“What are those?” Gloria focused her sight on one of the female bodies. The body basically had no hair, but still “fresh” looking skin, if only overly pale and showed absolutely no signs of veins or wrinkles anywhere. They were breathing, their limbs were twitg, and their mouths were moving as if they were trying to speak.

  “Boxes, empty vessels, tainers. ” Master Liaoran’s voice was solemn with palpable fury: “It was but a theory worthy of nothing more than oblivion - an idea of the old days regarding the nature and exploitability of humans themselves as - as a kind of extractor and transformer for the kind of energy in Qiyun flow, making it usable for humans. But - as you could see - ”

  “This method is utterly evil, and however ories, however it’s set up, the energy would still be tainted.” Tae Kuo shook his head at the sight below: “Not to mention - this is - this is gonna cost a lot of actual humans, right? These are just bodies, and there’s got to be something that ihem with actual human spirits or souls, right?”

  “You’re exactly right, Sifu Kuo. Looks like you’ve figured it out already.” Master Liaora out a long sigh as he led the team downward o another flight of stairs, only this time the stairs were oerior of the hole, and with some rusty metal railings on the side. “These poor people - in theory, they o be selected, based oime of birth, pces of birth and ‘produced’ at a certain age duriain time windows.”

  “... Yin year, Yang month, Yin day, Yang hour, born in a natural White Tiger Fengshui Spot, ‘produced’ when one is at seventeen and a half years of age?” Tae Kuo asked after a short moment of silehe ‘heavenly perfected medium’?”

  “This is one of the effective ways, I’m afraid.” Master Liaoran shook his head: “But there is no one so perfectly fitting. Not ohat could make it to that age naturally, anyway. So there were a number of ways to adjust for the gs. If you could believe it, this was a real course of researd study back then.”

  “The study of pilrs - the actual, ritualistic pilrs of man.” Tae Kuo could not help but spit: “Fuckers - those waste of air and space who studied it shall have no heir, no legad bear only the shame.”

  Before anyone could respond, a loud moan came from several bodies from below. They had already desded to a level that was quite low, and just a few stairs lower they could even reach their hand out below and touch the dark spikes. They fixed their eyes on the bodies that made the sound, just in time to see dense white fog rise from their mouths, eyes, nostrils and ears.

  “This is not good. GO!” Master Liaoran sped up his steps.

  The fog ing from these bodies began taking shape almost immediately. First it was faces, each cloud of fog maed one face, looking almost pletely simir to the body that released it. Then came hands and arms, and then the chests and the rest of their upper bodies.

  But before these shadows of fog could pletely take shape, their faces began grimag as though they were in pain. Before long, their newly formed upper bodies torted, twisted and mutated. More faces grew on their necks, pecs chests and backs, their fingers branched like trees, and their arms forked into bigger tree-like structures of flesh and bones.

  “Flesh! New flesh! Take over for me! TAKE OVER FOR ME!” One of the white shadows screamed in dozens of voices in unison. Three more mutated white shadows lu the team, all screeg for fresh, living humans to take their pces on the spikes.

  “Don’t attack! If you don’t know how to tune your Qi, they could i you.” Master Liaoran pointed forward and downward at a small arch while he trated his Qi on his palms: “You go forward and find a pce to hide, wait for me!”

  “Master, be careful!” Marodded at Master Liaoran before heading first in the direaster Liaoran poio - there was a turn at the end of the stairs, past which they would ehe ard go further down.

  Behind the arch was another flight of stairs with smooth solid metallic gray walls on both sides. The height betweeairs was unfortably higher than all the others before. They were a bit sticky as well, like newly id tar.

  Behind them, Master Liaoran ted an are sutra with a soft, geoh his hands in a prayer pose. A golden aura radiated from his body, f an imperable wall around him. The mutated white shadows tried to surround him, but the golden wall of light became harder to squeeze through the closer they got.

  At the same time, the calming, sing energy from the golden light suppressed the mutating influence raging from ihe shadows. The additional faces were silehen gradually merged bato their upper bodies made of white smoke.

  As Master Liaoran fihe st line of his sutra, then raised his hands above his head. A small metal bagua mirror rose from between his palms. The mirror rotated in the air, ripples of energy pulsed from the face of the mirror, creating a golden vortex.

  “Light! It’s light!” “I ! I o go back!” “Light! Light!” The white shadows made of fog cried and ughed at the same time as they flooded towards the vortex. Ihan half a miime, these shadows dissipated without a trace.