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“Yeah, right, so you can craft a shank or a lockpick?” I said. “We don’t have any water to begin with. Now shut up before I shove your head down your own neck.”
“If you did, at least this infernal beard might stop itching,” he muttered. He tried to scrape his chin with his shoulder. “I don’t know how Guan Yu manages it.”
At least some of us remembered we were in this dimension for reasons other than chit-chatting. Nezha stepped in front of the group and heroically gazed into the distance.
“Behold! I sense the demonic qi that plagues Heaven on this realm. . . .” He operatically swept his arm toward the funkier-looking rock formations. “In that direction.”
His statement was for the benefit of the Great White Planet, who already had his judging notebook out. The old god gave a little shake of his head. Apparently that was too much of a gimme to be worth anything.
“I’ve got a better way to find our enemy with more specificity,” Erlang Shen said, making Nezha scowl. “Genie can do it.”
The gods turned to me. “She has true sight,” Erlang Shen explained to the others who hadn’t known me for long. “Finding a powerful source of demon energy would be a snap for her.”
It was technically true, but hearing him mansplain my own abilities made me want to claw my eyes out from sheer spite. “Hey!” I yelled at the Great White Planet, who was scribbling away. “Do not give him points for that!”
“He thought of the idea,” the old man said without looking up from his writing. “And he’s why you’re here to begin with. You and the Monkey King are neutral parties. Guanyin doesn’t automatically receive the benefit of any good you do, nor does Guan Yu from Sun Wukong.”
My temper flared at him, for boosting Erlang Shen and also for noticing the all-too-real split between me and Quentin. “Genie,” Guanyin said, sensing my blood heating up. “It’s okay. You helping us out will only be a good thing in the long run.”
“Fine,” I sulked. I went over to where Nezha was standing, and he got out of my way before I shouldered him aside. I faced the direction where the landscape got weirder and held my fingers to my temple.
And shrieked.
The purple light that bombarded my eyes was like a flashbang going off in a dark room. I fell on my rear in surprise and tried to press the sting out of my retinas.
“Yaoguai!” I shouted. “They’re right there!”
“Where?” Quentin said.
“Everywhere!”
The area had looked clear and pristine when we’d arrived, untouched by any living presence. But the moment I’d had true sight on revealed that less than a hundred yards away, the landscape was absolutely covered with the telltale purple glow of demon qi.
Nezha tried tilting his head. “I don’t see any yaoguai.”
I knew what I saw. Less than a hundred yards away, there were so many sources of demonic energy that they blended together in a Pointillist mass of light. And they were shining stronger than any of the monsters I’d fought on Earth.
“I can settle this,” Guan Yu said. He stepped forward and raised his halberd. It quickly started to glow brighter and brighter. My horror truly sunk in once I realized he was doing it on purpose.
“Foul creatures!” he roared at the empty space, waving his luminescent weapon like a road flare. “If you are out there, be warned that you stand in the presence of Heavenly gods, as well as your mortal enemies the Shouhushen and Sun Wukong, who each have slain scores of your kind in the past! You would do well to consider the circumstances before making any aggressive maneuvers! Now show your ugly faces, cowards!”
There was a moment where nothing happened. And then, as if they’d taken Guan Yu’s advice to heart and carefully tallied our numbers and strength, the yaoguai revealed themselves.
Powerful individual cloaking spells shimmered and melted away. Irregular shapes unfurled and stretched to their full height. I saw animal limbs and bird talons and tree boughs waving ominously at us.
Yaoguai. Hundreds of them—maybe a thousand.
And not just any garden variety. These were heavies. Many were bigger than Yellow-Toothed Elephant or radiated the magical power of the Six-Eared Macaque. Or both. The yaoguai of the Blessed Planes belonged on a different level than the ones I babysat in the forest. Those demons were high school. These demons were NCAA with options to go pro.
And with their concealment magic, they’d caught us in a perfect ambush. We’d blundered into an army of the unseen. The Yin Mo.
Because there were so many yaoguai, and because a lot of them had so many eyes, I could nearly hear them blink in unison. They stared at our numbers, verifying how outmatched we were. Gods or not, we were so far
up the creek we could have drunk from the source.
Their faces twisted open to reveal glistening fangs and ravenous tongues. A howl went up through the demons’ ranks, and the ones in front began a measured jog at us, the kind that turned into a full-out charge.
Guan Yu would not be beaten to the punch. “Battle commences!” he said with glee. He took off for the opposing horde by himself.
