The Fox Demon Came to Repay the Monk Before His Vows novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Bell and Rope

They tied Yanzhi under the bell.

The Hall of Exorcists was a stone barn at the north end of the temple, bare and cold and smelling of old iron.

In the center hung a bronze bell as tall as two men, on a chain as thick as a man's thigh.

Yanzhi knelt beneath its mouth with his wrists roped to a ring in the floor.

He had no clothes, only the grey blanket that someone had thrown over him after he hit the flagstones.

Along the walls stood forty young exorcists in black and white, with their hands folded.

They looked at him with bright, fascinated, frightened eyes, and Yanzhi understood that the Warden had called them here to learn something.

Bian Chengzhi walked a slow circle around him in the lamplight.

"This," he said, "is the difference between a spirit and a guest."

He held a wooden mallet in his right hand, and he touched it to the bell.

It was a tiny tap, hardly a sound at all.

It went through Yanzhi.

Every bone in his skull rang.

He heard himself make a noise he would never describe, and the young men along the wall flinched.

"The bell of the Three Halls," said the Warden.

"It was cast with a hundred years of prayer, and a demon cannot bear its voice. A guest, of course, feels nothing."

He tapped again.

Yanzhi screamed, and bit it off, and tasted blood.

"You're hurting him," said a very young exorcist near the door, in a thin voice.

The Warden did not look around.

"You may stand outside, boy."

The boy went.

Yanzhi was glad of it.

"Now," said Bian Chengzhi, crouching so that his grey eyes were level with Yanzhi's, and his voice dropped to something intimate and kind.

"We have time, little fox. The abbot sleeps. Tell me how you came to the mountain."

"On my feet."

"And what you want of Jingmo."

"I want to repay him."

"How touching." The Warden laid the mallet across his knees. "What did he do for you?"

"He spared me."

A strange expression crossed the Warden's face, there and gone.

"Did he," he said softly.

He stood and raised the mallet.

Yanzhi braced for it.

What came was not the bell, but a sound at the far end of the hall, a crack.

The great doors burst inward.

Jingmo stood in them.

He was in his shirt and trousers, barefoot, with his head shining in the torchlight and his chest heaving.

Behind him, red in the face and clutching his sides, stood Brother Zhiyin.

"Warden," said Jingmo.

Yanzhi had never heard his voice like that, flat as a blade.

"Jingmo," said the Warden, pleasantly. "You're meant to be keeping vigil."

"Release him."

"He is a demon, bound by the hall's own rein."

"He's a guest."

"A guest of the abbot," said the Warden, "whom the abbot is not here to protect."

"Abbot Cizhao sleeps. This is the Hall of Exorcists. Within these walls, I am the law."

Jingmo walked in.

He crossed the stone floor in total silence.

The young exorcists parted for him, and he did not stop until he stood over Yanzhi.

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