Kajio really was as amazing as Joyce had promised, not just a handsome dude with ridiculously good looks. Spade had to admit that much.
Almost as soon as they had a script ready, Kajio had a goddamn press conference ready, only one day after the article was released at that. The guy had even incorporated Joyce going off-script into the plan.
Spade peeked towards the adjoined room where reporters were gathering in droves, and then back at where Joyce was demanding his attention.
Joyce flapped her hands in the air. "It's capitalism, you know? Minimum wage, minimum work. Slightly-more-than-minimum wage, slightly-less-than-minimum work. Work smarter not harder and the whole thing."
Spade stared at her as if he were watching someone twerk on a national monument. Was the girl crazy? Was it really an allergy to work?
Spade tried to think back to everything they'd been through before and still managed to come up blank for an explanation. Joyce shook her head in exasperation.
"It's like...you know...if you can get it done within two hours, you tell your boss you need three days. If you need one day, you ask for a week. If you need a week, you ask for a month. Work the system, not work for it. And I was totally down with that whole schwiz except now we're kinda company executives and I'm starting to develop exploitative ideologies like a true-capitalist-ideology-brainwashed idiot."
Spade nodded uncomprehendingly. "Yeah, whatever. I don't think it really works like that here to begin with. You're not really the head of a company anyway, people are here because they want to be."
"Or are they," Joyce said.
"Joyce," Spade sighed, "Who cares? We're paying them, and they want to stay on the payroll. If you want to discuss the economy, we can do that after the press conference alright?"
Of course, it was probably not about whatever the hell she was trying to say right now. Spade tilted his head a little. Joyce had been eating less recently and rubbing at her neck a lot. Maybe it was the stress.
Strange as it sounded, they were actually rooted now and couldn't just run when it suited them. It probably bothered Joyce. Spade made a mental note to get her a day off to eat sweets and watch shitty movies, maybe with Leila.
"If the meme economy is staying strong here, I have full reason to suspect that lots of other parts of the economy are the same too," Joyce said before giving in. "Yeah, okay, let's go pose for the cameras."
"Talk for the cameras," Spade corrected. "Are you nervous?" Joyce gave him a blank stare.
"Guess not," Spade said, looking at her fondly like someone whose baby sister farted in the direction of their nemesis.
Mohan decided to finally remind them he was still hovering in a dark corner of the room. "Shall we go then?" he asked. Joyce jumped a foot into the air, screeching at an ungodly pitch.
"Did I scare you?" Mohan asked, obviously knowing he had scared Joyce. Spade tried not to roll his eyes. After all, Mohan had been this pretentious for decades now, it was nothing new to him.
"Damn I felt like a cat chilling on a car when the driver decided to honk," Joyce said, probably referencing something only she knew about. Mohan chuckled lightly and pretentiously.
"Sorry, shall we get going now?" Mohan asked. Joyce gave him a thumbs up and made a beeline for the door, Spade trailing after.
----------------------------------------
Pania stood at the back of the room, watching from behind as the camera flashes silhouetted the crowd of reporters. It was way beneath her to be scouting out this kind of event, but some kind of morbid curiosity drew her here anyway.
The group filed out, Joyce's short height accentuated by Spade and Kajio on either side of her.
Mohan stepped forward to the podium, cameras going off like it was their last chance to ever take a picture. "Hello everyone, thank you all for making time on such short notice. I am the Grandmaster Mohan of the Order of the Flying Dragons."
He looked over the crowd serenely, utterly unbothered by the hostility and curiosity bouncing off the walls. "I speak today to address concerns the public has expressed over my actions in the overthrowing of the Qing Dynasty. More specifically, I will address my actions at Guanyang Pass. I'll be brief, for your sake and mine."
"We have an ongoing civil war that is ravaging the lives and livelihoods of millions across the country, for someone closely associated with the war to take a position of power within Canton may be unsettling for many. However, I am not a war criminal. There are many who may think of me as one, but I violated no laws of war, and have never harmed a civilian."
