Part 3

The next day arrived and the streets were filled with people early in the morning. There were people setting up their stall to sell their goods and some were moving crates around town with large wooden carts, everyone had something to do and the street was very busy. Chung-Ling was running through the streets like a mad-man, pushing past everyone in front of him.

Over at Keel-Ga village, there were many constables scattered all over the place, keeping an eye on all the villagers as they were leaving the village. All the villagers were forced to leave. They couldn’t do anything about it with the amount of constables that were there, supervising them. Chung-Ling kept running as fast as he could through the crowded streets.

Everyone was out of the their house now. There were four constables standing near Ngai Chung were holding onto a flaming torch. Ngai Chung looked about to make sure there was no one left and then moved his hand, signalling them to set fire to the houses in the village. The constables quickly ran off in every direction, starting fires all around the village with their torches. When they finished igniting every house, they threw all their torches into the big fire and stepped back to watch. Chung-Ling was still running without any sign of stopping.

The constables were a good few metres back from the massive fire forming a human fence stopping any villagers from getting too near. The villagers watched the flames destroy their homes with tears running down their faces as they slowly walked out of the village.

Ko-Jit had just stepped out of the police station when he heard Chung-Ling call him. Chung-Ling was totally out of breathe now and had almost collapsed onto Ko-Jit.

“Do you know that Keel-Ga village is being burnt down by Ngai Chung’s men? And why did they release the fake fox spirit so fast? Why did Ngai Chung force all the villagers to leave? Why?!” Chung-Ling asked furiously.

“I don’t know!” Ko-Jit replied angrily. “Ngai Chung won’t let me into this case. All I know is that there is a secret that they don’t want us to know.”

“Why didn’t he let you get involved in this case?… What secret?” Chung-Ling asked.

Ko-Jit said in a quiet voice “I haven’t found out yet. But your father might be involved in this.”

Chung-Ling quickly moved his head back, surprised to hear his father being mentioned.

“Why would it involve my father?”

Ko-Jit grabbed his arm to pull him a little closer and started walking as he explained to him.

“Your father told the villagers, since there are fox spirits causing trouble here, you should move away early. He took out a big sum of money and gave it to the villagers as a way of buying the village.”

Chung-Ling stood there, trying to think of reasons why his father would do this, but he could not think of any reasons at all.

Part 2

The fox spirit was still watching Po-Poon when suddenly she heard someone climbing onto the roof next to her. She turned to look at who it was. It was an old man with a white long beard, white eyebrows and shoulder length white hair.

“My little fox spirit, Siu-Tsui, your exposing your fox features again. This is the human’s world, you have to look like a human here.” the old man said to her. He was her grandfather. She nodded and concentrated for a second then her white tail and fluffy ears disappeared from sight. She put her hand on top of her head to check the fox ears were gone, and smiled when she knew she had successfully hid them.

“Grandfather, I’ve been watching for a long time now and I still don’t understand. Aren’t constables meant to protect the people? Why do they harm people?” she asked. “And why did that man pretend to be one of us, zenkos, to trick people? And why does my hero seem to be distressed with problems? She was asking too many questions for her grandfather so he quickly replied “Why, why… Why do you have so much “why”s?”

“Well a “why” is just a “why”…There’s nothing wrong asking it.” she replied.

“Humans are complicated. You can never guess what they are thinking. Sometimes there are no reasons, you can’t ask why for everything. Even though you have been training for five hundred years now and can finally take on the form of humans, you have just started learning how to act like a human. How would you understand the detrimental nature of the human world?” he explained. He gave a sigh before continuing on “They all think that we, Kitsunes, are the most devious creatures alive. They think that we will only harm people and they always talk bad of us and invented idioms like “Friends of fox and dog” and “A fox borrows the tiger’s terror”. They even gave the name to the most foul women to be called Huli Jing (meaning fox spirit). The truth is, if you compare us with the humans, you will find the humans are a lot more ruthless than us.”

