Longjiang City. Dead of night. Back alley behind a club.

  Bone-rattling bass leaked from inside, muffled by thick walls and fire doors into a dull, throbbing pulse. The alley was crammed with dumpsters and cardboard boxes. The air reeked of beer, vomit, and cheap perfume.

  A tipsy young man shoved open the back door and stumbled out. He'd had a few too many. Needed some air.

  The alley was quiet. quiet.

  Five minutes ago, when he'd popped out for cigarettes, there'd been a bunch of people smoking and chatting here. Now? Empty. Even the homeless guy in the cardboard nest was gone.

  The cold was wrong too. This was July. Should have been pushing thirty degrees even at night. But he felt like he'd walked into a meat locker. He could see his own breath.

  He shivered. "What the hell… did it just drop twenty degrees?" he muttered, turning back.

  He made it two steps before stopping. Something was watching him.

  He looked back. Nothing. Just dumpsters, boxes, and graffiti-tagged walls. The streetlight flickered, buzzing with static.

  "Getting paranoid…" He cursed under his breath and kept walking.

  Under the streetlight, his shadow stretched long behind him. He didn't notice that the shadow—the one that should have moved with him—had stopped. And was slowly changing shape.

  A hand emerged from the distorted shadow. Inch by inch, reaching for the back of his neck.

  But he it. That watched-while-you-sleep feeling. Growing stronger. Like someone standing over your bed in the dark.

  His head started swimming. His legs went weak.

  "What… the…"

  He tried to call for help. But something had stoppered his throat—no sound came out. He tried to run. His legs refused orders.

  The hand from the shadow touched his nape. Bone-deep cold. Like someone had pressed dry ice directly against his spine.

  His consciousness began to blur. Something cold and alien was pushing its way in. Into his body. Into his .

  Just as the shadow was about to fully sink into him—

  BOOM.

  The wall at the end of the alley exploded. A crack tore open from nowhere, and almost simultaneously, a blurry, translucent figure came rocketing out—riding a shockwave of spatial distortion that slammed directly into the possessing shadow.

  "WHAT THE F—?!" The ghost shrieked with fury.

  Ling picked herself up off the ground. Everything hurt.

  Passing through the Hungry Ghost fissure felt like being stuffed in a washing machine for eight hundred spin cycles. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog.

  No colors in her vision. Only the flow and tangle of energy.

  In front of her: a clump of grayish "yarn." A ghost with some cultivation. But in Ling's eyes, it looked pathetically fragile—like a ball of string mauled by a cat, loosely drifting in mid-air. The core threads—its obsessions—were wrapped tight around a denser energy mass below.

  "Oh nice, first thing I see is a possession in progress!" Ling marveled like a lucky tourist. "Talk about timing!"

  That brick of spatial turbulence she'd ridden in on had smashed the ghost's entry point into a dead knot. Now it was like a rusty zipper catching on the lining—top half still outside, bottom half already fused in. Couldn't go forward. Couldn't pull back. The prize was in the bag, but the bag was snagged on a nail.

  "Pfft." Ling couldn't help it.

  But she had bigger problems. The "air" here was too thin. She could feel herself starting to disperse.

  Then—crackling sounds from behind. The fissure hadn't fully closed. She could sense the Purifiers approaching from the other side.

  "Alright, since you two are putting on such a show… let me return the favor."

  She looked at the tangled mess on the ground.

  "Hey bro," she said to the stuck ghost, her face suddenly blooming into a radiant smile. "You're not the way in, right?"

  "You—"

  Before it could finish, Ling moved. Impossibly fast. She lunged, grabbed the threads still dangling outside the knot—and yanked.

  "OUT YOU GO!"

  A crisp snap. The ghost, along with the dead knot, was ripped free and sent flying. Ling slipped in smooth as silk. The whole thing took less than a second. Seamless.

  The ghost pinwheeled through the air and splattered against the wall. "???"

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It took a full five seconds to process what had just happened.

  "You—you STOLE my body?!" It let out a wail of despair and rage. "You TORE me off?!"

  "Sorry bro," came Ling's voice from inside the man's body. A hint of apology, but mostly relief. "This is called… uh, possession is nine-tenths of the law."

  "YOU—!!!"

  Ghost-bro was shaking with pain, face twisted to the extreme.

  Three months! Three months of stalking! Three months of staking out! He'd passed up how many other targets, all for this one "decent physical specimen"! And at 99% completion, some came crashing through a wall crack and stole it?!

  "YOU—!!!" Ghost-bro roared. "Do you know how long I waited for this body?! I—"

  "Nope." Ling lay still inside the man's body, playing dead. Very sincere. "But probably a while, huh? That's rough, buddy."

  Ghost-bro felt his three souls and seven spirits ignite with fury. He opened his mouth, ready to unleash the most blood-curdling scream of his entire death—

  What this poor bastard didn't know: the Hungry Ghost Realm's garbage dump was like a pressure cooker's bottom layer. And the Turbid Abyss? The bottom of bottom.

  To Ling, mortal-world strays were just… fluffy, wispy little yarn balls. That kind of power gap? This unlucky ghost was actually fortunate today. If Ling had hit him head-on, it wouldn't have been "torn off." It would have been instant annihilation.

  Right then, movement from the fissure. Two figures wreathed in black mist crawled through. The Purifiers.

  Ling lay motionless in the man's body, focused on catching her breath. The Purifiers' "gaze" lingered on her for a second.

  "Uh… what do we do?" The one on the right spoke slowly, awkwardly. "She's… already in a 'sleeve.'"

  "We head back, I guess…" The left one retracted his smoking chain. "It's just three hundred years of bonus. At least we keep our lives. Let's not bother her highness. Move."

