Hunting in the Northwest
Captivity was for survival; distance, for atonement. Battling spirits and monsters with courage and wit was out of necessity, yet every encounter proved an obstacle. Gathering the hearts of these phantoms prolonged her own life, and also sought to redress the ancestral sins that haunted her lineage. Journeying through the northwest, she subdued every hindrance along her path, testing the limits of her fate and the depths of her inherited guilt.
Hunting in the Northwest
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At midnight, the sky is always terrifyingly black, and the silence is chilling. Yet, in this eerie hour, someone moves under the cover of darkness.
The wind wantonly stirs the bamboo in the courtyard, and the rare barks of dogs drift from deep alleys, while the wind whistling through the hall shows no mercy in its clamorous rush.
With a sudden bang, the main hall’s door is slammed shut by the wind, the incense burning before the ancestral tablets is snuffed out in an instant, and a flurry of ash scatters across the long altar table.
The person who had been dozing on a meditation mat snapped awake at once—sleep would not come again tonight.
“You are no stranger to this place, yet you still show such disrespect, barging in with such impatience and disorder!” The voice was hoarse and low, grating like shards of broken porcelain.
Though the man kneeling on the mat was just twenty-three, his composed bearing made it clear he was not to be underestimated.
In answer to his annoyance, only a silvery, bell-like laughter sounded from the doorway—playful and teasing, yet lacking any real sincerity. Of course, the two of them—well, one person and one ghost.
They had known each other so long that the man no longer cared about the occasional flirtatious banter—it meant nothing to him.
“Oh my, Ninth Master, you’ve spent too much time alone—why are you suddenly so formal and bookish?” She much preferred when he spoke to her in modern language rather than in archaic, flowery phrases.
And for a female ghost who had li
