Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Mirror Broker

In a clan like that—parents sharing a bed but dreaming different dreams—Gu Shi Yi’s life was never going to be easy. Then her birth mother pulled that stunt, and things went from bad to worse. Otherwise, how could she have been lured away by one single line from the old Daoist priest?

“Come with me. You’ll learn Daoist arts, and you’ll live like drifting clouds and wild cranes—free, unbound, and answerable to no one. Doesn’t that sound beautiful?”

It was that one phrase—“free, unbound”—that did it. Gu Shi Yi followed him, and once she left, she was gone for twenty-five years. She’d barely grown up before she was already wandering the jianghu.

Wandering was one thing. The real problem was that the old Daoist priest seemed to have a terrifying enemy. For years he’d been dodging them, so every time they settled somewhere, they had to leave within three years. Gu Shi Yi followed him across the world—north and south, east and west—until they finally ended up on an unnamed mountain. They borrowed a crumbling little temple to live in, and at last, they’d managed to stay put for five or six years.

She was almost thirty now. Down in the mortal world, women her age had long since married and started families—children everywhere, noise everywhere, life everywhere.

And her? She’d burned through her best years like kindling. Night after night, she slept alone in a cold bed, with no man to warm the quilts. Not a single one.

She wanted to marry!

Just thinking about it made Gu Shi Yi want to cry until her eyes swelled shut.

So on the nights when she and the old Daoist priest slept under the sky for a quilt and on the earth for a bed, Gu Shi Yi sometimes found herself thinking of the silk-and-jade comfort of home.

“Sure, I’d get my brothers and sisters looking down on me, and I’d have to endure my own father’s ice-cold face, and the servants would bully me whenever they felt like it… but at least I ate well. At least I drank well. At least I didn’t have to worry about whether there’d be food tomorrow…”

Regret like that would occasionally flicker through her mind—just a flicker, gone in an instant. She knew her own temperament. She’d been born loose-limbed and wild-hearted, the sort who couldn’t stand being pushed around. When she was five, a cousin snatched her little sword, and she’d fought that cousin even though they were several years older. When she couldn’t win, she’d bitten them until they screamed, loud enough to drag an official over to break it up.

That was her.

And that nature of hers mostly came from her mother—the one who’d run off with some wild man. Gu Shi Yi liked men, hated being controlled, and in a family like that you only got two choices: rebel until you became a full-blown oddity, or let them crush you into a tame little songbird in a cage. There was no third path.

So the regret vanished as quickly as it came. Better to follow the old Daoist priest and be free. Better still… he’d opened a door for her. A door into a whole new world.

Yes.

Literally—a door.

Gu Shi Yi watched the old Daoist priest slumped over the table, chuckling foolishly at his wine bowl, and measured him with a calm, practical eye.

The old bastard could drink. On any normal night, this would only have him half-soused.

But tonight wasn’t normal.

She’d spiked the wine.

Five li behind the temple, on a ridge, there stood a thousand-year pine. Two years ago it had endured a lightning tribulation and awakened into a spirit. When she had nothing to do, she’d go visit and gossip with it. The pine tree spirit had only just gained awareness, but it had lived in these mountains long enough to know all sorts of things.

It had told her about a plant that grew in a valley below: Drunken Immortal Grass. It bore red berries, and if you brewed them into wine, it could get even an immortal drunk. Gu Shi Yi hadn’t dared pick much—only three berries. She crushed them, squeezed out the juice, and mixed it into the wine.

The old Daoist priest drank it.

Tonight, he wasn’t waking up.

Still, she didn’t trust him. His power might have been fading these past few years, but his foundation was still there. What if he was pretending?

She leaned over and shoved his shoulder.

“Hey. Old Daoist priest. Widow Zhang’s sons are charging up the mountain.”

Widow Zhang was an old widow from the little town below. She was sixty. These days people lived long, and sixty barely counted as old—more like sturdy middle age. Her children were grown, her life was quiet, and apparently the loneliness had rotted her brain and blinded her eyes, because she’d somehow taken a fancy to this scruffy old Daoist priest with his weasel face and his permanent stench.

During their years on this mountain, he snuck down once a month to meet her. And the two of them… gods, they were disgustingly passionate.

Just remembering it made Gu Shi Yi smack her lips.

Tsk. Tsk.

Once, curiosity had gotten the better of her, and she’d secretly followed him down the mountain. She tailed him all the way to Widow Zhang’s courtyard wall and listened from under the window.

The noises.

The whispers.

The sticky, syrup-sweet pillow talk that made her feel like she’d fallen into a vat of vinegar—so sour her teeth hurt, so sour she’d shivered right there in the dirt.

