The Grandmaster

"Someone's come back," his friend had said. "Someone you'll be pleased to see."

The words had whispered out of the cracked talisman seal, left at the drop point near the city gate. No point in asking who it was: there would be no answer.

Days later, spying Xuanyu through the fog, he was so disappointed he could spit. Glad to see that weakling? For what?

His scowl was still twisting his Daozhang's face when the whistling started, when paper dolls arrived to eviscerate his fierce corpses.

Xuanyu couldn't do that.

He let them lead him in—to meet his Grandmaster.