Bonus: Cut Content

 AN: Hey guys as a little bonus here's some content cut from the main story describing a Sect Job Ling Qi took.

Ling Qi reported for a Sect job early in the morning. The directions given at the main hall sent her down the mountain to meet the requester in town. Rather than the disciple and owner of the mansion himself, the job giver turned out to be a rather elderly woman in the first realm, waiting for her at the edge of the mansion’s grounds. She was the head housekeeper and the only member of the staff still around.

“So, this is the place.” Ling Qi looked up at the peaked roof visible over the wooden barrier that surrounded the grounds. “Do you mind if I ask why the home got into this state?”

“Of course, Honored Miss,” the elderly woman said as she led Ling Qi toward the gates. “The house staff was called away by Lord Seung for other duties, and the Young Master has been too occupied with his Sect duties to approve new hiring so we have fallen behind.”

Ling Qi considered those words and the short woman who had spoken them. There was pretty obviously some details being left out, but it would be rude to press. “Unfortunate timing,” Ling Qi mused. “And what has caused the house spirit to grow so unruly? While I have little practical experience with such matters, my studies have indicated that such spirits are usually rather tame.”

They reached the gates then, and Ling Qi glanced over them, taking in the security arrays woven into the carvings on the wooden doors. It didn’t seem like anything she couldn’t bypass with focused effort. 

“You are correct, Miss,” the housekeeper agreed. “House spirits are usually friendly things, but this property only recently came under the ownership of Clan Seung. The house spirit does not yet recognize its new owners,” she explained, fishing a flat grey disc from her sleeve. She pressed it to the indent in the center of the gate, and it shimmered, causing the gate doors to swing open.

“I see,” Ling Qi said with a frown. “How was anyone living here at all then?”

“The staff had been performing the proper rites to suppress and suborne the spirit after the Young Master enacted a sealing.” The old woman sighed. “When they were called away, those rascals failed to do their final duties, and so the spirit broke free. These old bones were not up to the task of suppressing it at this point, I am afraid.”

Ling Qi nodded, looking past the gates and across the garden inside. The flowerbeds and grass had an unkempt look to them, and the windows seemed dark. She could feel a fairly potent presence from the place, but it was riddled with weakness, pulling it down into the second realm. She had only briefly encountered the concept of house spirits as a subset of object spirits; events like this must really make property transfers among immortals a pain. 

“What need I do then?”

“The spirit tablet lies in the second basement.” The elderly woman pressed the disc that had opened the gates into Ling Qi’s hand. “And this will disable the locks,” she said pragmatically. “You need but reach the tablet and sprinkle this-” she added a vial of red powder and a few sticks of rather expensive-looking incense on top of the disc “-across its face. Then perform a pacification rite.”

Ling Qi was familiar enough with basic spiritual rites at this point, though she didn’t recognize the powder. Studying it for a moment, she frowned. Dried blood? By the aura, it was the blood of a potent cultivator too. She supposed that made sense if this was meant to bind the spirit to a new master and he wasn’t present. 

“Consider it done then,” Ling Qi said, putting on a smile. “I will be back shortly.”

“Spirits bless you, Honored Disciple,” the old woman said, bowing deeply. “You have my thanks.”

Ling Qi nodded absently as she stepped beyond the gate, putting the woman from her mind as she focused on the task ahead. She could feel the house spirit’s qi, threaded throughout the structure. Avoiding its attention wouldn’t be easy.

Ling Qi let the edges of her being fray as she crept across the grounds, melting into the shadows cast by the wall under the late afternoon sun. She eyed the vast, complex web of spiritual awareness that engulfed the house. It might have been a beautiful thing once, but now, it was laced through with lines of wrath and disgust and ragged holes where something new was growing.

It felt like studying a tapestry which was being replaced thread by thread with a whole other weaving; the holes were places where new and old had torn apart, and the dark lines… Well, that was where the metaphor broke apart a little. Still, she supposed she should be glad for the holes; she had very nearly allowed her qi to trip the web at her first step, so dense it was. If it had been whole… It seemed like she wouldn’t simply be able to rest on her laurels in the future when it came to sneaking.

Her near failure only made her more determined though, and soon, Ling Qi made it onto the porch, taking one careful step at a time. There were no eyes to hide from here, only the spiritual senses of the house itself, so she had to adjust her method of skulking. While she did have the key, Ling Qi did not want to alert the spirit; instead of using the door, she crept around the perimeter until she found an open window leading into the kitchen. Such things could be relied upon, it seemed, even in a cultivator house.

That wasn’t to say that there weren’t alarm formations layered around the window, but she managed to bypass them slipping between the figurative “bars.” Inside, things changed. As Ling Qi slipped down the dimly lit halls, she could feel a pressure on her back, the weight of the house spirit, an incoherent mass of negative emotion that raised the hairs on her neck.

Decorative vases rattled, and floorboards creaked without rhyme or reason. Out of the corner of her eyes, she would often catch movement such as shadows crawling unnaturally on the walls and faintly human silhouettes passing from room to room. The sounds were the worst though.

From the moment she entered the building, the faint sound of sobbing had reached her ears, unending and uninterrupted save by an occasional snippet of feeling that became words.

Where have you gone…?

Ling Qi grit her teeth, doing her best to ignore the grief pressing down on her like the cold pressure of a lake in winter.

Come back, please!

It was hard to do so when the visions in the corner of her eye grew more numerous, the indistinct figures of people going through the motions of daily life, happy and sad. It was difficult to not jump when one of the sightless wraiths passed right by or through her. She saw images of a child chasing a ball, a proud woman sweeping down the hall, trailed by the images of handmaidens, and men deep in arguments, their words garbled beyond recognition.

Please do not leave me…

She soon found the door leading to the basement, and here, she finally made use of the key for there were no other entrances to be found.

Usurper! Thief!

She grimaced as she felt the house spirit’s attention redouble, and the house grow darker still. She darted her way down the stairs as the volume of the sobbing grew greater and took on a furious edge. Still, she slipped undetected through the web of the spirit’s attention. For all that, she could hear the furniture rattling and the door behind her swept shut with a loud bang. The house spirit knew someone was here, but it had not “seen” her yet.

Ling Qi slipped between wine racks and storage shelves as she made her way down to the second level of the basement, ignoring the crashing sounds of things falling behind her as the shelves rocked and the ground quaked. The second floor was thankfully bare, most of its contents apparently removed, leaving only empty alcoves. Only one remained full, an ornate little shrine holding a stone tablet as wide as her hands placed together and only a few centimeters thick. Characters were carved in its surface, but they were unreadable, as if the stone had melted like wax, leaving the characters warped and broken.

The sobs rose to a shriek as Ling Qi darted forward and popped the stopper off the blood vial with her thumb, and a quick flick of her wrist sprinkled the coppery-scented dust over the warped tablet. The blood gleamed as it landed upon the stone, and the foundations of the house shook violently.

... And then, all was still and silent. Ling Qi grimaced as she felt something like pain shoot through the web of spirit all around her, and the feeling of grief and fury hung thick in the air. For the moment though, the spirit was impotent, and so she did not waste any time lighting the incense and beginning the pacification rites.

By the time she was done, the web around her was reduced to a fuzzy cloud, barely coherent, and the last feelings of struggle had faded. With the house pacified, she left by the front door and returned the key to the housekeeper before returning to the Sect to collect her Sect points.

That had been far more unpleasant than she had expected, even if she had avoided real conflict with the spirit. Ling Qi silently resolved that if she ever purchased a house old enough to have a spirit, she would definitely ensure the thing wasn’t hostile first.