"Meoooow!"
The cat demon, bulkier than any tiger, loosed a shrill cry, every strand of its earth-yellow fur standing on end.
It was locked in a grinding battle with the Corpse King, bathed in blood, its body crisscrossed with wounds where the flesh had split wide. That flesh had already gone black, eaten through by corpse poison.
"Hrrraaagh—"
The Corpse King's face was green, its fangs bared, a bloody sheen crawling over its blackened nails.
Three arrows as thick as a grown man's arm ran clean through its body, runes coiling along the shafts, wearing steadily at its death qi. Yet the Corpse King raged on, ferocious and unbowed, demonic qi billowing up like beacon smoke until it seemed to join heaven and earth.
"Damn it, that's three Demon-Slaying Arrows in it already. Why won't this Corpse King go down?" snarled the Daoist priest who stood off to one side, pinning the thing in place with an array of talismanic implements.
The Demon Suppression Bureau's Innate masters could be counted on one hand, and strong hands were needed to hold the headquarters. With Xu Qianfu already gone to deal with the Thousand-Year Tree Demon, there was simply no way to spare more Innate martial artists.
So the Bureau had called in an adept from the Daoist Order, brought along the cat demon king it had spent so much blood and effort taming, spread a net across heaven and earth, and lain in wait for the Corpse King.
The plan had not gone smoothly. They had lost men and officers before they even drew the Corpse King out, and the Corpse King itself proved far tougher than anyone had imagined. Arrow after arrow punched through its body, a dozen implements bore down on it, and still its savage might towered over the field.
The Bureau's people fought on without a word, doing everything they could to keep the demons under the Corpse King's command occupied.
Not far off, in a patch of gloom, Lilith watched the battlefield, the breath of life and death coiling endlessly in her eyes.
She was using [Desiccation] to quietly gnaw away at the vitality of the Bureau's side, while secretly helping the Corpse King hold its wounds closed and feeding its demonic strength.
No other priest could have managed it. When holy light settled on a ghost or a fiend, the result was no different from being hit with a damage spell. But Lilith could reverse life and death; even undead units, the sworn enemies of the living, she could heal without trouble.
More than that: though she had yet to find time to ascend to the Middle Sequence, her extraordinarily high compatibility with the [Life Reaper] legacy meant she had already grasped part of the nature of the [Trickster Mage] and the [Shadow Mage]. Her ability to stay hidden was no worse than a rogue of the same rank.
Then a flicker of cunning crossed the Corpse King's cold, cruel eyes. It swung wide around the cat demon and lunged straight at the priest who had been harassing it with implement after implement.
"No—!"
The wail ended when a black demonic claw tore the priest's heart out of his chest.
Lilith lay deep in the shadows, watching it all in silence, life-force gathering quietly inside her.
"Sisters, my own abilities may be limited, but I will never shortchange you by so much as a hair! I promise you this: follow me, and your treatment will only get better than before, never worse. Everything the Tree Demon could give you, I will give. And what the Tree Demon could not give, I still can!"
"Set the rest aside and just think about it. When the Tree Demon was alive, did she ever hand you that many [Yin Soul Stones] every single day?"
Li Fei's face was all warmth as she put the question to them, her voice ringing out.
These past two days she had used thunder and iron to establish her authority. Now it was time for kindness.
"She did not!" Several of the more "perceptive" female ghosts answered at once.
"Of course, Yin Soul Stones are hardly worth mentioning. Where sisters are concerned, I don't hoard my little treasures. Every demonic art and legacy the Tree Demon kept hidden away, any sister here may leaf through as she pleases. And beyond that—"
In a tone dripping with persuasion, Li Fei laid out the benefits and privileges awaiting the female ghosts, then finished by painting the sky itself: "Sisters, think back. In the past, whenever we ran into people from the Demon Suppression Bureau, didn't we all have to give them a wide berth, terrified of being killed, or worse, taken alive and handed over to serve some fat-bellied noble?"
"With me it's different! You've seen it yourselves. Even Nie Yunyi, that famous name among humans, supports me taking charge of the Demon Suppression Bureau! Once the Bureau is our territory, protecting you all is the least of it. Why shouldn't I find each of my sisters a post and a title inside the Bureau itself?"
"By then, not only will the court's lapdogs no longer dare to push our sisters around, even the other demons and fiends will have to flatter and fawn when they see us."
Li Fei had been born with a face fit to overturn kingdoms, and when she wore that warm, earnest smile, there was a faint shadow of Qin Zhihua in her: dignified, generous, the kind of presence that dissolved the guard between one heart and another without anyone noticing.
The terms she offered, [Legacy] included, outstripped anything the Tree Demon had ever given. Add the grand promises she spun off the top of her head, and quite a few of the female ghosts were genuinely moved, light kindling in their eyes.