Siu-Tsui thought for a moment and replied “Really? But if it wasn’t for my hero that saved my life, I wouldn’t be here any more. Grandfather, I think that humans aren’t as scary as you say.”

“I hope you learned your lesson from that.” her grandfather quickly replied. “I remember you decided to sneak out of the forest when I wasn’t watching, such a foolish decision, which resulted you in getting caught.”

Siu-Tsui lied down on the roof resting her head on her arms as she tried to reason with him “I only got caught because I was trying to save my friend, Ninetails.” She started smiling as she reminisced “But I was lucky, and was saved by him.” She was referring to Po-Poon who saved her when she was still a little fox in the past.

“Thank God he saved you in the past, but you have saved his son to return the favour.” her grandfather said. “Until recently, you still didn’t know how to take on human form. I was worried that you would run into trouble so I never allowed you to leave the forest, but as they say “If you are saved by someone, you are forever in their debt”. As soon as you learned how to take on human form, I took you here to visit your lifesaver’s family. You can now say you’ve accomplished one of your wishes, it’s about time we went back to the forest now.” He got up ready to leave but Siu-Tsui grabbed his arm stopping him. “Grandfather, I… I don’t want to leave so early.” She kept shaking him as she was talking. “I want to stay in the human world for a bit longer” she continued, still holding onto his arm.

“Look at you. You have so many things to say when you are talking to me. But you don’t know a lot of human phrases and rules about them yet. Forget it, lets get back to the forest as soon as possible. If we go back any later I won’t be able to sleep.” Siu-Tsui pulled him back again, not letting him go and continued nagging at him “Grandfather, when you can’t sleep, you have Siu-Tsui to chat with. But the person who pretended to be us was so evil, he should be taught a lesson or I won’t be happy to leave.”

Siu-Tsui’s grandfather gave up with reasoning with her and decided to let her do what she wanted.

Part 1

Chung-Ling wanted to know if his father had anything to do with this so he decided to go and have a chat with him. The fox spirit followed him on the rooftops and was now looking through the window of an office with Po-Poon inside. He was carrying a brush writing a Chinese proverb on a long piece of white paper on his desk. In China, calligraphy was an important art that many people treated with respect and appreciated. Many people liked to practice the art of calligraphy in their spare time, especially elderly people.

Chung-Ling walked into his office and started the conversation off “In Keel-Ga village, someone was indeed pretending to be a fox spirit to harm others. Luckily Ma-Gut and I managed to capture him… Or else Keel-Yi-Niu’s death cause would remain unknown.”

Po-Poon wasn’t very happy with his actions “You’re not a constable, you should mind your own business.”

“My own business? Father, do you know how many of our staff live in Keel-Ga village? Are you saying we shouldn’t care for our employees?” Chung-Ling replied back.

“I’m not telling you to ignore everything, but you need to know what is within your capabilities. Catching criminals is a job for constables. What’s that got to do with you?”

“That’s not how you say it, Father.” Chung-Ling said.

Po-Poon explained “I have already told Wing-Jun to organise Keel-Yi-Niu’s funeral, and a relative of his has promised to look after his granddaughter. Everything is fine now, you should just stay out of this or you’ll only cause trouble for yourself.”

Chung-Ling decided to stop arguing with his father and stepped towards the window talking to himself. “Why would I cause trouble for myself for doing nothing? Its obvious that someone is pretending to be a fox spirit in Keel-Ga causing trouble….why would I cause troub…” he paused to wonder why his father had said “cause trouble for himself”. Chung-Ling thought he was hiding something from him. He turned to his father and asked him “Father, what do you know about this?”

His father looked up and quickly replied “I don’t know anything. Father doesn’t know anything about it. I only know to tell you to mind your own business. If you have so much time available, why don’t you use some of that time to learn more about our New Year’s Prints.”