  "Ugh… another all-nighter writing reports and self-criticisms…"

  The two Purifiers who'd been so imposing in the Hungry Ghost Realm now slouched like beaten dogs, ready to retreat.

  That's when the torn-up ghost on the ground spoke up weakly: "Officers… please, you gotta help me… that bitch robbed me in broad… uh, dark… whatever! She's the one you're hunting, isn't she?"

  Both Purifiers whipped around. Stared at the ghost. Four eyes met. A certain "workplace understanding" bloomed between them.

  "Old Zhang," the right Purifier cleared his throat. "The mission brief said to catch an 'evil spirit' with illegal contraband who stole our yang essence. Right?"

  "Correct."

  "Look at this guy." He pointed at the ghost. "Lurking around bar alleys, acting suspicious, and wasn't he just attempting possession? Doesn't he fit the description?"

  "That's definitely him! Look, he's still steaming with yang essence!"

  Ghost-bro: "???"

  "Ah, but the yang flask thing…" The left Purifier hesitated.

  Ghost-bro's spirits lifted instantly. His eyes brightened. "Yes! yes!" He pointed frantically at the body on the ground. "It's her! The one inside is your fugitive! The yang on me is just residue from the possession attempt! I can testify—"

  He didn't finish. The "unconscious" body on the ground twitched. A foot gave a little kick. A small bottle rolled out, tumbling across the ground until it stopped right at Ghost-bro's feet.

  An empty, transparent flask. Faint traces of yang essence still clinging to it.

  The air froze.

  Ghost-bro looked down at the bottle. Looked up at the two Purifiers. The Purifiers looked down at the bottle. Looked up at ghost-bro.

  "…"

  "Old Zhang," the right Purifier spoke slowly, something meaningful in his voice. "Why does this guy have our yang flask?"

  "Good question," Old Zhang's tone shifted. "Must be the thief we're after."

  Ghost-bro: "…"

  The right Purifier swept his arm decisively, looping the chain around ghost-bro's neck. "Suspect apprehended. Mission complete."

  "No!!!" Ghost-bro's voice cracked. "THIS ISN'T MINE!!! That bitch kicked it over!!! Didn't you see?!!"

  "We saw." The right Purifier nodded. "We saw a yang flask at your feet."

  "And you just confessed to 'attempted possession,'" Old Zhang added.

  "Unlicensed trafficking, possession of contraband, tampering with evidence, illegal possession, plus theft of law enforcement property." The right one counted on his fingers. "Five major charges. You're in for a good time."

  "Mother—!!!" Ghost-bro shook with rage. He spun toward the body on the ground, eyes red: "You—!!!"

  He only got one word out. Next second, everything went black. He'd fainted from sheer fury.

  Just like that, two shadows dragged away the scapegoat, slowly disappearing back through the fissure. The alley fell silent again.

  Ling maneuvered the body upright. Her coordination was off—she nearly faceplanted again. This vessel was too "small" for her. Like cramming size-10 feet into size-6 shoes. Suffocating.

  She lifted her head, awkwardly adjusting the focus of eyes that weren't hers. This was her first time seeing the world through human hardware.

  No stars. The night sky was covered by a moldy, dirty gauze. Distant buildings jutted like jagged fangs, flickering with neon in every color. The lights stabbed into her retinas without pattern or mercy, bringing a physical sting.

  She took a deep breath.

  "—"

  Her lungs felt like they were being sanded from the inside. Air wasn't just energy flow anymore. It was packed with coarse particles: gasoline's sting, cooking oil's char, sewer rot. And something else, the strongest of all, something she couldn't name—the raw stench of the .

  This body was heavy. Like wearing a waterlogged coat. Gravity pinned her to the ground. Every pore on her skin screamed discomfort, yet greedily devoured every scrap of sensation.

  Too much. Sound, smell, light, touch—all flooding in at once. No buffer. No filter.

  So this was what humans lived with every moment. No wonder they went crazy so easily.

  Ling slowly raised her hand. She made a fist, feeling tendons contract, feeling . And pain. Real, sharp, proof-of-life pain.

  "So this is the mortal world…"

  Loud. Stinking. Cramped. Heavy. Every inch of air stuffed with the residue of desire and anxiety.

  But—her lips slowly curved upward. Warm.

  This world was warm. Not the eternal, deathly cold of the Hungry Ghost Realm. This was scalding, restless, ready to overflow at any moment—the temperature of being alive.

  "Not bad."

  She stood, wobbled, caught herself against the wall.

  "Stinkier than I expected," she said. "Hotter too."

  "Both."

  Ling dusted herself off and took her first step toward the brightest lights.

  "Let's go, Little Ear. Time to find Su Soran."

  That's when a voice came from behind her.

  "Possession. Third-degree offense."

  Ling froze mid-step. The voice drew closer.

  "Unlicensed presence in the mortal realm. Second-degree offense." Flat, tired, dripping with bureaucratic ennui. "Disturbing mortal cognition. First-degree offense."

  She turned slowly. Under the streetlight at the alley entrance stood a massive shadow. Solid. Heavy. Like an entire mountain bearing down.

  As it stepped closer, she made out the details: a weathered middle-aged man. He wore a cheap olive-green bomber jacket, stretched tight over his bulk. His shoulders were broad as a bear's. He fiddled absently with a rusted pocket watch.

  "Add it up," the man sighed, "you're looking at a permanent residency in the eighteenth level of Naraka."

  No killing intent in his eyes. Just the weariness of someone dragged out at midnight to deal with petty nonsense.

  "So, little pipsqueak," he asked, "you coming with me? Or do I need to send you off?"

  "Oh, right. Introductions." He stepped into the light, his fierce eyes undercut by bone-deep exhaustion.

  "Jiang Dax. The Local Earth God of Longjiang. Everything here? My jurisdiction."