Putting down the letter from the Flying Dragons, Taeyun watched as his office burst into cacophony. He had been careful to limit the occupants to his most trusted subordinates. The ones he trusted best were the ones he had handpicked or trained, even if many of them tended to have a shorter fuse that inversely matched their abilities.
Among the top-ranking members, the Chief of Staff, the Provost Marshall, the Chief of Finance, and members of the Steering Committee fit the criteria. It also included Pania and Luco, the former of whom looked ready to punch out the latter.
He sighed at the ruckus. It wasn't a topic that would set off the gossip mill, he supposed, or the popcorn machine for that matter. But it certainly made people nervous enough.
"Everyone calm down," Taeyun ordered, glaring at Pania until she loosened her grip on Luco's collar. The room settled into an uneasy quiet.
"There's no need to panic," Taeyun said into the silent air, "Or get too excited. In either case, the Shaman Council already knew as of yesterday, and I'm sure that people will start figuring it out themselves if the gateway to the Spirit Realm remains open. But Jia Xu's not the one I'm worried about. I'm worried about the hot-headed, extreme-minded, impulsive young fools on both sides; hers and mine."
Helang let out a sigh that seemed to come from deep within his chest cavity. "Not unreasonable, given how easily excited some people get. And inciters tend to fare well at these times."
His Chief of Staff, Lanhui cut in with an angry toss of her head. "Exactly! Many of the new recruits are completely lacking in discipline. Chairman, we might as well put riot-control on our contingency plans."
Provost Marshal Zuojian let out a deep sigh. "Sir, it might be wise to put evacuation on the list as well...for all we could know, this could devastate the city." Everyone winced at the thought of evacuating millions from the densely populated area. It was a logistical nightmare.
Taeyun looked around the room. Even the excitement of the younger shamans was dampened by the harsh reality that they could not use the gateway to their advantage, neither against the Shaman Council nor the warlords.
In a better world, he could work with Jia Xu to use the gateway without constantly fearing for a repeat of the first Northern Expedition, where the Nationalist and Communist army commanders had killed each other two weeks in. But fantasizing about a better world was useless. After all, he couldn't assassinate Jia Xu without stirring up a huge fight.
"Alright then, one thing at a time," Taeyun said, and the room burst into a haphazard discussion again. Helang caught his eye with a worried look. Taeyun shot him a reassuring smile, but it fell empty in the face of the crisis before them.
"We should find the gateway as soon as possible," he murmured to himself. Everyone fell quiet again. Taeyun glanced up at them. "Jia Xu definitely will do so too, or either one of us could have a coup on our hands anytime soon. You know how people can get when they've convinced themselves they are right and sure to win..."
He looked at Pania, speaking pointedly. "We'll have to get the Flying Dragons on our side. From what our agents in Hong Kong tell us, they may very well be the key to all this."
Either way, Taeyun had decided to kill them if they didn't cooperate. Mohan be damned, a war in Canton was way scarier than an old relic from the Qing Dynasty.
"How are we going to do that? Bribe them?" Lanhui's voice dripped with sarcasm. Taeyun chuckled.
"They seem to have been in contact with the Salehrad house recently, haven't they? I say we talk to the younger son a bit, Kajio was it? That man is good at judging people. Pania, you should go talk to him and see if he has anything of help," Taeyun said.
In other words, squeeze the information out of him. Pania nodded slowly.
"Alright, Chairman. I'll give it my best."
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"Oh my god," Joyce muffled her groan with a pillow, "Oh my god that was so awkward!"
Spade sighed at the form kicking her legs on the couch. "There was no way that wasn't going to be awkward," he comforted futilely.
Joyce continued to groan into the pillow. It had been so awkward that it would've won her a spot on the top ten cringe rankings. It was worse than if someone started quoting anime villain one-liners during a high-school argument and everyone who had watched the anime before suddenly began to wish they hadn't.
"And he just sat there and listened to me talk for three minutes straight-"
"Five minutes," Spade corrected.
"Five minutes straight! I compared myself to Godzilla! I have no face to meet my ancestors!"
"You didn't have any to begin with, why the hell are you upset over this after repeatedly acting awkward and undignified in front of every single person we've met so far? I thought it was your goddamn personality trait!"
"And now you're roasting me!" Joyce groaned into her pillow. "You know I wasn't always so thick-skinned, okay? And that was someone I wanted to make friends with!"