A murmur swept through the crowd, silencing as soon as Mohan looked over the room.
"I am not denying the harm I caused through my actions, the consequences of which have scarred the hearts of my countrymen for decades. I have not gone a day without being haunted by what I did at Guanyang, but I cannot say that it was something I should not have done.
At Guanyang Pass, I was protecting a government that was derelict and corrupt, but still the shield against conflict and foreign invasion for hundreds of thousands. I was protecting the sovereignty of a country that was already collapsing, acting as one of the last pillars in a crumbling state, but I do not regret it.
As doomed as the Qing was it would be that much more wretched if none were willing to go down with it. I fought for my country and allowed it to remain sovereign for a while longer, for better or for worse. If there is anything that I regret, it would be that I was born within the borders of the Qing, and thus owed my allegiance to it."
Mohan glanced at one of the younger reporters in the crowd with a soft smile.
"The generation after me only knew the civil unrest that ravaged the entirety of the nation, with no government to offer protections, no structure, no pillars to lean on. The younger generation will understand even less, of what it was like to have a country, what it was like to be born as a member of a nation, only knowing of the warlords and their destruction."
Pania gulped past a dry throat. When Mohan spoke the air seemed to grow dry and hot, probably due to Ling Guang. Pania couldn't sense the Vermillion Bird anywhere, but Mohan seemed to exude the same authority as if Ling Guang were here.
'Looks like the old man's still got it in him,' Pania felt a thrill of excitement go up her spine. One way or another, she was living in the same time period as the Vermillion Bird's second contractor and the spirit-sent.
"It is my hope, and the hope of the Order of the Flying Dragons, to remediate that. For too long we have shunned both the past and the present, clinging to false hopes for the future with no foreseeable end in sight. However, I will dedicate the rest of my life to changing that.
Furthermore, I hope to address the incorrect rumors regarding Joyce Lee, the spirit-sent." Mohan nodded at Joyce, who dipped her head in a shallow bow towards him.
"The Spirit Realm is much closer to our world than we would believe, and the barrier between us much thinner than most would like to think about. The barrier shifts and changes by its own volition, growing thicker and thinner in an unending cycle over the course of millenniums. When the barrier becomes thin enough, a spirit-sent is likely to appear, often at the start of a series of other occurrences.
However, there is no causation between the spirit-sent's appearance and oddities with spirits within our world. Theological studies have proven that the spirit-sent only appears first because they are human, and therefore have an easier time entering our world, while it takes longer for spirits to make it through the barrier.
Therefore, I can confidently assure you that Joyce's appearance did not cause the spiritual oddities that occurred afterward."
Mohan glanced at his script. "That is all, we will take questions now."
Pania blinked at the exceptionally short speech, zoning out as several reporters tried unsuccessfully to question the validity of Mohan's assertions about Joyce.
Unsurprisingly, people were too scared to ask Mohan anything about Guanyang again. Even after Joyce had straight-up summoned the Azure Dragon to rip up a Kraken, Mohan's presence was more frightening to those gathered here.
Pania snapped back to attention as a reporter obviously from a tabloid, as notable from the tabloid company's logo prominently displayed over his ample pecs, rose to ask a question. "Ms. Lee, do you feel homesick for your own world?" He asked, probably hoping for something he could spin into a clickbait article.
"My parents both left their country behind and were fine, and I think I inherited that," Joyce said. "Like, unfortunately, I didn't inherit the part where they were badass enough to fistfight military police and shit but like, I have to be the exception to the stereotype, you know? Can't have everyone thinking that All Asians Know Kungfu."
Pania rolled her eyes at both the question and the reply, each nonsensical in its own right. A reporter who'd caught her expression gave her a wary look until Pania shot the woman a glare.