And then, because those two had no shame at all, the commotion grew loud enough that Widow Zhang’s four young, strong sons heard it. They grabbed weapons, kicked down the door, and rushed in to beat the old bastard to death.

Luckily, Gu Shi Yi had been there that night. Seeing things go sideways, she tore off a corner of her clothes, drew a talisman, and used an External Incarnation Technique to switch the old Daoist priest out.

Otherwise… he wouldn’t have needed to wait for his enemies. He would’ve been carved into pieces right then and there.

After that, the four sons from the Zhang family somehow discovered that Gu Shi Yi and the old Daoist priest lived on the mountain. They even gathered a group of people and charged up to beat the adulterer, scaring the old Daoist priest so badly he fled into the woods and didn’t dare show his face for a whole month.

But old habits die hard. Once the heat died down, he still snuck back to see Widow Zhang.

And then he got caught again.

Gu Shi Yi wasn’t there this time, but the old Daoist priest’s luck was indecent. He took a few blows, then used a Cicada-Shedding Escape Technique—left his clothes and pants behind as a human-shaped decoy for them to beat, and ran back naked as the day he was born.

When he staggered into the courtyard, Gu Shi Yi had been chopping wood. She looked up, saw a skinny, wobbling blur of bare flesh, and screamed so hard she covered her eyes and fell flat.

She had nightmares for days after that.

To calm herself down, she even went down the mountain a few times just to stare at the house guards at Squire Wang’s estate—men built like walls, muscles knotted and thick—until she finally managed to drive the image out of her head and banish her heart-devil.

But the Zhang family’s sons had planted a heart-devil in the old Daoist priest for good, especially Zhang Sanlang and his pig-killing knife. That blade had nearly ended the old Daoist priest’s bloodline on the spot. Ever since, just the memory made his legs shake and his crotch go cold.

So whenever Gu Shi Yi so much as mentioned the Zhang family’s sons, the old Daoist priest would spring upright and panic—eyes wide, head swiveling—like a stray dog and a pig awaiting slaughter all at once.

Sure enough…

The moment he heard “the Zhang family’s sons,” the old Daoist priest jolted so hard his spine cracked. His head snapped around with an ugly little sound that made Gu Shi Yi wince, suddenly worried he’d break his scrawny neck.

He squinted toward the gate, lips moving.

“W-where… where are they?”

A strange glint flashed through Gu Shi Yi’s eyes. She pointed outside as if she could already see them.

“Almost here. A hundred steps, maybe. I can hear them!”

The old Daoist priest went pale. He shoved the table so hard the bowls rattled.

“Run! Run! If we don’t run, this Daoist priest’s life is finished!”

And, more importantly, his little life was finished. Sure, it wasn’t as useful these days, but it was a family heirloom. With a bit of care, it could still last him until his last breath.

He spun—

“Pa!”

In his panic, he tripped over his own feet. Left caught right, right caught left, and down he went, slamming forehead-first into broken stone. He didn’t even groan. He simply went limp.

Gu Shi Yi walked over and kicked him.

“Get up, you old bastard… If you don’t run, the Zhang family’s sons are going to slice you open… They’re here! They’re coming in!”

She pointed at the gate and shouted like a madwoman.

The old Daoist priest didn’t move.

Good. He was really out.

Gu Shi Yi bent, hooked an arm around his waist, and hauled him up with a grunt.

“Ugh. You reek.”

He didn’t bathe. Ever. His stench could knock down birds. How Widow Zhang managed to lay hands on him was a mystery of the heavens.

Holding her nose with one hand and dragging him with the other, Gu Shi Yi hauled him into the main hall and tossed him onto the bed in the corner. She leaned in and slapped his face—once, twice.

No reaction.

Satisfied, she went back outside.

It was the Mid-Autumn Festival. Moonlight was at its strongest, and the moon ruled the sky like a cold, bright monarch. Its pale glow washed over the ruined temple—broken walls, collapsed tiles, scattered bricks, everything ghostly and bleak. From the dense woods outside came the odd cries of night birds, sharp and wrong, as if something unseen were laughing.

A normal person would’ve wet themselves.

Gu Shi Yi only felt excited.

This was the perfect time.

She dropped to her knees and kowtowed several times toward the moon, solemn as if she were praying before an altar.

“Founding Patriarch above—bless your disciple. Let it succeed tonight.”

Then she sat cross-legged, formed hand seals, and steadied her breathing. In a few breaths her mind cleared, her spirit platform settling into stillness. Fine threads of white light began to slip into her with each inhale, strand by strand, gathering inside her body like mist pooling in a bowl.

Time passed—how much, she couldn’t tell.

