Demon Braids and Three Demonkin Massacres

"Gulp..."

Li Xiang felt as though his heart was about to leap out of his chest.

What kind of face was that?

It had no eyebrows, no nose, only two deep black holes spewing murky bubbles.

In its dead-fish eyes, milky-white film covered most of the surface.

Only a pupil the size of a needlepoint remained at the center, rolling fixedly with inhuman greed. Through the thick glass, it watched him like a delicious bug trapped in a fishbowl.

"You... don't... have... a... demon... braid?"

The voice came in fits and starts, like a drowning person crying for help, yet also like an interrogation.

"You can kiss my ass!"

Li Xiang nearly let the curse fly.

At that perilous instant, a broad, warm hand reached over and covered his eyes.

Darkness fell, cutting off their gaze.

"Don't look. Don't listen. Don't think."

Lin Shouzhen's low voice sounded beside Li Xiang's ear, steadying him like a great bronze bell. It shattered the cold pull inside his mind.

Then Li Xiang heard a faint tearing sound.

Teeth breaking skin.

"By decree!"

Lin Shouzhen barked, his voice cracking like spring thunder.

Li Xiang could not see, but he felt a surge of scorching, pure yang energy erupt inside the cramped cabin.

Lin Shouzhen had bitten his middle finger. Using it as a brush and his blood as ink, he swiftly drew an intricate talisman on the porthole glass.

His finger swept like dragons and snakes, completing it in one flowing stroke.

As the final stroke landed, the blood talisman came alive, shining with a faint but pure golden light. Against the pitch-black river, it was a beacon driving back the gloom.

"Lin Shouzhen of Maoshan requests passage through the Blackwater River. Everyone aboard is an ordinary person. They don't know the rules and meant no offense."

Lin Shouzhen spoke quietly, but his tone brooked no argument.

He released Li Xiang's eyes and cupped his fists toward the terrifying face outside the window.

"Tonight is the Dragon King's joyous day. Bloodshed would be inauspicious. For Maoshan's sake, please grant us passage and take no offense."

Li Xiang could see again. He gulped down air and looked out the window.

Before the golden blood talisman, the scaled face pressed against the glass showed an uncannily human wariness.

Its dead-fish eyes shifted as if weighing the matter. At last, it gave Li Xiang a long look. The greed had not faded, but it had no choice but to retreat.

"Gulp..."

Trailing a string of bubbles, it slowly drew back and vanished into the ink-black river, leaving only a faintly trembling patch of water.

Only after that suffocating, icy presence disappeared did the cabin grow a little warmer.

"Wh... what was that thing?"

Li Xiang's throat felt packed with sand. His voice came out painfully hoarse.

Lin Shouzhen did not answer immediately. He took a yellow cloth from his robe and carefully wiped the fading bloodstain from the porthole.

"Master?" A rustle came from the upper bunk. Lin Xuanguang had been startled awake by the shout.

He poked his head out, bleary-eyed, but the sight of his master on such high alert woke him at once. "Did a water monkey climb aboard? Or was it a river sprite?"

"Neither."

Lin Shouzhen shook his head, turned, and looked at Li Xiang.

"That was a River-Patrolling Yaksha."

"A River-Patrolling Yaksha?!"

Lin Xuanguang sucked in a breath. Even Lin Xuanshu, who had been resting nearby with his eyes closed, snapped them open in disbelief.

A River-Patrolling Yaksha was a water deity's officer formally invested by the Demon Dynasty. It was no ordinary demon or ghost.

"Tonight, the Dragon King of the Blackwater River is celebrating his wedding. The Yaksha was clearing the way."

Lin Shouzhen sighed and walked over to Li Xiang. He patted his shoulder three times, sending warmth through him with each touch to dispel the chill in his body.

"Young friend Li, your Spiritual Perception is too strong."

Lin Shouzhen looked at Li Xiang with a trace of regret. "Hundreds of people aboard this ship were asleep. Only you heard the River-Patrolling Yaksha knock."

Li Xiang's heart sank.

Spiritual Perception. That must be the Embalmer profession's trait—Corpse Sense.

Years spent handling corpses and walking the border between life and death had made him far more sensitive to such sinister things than ordinary people.

"Sometimes seeing too clearly isn't a blessing." Lin Shouzhen sat back down on his bunk and continued.

"As the saying goes, ignorance is no crime. If you hadn't woken and met its eyes, it would have knocked twice, found no answer, and left.

"Because you couldn't 'see' it, the rules would have counted you as ignorant. But you saw it and met its gaze. That created a bond of cause and effect."

"The Dragon King's wedding..." Li Xiang murmured, overcome by the absurdity of it all.

What the hell kind of world was this?

And the question that thing had asked him still circled through his mind like a nightmare.

"Daoist Lin, it asked whether I had a demon braid. What did that mean?" Li Xiang looked up.

At the words demon braid, the room turned oppressive.

Bitterness crossed Lin Xuanshu's face. Lin Xuanguang clenched his fists, his expression indignant.

Lin Shouzhen stayed silent for a long time before letting out a weary sigh.