"There are questions as to how Ms. Lee is able to accomplish many of her feats in defiance of laws of physics. According to eyewitnesses, Ms. Lee rode a motorcycle...onto a motorboat before? May I ask how?" A reporter asked incredulously.
Pania resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the stupid question. The girl could summon the Azure Dragon at its full size and they were worried about physics?
Joyce cleared her throat and leaned forward to the microphone. "Action movie feminism," she said seriously. "Next question."
"Ms. Lee, as Chairman of the Order of the Flying Dragons, how do you feel that the organization remains associated with the bloody legacy of the Qing Dynasty? As the first spirit-sent in a thousand years, many people had hoped you would have led the Order in a new direction, what is your response to that?" A reporter asked in an accusatory tone.
Joyce shifted, probably to flip the reporter off, but Kajio pressed down her hand before she could. Pania bit down a smirk.
"I think that denying history is self-castration, let's be honest, everyone is in some way involved in the legacy and aftermath of shit that went down a hella long time ago. We could argue that every warlord conflict going on today is an extension of the rebellion against the Qing, as Mohan was nice enough not to say." Joyce said, unbothered by the sudden increase of typing sounds.
"But if we go ahead and say that everyone who has fought in a conflict related to Qing and the aftermath of are not fit to live and work among us, what kind of society are we going to be looking at after we reunite the country? Y'all'd've known that there are a lot of combatants, right? Not to mention a lot of kids who got conscripted," Joyce asked. A murmur swept throughout the crowd.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Pania stared at Joyce in shock. It was a widely known fact that whichever faction won would take on the Northern Expedition, and Mohan had vaguely said as much, but to say it out loud so blatantly was the equivalent of a declaration of war. Pania clenched her jaw.
"Miss Lee! Does that mean that you intend to take on both the Shaman Council and Hengshan Association?!" a reporter asked. Joyce shook her head, flashing a careless grin at the crowd.
"I'm more in favor of working together, why waste time slapping each other in the face when we can team up and slap warlords in the face? We hope to act as a neutral force to protect the balance between the Shaman Council and Hengshan Association, kinda like UN Peacekeepers but actually a bit more effective." Joyce said. Spade leaned over and whispered something in her ear.
"Alright, y'all don't have a UN, that's fine, just think of our intended role as a peacekeeping function." Joyce gave them a thumbs-up.
Pania continued staring until Joyce met her eyes. Pania scowled fiercely.
'You're a fool', Pania mouthed.
'I know,' Joyce mouthed back, or at least it seemed to be what she was saying. It was equally possible that Joyce was saying something like 'Burger' or 'Pancake'.
Pania shook her head in exasperation. The idea would have been doable if the situation was different, maybe if Joyce had arrived five years earlier, but now the only future Joyce had in store was a premature death.
'It's already happening,' Helang's voice rang out in her brain and Pania turned away, suddenly feeling guiltier than was reasonable.
'It was reasonable;' she thought to herself, Joyce's shitty-low-level-opium fueled pipe dream wasn't worth shit in the face of reality. And if knowing the girl made it harder, that was only human nature, and even Taeyun was careful to make sure no one in the Discipline Committee had to move on people they'd worked with.
----------------------------------------
Joyce followed Kajio off the stage, Spade shuffling along behind her. Something was weird, Joyce decided, she felt numb in a really bad way. There was a rushing sound in her ears that cumulated into a sharp ringing noise, and everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion
And then a sharp pain shot down her neck. Joyce crumpled into the closest chair, wincing as she clutched at the base of her skull.
"Joyce," Spade called in alarm, rushing over to hover like a worried parent. "Joyce, what's wrong? Do you need a healer?"
Joyce made to shake her head but immediately regretted the decision with the sharp pain that pulsed through her spinal cord. "Ow ow ow, shit!"
"What's wrong?!" Spade demanded, Kajio and Mohan rushing over from behind him.
"Joyce?" Mohan reached out, running a spell over Joyce and frowning when it came back empty. "I don't sense any physical ailments. Where does it hurt?"
