17 Chapter 16 - The Grandmaster

Vast is the "great and originating power" indicated by Qian! All things owe to it their beginning: it contains all the meaning belonging to the Spirit Realm.

---Book of Changes

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Kajio watched as Joyce ate her third bowl of rice. Spade gave him an apologetic look that suggested Spade dealt with this on a daily, meal-y basis.

"I'll probably have to plan for the unexpected," Kajio had declared to Selva, full of confidence in his ability to keep churning out plans as things progress, but that was before Joyce had crashed a motorcycle into his boat, summoned a snake, a dragon, and then mangled the speech he had thoughtfully prepared while she was having an impromptu ocean rodeo.

The girl was probably insane, and definitely unhinged. Even worse, she didn't look great in-person and worse on camera, especially since she was never properly dressed and three out of five times dripping with what seemed to be two gallons of seawater. He'd have to make the best of it, he supposed.

First things first, the aftermath of this incident. Tonight he'd let the anticipation built, tomorrow, they'd stir it up even more. Kajio checked the live-stream playback again.

Viewership had grown to almost 6 million within three hours, and by the looks of it, would hit ten million soon enough. And that was even before the media started on it, if they did, against the wishes of Jia Xu and Taeyun.

The comments section was equal parts amazed, terrified, and amused. Most people were amazed at the war between the spirits, and the image of Joyce and Spade riding a winged-spirit with the two giant spirits fighting behind them was circulating a lot.

Unfortunately, so was a screenshot of Joyce turning to ask Spade the phone number, with the caption of "Mom, what's my number again?" It had become a meme already.

"The problem now is that we've actually gone and done it before we were prepared," Kajio said aloud. Spade gave him a long look.

"That might be for the best if you want this city to stay sane," Spade said. Joyce grinned at them.

"If it would help, this isn't the turning point yet," she said. They both swerved to look at her.

"What?" Kajio asked, startled by the suddenness of the statement.

"Joyce, what the hell does that mean?" Spade asked warily.

"I don't really know how to explain it, but it's kinda like how it was in Harbin when we were thinking of heading towards Xi'An to check out the shaman groups near there," Joyce frowned a little, "Just knew that wasn't really it."

"Xi'An? Does that mean something to you or are you just listing places now?" Kajio asked, alarms going off inside his head.

"We decided not to go to Xi'An first," Spade explained, not actually explaining anything.

"The beeline from the Northeast," Kajio muttered, frowning to himself as he tried to process whatever they were trying to say. "I thought it didn't make sense that you cut down in a straight line instead of zigzagging through the country or even trying any other place."

"It would've been too late, we would've been out of time for something that wouldn't work otherwise," Joyce explained. "The fabric here is thinnest, after all, or I wouldn't have landed in Hong Kong. Now the orbit's shifted a little, so it's closer to Canton instead."

Kajio looked at Spade, who gestured helplessly as he grasped for a way to explain her seemingly nonsensical words.

"It...the Spirit Realm is kind of really close right now, and it's closest near Hong Kong, where Joyce landed, but now it's closest to Canton. The resulting disturbances are likely to affect Joyce's powers as well, so we wanted to try our luck in Xi'An first after we hit the Peking Plains, but we were worried her powers would out her if we went there," Spade finally managed.

It created more questions than it answered, but Kajio decided to let it go in favor of focusing on his main problem.

"So what do you mean by turning point in our current situation? Are you somehow going to go more viral than you are in the process of becoming?" Kajio demanded. Joyce finished her food and shook her head.

"Not exactly, just, in terms of legitimacy I guess?" Joyce scrunched up her face. "I mean, I really looked like a drowning rat, and I'm also bad at speeches, I'm sure we'll get some recruitment, but not enough to pose an actual threat. It's like we've gotten a media boost but we haven't won the primaries yet."

Kajio mulled on that for a bit. "I should plan for that then," he said thoughtfully.

"Awesome, please don't tell me about it though," Joyce smiled at him.

"Really, don't," Spade warned as if this wasn't the seventh time he was saying it.

"Yes, alright," Kajio said drily. He frowned a little. "You two should come here at noon, we can all take calls, Selva and Leila said they'd help."

