The Kunlun Files

Chapter 4: The Guardian in His Soul

"He won't die," I said.

There was a silence on the line. "You cleared something out of him last time. So why is he still doing this?"

"What I removed last time was the guilt in his soul — the exhaustion. But the causes of his suicide were never a single thread. Karma works like this: while old debt is being paid, new debt is being made. Most people's old karma isn't settled before the new one starts piling on. When old and new karma tangle together, the person starts breaking in ways no one can predict."

"How can we help him?"

"Actually, I'm curious about something." I let the question sit. "Why do you care about Old Chen this much? Don't tell me he once saved your life."

"Ancient history," Wu said. "Let it go."

"Fine. When he wakes up, tell him this for me: if he still refuses to make a choice, he will keep trying to kill himself, again and again. But dying, for him, is not going to be easy."

Because I had noticed something during that first reading. Under Old Chen's crawling, bleeding soul, some nameless force had been holding him together — straining, stubborn, refusing to let go. It had looked like a power he was born with.

Men who build fortunes as large as his tend to have souls far stronger than ordinary people's. Wealth and fame in this world are never earned by effort alone; there is always heaven's hidden machinery in it. And people like that are usually watched over.

Guardians.

When the karma pressing down on him grew too heavy, Old Chen could only receive it through his own body — hence the rope, the pills, the hospital. And if my guess was right, the reason every attempt had failed was that his guardian kept catching him on the way down.

Half a month later, Old Chen was out of the hospital, and Wu brought me to see him.

He looked terrible — body and spirit both running on fumes. But it was his soul that alarmed me. Last time, for all the chains and blood, the soul itself had still held a human shape. Now it had collapsed in on itself, like a house after a fire. The life essence inside it felt drained — as if something had been *feeding* on it.

"Master," Old Chen said weakly. "Wu told me what you said. But I don't know what I did wrong this time."

"You, as you are now, are no longer yourself." I leaned forward. "Think carefully. Throughout your life — at every major decision — wasn't there always a voice, at the bottom of your heart or the back of your mind, speaking to you?"

"Isn't that just a man talking to himself?" He stared at me. "Are you saying it was a god? Talking to me?"

"Repeat a passage after me. When you've finished, I'll give you your answer."

He followed me, line by line. And as the last words left his mouth, I saw his soul stir — a faint response, like an ember answering breath. Then something began to climb out of it.

It pulled itself free slowly, shaking, and gradually settled back into its true shape. Not quite human. Not quite beast.

"Thank you," it said to me, in a voice worn down to almost nothing.

"You're his guardian, aren't you."

"Yes." It sagged where it stood. "Though he's nearly worried me to death."

"Why does he keep trying to kill himself? What is the real cause?"

"All those things he invited home." The guardian's voice turned bitter. "Every one of them wants to occupy his soul. I fight them every day. Every fight makes him suffer. Every fight I lose, he tries to die — and then I have to burn my own spiritual power to pour life back into him. In the end I had no choice. I burrowed into his soul and stayed there. Because the day those things take it over, he's finished."

"Of everything he's invited home — which one is hurting him most?"

"None of them is small." The guardian laughed, a hollow sound. "One or two, I'd never have given a second thought. But they come at me in a swarm, all at once, every day. If this goes on—" it looked at Old Chen, and for all its exhaustion there was something unbearably gentle in its eyes, "—I'll die before he does."

I turned back to the past then, one more time, and read the karmic threads connecting Old Chen's previous life to this one. When I had it all, I faced him.

"You and I only know each other because of Master Wu," I said. "So today, I will tell you everything. But what you choose afterward is your own affair — your own fortune. I am only the one who states the facts. I am not the one who decides your fate."

He heard the gravity in my voice, and his whole bearing changed — though I knew that new steadiness was really his guardian, holding him up from behind.

"Master. Please speak."

"The main cause of your suicide in this life is that you invited home too many statues. The statues themselves, from every channel, were all genuine. The problem came after you brought them home: other things moved into them. And most of those things are the animals you hunted in your last life." I paused. "Though even they had a claim on you. In the life before the hunter — when you knelt before those spirit tablets — they were the men who slaughtered your soldiers. You owed each other, life for life, going back and forth."

"But they were proper gods I invited. How could those things just— occupy them?"

"You had already settled that old karmic bond in this life, before it ever came to statues. Think: you made your first fortune, and then someone set a trap and nearly killed you. That was the debt closing. You survived it because your guardian protected you. But afterward, you listened to too many masters, all telling you your killing karma was heavy and you had to atone — and so you tangled yourself back into that karmic web all over again. You invited them back into your house with your own hands."

Old Chen opened his mouth. Closed it. "I— that—"

"The karma of this world is not a ledger," I said. "It is rarely as simple as a life for a life."

"And this guardian you say has been protecting me—"

"It has stayed by your side since you were small. If it weren't strong enough, you would have died long ago."

"Can guardians die?"

"They can."

"Then—" his voice shook, "how do I keep mine from dying?"

"Stop trying to die, and it won't die saving you. Many children are born under a kind of protection — that is their guardians watching over them. But as they grow, life throws more and more at them, and the guardians take wound after wound shielding them, until one day they simply fail and die."

That was when Old Chen broke down for the second time.

"No wonder," he wept. "No wonder I always felt something beside me, protecting me. I thought it was the gods I invited — that's why I refused, no matter who told me to send the statues away. All this time it was *you*— the one who's been with me since I was a child—"

And then, suddenly, viciously, he slapped himself across the face, once, twice, before we could stop him. He looked at me with utter helplessness.

"Master. Is my guardian still there? Is it— is it all right?"

"That passage I had you repeat just now — that was to wake it. It's here. But it is not all right. To keep you alive, it has spent its own power on you again and again."

"Ah— I—"

Old Chen could no longer speak through his tears. And his guardian, watching him weep, wore an expression I can only describe as contentment.

Everything in this world waits on ripeness. Some words cannot be said before their season; some things cannot be done before their time.

On the road of a life there are far more than eighty-one trials. But the only one who can ever truly defeat you — is you.