“So, what should we do with this?” Gloria walked around the test coffin and asked: “Should we just destroy it?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Tae Kuo sighed: “Go get a dle. And bring me some copper s from uhe altar.”

  Gloria went to the ba to fetch the requested items. Tae Kuo took the copper s and put them in his sleeves, theured to Gloria to hold the dles before him, between their position and the coffin.

  “Now, you already knoecialized dles like these protect people from malicious spirits.” Tae Kuo raised the gss bottle of special rice wine in the air, “But do you know why?”

  “Is it because of the dle wick with some kind of special thread woven in?” Gloria answered without even thinking.

  “That’s half of it, and the other half is in the wax that makes the dles.” Tae Kuo nodded, his eyes still fixed on the coffin: “You may say: ‘woah that’s literally the entire dle’. True, but here’s the thing to remember, different binations of the wid the wax makes for different dles. For example, this ohere’s abar added to the wax, and the wick is made with sage, cotton, and some linen, soaked in special rice wine and oil. And this kind of dle, as you have experienced, create barriers of prote for people inside. But oher hand, what touch you, hurt you. So if we know how to use it, it bee a on. Just like this…”

  Tae Kuo trated his Qi on his left palm, then poured some rice wine on it. His Qi had a light yellowish green glow, and the droplets of wine sizzled the moment they made tact. He then hahe gss bottle to Gloria, then took the dle from her hand.

  “Watch closely.” Tae Kuo said to Gloria. “And be careful, we don’t know what’s in that thing.”

  Gloria swallowed and nodded. Her right hand g a talisman, and her left holding the gss bottle.

  Tae Kuo swung his left palm across the dle’s fme, the wine on his palm caught on fire. With this move, his palm seemed to have been coated with a yer e and red energy. He ched the fingers on his left hand aside from the middle and index fingers. With his Qi flowing from his palm into the tips of the two still standing fingers, the fme and the energy from the dle went along and dehe moment, he swung his fingers horizontally like a sword. A crest-shaped energy bde shht at the egg-like cluster at the ter of the web.

  Gloria’s eyes opened wide as the energy bde sunk into the cluster, igniting it from inside while bsting it into pieces. The e and red fme spread through the vines and threads that made up the web, turning it into ashes and smoke. A faint scream echoed in the room, and a shadow arose from ashes. Before either Gloria or Tae Kuo could make out what it was, the shadow darted at the door, seemingly trying to escape.

  Gloria unched herself at the door. Her moveme a string of faint, light blue shadows behind her. Her Qi was trated on her right forearm and right hand, some of which was infused into the talisman tucked in her fingers. She swung the gss bottle in her left hand, throwing a spsh of sticky rice wi the shadow, while her right hand was thrusting forward.

  Tiny bdes of Qi extended out from Gloria’s fiips like cws. They sliced through the air and some of the airborne droplets of rice wihe talisman clutched in her palm lit up from her Qi, emitting a purple fme that instantly shrouded over her entire hand. Within the blink of an eye, a bulk of her Qi left her hand, along with the purple fme and formed an energy the air. It left a trail of purple sparks behind, and caught up to the shadow in no time.

  Poof! The energy cw sshed the shadow into several pieces. It then turned into a ball of purple fme, ing everything.

  Her fingers felt a gentle chill, it was the same feeling of wheered into a room of lower temperature, or when she exuded a rge amount of Qi and she temporarily lost the prote it would normally provide.

  A strange sense of soreness came, the same symptom of overexerting her Qi.

  “Are you alright?” Tae Kuo asked: “That was quite a strike… you may o rest a bit…”

  “I - I think I’m alright. Just - I used more Qi than I intended, for some reason.” Gloria shook her head, then looked at his right hand, which was shaking: “What’s in that wine? ”

  “It’s, uh, a lot of ingredients.” Tae Kuo scratched his head: “One of them being mandragora - but don’t worry, it’s a very low dose, it only serves as a catalyst for your Qi flow. And - you just spshed a lot, so... My apologies, it should wear off soon.”

  “Okay - okay - ” Gloria hen sighed: “Good to know. As long as there is nothing un left.” She looked around, while her hand was still rec. It seemed the initial strike from Tae Kuo and her follow up fihe job. There were no traces of the web or that egg-shaped cluster left. The shadows of the faces on the coffins still remained but appeared to be more blurry and transparent. And the shadow of the middle aged man had almost pletely disappeared, leaving only a light e shadow of his outline.

  “Have you caught its shape? The shadow, I mean.” Tae Kuo checked around once more, then asked.

  Gloria thought for a while, then shook her head: “I - I didn’t really see that clearly. It just looked like something with - with roots aacles.”

  “Yeah, I saw the roots as well - and a little bit of its head. If you could even call it a head.” Tae Kuo sighed: “But - back to the more pressing matters. Have you informed the unity collective on this yet?”

  “No - I haven’t really got a ce to yet.”

  “Good, then we report to them now and have a better report with more details.” Tae Kuo nodded: “Do you still have the pt order? And a copy of the death certificate?”

  “Yes, let me get it.” Gloria went back to the ba.

  The man who answered the phone seemed to be ued and zy at first when Tae Kuo called, but as he proceeded to describe what happened just now and what led to this, the man seemed to grow more and more ed. When Tae Kuo finished his description, he asked Tae Kuo to wait a moment, then proceeded to put him on hold, before telling him the unity collective will be sending someone really soon.