"The demon braid..." He pointed to the crown of his head, as though a mark of humiliation still lingered there.

"Young friend Li, did you know that dynasties rise and fall through more than wars between men?"

Lin Shouzhen lowered his voice, recounting a forbidden history that had been deliberately erased.

"Every fallen dynasty earns something like a posthumous name. We call the Former Dynasty the Demon Dynasty because the Demonkin who entered the Central Plains did not win the realm by horsemanship and archery alone."

"To rule the Central Plains, they signed countless unequal treaties with the monsters of the mountains and rivers, surrendering our rights and disgracing the nation!"

"To secure their rule, they invested a hundred thousand mountain gods and river gods. Most of these so-called gods were man-eating demons and monsters."

Hatred flashed in Lin Shouzhen's eyes. "To let those demons feast openly on human incense offerings and flesh, the Demon Dynasty issued the Demon Braid Edict."

"Keep your head, lose your hair. Keep your hair, lose your head."

"They shaved all the hair around the scalp, leaving only a tuft on top to braid into a thin queue down the back. It had to be slender enough to pass through the square hole of a copper coin. That was why they called it the Cash-Coin Demon Braid."

Li Xiang instantly thought of a hairstyle from a dynasty in his previous life, and his scalp prickled.

History did have a way of echoing itself.

"But it wasn't merely a hairstyle," Lin Shouzhen continued. "That braid, thin enough to pass through a coin, was a contract. A Token of Allegiance. It proved that you, as an obedient subject, had submitted to those mountain and river gods."

"With a demon braid, you could walk through the deepest forests, and ordinary demons would smell the stink of servitude on you. They would know you were a contracted two-legged sheep under a great demon's protection and wouldn't dare harm you lightly. But without one..."

"Without one, you were a rebel, unclaimed food. A demon could eat you without incurring any karmic debt!"

"Didn't anyone resist?" Li Xiang could not help asking. "How could no one resist a treaty that raised people like livestock?"

"Of course they did."

It was Lin Xuanguang on the upper bunk who answered. The young Daoist's face was red with anger as he jumped down.

"Back then, scholars south of the river and righteous fighters of the martial world rose up countless times against the Demon Braid Edict. And what happened?"

Lin Xuanguang ground his teeth, his eyes blazing. "When the Demon Dynasty's army couldn't crush them, it summoned the great demons it had invested!"

"Guangling, Lianqi, Jiyang... Those demons slaughtered three great cities, killing for ten whole days! More than a million people weren't cut down by blades. They were devoured alive!"

"That battle turned heaven and earth dark and sent blood flowing in rivers. After those three massacres, the backbone of the realm was broken. The people seethed but dared not speak. They could only shave their heads through tears and grow that humiliating demon braid."

The room fell deathly silent.

Only the waves outside the window could be heard, keening for that blood-soaked history.

Li Xiang clenched his fists until his nails dug deep into his palms.

So the demon braid was not just a twisted fashion. It was an assault on the dignity of an entire people, proof that humans had knelt before demons.

"Later, the Demon Dynasty fell and the Great Xin Dynasty was founded. But how could a century of entrenched abuses be swept away so easily?"

Lin Shouzhen took up the story, his voice bleak. "The braid on the head was cut off, but the braid in the heart was much harder to sever. In the eyes of certain great demons, the old treaties still hold."

"Take tonight's River-Patrolling Yaksha. It still follows the old agreement. To it, a person without a demon braid is unclaimed prey. Eating you would be entirely lawful."

At his master's words, Lin Xuanguang slammed a fist into the metal bedframe, setting the bunk humming.

"The Mountain Lord's bride, the Dragon King's wedding—they're all sacrificial rites the Former Dynasty devised to curry favor with demons. The Great Xin Dynasty outlawed them in public, but some local warlords and gentry still make offerings in secret for their own benefit."

"And now these demons want to use treaties they signed with the Demon Dynasty hundreds of years ago to bind the people of the Great Xin Dynasty. They deserve to be put to death!"

Li Xiang drew a deep breath and steadied the turmoil inside him.

"Why have I never heard of any of this?" he asked.

In his memories, however chaotic the Great Xin Dynasty might be, it was at least a human dynasty.

"Because some people have deliberately forgotten, and others have deliberately concealed it."

Lin Shouzhen's gaze grew distant. "For ordinary people, the more they know, the sooner they die.

"The Demon Dynasty lasted 2,960 years. Its successors wanted to wash away the humiliation of the nation's founding and used literary inquisitions and every other means at their disposal.

"Each generation forgot a little more. Time has all but washed away what happened back then.

"Now people only know to pray to the gods for safety. Who remembers the heaps of bones beneath those divine thrones?"

"Besides, some of today's Beiyang Warlords have begun walking the Former Dynasty's old road for the sake of power, willingly colluding with monsters... These are troubled times."

Li Xiang fell silent.

The darkness of this world ran deeper than he had imagined.

People had to struggle not only against other people, but against the demons and monsters that held sway.

"If only another powerhouse like Wu Taizu would appear," Lin Xuanguang said suddenly, a flicker of hope in his eyes.

"Wu Taizu?" Li Xiang had never heard the name.

