New Gods · Conversa

Rain in the Late Tang falls upon an unnamed creek outside Yongzhou City. The sound of water is soft, so faint it can barely drown out the fresh cut across her palm. When the woman in white opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is her own hands—fingers slender, nails clean, not looking like those of someone who has ever done hard labor. She does not know who she is, nor why half her body is submerged in the stream, with a pearl hairpin still tucked into her hair, bone-chillingly cold. A young man squats on the bank watching her, a yellow mutt at his heels. The dog barks twice, but the man stays still, only asking, "Are you okay?" She opens her mouth, but her throat feels blocked by something. The wind of the Wei and Jin dynasties rustles through the masts of Penglai Harbor, making the papers on the bounty board rustle loudly. A man wearing a bamboo hat tears off a bounty notice, his fingertips pausing briefly on the parchment. The reward money is barely enough to top off his Primordial Gas tank. His Third Eye remains shut, never opening again since that scar cracked open twelve years ago. His name is Yang Jian, once a disciple of Master Yuding, now a bounty hunter scraping a living off contracts at the Penglai docks. Someone passes by him, glancing at him without recognition. He folds the bounty poster and slips it into his pocket, walking deeper into the docks. The sound of a harmonica drifts out from an alleyway, though he cannot quite make out the tune. In modern-day Donghai City, the night is sliced open by the roar of a motorcycle engine. On a racetrack converted from an old industrial district, Li Yunxiang twists the throttle to the stop, spraying gravel from his rear wheel to clatter loudly against the corrugated iron fence. He does not know why his chest feels so tight tonight, only remembering that when he passed the water station earlier today, the line stretched half a block long, and a little girl holding an empty bucket squatted by the curb with a numb expression. As he rode past her, a sudden surge of heat seared his back, but he did not look back. Kasha shouted from the back seat for him to slow down, but he ignored her, leaning the handlebars over to skim right past the guardrail.