Great-Uncle Wen's body was caught in a shivering rattle of the spirit, his frame vibrating with a violence that shouldn't belong to a man ninety-five years on the clock. Those twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness were wide and staring, his wrinkled face—once a mask of benevolence—now pulled into a rictus-grin that belonged in a charnel house. Suddenly, a sound like a liquid whipcrack filled the room as the arm of his black chair splintered under a grip that was fast becoming a set of skeletal talons.
"Great-Uncle!" Li Guoming barked, his pulse starting to red-line. He'd seen the chemical curse take Ah-Ling at the recovery center, but this was a different breed of horror. Wen's limbs and face were performing fantastic rubber acrobatics, the skin bulging and pulsing as if something buried deep in the human wreckage was trying to force its way into the stagnant air. Li tried to lunge forward, thinking he could pin the old man down, but Zhao Feng's hand clamped onto him like a steel trap. "Stay on your side of the line, Ming-zai!".
Then, the machinery of the room unhinged. A man burst through the front door, his voice a high-voltage shriek that cut through the gloom: "STILL!" In the same heartbeat, his hands performed a blur of rubber acrobatics, flicking short needles tipped with yellow, red-striped spheres—sticky little things the size of small-fry peas—through the air. They hammered into Wen's forehead, shoulders, chest, stomach, thighs, knees, shins, and feet—eleven points of a focused, urgent haste. The old man's shuddering stopped instantly, his body becoming a stone effigy frozen in a void of logic.
The newcomer didn't waste a second. He moved with a predatory intensity, lunging toward the chair. He fished a small glass vial of orange-red chemical cocktail from his pocket and popped the cork with a liquid whipcrack. He pressed the needle at Wen's forehead, then used his fingers to unhinge the mouth of the machine, forcing the liquid down the old man's throat. He jacked the chin up to ensure the medicine took, then performed a final centrifuge of movement, spinning behind the chair to drive one last needle into the very crown of the old man's skull—a final thud of certainty.
The whole thing went down in the space of a heartbeat, but it worked like a charm. Great-Uncle Wen, previously a vibrating engine of nightmare, suddenly went as still as a stone effigy. Those twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness snapped shut, and his face settled into a mask of calm, looking for all the world like a man lost in a deep, restorative dream.
Officer Zhao Feng felt the tension leave his own gears; he let go of his friend's arm and helped Li Guoming to his feet. He led him toward the newcomer—the man who had just performed that high-stakes act of spiritual surgery.
"Ming-zai, this is Detective Tian Shu," Zhao explained, his voice a dry, shivering rattle., "He's a bloodhound from Department 9, flew in straight from Thailand to help us bird-dog this case and find the key in the lock." Tian Shu, the younger human hawk, offered a sharp, clinical nod of respect to both officers. "Chief Zhao, Chief Li. Good to meet you in the flesh."
"What the hell happened to my Great-Uncle?" Li blurted out, his pulse still red-lining with a sudden, jabbing alarm.
"The old man was overmastered—possessed," Tian Shu said, his face a mask of cold knowledge. "I hit him with a chemical cocktail of herbs and red sulfur, and I've hammered home the needles in twelve key zones to drag his soul back from the dark galleries. He should be coming around soon, but the math is ugly—I reckon that thing has been in the machine for a long time. The rot might be deeper than a standard raid."
The detective fished a small paper packet from his chest-rig and handed it to Zhao Feng. "Get me a bucket, Chief. A big-ass one. And mix this powder with warm water. He's going to need to wash his mouth out once he's finished processing the poison from his system."
Zhao and Li guided the human wreckage of Great-Uncle Wen back into his chair. They scrambled into the kitchen to wrangle the bucket and the water with focused, urgent haste. When they returned, Tian Shu was already at work. He began pulling the needles—those tiny, silver pinpricks—leaving only the anchors in the old man's gut and feet. He massaged the spine, the temples, and the notch between the eyebrows with a slow, rhythmic cadence.
A heartbeat later, Great-Uncle Wen's eyes fluttered open. They weren't black holes anymore; they were back to the milky, cataract-fogged eyes of a ninety-five-year-old man. He looked around with vacant, staring incomprehension before the first shivering rattle of a heave hit him.
His jaw unhinged, and he began to yark into the bucket. What came out wasn't food; it was a viscid, tar-like sludge as black as a washed blackboard. It exhaled a swampy reek—the stench of rotting meat and old, putrid secrets that was so foul the three lawmen had to turn their faces away in white-faced astonishment, their own stomachs performing fantastic rubber acrobatics against the smell.
Great-Uncle Wen spent the next ten minutes in a shivering rattle of a heave, yarking up gouts of that viscid, tar-like sludge until nearly half the bucket was filled with the swampy reek of his own unmaking. He gasped for air in a dry, rattling struggle, looking like a spent shell that was finally ready to give up the ghost. But after two or three sips of the warm chemical cocktail prepped by Tian Shu, a flicker of life returned to his face, though he remained as weak as a piss-ant in a gale.
"A-Ming... at the end of the line, you actually came for me." Great-Uncle Wen rasped. The words hit Li Guoming like a physical blow. He couldn't stop the storybook tears from gushing, and he pulled the old man's fragile, human wreckage of a frame into a fierce, loving embrace.
