The cold wind swept dust through the crack in the door, making the oil lamp flicker between bright and dim. Chen Wuya stood on the threshold, his cloak not yet fully settled over him, but his gaze had already crossed the courtyard and fallen upon the night sky in the direction of Western Forest. Without turning back, he said quietly, "If I have not returned by the third watch, take the others and wait at the back hill behind the ruined temple."
Bai Zhi stood inside, her flexible sword still unsheathed. At his words, her fingertips tightened slightly. "Aren't you going to burn incense?"
"The incense must be burned." He pulled up his hood. "But tonight, someone has to collect the debt for those offerings."
The door shut behind him, and his footsteps were soon scattered by the wind.
Night had only just fallen when the ruined temple crouched alone at the end of the barren slope. Its offering table leaned crookedly, and its incense burner lay overturned on the ground. Chen Wuya lit no lamp and offered no kneeling prayers. He merely mixed a pinch of brown powder into the remaining ash and lightly scattered it over the four corners of the offering table. He moved very slowly, as if afraid of disturbing something—or as if deliberately letting someone see.
Once he had finished, he took out the badly worn bronze token and set it in the center of the offering table, half-covering it with broken roof tiles. Then he retreated beneath the old locust tree behind the temple, pulled out a tinderbox, lit three cheap sticks of incense in a pile of dead grass, and planted them in the soil.
Firelight illuminated half his face. His shadow stretched long, swaying endlessly over the broken wall. He stood without