“No, but you…” he kept pondering what his father meant, but Po-Poon gave him no chance and told him to go out of the room and give him some peace to finish his calligraphy. Chung-Ling reluctantly walked out more puzzled than before. Po-Poon finished his calligraphy and held it up near the window so he could see it better under the moonlight. The fox spirit, still sitting on the roof, saw what he had wrote: One can never please all at once, Just choose the path that you won’t feel remorse.

Part 16

On the roof of a building was a beautiful woman. It was the mysterious woman that saved Chung-Ling’s life earlier except she now has a white fluffy tail, and furry white triangular ears on top of her head. She was at Keel-Ga village and she saw a few people helping a young girl burn some ghost money, also known as hell money or heaven money, for her grandfather Keel-Yi-Niu. In China it is believed that they can send things to the dead simply by burning them. It was common for people to burn fake money, paper gold bars and paper jewellery.

She then headed back to Jinan and on the roof of one of the houses, she could see inside the police station. Ko-Jit was having another argument with Official Ngai-Chung.

“I worked hard to catch that fake fox spirit and you let him go?!” Ko-Jit shouted furiously. Ngai-Chung replied angrily “Do you know that you got the wrong person? He is one of my men working undercover to find out more about the fox spirit. I told him to pretend to be a fox spirit to lure the real one out.”

“He is one of your men? Why didn’t you tell me earlier? This is ridiculous!” Ko-Jit yelled out.

Later that night, when Ngai-Chung left the police station, the fox spirit decided to follow him. He had secretly planned a meeting with Official Chi-Yuen, Ngai-Chung and the clairvoyant that had predicted the disaster.

“You told me that no one would get hurt. What do we do now?!” Official Chi-Yuen shouted.

“Official Chi-Yuen, I only wanted to scare him. I didn’t know that Keel-Yi-Niu was such a coward and would be scared to death.” Ngai-Chung explained. The clairvoyant got out of his seat and said “Official Chi-Yuen, it makes it better for us. Everything I have said has come true, the villagers will no doubt believe it now.”

“Well either way, I don’t want to be so ruthless.” Official Chi-Yuen grunted.

After watching them argue for a while through a window, she decided to go to Po’s family and see what Chung-Ling was up to. She sat on a roof across from Chung-Ling’s room and watched him through the window.

Chung-Ling was in his room alone sitting on his bed talking to his turtle.

“Magic Turtle, Magic Turtle… I have a bad feeling… that my father has something to do with all this… what should I do?”

Part 15

It was late at night and Ko-Jit had devised a plan to catch the so-called fox spirit. It was dark in the forest and very quiet. The only noises you could hear was the rustling of the leaves created by the wind or the sounds of the nocturnal animals that dwelled in the forest. There was a mystical fog in the forest, decreasing their ability to see and causing the forest to look more creepy than usual. Hiding behind some tall bushes was Ko-Jit and Chung-Ling who was holding onto a pole with a loop of rope attached to the end of it. This piece of equipment was usually used for catching dogs but he thought it might come in handy for this situation. The way it works is you attempt to lasso the rope around their neck and since the rope is tied like a noose, it tightens as they try to run away.

Hiding behind another group of bushes was two other constables, helping Ko-Jit to catch the fox spirit. They were both carrying some rope to tie the beast up once it was caught. They have been sitting here for hours now and were very bored. The two constables were waving their hands about, trying to get rid of the flies around them. They edged over to Ko-Jit to talk to him.

“Boss, we’ve waited all night. Never mind about the fox spirit, we never even saw a person walk past.”

Ko-Jit replied “If you want to find out the truth behind this, we’ll have to continue waiting, even till next morning.”

Chung-Ling agreed with him “Yes, Keel-Yi-Niu died a horrible death and left his granddaughter all alone. I don’t care whether this fox spirit is real or fake, we must catch it!”

As soon as he finished his sentence, a white blur flew past them across the sky on top of the trees. Immediately the chase was on. First to run out the bushes was Ko-Jit and he wasn’t far behind the beast. The other three followed behind on foot, a lot slower than Ko-Jit.