"We can do that? For one phone number?" Spade looked amazed. Would make sense, given the antique technology popular in his day.

"Yeah, it's easy to set up," Kajio said, "I'll just hook it to the landline so we can use several lines at once. I've got an intake questionnaire and system ready, though I might need to make one in English for Joyce. Joyce, definitely try to stay on-script when you translate it back, alright?

Joyce nodded slowly. "Dope. I'll do my best. Do you think the other shamans will start trying to kill me right now? I bet Jia Xu and Taeyun are going to hate me, after all, I made them both look pretty ignorant."

Kajio didn't want to say it surprised him that Joyce understood that, but it surprised him that Joyce understood that. After all, none of her previous actions suggested she knew there was something called consequences or conventional reactions.

"They probably will, they can't move against you as the heads of their organization, but they can still try to kill you," Kajio said, "Set up some wards or spirits or whatever, don't get offed right after you go viral."

"Sure," Joyce said cheerfully. Spade gave a grim nod, tracing the hilt of his sword with a thumb. The mood plummeted as Spade seemed to consider his options.

"I wonder if we can hit twenty million views by tomorrow," Kajio said, watching the view count tick up.

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Joyce kicked off the sandals Kajio lent her as soon as she entered their apartment.

"When the hell is the turning point? It's close, that's why I thought it was this," Joyce mused. Spade shook his head slightly, locking the door behind them.

"Take it easy and rest a little, things are going to pick up by tomorrow," Spade said, gently nudging her away from where she blocked the doorway.

Joyce's head felt surprisingly blank despite the Godzilla-style fight that had happened, the throw-down between spirits seeming not to resonate with her neural pathways.

"Maybe it's Mohan, like you said," Joyce said.

"Maybe," Spade sighed. "But after you've summoned the Azure Dragon at its full size, I don't think he'd try anything too crazy. Hopefully. Maybe. All else fails, you might need to summon something to hold off the Vermillion Bird."

Joyce shook her head a little. Really, the Four Pillars or Four Heavenly Spirits or whatever was nice to hear about, or when anime characters summoned them, or when anime yakuza named their groups after them, but things got a little less exciting when she actually had to deal with them.

"Whatever...let's chill for now, today's been wild," Joyce flung herself on the couch, nearly missing it. She reached for her phone only to remember she'd dropped it in seawater. Joyce groaned.

"I need to get a new phone at some point, preferably a waterproof one," she groused. Spade rolled his eyes like a parent whose kid had dropped their new bike off the roof by accident.

"Tomorrow morning," he said resignedly. Joyce grinned at him and turned on the TV to a playback of a low-budget soap opera.

She found herself on the edge of her seat with something akin to anticipation that the terrible plot certainly didn't warrant. Joyce frowned a little, judging herself for her bad taste.

She rubbed the back of her neck, where there were completely unnecessary goosebumps. Joyce had never taken herself for someone to be this excited to see a guy make out with his brother-in-law in an abandoned warehouse with a shootout in the background, but maybe it was just the utterly incongruous mellow background music that was probably royalty-free.

But still. "That's weird, is this drama even that good?" she asked Spade, who gave her a strange look.

"It's terrible, they're using painted-over water guns," Spade replied drily.

"Huh, I thought so. Why the hell am I getting so worked up over it?" Joyce scratched at the back of her neck, where the anticipation and tension were building up at an alarming speed.

The window shattered with a shockwave that sent the glass shards flying in every direction. Spade shoved her head down before she could react, vaulting over the couch with sword in hand.

"Bro, what the fuck was that?!" Joyce shouted, peeking over the couch. Spade promptly chucked a pillow into her face. He drew his sword, eyes focused intently on the window. Joyce felt the tingling at the back of her neck grow into a painful knot, wincing at the unexplainable chill.

A burning bird crashed into their living room, looking decidedly not in pain or dying. Joyce gaped at it, dimly recognizing the presence of the Vermillion Bird. Lord Ling Guang, Spade had called it, Mohan's contract-spirit.

"Imposters," the bird boomed in a voice that sounded like Samuel Jackson had merged with Hugh Jackman and ingested a stereo system, "Mohan requests your presence."