"He was Emperor Taizu of the Wu Dynasty, before the Demon Dynasty. You haven't trained in martial arts yet, so you wouldn't know. Once you go to Linjiang County to train, you will."

Lin Xuanshu, silent until now, spoke with reverence.

"Wu Taizu started out as a Beggar. With nothing but his iron fists, he smashed the old order to pieces. He worshipped no gods, sought no immortals. He believed only in his own fists."

"They say he once swore: no marriage alliances, no indemnities, no ceded land, no tribute. The Son of Heaven would guard the frontier; the sovereign would die for the realm."

"One man, one fist—he struck fear into all who heard his name. The Taizu Long Fist he created remains one of the martial world's foundational arts. It demands neither exceptional physique nor talent. Anyone can master it."

"What a shame..." Lin Xuanshu shook his head, the light fading from his eyes. "For another man like that to appear—hard, hard, hard!"

Those three repetitions laid bare the despair of their reality.

Sitting in the dim lamplight and listening to these secrets, Li Xiang felt his fear slowly fade. In its place rose a longing unlike anything he had known.

Train in martial arts.

Li Xiang told himself that in the depths of his heart.

I have to train. Only when my fists are hard enough will anyone sit down and listen to reason.

"All right. It's late. Get some sleep."

Lin Shouzhen glanced at Li Xiang. Seeing the fire burning in his eyes, he said no more and merely waved a hand.

"The Yaksha accepted my blood talisman, so we've passed tonight's trial. Nothing else will happen to us."

Li Xiang nodded and lay back down.

The next day.

Li Xiang woke to the sound of someone crying, desperately trying to keep it quiet.

There were no heart-rending wails, only chattering teeth and sobs muffled as though the person's throat were stuffed with cotton.

Li Xiang had heard that sound often in the burial-clothes shop. It came from people so terrified they did not even dare cry aloud.

He got out of bed and found that everyone else in the cabin was awake.

"Something happened outside," Lin Xuanshu said quietly when he saw Li Xiang stir.

Li Xiang said nothing. He buttoned his long gown and pushed open the heavy cabin door.

The kerosene lamps in the corridor had long since gone out. Pale, feeble morning light streamed through the portholes onto the wet deck.

Several sailors carried wooden buckets, washing the deck with expressionless faces.

Splash—

A bucketful of water struck the deck. The runoff was a glaring red as it wound toward the drain.

"That's what happens when people ignore a warning."

At some point, Lin Xuanguang had come to stand behind Li Xiang. His voice was cold. "The captain made it clear yesterday: no matter what you hear, don't open the door.

"But some people always think they're the exception. They think a foreign gun or a few foreign books will make those things afraid to touch them."

Li Xiang followed Lin Xuanguang's gaze.

At the end of the second-floor corridor, the door to the cabin where those young reformers had stayed stood wide open.

A body lay facedown in the doorway.

It was the young man with gold-wire glasses.

His death had been gruesome. His hands were still stretched out as if pushing the door open, either trying to escape something or to welcome it in.

Several more bodies lay inside the cabin. They had died in different ways, but every one of them had been gutted.

"Yesterday, he was holding forth about breaking the old world," Li Xiang thought, his emotions tangled. "He didn't break it. One of its monsters ate him first."

"And he wasn't the only one."

Lin Shouzhen stepped out, his hands behind his back, and looked toward the communal cabin on the lowest deck. "The second floor houses people with money. Its defenses are better, so only those six fools died. Down below..."

He paused, his voice tinged with detachment. "In the communal cabin below, a hundred and thirty-six people died last night."

"A hundred and thirty-six?!"

Li Xiang's pupils contracted sharply.

The people below were peddlers and laborers, those at the very bottom of this world. To save money, they had packed themselves into that damp, dark sleeping area.

"Why?" Li Xiang's voice was dry. "Didn't the River-Patrolling Yaksha leave last night?"

"The Yaksha left, but the creatures it brought from the river didn't." Lin Shouzhen shook his head.

"The Yaksha is an official. It cares about ceremony and rules. Pay its toll, and it will grant you some courtesy. But the shrimp soldiers, crab generals, water ghosts, and river sprites under it? They're ravenous fiends."

"The Dragon King took his bride, the Yaksha cleared the way, and the cold scraps left over were naturally tossed to the Lesser Ghosts below."

Li Xiang fell silent.

More than a hundred lives seemed to have become nothing but a cold number.

"I'll go down and take a look," Li Xiang said.

He was no saint, nor did he harbor some grand compassion for all who suffered.

But giving the dead a dignified end was his job—and his path to growing stronger.

"I'm an Embalmer. If the Corpse Qi from a ship full of bodies doesn't disperse, they could turn after nightfall. Then this really will be a ghost ship." Li Xiang had given them an entirely reasonable explanation.

"Brother Li, I'll give you a hand." Lin Xuanguang stepped forward.

Lin Xuanshu opened his mouth to call his junior disciple back, but Lin Shouzhen raised a hand to stop him.

"Xuanguang's heart isn't in cultivation. Let him go." Lin Shouzhen watched the two young men walk away and spoke softly.