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Chapter 37 - Chapter 37. A Man’s Resolve

In the blink of an eye, he was in a sanctum with a bronze Buddha statue at the back end of the room, standing beside a flipped table. Two incense burners that should have been on the table were now on the ground, ashes everywhere. Burn and scratch marks were all over the place, the smell of burned paper and candles filled the air. A dirty clay jar sat by the foot of the Buddha statue, its mouth was sealed with a wooden lid, a long red paper seal with evil-suppressing symbols written on it and several talismans.

A monk whose robe endured some pretty new and heavy damage walked up to him, his right hand pressing a piece of white rag against his right forehead to stop the bleeding from a wound underneath. "Now the seal is done. You must take it away, as far as possible. Find someone who knows how to handle it."

"Yes, master." He bowed towards the monk and went to pick up the jar.

In the next moment, he had already locked the jar inside of a large box, with dry grass and cloth as padding. His family sent him off onto a boat - many of them would have been alive, if not for the evil creature the monks locked into the jar. Mo-sin-a, something he once thought was just a myth, out of old folktales. How wrong he had been, and how terrifyingly malicious it turned out to be.

He went to mainland China, or to his family, just China, in search of people who could help. But he ended up meeting a lot of scammers and/or incompetent exorcists, who could not even name what he had in the jar.

 Frustrated and desperate, he went back to Taiwan and got in touch with some long lost friends. Some of them told him about a small temple in the US - in Los Angeles, built and run by a group of Japanese Buddhist monks. He had his reservations about this plan - but he had run out of options at that point. So with the help of his friends, he booked a flight with the box to Los Angeles.

"Sorry sir, but we ran out of room for carry-ons. You need to check this luggage. Besides, it wouldn't fit anyway." The clerk behind a check-in counter told him, rather impatiently and smugly.

It was a bumpy flight, and the flight crew had not seemed to be handling their luggage properly. He rushed out of the airport and took a taxi to the hotel his friends arranged for him - from what he heard it was a cheap hotel, but it was not a time to worry about that.

"Sproutlinger Hotel" - a weird name, and kinda dark and gloomy. Still, he needed just one night's stay.

Room 127, not dirty, clear air and a clean bed. He wasted no time to open the box and to check on the jar - he dared not do it while he was on his way here.

Anger, fear and worry filled his mind as his attention was grabbed by the cracks on the jar. It must be those clumsy and careless good for nothing baggage handlers, why couldn't they just do their jobs!

Black smoke seeped from the cracks. The cold, lifeless, high pitched giggle resounded in his ears. He tried to leave the room - but he could barely take two steps before the illusions overtook him. 

So, that was what it felt like.

He found himself inside an empty building. Twists and turns, doorways and hallways, lanterns and candles. But no way out - this was something he finally realized after spending a very long time walking around, looking everywhere he could.

And when he was exhausted, frustrated and was about to be overtaken by stress and fear, it appeared. The girl in a red garb, the Mo-sin-a. It followed him, giggling, singing, chanting, threatening him all along the way. It did not stop, until he tripped and banged his head against the corner of a wall, and the ground.

He did not bleed, but the pain was real, as was the liquid warmth dropping down his head. At this very moment, words flashed through his mind. Some from the local exorcists, some from the Buddhist monks, some from a local witch who ended up dying. They told him, Mo-sin-a fed on fear, it fed on desperation, it fed on the deep, dark memories from one's past. The experience so far told him the creature he was facing was much stronger and terrible than these words implied, but at this very moment he had a desperate epiphany: if he could not beat it, he could first be like it.

He closed his eyes, only to find that he could still see the environment around him, only slightly different, and everything was shrouded by smoke and fog. Crazy thoughts bubbled up in his mind, or was it another epiphany, he was not able to tell any more. He stuck out his right hand middle and index finger, and shoved them into his own eye sockets.

The terrible pain and the warm liquid on his hands did not stop him. His eyes were no more, but still he saw - beneath the rotten world of illusion was only the hotel room he was in, only that it was filled with black smoke, and the walls were covered in fleshy sores, wounds, pustules, rotten skin and mutated veins, while his bed, his luggage and all the lights in the room were gone.

A short, child-sized humanoid creature with broad shoulders and long fur stood before him, its two claws were by his temples.

He yelled, he roared and screamed as he grabbed this creature by its arms and slammed it against the floor. Fist wailing, teeth biting. The creature fought back, its claws were sharp, leaving deep gashes on his arms, chest, shoulders and face. But this did not stop him, hell, it aggravated him even more.

His surroundings shifted constantly as the fight went on. Sometimes he was in the labyrinth of a building, fighting the little girl in a red garb; sometimes he was in his room, giving his all to fulfil his destructive and murderous rage.

The fight went on for a long time - too long, he began to think. The creature was almost fully torn apart a few times, but it just did not die. He himself was more than grievously, even fatally injured, but he was still able to fight; even stranger, he could feel the strange energy and strength coursing through his veins - a power he did not reject, but having imposed a cost on him.

The body of the creature/girl in a red garb assembled its body again. It seemed to be gaining the same kind of strength as well. It tried to escape, but he rushed over and restrained it - for only a moment, until he got a glimpse of what was outside the window - dark, gray, barren. This was not the real world either.

He grabbed the creature and pulled it back into his room. He slammed it against the wall, himself along with it. He slammed again, and again, and again. At least the pain was real, he really needed to wake up. He must wake up and deliver the jar to the Shenmue Temple. That was his only chance.

After maybe the one hundredth, or three hundredth slam. He broke free - at least partially. 

The surroundings were finally real. He woke up on the floor, closed the box and ran out of the room. He knew where the temple was, as the receptionist pointed him in a rough direction when he checked in. He did not remember much else, he just needed to carry the box with a jar inside.

He was almost hit by cars a number of times. He asked around when he felt lost, with unclear sentences and slurring words, and some people were kind enough to offer him help. Following the leads, he ran into the woods. The tree branches scratched and cut him, the cold numbed his arms and hands, and the rough terrain had worn his shoes, his feet and his legs. 

He climbed and climbed, until he could not anymore. But as fate would have it, he was discovered by a monk, a monk from the Shenmue Temple.

But the part of him that did not break free did not know this, for he knew only one thing for now - to contain this creature for as long as he could. If he could not kill it, he would just simply keep fighting.

But he did not expect that the fight would last years, even when the strange, ominous strength and power stopped flowing into him. His mind was fading, his will was weakening. A few times, the creature was even able to do its old trick and harness power from outside. But even so, their struggle went on.

Their area of battle changed over the years as well. No longer physical, for both of them realized that the longer they stayed in this world, the less they became bound by the laws of the previous one. They became two minds, two dreams trying to contain and consume each other. And at the same time, they became more and more alike. 

Things stayed this way for a long time, until one day, another person with a strange mind and will was pulled into their battleground.

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