Chapter Eighty-Five: A Nocturnal Visit to the Inn

Since the tragedy of the man whose belly was filled with fish, the entire atmosphere of Zhenhaichuan had changed completely.

In the past, as the first light of dawn broke, the fish market would already be bustling with noise, carts and boats coming and going, the air vibrant and lively. Now, however, it had fallen silent; only the wailing of the sea wind could be heard, with no sign of fishermen hawking their catch.

As Lin Jiansmoke walked through this quiet, she found the air thick with an inescapable stench of rot and brine, seeping into her lungs and making her chest heavy, nearly to the point of nausea. She pressed her sleeve to her nose and frowned as she looked ahead, seeing heaps of silver-scaled fish piled like small mountains by the dock, utterly abandoned. Their bodies, under the sunlight, gleamed with a ghastly, lifeless pallor; their bellies were swollen, flies buzzing incessantly, and from the depths of decay oozed a yellow-green pus that stained the bluestone pavement.

She sighed inwardly. Having listened to Officer Shangguan Chuci’s words earlier that day, she had returned to the Demon Suppression Bureau to consult with Commander Ling Jue. Both had agreed that, though this solution was regrettable, it was the only viable path for now. A notice had been posted, declaring that the Eastern Sea might be contaminated by foul currents and fish consumption should be temporarily avoided.

The townsfolk, upon reading this, were thrown into unease—who would dare gamble their life for a single bite of fresh fish? But this also meant the fisherfolk, whose families had lived by the sea for generations, had lost their livelihood. If this continued, even the very foundation of Zhenhaichuan would be shaken. It was, as the saying goes, “treating the wound before your eyes by cutting out the flesh from your own heart”—a bitter dilemma that twisted her gut with worry.

Lost in thought, she was suddenly drawn by the faint sound of drums and gongs up ahead—not mournful, but oddly jubilant, with a hint of the uncanny. Following the sound, she saw a household with paper lanterns shaped like fish hanging at the door. Several men were carrying out a thin wooden coffin, but their faces bore none of the usual grief; instead, there was an inexplicable fervor.

Astonished, Lin Jiansmoke stepped forward and stopped a young man holding a spirit tablet, asking, “Little brother, if your family is in mourning, why is the atmosphere so festive?”

The youth was at first impatient, but seeing her dressed in the dark uniform of the Demon Suppression Bureau, he halted and a strange pride flickered across his face. “Officer, you may not know. My third uncle has been chosen by the Dragon King to serve as a divine envoy, to enjoy eternal blessings in the Eastern Sea Dragon Palace. That is a cause for great celebration!”

Hearing this, Lin Jiansmoke felt a chill creep up her spine. “A divine envoy? Was your third uncle the one whose belly was filled with fish?”

“Exactly!” The young man straightened his chest and declared with pride, “We were ignorant at first and thought it was some evil possession, almost ruining my uncle’s chance at immortality.

“Fortunately, the village elders enlightened us—this is a sign of ‘symbiosis between man and fish.’ My uncle's soul is undying, now merged with the countless fish of the Eastern Sea, free and prosperous forever. Our family shares in this honor!”

Lin Jiansmoke was both alarmed and appalled, finding this story both absurd and laced with a chilling sense of something sinister. She could not help but ask, “And you truly believe such a wild tale?”

The young man’s pride vanished at once, replaced by irritation and suspicion. “Officer, what do you mean by that? My uncle’s ascension is a blessing from the Dragon King. Or do you, in the eyes of the Demon Suppression Bureau, consider even the Dragon King a demon?”

At his outburst, the men carrying the coffin halted, their unfriendly gazes converging on her.

The path to immortality was long severed, Heaven’s gate barred; there was no real way to become immortal in this world. If all it took was faith in the Dragon King, then the whole world would be his believers. Lin Jiansmoke thought this inwardly, but she knew such words could never be spoken—certainly not to these villagers. Here in Zhenhaichuan, where life depended on the sea, the Dragon King was as revered as Heaven itself. No matter how powerful the Demon Suppression Bureau was, it could not uproot the faith ingrained in the people’s hearts over centuries.