The chase continued till they were back in Jinan, and they were now on the rooftops jumping from building to building. The fox spirit knew he would catch up sooner or later, so it was throwing everything it could into Ko-Jit’s path. The beast whacked a hanging lantern towards Ko-Jit, but he deflected it away with a quick draw of his sword. The beast could not get away from Ko-Jit. The chase continued on the roofs and Chung-Ling, with the other two constables were now back in Jinan too. They didn’t know where they were though so they decided to split up and search for the fox spirit. Chung-Ling was running down a narrow street when suddenly the fox spirit landed a few steps behind him. Chung-Ling kept jogging ahead, unaware of the fox spirit behind him. The fox spirit took out a dagger with one hand and was ready to strike him from behind. Chung-Ling, hearing the unsheathing of the dagger, turned around and saw the small shiny blade fly towards him, fast.

A young woman dressed in white saw Chung-Ling in danger from the end of the street. She blew into her hand, aiming at a wooden sign above the fox spirit as if she was casting a spell. A weird haze-like ball, shot from her hand to the sign and when the haze hit the sign, it fell down crashing onto the fox spirit, saving Chung-Ling from certain death. Chung-Ling didn’t see the ball of haze. All he saw the sign falling onto the fox spirit in front of him and he was confused how it happened. He looked behind him and saw the woman. He stood there staring at her, dazzled by her beautiful looks. It was the Goddess from last time that he had caught a glimpse of as she soared over the city’s wall.

The fox spirit had got back up to his feet but Chung-Ling started smiling. He saw Ko-Jit coming up from behind the fox spirit just in time. He knew that he would be able to take down the fox spirit with his amazing Kung Fu. They started fighting, clashing the sword against the dagger several times and sending kicks towards each other. As the fight was going on, the woman started to run away, and Chung-Ling chased after her. When he came out of the narrow alleyway into the main street, Chung-Ling being as clumsy as ever, tripped over the pole he was carrying and started falling towards the ground. The young woman, a few steps ahead of Chung-Ling, heard him falling and quickly turned around and flew towards him to grab hold of him but she was a little too late and lost her own balance too, making them spin towards the ground.

As they spun round and round, they looked deeply into each other’s eyes. A picture suddenly came into Chung-Ling’s mind. A person was carrying a baby in his arms. He was trying to make the baby cry and they were being watched by a white fox on a nearby roof. The fox knocked some slates off the roof and as soon as they hit the floor, the baby started crying. He could see the reflection of the fox in the baby’s eyes. Suddenly he felt pain run along his arm. He had landed on his arm on the floor next to the woman. He snapped out of his thoughts and quickly got back up on his feet and tried to help her up. She quickly got up by herself, and took a step back, with her head facing down to the floor. She looked very shy and frightened.

“Hi there…” Chung-Ling said. The young woman had trouble getting her words out. She opened her mouth to say something but all that came out was “You…”

Chung-Ling wanted to ask something about her but changed his mind, instead he just smiled

“Never mind… Oh, sorry about last time by the way. I mistakenly thought you were the fox spirit. If I did anything against you, please forgive me.”

She smiled at him, shaking her head side to side and looked down at the floor again.

Ko-Jit was still fighting with the fox spirit but he managed to whack the dagger out of his hand. Without a weapon, the fight would not last much longer. The fox spirit had no chance against him and Ko-Jit quickly knocked him down to the ground with a kick. The other two constables arrived just in time and grabbed hold of the fox spirit while he was down on the floor. They took off the fox mask and behind the mask was a man wearing a female wig with two ponytails. Ko-Jit quickly ran up to him and put his sword against his neck to destroy his chances of escape and ordered his colleagues to tie him up. Ko-Jit saw Chung-Ling a few metres away and started walking towards him once he was tied up.

