste…"
That fills almost the whole note—except for the margins, where another line is squeezed in. Power's:
"The side dishes were washed by this great lady! Damn human brat, write it nicely for me!"
Evidently, Power dictated and Denji wrote.
Su Tang reads the two parts, and a smile curls his lips.
Humming a tune he can't name, he lifts the lid.
As expected, the noodles have congealed. Bits of vegetables are scattered on top—cabbage, shredded potato, carrot… obviously Power's handiwork. The shapes are all irregular.
But cooked is cooked. Edible.
He carries it to the table and, with a touch of ceremony, sets out a fork and chopsticks.
Like most parents tasting a child's cooking for the first time, his face is full of smiles.
Whether it tastes good is another matter—but the solid, satisfying sense that the child is growing up fills him to the brim.
So he doesn't leave a single noodle.
When he's done, he wipes his mouth, dresses, and leaves the clinic.
It's one-thirty in the afternoon. He's going to visit Aki Hayakawa.
Yesterday, before he went home, Aki was still unconscious in his hospital bed.
He wonders if he's awake now.
Creak.
He pushes open the ward door, glimpses the back of a woman turning to leave, then looks to Aki on the bed.
"You look a little better. When did you wake up?"
"This morning." Aki forces a smile, clearly unwilling to burden others with his gloom.
"I brought you fruit."
He sets the basket on the table and takes in Aki's hair hanging loose to his shoulders. He sighs softly.
It's his first time seeing the man like this.
"Are you all right" are words he can't say. Anyone who isn't blind can see Aki is not in a normal state.
So he shakes his head and changes the topic. "That woman just now was…?"
"Senior Himeno's younger sister. She brought me some letters Senior Himeno left."
Aki lowers his head, gripping a few tear-stained sheets.
"Sorry…"
Su Tang opens his mouth. He hadn't expected his topic change to run straight into the muzzle.
Himeno…
It was "Sloth" that put her into a permanent sleep, it seems.
He wonders if the Horse Talisman…
…could wake her.