Lin Jiansmoke dared not say another word. Clutching the palace lantern to her chest, she hastened away under the increasingly hostile stares.

As she walked on, a sense of eerie dread seemed to envelop all of Zhenhaichuan. Fear, numbness, or—more commonly—a kind of madness born of despair marked the faces of the townsfolk. This was far more terrifying than any demon or monster; it was terror multiplied a hundredfold.

Before she knew it, she had arrived near the Tidal View Inn. From a distance in the darkness, the inn looked less like a house and more like an ancient, beached beast. Layer upon layer of eaves and brackets jutted like the creature’s stiff, skeletal spines, and each tightly shut window was like a scale torn from its hide, with faint glimmers of light leaking through the cracks—no more than the dying glow of phosphorus. When the sea wind blew, the sign bearing “Tidal View Inn” creaked softly, but to her ears, it sounded more like the beast’s last pained murmurs.

The closer she drew, the more wrong it felt. The inn was too quiet—not the usual calm of a closed establishment, but a deathly silence that seemed to have sucked out even the last breath of life. There was no clatter of bowls and chopsticks, no raucous laughter of patrons, not even the wailing of the wind around the eaves; everything here felt as though it was being swallowed by an invisible wall.

Then, she heard it again: the faint sound of a little girl crying. It didn’t come from any single room, but seemed to permeate the entire inn, seeping from the cracks in the walls, the grain of the floorboards, the heart of every beam and pillar—everywhere, inescapable.

The two red lanterns at the entrance, which should have radiated festivity, now glowed with a dark, bruised hue, as unsettling as congealed blood.

Standing before the door, Lin Jiansmoke felt more deeply than ever that the job of a Demon Suppression Bureau officer was not for the faint of heart. She took a deep breath, as if steeling herself for some immense ordeal, and with trembling fingers, carefully dimmed the flame of the palace lantern she held, turning it lower and lower. As the pale light grew fainter, the world around her also plunged further into gloom.

Yet the little girl’s cries only grew clearer and more piercing in her ears. At last, when the flame was no more than a flickering pinprick, wavering and uncertain, she heard a boy’s voice through the endless weeping: “There, don’t fuss now…”

Lin Jiansmoke started in surprise. At that moment, the words spoken by Young Master Chu earlier that day echoed in her mind: “There’s still a servant boy staying in the woodshed at the back of the inn.”

There was no mistake—the voice belonged to that servant. But why would he be comforting a doll at a time like this? Did he know of the doll’s existence, or had he fallen under its spell, becoming its puppet?

A thousand questions crowded her mind. Lin Jiansmoke bit her lip. She had come here seeking the truth—if she faltered now, how could she hope to resolve the crisis?

With her resolve steeled, she surveyed the high wall to the rear of the inn. It might have looked formidable to others, but for a practitioner at her level, it was no real obstacle. The only burden was the palace lantern she carried.

Frowning, Lin Jiansmoke swiftly made a plan. She placed the lantern gently in a shadowy corner by the wall, then drew from her sleeve a coil of silk-fine mechanism cord—a special tool of the Demon Suppression Bureau. One end she tied to the lantern, the other she gripped firmly in her palm.

Taking a deep breath, she leapt, her feet tapping three times on the wall’s crevices like a dragonfly skimming water, each step silent and precise. Reaching the top, she pressed her left hand lightly on the coping and swung herself over without a sound.

As soon as she landed, her slender wrist flicked and the cord went taut; the lantern sailed gracefully over the wall and dropped soundlessly into her waiting arms. The movement was smooth and nimble as could be.

Cradling the lantern again, Lin Jiansmoke looked up toward the woodshed not far away, from which the boy’s voice still drifted, soothing and low.