"Of course, every ghost has her own ambitions. If some of you would rather not follow me, I understand that too."
Li Fei shifted her tone and made her pledge without a shred of hesitation: "Five years! Give me five years, sisters. If at the end of them you're still dissatisfied with me, you may come and go as you please. I won't stand in your way, and I'll send you off with a generous gift besides. And if you're willing to stay on, then I, Li Fei, will share every hardship with you, one boat, one heart."
She paused, then reached out and stroked the skull of the skeletal ghost-mare beside her, adding gently, "You too."
Five years?
The female ghosts exchanged glances.
Five years was hardly a long stretch even for a human cultivator, and ghosts generally outlived humans by a wide margin. Five turns of spring and autumn would pass in a blink.
Faced with a promise like that, even the coldest and hardest among them wavered. Five years of eating and drinking well, free study of a demon king's legacy, maybe even an official post, every benefit imaginable. And when the five years were up, they could simply dust themselves off and walk away.
The look in their eyes changed. Who would have guessed that this enchantress, ruthless as her methods were, could be so generous with her own people?
What these female ghosts clearly did not understand was that in five years Li Fei might well be what this world called an immortal, with no shortage of ways to keep them in hand. Especially the Kun Division ghosts: never mind five years, if five months went by without them being bent into the shape of a succubus's tail, that alone would prove Miss Top Courtesan's charm had water in it.
"And if that still doesn't satisfy my sisters..." Li Fei drew the words out, her meaning weighted. "If you can bring me ten new sisters of acceptable talent, I'll present you the same generous gift and see you off with my blessing."
"And naturally, sisters who don't wish to leave are welcome to invite as many new sisters as they like. I'll reward you accordingly."
Female ghosts who met the standard were hard to find, so she set the rule to see whether these ones had sisters, wives, or daughters of their own to bring in, and swell the ranks that much sooner.
"I have a sworn sister..."
"My mother's younger sister..."
The female ghosts had already begun whispering among themselves, and more than a few of the simpler ones were glowing, as if some bright future had opened in front of them.
Li Fei watched, and her smile grew warmer still.
"The Demon Suppression Bureau belongs to humans, in the end."
The voice belonged to a mature female ghost with a striking, well-worn beauty. "Say you do take charge of the Bureau. What happens when the humans won't tolerate us, and they force you to throw us into the Demon-Locking Tower? Are you going to break with the imperial court over it?"
"Besides, the Bureau has destroyed more ghosts than anyone can count. If not for the Bureau, I would never have become a vengeful ghost at all! Are we simply writing off a sea of blood-debt?"
The one challenging her was Huang Zhenzhen, the newest of them, with a plain, softly lovely oval face that suggested a good wife and a gentle mother. Yet between her brows sat a savagery that would not disperse, and the ghost-aura around her was chilling. She had plainly died carrying resentment and grievance down to the marrow.
When she spoke the three syllables of the Bureau's name, that neat, pretty face twisted, every word ground out between her teeth, hatred bone-deep escaping as cold vapor through the gaps.
The others fell quiet at that. None of them had the nerve Huang Zhenzhen did, to question the woman to her face, but the ghost-aura that abruptly thickened around them told its own truth.
For all that the Six Paths had collapsed, demons born of heaven and earth were still the minority. Most demons grew out of fish and insects, birds and beasts, grass and trees, stone and mountain. Ghosts likewise formed when a living thing died and its soul gathered with the yin qi. But not everyone who died became a ghost.
When an ordinary person died, unless they were buried in a place of great malevolence, they were nothing more than dry bones in a grave, waiting quietly to rot. At least nine ghosts in ten had died with hatred in them, and stood up again carrying that grudge.
These female ghosts were no exception. Most of them could not keep their memories of life intact, but shards of them still clung to their souls, the parts carved deepest: the reason they had been driven to death, the reason they had risen as vengeful ghosts, and the marrow-deep hatred that came with it. That was why the Tree Demon had been able to gather female ghosts so easily. Decent treatment and a generous manner mattered, but so did her willingness to take vengeance on their behalf. If a female ghost had been wronged in life, the Tree Demon would devour the demon who had harmed her in front of her eyes, and that was what earned her a heartfelt cry of "Granny."
"Sister, you've put your finger right on it."
Li Fei's face turned grave at the challenge, and she brought out her killing stroke.
"In this world humans have it hard, and we demons and ghosts have it hard too. But sisters, never forget this. Human or demon, it is always we women who have it hardest."
"Other demons, when they lose, get a blade through the neck and that's the end of it. But we female ghosts, we she-demons, sometimes we can't die even when we want to. What becomes of us once humans take us alive, I hardly need to spell out. Even demons covet our bodies and treat us like playthings."
