Sothing flashed at the mouth of the alley.
Sothing blue.
Eathan caught it only because he looked back at exactly the wrong mont. Midnight Avenue's hanging permits—those smug little placards every licensed stall wore like rit badges—had all torn loose at once. Hundreds of them lifted into the air in a whirl of pale blue paper and ink, circling one man standing very still in the middle of the street.
"…Hai Xianmo?"
He looked the way he always did, too—polite smile, eyes too clear, hands folded as if he were rely watching an interesting show.
One of his hand was raised, fingers slightly curled, and the papers stread around him like a current. Queue ropes uncoiled and snapped into barriers where they passed. Street lanterns rotated, turning certain lanes into dead ends and others into neat one-way streams. Signs rewrote themselves in streaks of light:
TEMPORARY TRAFFIC DIVERSION — AUTHORIZED
NO WEAPONISED QI IN PUBLIC WALKWAYS
FORM AN ORDERLY LINE
The effect spread with eerie calm. Spirits who had been screaming and scrambling a mont ago found their steps redirecting, their panic split into channels, the whole avenue flowing away from the centre like water around a stone.
Ji Renshu's spear was already out. Yang Mingze had his arm braced to bull through the new barriers. Yue Shiyao was looking up at the drifting permits with narrowed eyes.
"Midnight Avenue charter, section twelve," Hai Xianmo said, and every blue slip in the air lit up at once. "No violence, divine or otherwise, within an active comrce district unless cleared through local authority."
For one impossible beat, the Platinum Paladins stalled.
There was no action that unfolded between the two sides, but the tension was palpable from even the opposite side of the Avenue.
Eathan did not stay to see how long it held. They had to keep going.
The alley twisted twice, and they caught sight of lantern light that spilled from an open service door.
Chewie shoved the door so hard it smacked the wall.
"In," she spat.
They poured through the back entrance, then slamd it shut. Darkness enveloped them briefly before a lavender glow illuminated the surroundings.
First, Eathan slt the sting of powder and lamp oil. He then heard sound. Soone was arguing over missing sleeves, soone else over blood-mist levels, and a line of paper lanterns buzzed faintly overhead with stage-light enchantnts.
They stood among racks upon racks of costus and shelves piled high with artisan stage props. Posters on the walls depicted scenes from unfamiliar dramas. Phantom actors swished past in long sleeves and trailing scarves, spicy makeup thick on spectral faces. Soone cursed about a missing prop; soone else was fixing a wig with stabbing speed.
For one awful second, Eathan stood there breathing like a hunted animal while the world tried to rearrange itself into "performance hall" instead of "divine pursuit."
"Keep moving," Chewie hissed, already dragging Bai Hu sideways behind a stack of prop boulders.
That helped.
He grabbed the first costu pieces within reach and committed what was likely a fashion cri against several dead dynasties. A gauzy veil went around his shoulders. A silver half-mask got shoved into his hand, then onto Bai Hu when that felt more useful. A long embroidered sash ended up wrapped around Chewie's waist like she was an underfunded opera extra.
Bai Hu accepted every indignity in silence.
A stagehand nearly collided with them, skidding to a halt with a hiss. Her gaze took in their ss of costus, then drifted to the tall white-haired man, whose aura brimd under the coat like a humming reactor. For a second, Eathan was almost certain they were done for.
Then, the ghost spirit cursed.
"Which company are you from?" she snapped.
"Temporary replacent cast," Eathan said imdiately. "From the Pavilion. Director told us to… spiritually inhabit the backstage first."
The lie ca out too smoothly.
He heard it himself—a little too clean, a little too quick—and knew at once that sothing was wrong. He didn't have ti to unpack it, because the stagehand had already thrown both hands in the air.
"The Lady's projects get weirder every quarter," the stagehand muttered at last, turning away. "Fine. Just don't touch the collapsing-river set. It already hates us."
Then she was gone.
Chewie squinted after her. "I want to ask what a collapsing-river set is."
"No you don't."
They slipped deeper into the maze.
