The carpenters knew nothing of it. The danger had been gathering for days. The black-robed men who swept through the village searching for children were disciples of the demon cultivator Wei Jiu — the same sect that came to Jue Mountain every year to bury iron boxes in the earth. Two days before the search, several black-robed disciples stood at the mountain's base and reported to the woman above them: "Elder Tu, the entire mountain is wrapped in some form of spiritual power. We have circled it fully. There is no way in." The woman they addressed was draped in black gauze embroidered with gold, her beauty precise and cold. She narrowed her eyes. "This is not your first time here. Hire villagers. They have no spiritual roots — the spirit shield will not stop them. The soul-dulling curse we placed will blunt their five senses enough that they can manage the lower slopes." The lead disciple hesitated. "That is what we have done, Elder. But this time is dif...
The highest peak of Zetsuzan is called Zansendai, and on it stands a single tree. Trees grow on mountains. That is unremarkable. But Zetsuzan is bare on every slope, every ridge stripped clean, and so this one half-dead ancient tree rising from the summit carries a weight of strangeness that bare facts cannot account for. The villagers of Juefeng, settled at the mountain's foot, have long made their peace with it. Twenty years ago the tree was full and green. Now it is not. The old men who sit idle at the village entrance have a tidy explanation for this: the tree is a Dushan Yangxian, a tree that achieved spirit and ascended toward immortality. An immortal thing, they say, cannot share a hillside with common grass and ordinary saplings. It demands the mountain for itself. The explanation is tidy, but it is not without support. Twenty years ago, disciples from sects whose names most people could not pronounce came to Jueshan to investigate the tree. The old people still talk about ...