"And beyond that, I imagine some of you still hold memories from your lives. How did you become ghosts? Beaten to death by a husband? Sold off and hanged yourself? Bullied by some local tyrant and dumped in the wilds? Or something more wretched still?"
Tenderness and sorrow rose in Li Fei's eyes. She opened her arms wide, her voice climbing, impassioned.
"So, sisters! Before you cling to whether you are human or ghost, demon or fiend, remember above all that we are women!"
"By what right must the children born of our bodies take their father's name? By what right must a woman follow her husband wherever he leads, be he a rooster or a dog, while a man may keep three wives and four concubines? By what right must we guard our chastity while men frequent the pleasure quarters and call themselves romantics for it? By what right is a woman's virtue her lack of talent, fit only to serve a husband and raise his sons at home?"
Li Fei's voice was deafening, and the female ghosts' faces changed as they listened.
Even Huang Zhenzhen, who had stepped forward to challenge her, was left with her skull ringing from words so heretical, and murmured, "It has always been this way..."
"It has always been this way. Does that make it right?"
One question, and the ghost had no answer. Li Fei went on pouring out what was in her.
"Every time I see a woman swallowing it all and bowing her head, I shake with rage. Cold sweat on the hottest day, hands and feet gone to ice. I can't help asking whether this world will ever be good again, why oppression of women fills every corner of it, when we women will finally be able to stand up straight."
"I once thought I would find the answer in the learning of those who came before us. But I opened the books, and on every page, scrawled crooked and slanting, were two words: womanly virtue. I couldn't sleep. I stared at them half the night, and then blood came seeping out of the spaces between the words. The whole book was soaked in it. Our blood, sisters. The blood of women!"
Li Fei lifted her face to the sky as she asked it, her voice carrying both grief at their misfortune and fury at their meekness.
Thought from an age not yet born tolled like a great bronze bell, rolling and rumbling through the minds of ghosts who had been bitter and full of grievance from the start.
In the hush that followed, Li Fei looked around at them all, her voice thick with feeling.
"From that moment, I had a new dream."
"I dream that one day the women of this world will rule their own bodies freely, and no longer be chained to some worthless notion of chastity."
"I dream that one day, in the halls of court, female officials will speak for the rights of women and not yield half a step to any so-called great man."
"I dream that one day even the pleasure houses, those mires where women fall and lose all say over themselves, will be places a woman may enter and leave as she chooses, where a courtesan can tell a client she dislikes 'no,' and where a wealthy woman patron may enjoy herself as freely as any man, without a whisper of gossip to endure."
"I dream that one day we women will truly stand, our fates decided no longer by our sex, but by our ability and our character."
"In truth, that we are born equal ought to be self-evident. So why has it become a thing beyond our reach?"
"The reason is simple."
Li Fei paused, then rang out each word like struck iron: "Running away wins no equality. Rights must be fought for! Human or demon, we women cannot go on pretending to sleep!"
"You think I want the post of Demon Suppression Bureau Commander merely to serve myself?"
"Wrong. Utterly wrong!"
"Glory and riches are passing clouds to me. All I want is for tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of women to know that we too can rule our own house!"
"And if that is so, how could I ever sell out my sisters for my own selfish gain?"
At the end of it, Li Fei extended her hand to them, and her invitation was earnest and full of feeling.
"Come with me to Lin'an. The Demon Suppression Bureau, the imperial court, both of them need more women holding power. Only that way can we wake the sleeping women of the Song Kingdom, of the whole world, and let everyone see what women are capable of."
"Will you walk with me?"
Through a long silence Li Fei swept her gaze around, and everywhere it landed the female ghosts were nodding. Some had tears standing in their eyes.
At last her gaze settled on Huang Zhenzhen's face.
"And you?"
Ghost-aura surged around Huang Zhenzhen, blood-light blazing in her eyes, as though some future had caught hold of her heart, a future she would fight for until she was snuffed out.
After a moment the aura drew back into her, and she looked at Li Fei for a long time.
In the meeting of their eyes, Huang Zhenzhen saw a sincerity and a resolve beyond anything she had known. So she bowed her head.
"If it can truly be as you say, then what does it matter if I die a second time?"
Sisters, throwing feminist punches really does work.
Li Fei's lips curved.
"Watch and see."
On a battlefield gutted from end to end, the corpses of men and demons lay heaped together, great pools of blood spreading across the ground, a sight to turn the stomach.
A skeletal phantom took shape in the empty air. Her form was tall and slender, her bones beautifully and elegantly proportioned, the scalloped lace hem of her black gauze skirt swaying soundlessly in the wind.