"It's like period cramps but through my whole body," Joyce grit out, "Why the hell is it like this when I already eat ginseng and ginger? Did my ancestors' herbal wisdom fail me?" She squeezed her eyes shut as her head throbbed painfully.
"Maybe it's stress," Kajio said gently, pressing cool fingers to Joyce's forehead. She glanced up at him.
"I've been in more stressful situations than this," she protested, head swimming as she shifted.
"Life-and-death situations trigger a different set of responses than this kind of stress," Kajio said, pulling out a cooling wipe and pressing it at the base of Joyce's skull. The cool sensation eased the pain a little, and Joyce leaned into it gratefully.
"Oh," Joyce said, "I don't think I'm really stressed."
"You didn't eat as much the last few days either," Spade said with a frown. "You only ate one bowl of rice for dinner yesterday." Selva raised an eyebrow at that, covering his mouth to hide his surprised reaction. Joyce scowled at them.
"Only one bowl?" Kajio asked in alarm. Joyce sighed.
"Fine, maybe I'm a little stressed and just so emotionally constipated I can't tell," she said begrudgingly.
Somehow she hadn't felt stressed the way she once did, but there had been a vague sense of unease and discomfort that had been building up the last few days. She glanced at their reactions, catching a strange look flit over Mohan's face before it settled back into an unperturbed mask.
"Eat some red ginseng," Spade urged. Joyce resisted the urge to groan.
Spade had been nagging at her about that every single day, and she had thought she'd managed to skip the supplement for once. Even if she knew it was a superfood or whatever, childhood memories of being force-fed the supplement had somewhat ruined ginseng for her.
"Do you want some carrot soup?" Selva offered. Joyce pursed her lips at the thought of the sugary, watery carroty concoction and politely declined.
"Let me just sit here for a bit and I'll be good to go," Joyce said. Mohan continued looking at her.
"If you continue feeling uncomfortable like this after today, tell me immediately," Mohan said, voice strangely sharp. Joyce peeked at his face as it crumpled into a frown.
"What's the problem, Grandmaster?" Selva asked cautiously. Mohan shook his head.
"You're mistaking Joyce for a normal girl," Mohan said, "If we're not careful, it'll cost her life." He looked Joyce over again, frowning in frustration. "I can't figure out exactly what's wrong, but if it persists, I'll have to do something about it."
Joyce blinked, straightening a little under Mohan's gaze.
'That much was true,' she thought. Joyce hadn't actually felt stress like she once did over SAT books ever since arriving here, for some reason or another, it seemed like the feeling simply flowed out and away instead of building up inside.
"That's a little...well, it doesn't hurt to be careful," Kajio said. He turned towards Joyce. "You should rest for today and take tomorrow off too, and if you still don't feel well, I'm sure the Grandmaster can check if there's a pattern of some sort. Are you sure it isn't stress?"
"I haven't actually been properly stressed since I came here," Joyce said, "Even when I'm scared it disappears afterward." Mohan nodded as though confirming something.
"Either way, let me know," Mohan said.
Selva ended up driving Joyce and Spade back in his van, salvaged from his gig with the White Cloud Shamans.
"Easy," Selva said as he cautiously helped Joyce into the car. She thought it was a little overkill, she wasn't a broke college student trying to sue a car that had lightly touched her calf so she could get free tuition. Then again, Selva didn't get her reference so he just ignored it.
The pain subsided a little on the way back, only to come back in full swing soon after Joyce got home. She found herself curling pathetically on her bed, breathing in short breaths through her nose as the pain rippled down from her head into her spine, fanning out to clench around her ribs.
'Show me how it feels,' Spade sent through the mental link. Joyce blinked, frowning as she hesitated.
She finally gave in to his worried-old-father-with-a-son-in-the-war face and did as he asked, only for his face to level up into worried-old-father-with-a-son-missing-a-leg-on-the-frontlines expression.