"Mohan does not have the right to coerce the spirit-sent into a meeting!" Spade snarled.

The bird seemed to smirk.

"But I do," it said, and the room burst into flames.

Joyce screeched like a pterodactyl as a pair of giant claws clamped around her and promptly lurched upwards and to the left.

'Wrong genre, bitch! This isn't Jurassic Park!' Joyce caught onto a knot of energy and dragged, dropping it onto the floor with a thud as the Vermillion Bird writhed, nearly clawing Spade in the face.

"Fuck you, go back," Joyce snarled, pulling open a pathway to the Spirit Realm. The Vermillion Bird tried to say something but instead gave an indignant squawk as she promptly tried to physically push it in.

"Joyce, Joyce! That's a Heavenly Beast! You can't forcefully deport it!" Spade shouted almost hysterically.

"Bro, I get it, no one wants to build a border wall and make someone else pay for it or anything but this is a goddamn self-cooking bird, what the hell do you want me to do?!" Joyce screeched.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a neighbor skitter out of their line of sight, glancing at the broken window in dismay.

"How dare you?!" the bird shouted. She winced a little, mentally apologizing to Samuel Jackson and Hugh Jackman.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not getting baked when I already have to be steamed every single day!" Joyce said in an almost-pleading tone to the bird, which glared at her and pecked her arm. "Ow!"

"Joyce, Lord Meng Zhang is going to be so pissed if you evict his friend," Spade said almost desperately. He promptly held his sword to the bird's neck and nudged Joyce's arm, signally for her to loosen her grip.

"You're holding the bird hostage, I don't see how this is better," Joyce said. She let go. The bird moved to peck at her again. Spade pushed the blade closer.

"Don't move," he growled, "Call Mohan here."

"I will not be ordered by you, you low-level spirit!" The bird looked ready to pop a vein.

"But you can be ordered by me, the book said so," Joyce shot back. Who cared if the bird was stressed? Everyone was stressed, the bird was just making things worse.

"I will not stand down to an untrained, ignorant, arrogant fool like you," the bird hissed through its beak.

"Spade, shove him in, I'm sure Meng Zhang will forgive me if I burn him some incense and canned fish, if he doesn't I'll just never summon him again," Joyce said. Spade gave her a dubious glance but began shoving the bird through the shrinking pathway, ignoring its furious squawks.

"Enough," a voice rang out from behind them. Joyce whirled to look, chucking the couch pillow at the voice just as a precaution. She really hoped she hadn't hit the landlord by accident.

The pillow fell to the floor uselessly. A man in dark robes with a golden four-clawed dragon stared back at her impassively.

The man looked to be in his late forties, with long gray hair gathered in a braid that made him look a little older than that. He was thin and not very tall, with sharp, somber features. He was what Joyce would describe as don't-mess-with-unless-you-want-him-to-beat-the-shit-out-of-you, the type of guy she stayed away from on principle.

"This is breaking and entering," Joyce said, ignoring the warning from her instincts, "You literally broke my window and my door."

"You're shoving my contract into the Spirit Realm," the man replied coolly.

"Because he was breaking and entering," Joyce shot back. She squinted at him. "I would have called the police but I feel like they don't want to get involved."

"Mohan," Spade said in a low voice behind her, "You'll regret it if you go through with this."

Mohan looked at Spade with an almost disdainful glance. "You falsely invoke my name and seek shelter under a disrespectful, untrained whelp of a spirit-sent. You take the robes and mantel of your forefathers and sully the name of the Order of the Flying Dragons. You attack and threaten my contract-spirit, and you think I will be the one to regret anything?"

"The Order of the Flying Dragons was sullied by your generation, nothing I do can make a bigger smear than you have!" Spade snarled back.

"You're still as cheeky as before," Mohan said, a hard edge in his voice.

"And you're still a mass-murderer," Joyce pointed out, giving him an innocent look.

"Joyce," Spade hissed. She ignored him, looking at Mohan with interest.

"You really can't say we've worsened the reputation of the Flying Dragons, sure we've made them less scary, and more integrated into the meme economy, but really, I don't think I can one-up you unless I start doing some seriously sketchy stuff," Joyce said. She shrugged under his imperious glare. "It's true and I should say it."