No flesh, no features, nothing but a frame of bone, and still she carried a beauty beyond compare.
"Meeeoowww!"
The cat demon, wounded from nose to tail, held its severed tail high, every hair standing up, and let out a cry that was both shrill and final.
It did not dare face that phantom head-on. Instead it hurled itself at the swaying Lilith, blood-red demonic qi coiling around its claws, meaning to kill the one who had made the phantom.
"..."
The skeletal beauty looked down at the cornered beast still fighting for its life. Her bearing was solemn as a temple image, and in those pale-white eye sockets there was even something holy and merciful.
The gray scythe in her hand came down all the same, gentle and quiet.
"Ngh..."
Lilith made a stifled sound as the white light over her skin shattered under a vast, crushing force. Her small, soft body flew backward, spraying blood the whole way, tumbled over and over across the ground, and finally dropped into a pit of dug earth.
The cat demon could not pursue her. As the skeletal phantom dissolved, so did the last of its life, and no light at all remained in its dull vertical pupils.
The place fell briefly silent. Only blood went on flowing.
How long that lasted, no one could say. Then a small pale hand, filthy with blood, reached up out of the pit, fingertips gouging deep into the soil.
Lilith dragged herself out with an effort, rolled over with difficulty, and ended up sprawled spread-eagle in the pooled blood, arms and legs flung out like the character 大 (big).
Legacy or no legacy, she had not yet crossed that final threshold. For a Sequence 7 mage-girl to maneuver between two forces each fielding Middle Sequence combat power was no different from pulling teeth out of a tiger's mouth. The danger was absolute.
Once the Bureau's side won its pyrrhic victory, Lilith had been forced to step out and face the survivors alone, along with the badly wounded cat demon king.
Backed into a corner, the surviving Bureau members had played every card they held, and the cat demon burned its demonic power without regard for the cost, wearing Lilith's protective items down to nothing. That last clawstroke, the one it never came back from, had nearly opened her belly, shattering more ribs than she cared to count and leaving a deep red gash across her stomach through which her organs showed.
Thankfully, at the moment the death-scythe finished its chant, Lilith had made the decision to switch to the [Obsidian Necklace] Miss Stepmother had given her, triggering its shield at the critical instant. It absorbed enough of the damage to leave her, barely, alive.
She took out a potion and drank it, then simply lay there in the fouled blood, the whole sky's worth of stars reflected in her weary emerald eyes.
In that quiet her thoughts drifted, and it was as if she were back on the night before they split up, Miss Stepmother holding her hand while the two of them walked beneath the stars, looking up together.
Lilith's palm curled slowly, as though closing around something.
When her fingers met her palm and nothing at all was caught inside, her eyelids trembled. The haze went out of her gaze all at once, and worry took its place.
She bit her lip and stood, heedless of wounds still knitting and of the tearing pain that went straight through her.
Because it had struck her that however unmatched that shameless woman's talent might be, she was Sequence 7 too, and she was just as caught in the vortex between the Thousand-Year Tree Demon and the Demon Suppression Bureau.
Whatever she was facing, it could not be any safer than this.
She's reliable, yes. But what if she happens to need my help? What if she's still in the thick of it with the demons right now?
Anxiety took hold. Lilith cast several healing spells on herself, but the residual demonic power in her wounds clung like rot in the bone, eating and tearing at her flesh, and third-tier spells were not going to clear it out any time soon.
The golden-haired girl pressed her lips into a line, ignored the severity of her injuries and the pain outright, and forced her swaying body upright. One step deep, one step shallow, she made for the Corpse King's lair, leaving a trail of crimson behind her.
She had to finish tying things off quickly, get to Luyuan County, and find the person she wanted to see.
Li Fei grabbed up a weightless scrap of white openwork fabric, used it to tie her soaked hair back behind her head, and sneezed.
Who's talking about me?
The suspicion flickered through her and was gone; she pushed it aside.
A hard battle was on. How could she let herself be distracted?
Across the pale, exquisite skin of her belly, the total count of patterns had climbed at some point to one thousand and twenty-four, blossoming into a black lotus, so vivid it seemed wet to the touch.
But tonight's harmonization quota wasn't even half done.
Nine female ghosts had already gone half-transparent, delicate bodies twitching, finished for the night. That still left eleven, and color was rising in those pale, pretty faces.
Rich tea fragrance filled the air, and a nimble long tail swung happily behind Li Fei's head, flicking up little sprays of light and water.
"Sisters, I'll be counting on your kind attention from here on."
Laughing sweetly, Li Fei walked toward the female ghosts with their dazed, unfocused eyes, her bare feet, skin like ice and bone like jade, sinking deep into the soaked mattress and leaving two lines of vivid, sensuous footprints amid the creaking of the frame.
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