Spade ended up force-feeding her red ginseng, but she drew the line at eating dinner and promptly tried to sleep.
'I sure hope I can sleep through all this,' Joyce thought drily to herself. Spade hovered nervously outside her door, updating Kajio every half-hour or so.
"I'm fine," Joyce called out as Spade came close to her door again, "I'm just going to sleep."
Spade's worry rolled into her head through their mental link, filled with the concern that he couldn't put into words. Joyce reached out comfortingly, trying to ease his stress. Joyce's eyes shot open.
Stress. Spade's stress reminded her of what actual stress felt like. Whatever the hell this had been, it sure wasn't it. Almost as soon as she had thought it, Spade knocked on the door hurriedly.
"Come in," Joyce said, the door flying open before she could finish the words.
"So it's not stress?" Spade demanded. Joyce scrunched her face up.
"It's not stress," she emphasized. "Not that I know what it is. Anxiety? I don't know, man."
Spade narrowed his eyes as he squatted before her bed so they were at eye-level.
"Can you show me the feeling again? I think I need to talk to Mohan," Spade said seriously.
----------------------------------------
Mohan picked up his pace as he neared the Salehrad house, where Spade was squatting outside the door. As soon as Spade saw Mohan, the swordsman shot to his feet and rushed forward to meet him.
"Did my description remind you of anything?" Spade asked immediately. Mohan ignored the lack of greeting and shook his head.
"No, I don't think I can get a good sense just from what you sent," Mohan said. "Does Kajio recognize it? It could be some sort of poisoning, maybe through the water supply or through the paint."
"No, Kajio didn't recognize it. It sounded like lead poisoning, but the timeline's too short for that to be true."
Spade's reply set off the alarm bells in Mohan's head. He stiffened, trying to figure out exactly what bothered him as he followed Spade into the house.
"Where's Joyce?" Mohan said as they entered the room. Kajio nodded in greeting.
"She's asleep," Spade said, "It's midnight." Mohan nodded slowly, frowning as he tried to think.
"Do you remember when she first started having these symptoms?" Mohan asked. Spade thought about it for a moment.
"I first saw her massaging the back of her head after we finished the interviews, but it seemed like a one-time occurrence at the time. But then a week later she started doing it more often, and she was doing it a lot the last few days, especially yesterday," Spade said.
"So after long stretches of working?" Kajio asked.
"Seems like it, the dates would match up," Spade said. Mohan frowned, something nagging at him furiously.
"So other than not being busy, what was different was the location, wasn't it?" Mohan murmured. Spade gave him an odd look.
"Well, yes," Spade said. "We got to actually sleep in our own beds for once."
Lead poisoning. Mohan frowned. Spade and Joyce didn't have any wards in their house, but Joyce could sense a spirit from a long way off. Not to mention that the problem didn't seem to be physical. And yet something was bothering him like a mosquito when someone's trying to sleep.
"Did anything change in your home recently?" Mohan asked.
"We had to replace the window and the door after you broke it," Spade replied drily. Something clicked in Mohan's head.
"We have to go. Right now," he said, whirling towards Spade.
"Let's go," Spade immediately replied.
"Use my motorcycle!" Kajio called out, "You'll get there faster."
"No need," Mohan said. He reached out towards his contract, calling for Ling Guang as he ran out the door, Spade on his heels.
Ling Guang swooped down in a blaze of red, skimming low enough for them to jump on. Spade let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like a squeak as they hurtled into the air again, Spade's leg still hanging precariously off the side. Mohan ignored the squawking behind him.
'Ling Guang, we must hurry,' Mohan sent through their link. 'I fear that the spirit-sent has fallen into a trap.'
'What kind of a trap?' Ling Guang sent back. Mohan sighed in frustration.
'I do not know, but it must be a well-concealed one.' It definitely was the work of Hengshan or the Shaman Council, but how was the problem.
Ling Guang gave a murmur of understanding, angling downwards towards Spade and Joyce's apartment.