"For what you know about Guanyang, you certainly seem eager to repeat it here," Mohan said, eyes glinting dangerously.

"Bet you can't do it without your contract. Spade, push him through!" Joyce shouted. Spade shoved, putting his weight into the action until the bird was halfway through the gateway.

"It certainly seems that you don't like to beg," Mohan hissed.

"Really? What could have given you that idea? Please get out of my house, how's that for begging?" Joyce shot back. She tried to pull the pathway a little wider to make things easier for Spade.

"Joyce, this is sacrilegious, I hope you know that," Spade grit out, struggling with the bird as it clawed at his sleeves.

"Sorry bro," Joyce said apologetically. She kept her gaze solidly locked with Mohan's, feeling vaguely like this was the co-ed version of a testosterone-charged pissing contest.

Mohan's eyes blazed with the light of borrowed power, a fiery reminder of the carnage he'd caused at Guanyang pass. Big deal, this was a harbor town. Firebenders could suck it.

Mohan's eyes crinkled and he began to laugh. Joyce gave Spade a confused shrug as all three of them looked on, vaguely unsettled. Mohan wiped at his eyes, waving his hand at the bird, which promptly stopped its pecking and being on fire.

"I suppose I deserved that," Mohan said amusedly, a friendly note in his voice that definitely wasn't there before. He was starting to look more like a nice taxi driver who was secretly a Special Ops veteran that ripped the throats out of people with his bare teeth back in the day.

"The flair for drama tends to stick, even after retirement."

Joyce couldn't begrudge him that after the drama she'd created today. At least his was conventionally illegal, hers had been more like slapping people with a sandal and shouting pro-Trump slogans to incite a riot.

But if he'd honestly made that kind of entrance just to be a bitch about it, she didn't know what she could say other than that she'd done the same thing last week. Except she'd actually had something to steal, just to make it worse.

"Mohan," Spade said in a calm tone that really meant he was about to start stabbing people, "What the fuck are you trying for?"

"Why don't you let go of my contract for now? It really wouldn't do for the first spirit-sent in a millennium to piss off the Four Heavenly Beasts barely two months in," Mohan said mildly.

Spade didn't move. Joyce cautiously gave him an all-clear hand gesture, and Spade slowly loosened his grip, stepping back from the furious bird as the pathway closed behind it.

"How dare you! You fools dare make a mockery of myself and my chosen one, you would ride on the name of the spirit-sent and disrespect the gods themselves?!" Ling Guang barked in a voice that sent shockwaves through the air. Joyce looked back unflinchingly.

"I didn't make a mockery of you any more than I make of myself on a daily basis, and you guys broke in. Also, please don't make me regret having Spade let go or I'll really just trap you in on the other side," Joyce warned.

She wasn't sure she actually could do that, but Ling Guang probably didn't know that. She glanced between the bird and its shaman.

"So what the hell did you guys want?"

Mohan smiled as the bird gave an angry huff, looking as though he'd just seen an amusing skit and it wasn't his contract they'd just had the equivalent of a shove-fight with.

"You falsely invoked my name," Mohan said. "That's taboo for a spirit-sent, and a mistake that could severely cost you should the lie fall through. You would know if you were raised here, why one does not lie about who their teacher is."

Joyce thought to Pania's pride in being a student of Taeyun and Feng Xia's corresponding pride for learning under Jia Xu. She winced a little.

"Sorry," she said, genuinely meaning it.

Mohan shook his head, still smiling. "That is why I have come," he said.

"No matter how powerful you are, you can't seriously think of trying to harm a spirit-sent," Spade warned, stepping forward with his sword ready.

"Tempting but not quite," Mohan said lightly. "Rather, I have come to make your claim true."

His smile grew at their confused glances. "I have come to teach you, Spirit-sent. As the Grandmaster of the Flying Dragons."

A buzz went straight up Joyce's spine, exploding in a burst of electrical shock near the base of her skull. She stared at Mohan, surprised and a little excited.

"So this is the turning point," she said. She grinned at Spade. "Congrats, dude. We've made it."