Beyond the curtains, the performance swelled. Through a gap in the drapery, Eathan caught a sliver of the performance on the main stage.
There was a woman in flowing river‑blue robes, her hair crowned with white pearls and standing at the edge of a platform painted like water. A man knelt before her, chains around his ankles. Nine pale infant masks floating behind them, each one lit from within by a dim red glow.
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"Beloved," the actress cried dramatically, voice echoing through the hall, "if you throw yourself into my currents, you will forget your pain!"
"And forget you with it?" the actor in chains wailed back. "I'd rather be torn into nine pieces!"
The audience sighed like this was very romantic.
The masks flickered, and the sound of infant wails layered over each other, high and discordant.
Chewie paused just long enough to squint. "Are they… romanticising the Nine‑Headed Infant?"
Eathan blinked once at the stage, then yanked Bai Hu onward by the sleeve before his commander's current setting of curiosity trapped them there for five more minutes.
"No analysis," he muttered. "We survive first, critique the script later."
Bai Hu looked back over his shoulder anyway.
The white-haired god in a borrowed stage coat watched the drifting masks with such open concentration that, for one stupid second, Eathan's chest did sothing soft and painful.
He killed that feeling imdiately. There were bigger problems.
Like the two figures waiting in the next room.
They found them by accident and all at once.
The rehearsal chamber was smaller than the main stage, half storage and half working space. Here, the lighting was cooler. A circle of chalk marks glowed faintly on the floor. Calligraphy scrolls lined one wall; floor‑to‑ceiling mirrors backed the other.
A tall ghost in armour stood in the middle of it, helt tucked under one arm, mid-recitation. Across from him, a man held a brush in his hand, a strip of unfinished calligraphy drifting between his fingers.
Eathan's brain took a second to match costus to mories.
"You are..!"
Both looked up at the sa ti.
The Ghost General's all-grey pupils landed on Eathan, then dipped to Chewie, then settled, finally, on the man half‑wrapped in stolen coat at their back.
He went still.
Tang Poet Sen Ren's brush hovered mid-stroke, plopping onto the ground with a thud.
"Oh," said the Ghost General.
"Oh," said Sen Ren, more thoughtfully.
"Area 001?" The General observed. "You travel far for tourists."
Eathan exchanged a glance with Chewie, then waved awkwardly. He did not expect to see Area 004's team composition from the Realm-Barrier Gas make a coback.
The Ghost General stared, mouth half-open. His armour rattled faintly with his shifting stance. "Did you… die?"
Eathan did not plan the next sentence. It simply left him.
"No," he said. "We're being chased by Platinum Paladins."
He heard the words and almost bit his own tongue.
He'd ant to phrase that more strategically. Instead, the words fell out with unnatural smoothness. Chewie stiffened beside him at the exact sa ti, and Eathan felt it a second later: a brush against the inside of his thoughts too late to block. His thoughts didn't cloud, exactly, but the urge to sugar‑coat anything simply… slid away.
His eyes snapped to Sen Ren's fan.
Chewie scowled. "Did you just—"
The poet's expression didn't change. "My apologies," he said, which sounded sincere and absolutely was not. "You walked straight into a truth-field. I thought it best to know whether the unexpected guests we were dealing with were frightened children or liars."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Chewie muttered.
The Ghost General's gaze swept over them again, slower this ti.
He looked at Bai Hu the longest.
To Eathan's alarm, his expression did not soften. If anything, it hardened into sothing closer to duty.
For a very bad second, Eathan thought: This is where they turn us in.
The room's temperature seed to drop.
Chewie's hand slid toward her seals. "You mind undoing whatever that was," she said, voice thin with warning.
"In a mont," Sen Ren said.
The Ghost General moved slightly, enough to make it clear that if this turned into a fight, he'd pick a side quickly.
Eathan's brain kicked through options. The noises outside weren't helping. A shout from the wings, then the distant crack of sothing heavy hitting wood. The chase hadn't stopped. In fact, it was only a matter of ti before the chase would reached the building.