"That didn't stop you in my case," Spade shot back. Joyce sat up with a start.
"It's true but you shouldn't say it," she whined. She sighed. "You have a point though. If he can't stand the cringe, he won't be able to stand it in the future either, right?" She promptly flung herself on the couch again. "But we need him!" She felt Spade staring at her in confusion.
"Is it his face or what? This is the first time you're throwing such a fuss over someone. You didn't even blink when Pania didn't like you," Spade said. Joyce sighed.
"If you didn't like me back then I would've freaked out too. I can't explain it, but I just knew it when we met, that it had to be you," she said. It was a weak excuse even to her own ears, but it was true she couldn't explain it past calling it a gut feeling, cheesy or not.
"I was the only one in the room back then," Spade looked increasingly exasperated. "Stop fussing and come eat lunch. Your stomach's getting really annoying."
Joyce glanced down at her loudly growling stomach. They hadn't gotten to eat anything at Kajio's place before the meeting had descended into the most awkward type of chaos. She sighed and rolled off the couch, her back hitting the floor with a thud. She clambered to her feet.
"Fine, let's eat," she said in resignation, and Spade shook his head before turning towards the dinner table. The lingering embarrassment faded as Joyce filled her bowl.
She wasn't Hamlet, after all, she could deal with a few moments of cringe here and there without making out with a skull and stabbing his fiancé, or whatever the hell he had done.
"How much do you think they'd find out? Do you think he'd throw down the funds for the juicy info?" Joyce asked, digging into her first serving of rice. Spade looked thoughtfully at the rain-splattered window.
"He might, the Shaman Council's got a hand each in spices and guns, they're rolling in cash. Jia Xu would probably authorize the funds without even blinking."
"No money no talk," Joyce said drily.
"Nowadays, at least," Spade gave a wry smirk. "It wasn't always like that. When shit hit the fan, the rich were the first to die. Then again, that was decades ago."
"Hah. People really are adaptable, huh." She crunched on a julienned piece of carrot that hadn't been sliced through completely, resulting in one long zigzag strip.
"Honestly though, I'd have thought Jia Xu and Taeyun were dealing opium like their lives depended on it." She'd also expected at least one of them to have a pet jaguar they'd stroke thoughtfully while wearing a cape and sitting on a cool chair.
"You know, the spirits that have come through so far have been fairly small, right?" she mused out loud. Spade eyed her as if he was looking at a cat that had dragged in the neighbor's parrot.
"You mean the shrine-sized spirit?" he said pointedly. Joyce frowned.
"In the Spirit Realm, the spirit I saw had an eye that was twice as large as me. Could you imagine how big the head would be then? I can't help but wonder what'll happen next at this rate." Joyce said.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Spade shook his head worriedly. "Hopefully nothing, but don't talk about it. You're tempting fate."
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Selva had never been so afraid for his life, to the point he could barely feel excited at his world-changing discovery. It was like being five feet away from a timed bomb while an eight-year-old clumsily tried to deactivate it with a pair of house scissors.
He would have been on the edge of his seat if something like this came up in a drama, but real-life hit a different way. It was just like how he wouldn't actually enjoy the aftermath of learning his spouse had slept with his mother, even if he liked the needless drama when it was in a TV show.
His phone rang with an incoming call from Kajio.
"Is it true?" Kajio demanded as soon as he picked up. Selva sighed shakily.
"Yeah, I'm on my way back right now, I'll be there in half an hour, but this is...what do I say to Jia Xu?"
"Don't tell her," Kajio replied immediately, "Things will get out of control if you do."
"Alright, I'll just tell her the first part then," Selva said resignedly.
"Thanks. I guess this is what she meant by 'if I didn't kill her right now', huh?"
"What?"
"Nothing, I'll figure something out, alright?" Kajio sounded tired.
"Alright, don't stress yourself too much," Selva replied. He sat in numb silence for the rest of the trip, without the emotional capacity left for even an episode of the drama he was watching. The male lead's quest to avenge his mother meant nothing now. Fuck.
Selva shot off the boat as soon it docked and rushed straight towards Kajio's house. He slapped the door with an open hand until Kajio swung it open and ushered him in.
"This is insane," Selva said as soon as the door closed, "So fucking insane!"
"Calm down, are you sure you're right?"
"I have to be, I know what I found," Selva insisted.
"Then could your conclusion have been wrong?"