Tian Shu reached out with a clinical rhythm, tapping Li's back. "Easy, Chief. Don't strip his gears with that hug." He began pulling the needles from Wen's gut, leaving only two anchors in the old man's feet—sentinels guarding against any residual poison.
"Thank you, Detective. Truly," Li Guoming said, his voice thick with a relief that tasted like sweet water. He looked at the young human hawk, but noticed that even through the smile, Tian Shu carried a mask of cold knowledge and a heavy blanket of worry—a look mirrored perfectly by Zhao Feng.
"Don't let the kid's age fool you," Zhao Feng said, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence. "He's more than just a bloodhound for the Department 9 machinery. He's a scholar of the Quanzhen and Maoshan arts—a standout disciple of the late Master Lin Feitian. When it comes to processing demons or bird-dogging occult lore, he's at the red-line of the elite. He's the heir to the priest Tian, a man who vanished into the private static of the overseas world long ago."
Tian Shu offered a jagged scrawl of a grin, his posture Humble but focused. "It's nothing so grand, Chiefs. I just follow the roadmap Master Lin left behind and study the dead-letter files of my great-grandfather. He lived in Thailand since the Xianfeng era (咸豐帝) of the Qing Dynasty. The locals there called him 'Mhor Tian' (หมอเทียน)—just a broken translation of our family name, 'Tian', lost in the linguistic static of the diaspora."
"Detective Tian's great-grandfather was a Longmen priest of the Quanzhen Sect, one of our true elders." Officer Zhao Feng added, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence. "In Thailand, they called his secret work 'The Records of Mhor Tian.' It's a dead-letter file of every overseas abomination and spirit-walker known to the dark galleries of the East. Our Department 9 machinery has used those scrolls to find the key in the lock more times than I can count. When the wind dies down, I'll let you eyeball it yourself."
Li Guoming gave a sharp, clinical nod and gripped the detective's hand in a white-knuckled squeeze. "Thank you for pulling my Great-Uncle back from the slaughterhouse, Detective. If I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes, I'd never believe a small-fry like you could be such a heavyweight demon-processor. Seeing you in action... it was like a childhood daydream coming to life, like that Master from the old Mr. Vampire movies. You've got a hell of a monolith of skill."
"You're laying the glossy dream on a bit thick." Tian Shu said, offering a jagged scrawl of a grin as he humbled himself. He turned to Zhao Feng, his voice becoming a dry, shivering rattle. "Chief Zhao, if you've got questions for the old man, you'd better bird-dog them fast. He's going to need a long stay in the private static of sleep very soon."
Zhao Feng offered a noncommittal nod, his face becoming a mask of cold knowledge. He looked at his old friend, Ming-zai, with a heavy blanket of reluctance before turning his attention back to the human wreckage of Great-Uncle Wen, who sat panting in his chair.
"Great-Uncle... Xiao Feng needs to process some math with you," Zhao said, his voice painted with a nursery-rhyme sweetness that didn't quite reach his eyes. Li Guoming started to lunge forward, his pulse starting to red-line with the urge to stop the interrogation, but the fantastic rubber acrobatics of the situation held him back. He saw the pleading look in Tian Shu's eyes and stayed on his own side of the line.
"Ask your piece, boy," Great-Uncle Wen whispered, his voice as thin as splintered glass. "I'm a dimming lamp, and the oil is running low, but the gears of my memory are suddenly clear—as if I've just woken from a long, restorative dream. The things from ninety winters ago feel like they happened just yesterday. Speak."
Zhao Feng gave a final thud of certainty with his head and asked the question that sat like spoiled meat in the room: "During those summers when you played in the rat-warren of his house... did that Uncle Liang character ever tell you his story? Did he ever let you eyeball the roadmap of his past?"
Great-Uncle Wen's eyes performed a heavy, final shutter as he nodded into the stagnant air of the hall. "Uncle Liang didn't let much slip through the static about his own roadmap," the old man whispered, his voice as thin as splintered glass. "He just claimed to be a Kaifeng man. He'd had a small-fry of a son who'd given up the ghost when he was barely off the clock, and seeing as I was a ringer for the kid, I became his designated favorite—a real treasure-trove in his eyes."
"But there was one yarn he spun that sat in my gut like a cheap paperback—a strange bit of history that felt more like a novel than real life."
A shivering rattle of a cough suddenly tore through the old man's frame. Detective Tian Shu didn't hesitate; he moved with focused, urgent haste to stroke the human wreckage of Wen's back, guiding a cup of that red chemical cocktail to his lips until the gears of his breathing stopped stripping.
"This particular narrative involves a gang of vultures," Wen rasped, his voice dropping into a low, rhythmic cadence once he'd caught his wind. "Pissant thieves who hatched a plan to raid a village of the elderly. They were looking for a king's ransom of a trade where they didn't have to put a single cent of investment into the machine."
The old man used a white cloth to scrub his mouth and laid it on the black ebony table. The three lawmen stared at the Rorschach of black, viscid sludge that stained the linen—a swampy reek of old corruption that looked for all the world like liquid tar.
Officer Zhao Feng leaned in, his eyes becoming twin abyssal pits of focused intensity. "Please, Great-Uncle," he urged, his voice heavy as stone. "Would you indulge us with your story? We are keen to understand."
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