Sen Ren tapped the butt of his brush against his palm, watching them all with those half-lidded eyes that never looked rushed.
"You're being chased," he said. "And you ca here carrying an unstable divine hazard while under local illusion cover."
Chewie folded her arms. "You say that like it was on purpose."
The Tang Poet's gaze flicked over their trio once, taking in the White Tiger, the frantic state of their clothes, the muffled racket outside. He exchanged a look with the Ghost General, whose brow furrowed in thought.
With a small, polite smile, he steered his companion aside and began to speak in whispers.
Chewie leaned closer. "Think they're reporting us?"
"Uh," Eathan hesitated, already scanning for ergency exits. "Let's give it another thirty seconds. Then we commit arson and run."
They both tensed, ntally timing the awkward silence. The White Tiger stood silently behind them, marine-thed robes drooping over broad shoulders.
Finally, the two ghost spirits turned back to them. The General let out a sigh, and Sen Ren stepped forward.
"So this is…" His gaze settled more squarely on Taeril. "…Commander Bai Hu."
The war god looked back at him in blank. If you didn't know him, you might call him composed. If you did, you saw the hairline cracks.
Silence settled for a beat.
Out in the main hall, a cymbal crashed; the audience laughed on cue.
Then the Ghost General stepped back, and Sen Ren's fan snapped shut. The pressure in Eathan's mind receded as swiftly as it had co.
"Mm," Sen Ren humd. "It seems the tide has arrived early."
Chewie blinked. "The what?"
The Ghost General shot the poet a look. "Enough theatrics," he said. "Orders are clear."
"Lady ng sent word an hour ago," Sen Ren said, "that if unexpected guests arrived in our district with a divine problem, we were to bring them to her imdiately."
Eathan stared. "Commander ng… knew?"
The General gave him a look that was almost pitying. "You're in her realm."
Chewie did not relax. "How do we know you're not just stalling us for the Paladins?"
That, at least, seed to amuse the two spirits.
"Because we're public servants," the Ghost General said. "If the Paladins start swinging that much law around in this district, Commander ng will fine all of us."
"And because if we wished to hand you over," Sen Ren said, "we would simply keep talking."
The Ghost General jerked his chin toward a side passage curtained in black gauze. "Lady ng's hidden access routes begin there. Paladins can force their way through theatre staff and civilians. They do not get to force their way through her filing system."
"Which," Sen Ren added, "is a far more terrifying prospect."
Still, Eathan hesitated.
Trust was not the word for what they had. Trust implied ti, evidence, and at least one reasonable conversation. This was narrower, more desperate.
But he could hear the pursuit reaching the outer backstage corridors now. Boots, raised voices, one stagehand loudly informing Heaven's enforcers that if they broke the blood-mist machine, the invoice would be spiritually binding.
Eathan's brain did the math. They could not outrun the Paladins through open streets forever. Not with Bai Hu shining through every borrowed disguise like a lantern wrapped in paper. And if it ca to a confrontation, it would be Heaven's elites versus one ntally‑fragile broken god, one reincarnated demon general in a pre‑teen body, and one extrely tired college student with a receipt printer.
In other words, the odds were bad.
Eathan glanced at Taeril.
The White Tiger had gone back to quietly existing beside them, wrapped in soone else's costu coat, unbothered by the fact he was currently the divine equivalent of contraband. His eyes moved from Sen Ren to the Ghost General and back again, the way a child might watch two adults discussing him as if he wasn't there.
If they stayed here, the Paladins would break in.
If they followed, they'd be stepping deeper into another Commander's power.
He weighed it for one breath.
Then he made the decision because soone had to.
"Fine," he said. "We go to Lady ng."
Chewie made a face that said I hate this, but she didn't disagree.
"Of course."
The General moved first. Sen Ren held the curtain aside. The hidden corridor beyond slled like old wood, ink, and colder air.
As Eathan led Bai Hu through, he heard the theatre doors crash open behind them, but he didn't look back.
The curtain fell shut behind them, and the route to Obsidian Spires swallowed their footsteps whole.
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