A faint white glow rose within her dantian qi sea, shining like the moon itself. With each slow breath, her lower belly lifted and fell, and the glow crept upward—belly to ribs, ribs to chest, chest to throat.

Then—

She spat.

“Clang!”

Something dropped onto the stone before her knees.

Gu Shi Yi picked it up and held it in her palm. In the moonlight, it revealed itself as a small bronze mirror, no larger than her hand. The back bore a few ancient, confident lines: a palace standing amid drifting clouds, and in the foreground a beauty in flowing palace robes dancing with long sleeves. Her body was graceful, her posture elegant—yet her face was blank, deliberately left smooth, as if the craftsman had refused to give her an identity.

Gu Shi Yi flipped the mirror over.

The front was dull and gray, as if covered by a veil of white gauze. She leaned in and peered at it.

Nothing reflected. Not her eyes, not her face, not even a hint of moonlight.

Gu Shi Yi lifted her gaze to the moon, adjusted the mirror, and tilted it until the angle felt right.

A white streak slid across the surface.

The veil seemed to lift, slowly, as if invisible fingers were peeling it away. The mirror grew clearer, clearer—

And when Gu Shi Yi looked down again, a face appeared.

Ordinary. Round. Round-eyed. The sort of look that, at Squire Wang’s estate, would get you hired as a maidservant to serve a miss.

“Shi Yi!”

Gu Shi Yi grinned.

“Yan Er. Finally. The time’s come—and I’ve gotten the old guy drunk. Just wait. I’ll start the ritual and pull you out.”

“Shi Yi…” Yan Er’s expression trembled with excitement. “Will it really work?”

“It will.” Gu Shi Yi nodded without hesitation. “The old guy told me long ago—this mirror is a Daoist treasure. It can connect yin and yang, and it can even glimpse what came before and what comes after. I can’t do the second part. My power isn’t that strong. But connecting yin and yang? That, I can manage.”

She tipped her chin toward the sky.

“And tonight the moon’s power is the strongest it gets all year. If there’s any night that can yank you across worlds, it’s this one.”

Yan Er’s eyes brightened—then dimmed, as if fear crept back in around the edges.

“Shi Yi… I’m not from your world. We’ve known each other a long time, so I understand some things. You and I belong to different worlds. Pulling me here won’t be easy. If it ruins your cultivation… forget it. I’m already dead in my world anyway. If our world also has the underworld court, then find a way to let me reincarnate.”

Gu Shi Yi’s face hardened.

“I can’t stand you when you get like this. And reincarnate? With what, exactly?” She jabbed the mirror with a finger. “You sank in that pond for three years. When you died, your resentment was sky-high—you’ve already turned into a vengeful ghost. You march into the underworld court now and the underworld constable will drag you straight into the eighteen layers of hell first.”

Her voice turned even sharper.

“And after that? You think you’ll come back as a person? Dream on. Best case, you’re a chicken or a dog. You people in that world like keeping cute pets, sure, but who knows what you’ll end up as? One bad day and you’ll be slaughtered, bled dry, skinned, and eaten.”

Yan Er stiffened. After a long moment, she nodded.

“Fine. Then… we’ll do it. But if it really can’t work… then forget it.”

“Not ‘we’ll see.’” Gu Shi Yi lifted her chin. “It will work. I’ve been preparing for months. No matter what, tonight it works.”

She set the mirror down facing the sky and went into the hall. In quick, practiced motions she dragged out the ritual tools she’d hidden away, then hauled the offering table outside.

She pulled on the old Daoist priest’s bright yellow ritual robe. She strapped on his thousand-year peachwood sword—the one he never let out of his sight. On the table she laid out the dipper, lamps, plaques, fish, ruler, seal, ruyi, and more, arranging them one by one until the setup looked properly solemn.

She placed the mirror at the center, then lifted the old Daoist priest’s white jade ritual tablet and burned incense before the Founding Patriarch. Her lips moved in a steady chant as she bowed and prayed, asking heaven and the Founding Patriarch to bless her.

“Your disciple dares to perform a forbidden ritual today and break the barrier between worlds. It is for sisters’ loyalty—so my friend may have one thin thread of life. It goes against the heavenly Dao and disrupts the cycle of rebirth. If punishment must fall, let it fall on me alone.”

She kowtowed three times, set the tablet down, and drew the peachwood sword.

She cut her left index finger and let blood drip into a bowl. Then she poured in a full bowl of extreme yin water she’d taken from a yin-heavy place in the mountains, and mixed in river mud dug from deep beneath the riverbed. She kneaded until it turned soft, then added a fistful of coffin soil from a hundred-year grave, three strands of fetal hair taken from a dead infant, and a pile of other strange, chilling ingredients—each one uglier than the last.