Deep beneath the roots of the Spirit World, in a cavern stitched together from teeth and silk, something stirred.
Eyes blinked open.
Not two.
Not four.
But dozens.
Koh the Face Stealer sat unmoving, draped in the stillness of eternity. The walls around him twitched with expressions — laughter, horror, grief — stolen faces that murmured like wind in a jar.
Something had changed.
The veil trembled.
A ripple of fear, not born of emotion — but design. Precise. Repeated. Refined.
Koh tasted it.
He chuckled, long and slow, like oil bubbling in an ancient pot.
"Someone's learning."
He tilted his centipede body slightly, slithering past a cracked turtle shell with a frozen face etched into it.
"But not ready yet."
He curled back into his shrine of skin.
And went still.
Back in the mortal realm, Lee walked through the village marketplace, hands behind his back, face relaxed.
The same smiles greeted him.
The same voices asked if he was still chasing spirits or just girls now.
He nodded, chuckled, offered polite quips.
Nothing had changed.
Because no one knew.
The shaman had been a foreigner. A whisper with no roots.
And his old master?
He'd left the village years ago. No wife. No friends. Only Lee had ever visited. His absence, though noticed, was not alarming.
Lee's trail was clean.
Still, as he passed by his childhood home, he didn't go in. His parents were inside — older now, more reserved. He visited less and less. They never questioned it.
He made sure of that.
People always assumed he was just "different" now. Focused. Maybe touched by spirit wisdom.
Let them think that.
He returned to the woods. Not the charcoal forest, but deeper.
Darker.
Near the cliff edge where mist hung thick and constant.
Hei Bai lived here.
Lee could feel the panda spirit's presence like an ancient drumbeat in the roots of the earth. Constant. Watching. Dormant — but not asleep.
His preparations had to be perfect.
This wasn't threading.
This was harpooning a god.
He spent the next two weeks quietly building the trap — not of chains or cages, but of invitation. He carved runes into sacred bark, scattered purified bones soaked in his aura, burned incense made from tree sap and old spirit blood.
A summoning by resonance, not force.
"Don't hunt the storm," he whispered to himself, "make it believe you are the sky."
He meditated day and night, refining his fear aura into something subtler — less like a knife and more like an infection. It didn't frighten anymore. It convinced. It whispered.
"Submit."
He crafted a soul-core — a black orb of polished spiritstone etched with fine veins of silver ink. Once Hei Bai was weakened, this would house its essence — compact, compressed, usable.
But he also needed insurance.
From an old book of banned scrolls — taken from a wandering monk he once "accidentally" encountered — he studied reversal seals.
If Hei Bai proved too unstable or if the absorption overwhelmed him, he would need a fallback.
One that could contain him.
Even from himself.
He wouldn't need it.
But logic demanded the option.
On the final evening before the summoning, Lee stood at the edge of the mist, the soul-core resting in his palm, glowing faintly.
His mask was off.
His real face watched the woods in silence.
He smiled.
But not kindly.