'Well concealed? More like obsolete!' Ling Guang let out a huff of anger. Mohan straightened, leaning forward to squint at the apartment below.
'Can you find it?' Mohan asked.
'I already have,' Ling Guang sent grimly. 'And I intend to destroy it.'
"Wait, you've got to slow down!" Spade shouted from behind Mohan. Mohan closed his eyes.
"Sorry about your apartment," Mohan said evenly.
"Wait, what?!" Spade shouted, breaking off into a screech as Ling Guang smashed forward, shattering the recently restored window and door with what was more or less a fireball.
'A bit overkill,' Mohan sent reproachfully. Ling Guang ignored him, shaking Mohan and Spade off. Spade staggered and tipped over into the outdoor pump, wincing as he clutched his shoulder.
"Mohan, what the fuck?" Spade asked weakly. Mohan ignored him, striding into the apartment riddled with pieces of glass and wood. Joyce stumbled into the living room, looking around with confused and bleary eyes, a hand on the back of her neck.
"Joyce," Mohan greeted, "How do you feel?"
"Like someone crashed into my apartment and destroyed my window and door," Joyce replied, wincing in pain as she turned to face him.
Mohan cast a ward over her, checking for abnormalities. At least this time he knew what he was looking for. An obsolete curse weaved into the door, a foreign curse woven into the window.
'Both of those fuckers are looking for death,' Mohan's lips curled into a vicious snarl.
"Uh, Teacher? Are you good? You look like someone didn't give you guacamole after you paid extra for it," Joyce asked doubtfully. Mohan struggled to replace his expression with a calm mask.
"You're quite unlucky, Joyce. You were not under one curse but two curses, both extremely rare and hard to detect. From what I'm seeing right now, it poisons the circuits of a shaman," Mohan said, frowning as the scan continued to show worrying results.
"Wait, circuits?" Joyce asked in confusion, "Why the hell did I not know that was a thing?"
"It's basically like blood poisoning, but it's not your blood, it's your energy circulation as a shaman. Didn't your parents ever talk to you about traditional medicine?" Mohan asked.
"Yeah, the whole thing about five organs and five elements, right?" Joyce said.
"Exactly. Shamans have both the normal energy circulation and the circulation of spiritual energy, closely intertwined throughout your body. These curses basically poison those circulations," Mohan explained.
"Quit the rambling and get to the point, old man," Spade snarled from behind him. "What the hell is going to happen now, you going to fix it or what?"
Mohan drew a deep breath. 'Those bastards are much more cunning than I thought.'
"At this point, I can't. A normal shaman would be dead already. Because Joyce is a spirit-sent, her body reacts differently. But if the poisoning isn't removed, she'll be dead soon enough."
"Wait, shit," Joyce squeaked, "But you broke the apartment already?!"
"That was the curse, not the poison," Mohan said grimly.
"Shit do I have to arrange my own funeral now? Can I ask for a coffin dance and funeral strippers? If there aren't strippers I don't want to go," Joyce said in a panicked voice.
"That won't happen, we'll fix this somehow. I'll go to the Shaman Council right now and beat a cure out of them," Spade said determinedly, gripping his sword tightly.
"Leave them to me." Mohan shot Spade a glance that froze the man in place. "You do your duty as a contract and help your shaman. Take Joyce and go to the Spirit Realm."
"You're kidding right?" Joyce squeaked.
"No, go into the Spirit Realm and seek the Great Dragon for help. That is the only way," Mohan said firmly. "Because there is no cure in the human world."
"Wow, shit, just my luck," Joyce grumbled. She nodded at Mohan seriously. "Thanks, Teach. I'll just do whatever you say, so I really hope you didn't read the instructions wrong or anything."
"What are you going to do?" Spade asked, a cold edge in his voice as he stared at Mohan.
"I'm going to settle the score," Mohan replied just as coldly. "Don't worry and leave it to me."