The Kunlun Files

Chapter 2: The Man Who Collected Gods

Master Wu called me early in the morning. He wanted me to save a man.

"What's the situation?" I asked.

"Not over the phone," he said. "Meet me."

When I saw him, he told me about Old Chen. Not a bad man, Wu said — but for the past two years he had been trying to kill himself, and the night before, he had tried again. His family had found him in time.

"What's driving it?"

"They say his past life was a hunter," Wu said. "Too much blood on his hands. Blood karma."

"There's more to it than that, isn't there."

I know Wu. If Old Chen's problem were nothing but a hunter's blood karma, Wu would not have come to me. He knows practitioners of every strange art under heaven, and none of them are simple people. He would have taken Old Chen to one of them first.

Wu just said, "You'll understand when you see him."

"You two are close?"

"Friends of the road. We did some business together, years ago."

The first thing I felt when I met Old Chen was *decline*. It clung to him like damp. There was something animal in his features — thin, worn, the look of a great predator wounded past healing, waiting out its final days.

He rose politely when I came in and pulled a courteous smile onto his pale face. Wu patted his shoulder and sat him back down. "Relax. She can definitely help you."

"The master looks very young," Old Chen said.

"Deep cultivation," Wu said.

Listening to them talk, I revised my guess about their relationship. Wu doesn't speak that casually with ordinary friends of the road. There was history here.

I took a sip of tea, and Old Chen came straight to the point. "Master. Can I still be saved?"

"There are two kinds of saving," I said. "Saving the body, and saving the heart. If you want me to save your body — that depends on your own fortune. If you want me to save your heart — that depends on your fortune even more."

He frowned and glanced at Wu.

"The master is telling you not to be greedy," Wu translated. "Everything has its allotted share. You can't force it."

"So— so that means— I can't be saved?"

"Don't rush. Answer her questions first."

"Can you do both?"

"Then start from the beginning," I said. "Tell me your story. All of it."

"That's a long tale."

"Keep to the important parts," said Wu.

Old Chen had gone into business as a teenager. He caught a lucky policy tailwind and made his first fortune fast — then, young and arrogant, walked straight into a trap that took everything and nearly took his life. Afterward he met a great master who told him he had been born under the Baleful Star: if he wanted to dissolve the curse, he had to burn incense to the gods. From then on, he entered every temple he passed and bowed to every god he saw. And strangely enough, another good opportunity came, and he made the money back doubled.

The first lesson had made him careful. For years afterward, wherever his business took him, before he talked a single word of trade, he would first visit every temple and monastery nearby to offer incense and kowtow. And whenever a statue caught his eye — some face he felt an affinity with — he would have it consecrated and invite it home.

"Old Chen is a collector of gods," Wu put in. "He keeps a whole warehouse. Statues he's invited back from all over the world, all these years."

"They're all gods of heaven," Old Chen said. "I'm only a mortal. Which one of them could I dare offend?"

"When did the thoughts of suicide start?"

"Two years ago. A master told me my last life was a hunter, that I'd killed too much, that retribution was certain — he wanted me to invite one of his consecrated statues home to dissolve it. I didn't believe him at first. But I consulted other masters afterward, and every one of them said the same thing. My killing karma from that life was too heavy."

"Did you believe them?"

"If they were lying," he said quietly, "then why do I want to die?"

"When you try — do you know what you're doing?"

"Sometimes I know. Sometimes I don't." His voice didn't change; that was the worst part. "When I know, I just feel that being alive has no meaning. When I don't, I wake up in the hospital."

"You've invited home so many gods from all over the world. How do they feel to you now?"

"Since the first time I tried, two years ago — when I go near the statues, I'm afraid." He twisted his hands together. "I think maybe even they can't save a sinner as deep as me. But don't ask me to send them away. I'd sooner die. All these years, without their protection, I'd never have made this money."

And there it was. Now I understood why Wu had called me, and why the others had failed. Wu had surely brought practitioners before me — and every one of them had probably told Old Chen to get rid of the statues. And Old Chen had refused them all.

While he talked, I had been watching his soul. He was not a man who valued money over life. What he truly could not bear to part with was his belief that everything he had, he owed to the gods' day-and-night protection. Send them away, and he would be ungrateful — and in his mind, ingratitude would kill him faster than any curse.

There was something else, too. A faint sense, nothing I could name yet: the reason so many attempts had failed was that his gods — or *something* — had been quietly holding him up.

"Why did you try last night?" I asked.

"I don't know. I just didn't want to live anymore. Living is so tiring."

"Then I'll look into what exactly is making you this tired. As for the outcome — same as before. It depends on your own fortune."

Old Chen had his housekeeper prepare a quiet room for me. I sat down, let the world fall away, and entered the Stillness.

What I found there made my breath stop.

Old Chen's soul was on the ground, crawling on all fours like an animal. Thick iron chains were bound around its limbs and its neck, and behind the chains dragged an enormous iron ball. Chains and ball were slick with blood. Every time the soul crawled forward, the iron cut fresh blood out of it, drop by drop onto the ground. Its face was twisted in agony — and yet some force kept holding it together, kept it crawling, kept it alive.

Grief rose up in me so suddenly that it took a moment to steady myself.

"Undo the chains," I said gently. "Undo them and it won't hurt anymore."

The soul raised its head. Looked at me with blank, lost eyes. And smiled.

Its mouth was full of blood.

"I'm a sinner," it said. "I have to atone."