Selva vehemently shook his head. He'd traced the shaman duo to a car chase with a local gang in the suburbs of Hong Kong. Selva had tracked down the car and then traced it to a mansion with an absentee owner.
The mansion had reported the theft of a sword from the Qing Dynasty a month ago, and Selva eventually confirmed through a surveillance camera in the street that Joyce and Spade had appeared nearby.
Upon further digging, he found a freight ship run by the local mob that took passengers from Indonesia to Hong Kong and another ship that took passengers to Tianjin Harbor, where there were plenty of boats that could get them to Russian waters. All in all, the timeline fit.
Arrive from Indonesia at three a.m. with the freight ship, theft and car chase in the morning, the boat rides that would be to get them to Tianjin by late afternoon, another boat ride at night to Russia, and then the trains to the Siberia-China border by afternoon the next day, where the two stopped being sneaky.
But it was too easy. Selva had uncovered all that in half a day. But it didn't make sense for it to be dug up that easily if the two spent an entire month trundling through warzones just so this incident could go ignored. After all, they attacked the Shaman Council's headquarters, why should they care about stealing a sword?
Selva had gotten into a video call with the owner, a mild-mannered man with a British father. The owner hadn't recognized either Joyce or Spade's pictures, but his father had. The old man was suffering from dementia, but even so, the man had reacted to Spade's picture with horror.
"Spade," the man had whispered. Selva froze in place.
And then the old man had begun half-screaming half-sobbing, and the owner had quickly hung up after that, leaving Selva with a boatload of unanswered questions.
Then the owner had called back an hour later, angrily demanding to know why Selva would torment an elderly man with the picture of someone he'd killed in self-defense.
"He's my family member," Selva had shot back, referencing the plotline in soapy revenge dramas even as he pushed down the chills that went down his spine. The owner had been taken aback, and then apologetic.
"Things were...I'm sorry for your family's loss, but things were very difficult forty years ago. You wouldn't have even been born then, so you wouldn't really understand. My father acted in self-defense for the sake of his family, for my sake, and I can't criticize that. But I'm really very sorry for the pain it has caused to you and yours," the owner had said.
Selva had glibly replied with something about confronting the past and forgiveness before hanging up, cold sweat dripping from his brow.
A voice in his head told him Spade could have been that man's son, named after his father and practically a carbon copy, but his churning stomach seemed to think that they were one and the same person.
And unfortunately, his instincts tended to be right. So the problem was what a man who died forty years ago was doing, alive and well on the streets of Canton.
And then it had clicked. A dead man walking. The golden insignia of the Flying Dragons. The gateway to the Spirit Realm. Selva had grown up among shamans even if he wasn't one of them, and he knew the legends and history as well as anyone in the Shaman Council. Even if it was only one of the possible answers, it was the one that made the most sense.
The gateway hadn't opened for something but for someone. Someone important enough for the Flying Dragons to emerge from hiding.
There was a spirit-sent in Canton.
"I think I know who it is," Kajio said, scattering Selva's thoughts. Selva whirled towards him with wild eyes.
"You already know?!" Selva sputtered, and then stopped still. The answer seemed to pull itself up from the bottom of a viscous pool of liquid.
"Joyce Lee is an unusual person, with highly unusual abilities. And she's very close with Spade," Kajio said, a look of shock and hysteria mixing on his handsome face. "We're jumping to conclusions a lot in this process, but if we want to keep the advantage of timing, I suppose we might as well jump to a few more."
Kajio tilted his head back, closing his eyes in what Selva recognized as an attempt to hold back a headache.
"What the hell do we do?" Selva asked, feeling incredibly drained. This was too much. No matter how much ability and responsibility went hand in hand, Selva wasn't that capable and he couldn't deal with this much responsibility. Especially not if they were right.
"We'll have to meet with them. I'll call them back to examine the shrine and we can take that excuse to talk with them. But you should probably go report back, Jia Xu will notice something's wrong if you dally too long," Kajio said. Selva nodded slowly.
"Alright. But what about you? What if they get violent?" Selva asked. Kajio smiled thinly.
"They won't, they're surprisingly careful in some ways, this being one of them. If I turn up dead, they know they'll be screwed. Don't worry about me and get moving," Kajio patted his shoulder gently. Selva nodded slowly and opened the door to leave. He quickly stepped back and closed it again.
"Shit."
"What is it?" Kajio asked. Selva struggled to locate his tongue.
"Pania from Hengshan is coming down the street. I think she saw me," Selva choked out. Kajio let out a humorless laugh.
"What luck. Don't worry, my friend. Just go without trouble, I'll handle the rest," Kajio's face settled into a look of grim resolve.
If it were a drama, it would be a look accompanied by three separate close-up shots from different angles, a playback of the main theme, and probably some special effects in the background. Selva nodded and opened the door again, nearly hitting Pania in the face.
"My bad, I was just heading out," Selva managed before ducking past her and fleeing.
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Pania watched the man leave with an irritated huff. She didn't know his name, but she knew he worked for the Shaman Council.
"Miss Pania, it is good to see you," Kajio said politely. She gave him an unfriendly smile.
"Hello, Mr. Salehrad, it's been a while," she replied.
"Just Kajio is fine, we're about the same age after all. Please do come in," Kajio said in a light tone as he let her in. He wryly pushed aside a half-full teacup on the table. "I'm sorry about my friend, we were next-door neighbors growing up, but now he only barges in when he needs something to drink."
Pania nodded slowly, not believing the excuse at all. He was neutral after all, it wasn't as though he would refuse someone from the Shaman Council.
"You must have come regarding the Flying Dragons?" Kajio asked. At her suspicious expression, he smiled slightly, "I cannot think of any other reason you might have come," he added. So the Shaman Council's man had been here for the same reason. A step ahead again. She bit down on an irritated snarl.
"Yes. You're a very smart man, so you should know the reason why they are important. I simply wanted to ask for a moment of your time to discuss them," Pania said resignedly.
"I would be more than happy to do so, but I must admit that I have not interacted with them as much as you have. If anything, I would want to ask for your impression of them," Kajio said, pouring her a cup of tea. Pania nodded her head in thanks, toying the handle of the teacup with her index finger.
"I come for your opinion and you immediately request mine, I would almost think you were looking to plagiarize," Pania said jokingly, actually meaning every word. Kajio laughed as though he hadn't caught on.
"I could tell you first, but I don't think you'd like what I have to say," Kajio said, "The same may apply for your Chairman."
So he was worried she would storm off in a huff without completing the exchange of information. Pania pushed away a flicker of anger. It was fair enough, given her reputation for being quick to start a fight. Even fairer given that he was a civilian in a neutral zone, ironically also where fights were quickest to break out.
"I'll be quick about it then. From what we know, both of them are extremely talented, and skilled to the point of being able to do banishments at will. That's highly unusual in and of itself, but then there's the whole thing where they don't have any spirit-contracts."
For all we know they're just drawing from the environment through their own bodies, just like their teacher Mohan. But at the same time, they don't know any theory, and we think that's deliberate on the part of their teacher," Pania recounted the information mechanically, stripping it down to its bare-bones to avoid giving Kajio an undue advantage. She glanced at Kajio to see his reaction.
Kajio nodded slowly, a calculating look in his eye as if he were confirming something in his head.
"That matches my impression," Kajio said thoughtfully. "They are talented, and they are very prideful because of it. They won't be forced out of neutrality." At that, he looked at Pania pointedly.
"I don't know much about the abilities of shamans, beyond the dangers and benefits they could pose to people like me. But in terms of people, I've been seeing all kinds of them since I could remember.
The Flying Dragons are the type that won't be forced. Push too hard and they'll give you the shamanic equivalent of a brick to the face, or in Spade's case, a sword to the face. They definitely want to make the choice on their own terms, don't they?" He paused a second but didn't wait for her to reply.
"They'll turn to whoever gives them a longer leash, it's as simple as that. They might become your allies, or even your subordinates if you give them the space to maintain their pride. I know that seems a little implausible, given Joyce's tendencies to appear...unkempt. But those aren't the acts of a humble-hearted person, those are the acts of someone extremely self-confident. It's pretty much her way of saying she doesn't care about what others think of her." Kajio sighed slightly.
"The Salehrad house wants to remain neutral, so I won't tell you anything that I would keep from the Shaman Council. But you should know that your Chairman will have what he wants if he gives them the illusion of a free choice," Kajio finished.
Pania gave an exasperated groan. So they would have to flatter and coddle the Flying Dragons beyond what the Shaman Council were sure to do. Unbelievable.
"This is fucking annoying," she grit out. Kajio rubbed at his temples.
"Believe me, I agree," he said in a heartfelt tone. The tea had gone cold, but Pania downed it anyway. When she went back, the meeting would probably drag on late into the night.