“Chung-Ling, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” he replied, and saw the unmasked villain on the floor. “It was a man?!”

Ko-Jit noticed the woman standing next to Chung-Ling and asked her “What are you doing alone out in the street at this time of night?”

She looked at Ko-Jit, and said “uh…” She seemed like she did not know how to communicate with people very well.

“By the looks of you, you don’t look like you come from here. Did you come from your home town to Jinan?” Chung-Ling asked, helping her reply. She took a moment to reply “Yes.”

“Do you need a place to stay? I can get someone to show you the way.” Ko-Jit offered. She shook her head and waved both her hands frantically indicating she didn’t need help.

At this moment, the criminal tried to escape as the two constables were not very strong. He shoved from side to side and managed to shake them off. Ko-Jit noticed and kicked a rock on the ground, roughly the size of a potato, which flew across the street and hit him in the shoulder knocking him back onto the ground. The two constables grabbed hold of him again.

“Still trying to escape?” Ko-Jit yelled as he stormed up to him. “Do you want me to chop your legs off?!”

Chung-Ling quickly ran up to him and punched him in the stomach as hard as he could

“It’s bad enough that you wear a stupid mask pretending to be a fox spirit scaring everyone, but you had to kill Keel-Yi-Niu too?!” Chung-Ling delivered another two, somewhat weak punches at his stomach, it was as strong as Chung-Ling could make it. Ko-Jit commanded his colleagues to take him back to the police station. While they were dragging the man back to the station, Chung-Ling and Ko-Jit turned around to look for the young woman again but she was gone.

Part 14

The next morning, a crowd had gathered around Keel-Yi-Niu’s body. It was very quiet and the only noise you could hear was the sound of a young girl crying. A few constables including Ko-Jit was already there at the scene examining the body carefully for clues. Everyone already knew it was the doings of the fox spirit and were frightened, wondering if they would be the next victim. Chung-Ling had just arrived and pushed through the crowd of people to see the old man lying dead on the floor with Ko-Jit crouching next to him. After looking at the body for a moment, Chung-Ling turned to see the little girl standing at the side between two woman, crying. He went over to try and comfort her.

“She is very pitiful,” said the woman beside her. She was Keel-Yi-Niu’s neighbour, who sometimes helped to look after her. “Keel-Yi-Niu was the person she loved the most.”

The other woman said “Now that he’s dead, there’s no one else to look after her. Who knows what she can do now.”

Chung-Ling heard a familiar voice to his right.

“I already told you this would happen.” It was the clairvoyant from yesterday. “It is full of evil energy here, it would be impossible to avoid this disaster. You can all see, someone really did die.” He said, pointing at the dead body. Ko-Jit saw him and just ignored him, still not believing in him.

“Can we still live here in Keel-Ga village?” someone quickly asked the clairvoyant.

“Since the fox spirit has chosen this place, they will definitely make this village their new home. You should not stay here any more if you still want to keep your lives. I urge you move away from here as soon as possible.”

Chung-Ling joined the conversation trying to defend the villagers “But they’ve been living here for generations now. Can you tell me where they can move to?”

One of the villagers interrupted “If there really is a fox spirit here, and we decided to stay. We would only be killed sooner or later.”

“That’s correct.” The clairvoyant reinforced. “If you want to stay alive, you must move away as soon as possible.”

There was a lot of commotion now. Suddenly Ko-Jit raised his arms up in the air to silence them. “Don’t listen to this fake clairvoyant!” Everyone focused their attention on Ko-Jit.

“There are many clues that disagree with the his story. Yes, Keel-Yi-Niu’s hand is holding onto some fox fur, but the end of the strands are very neat,” he said as he lifted up the dead hand to show everyone. “I reckon someone had cut this fur with scissors or a knife and then put the fur into his hand afterwords. I believe someone deliberately planned this out to make you all think it was the fox spirit that had killed him.” he explained loudly to everyone. They looked at each other confused at the situation, wondering who to believe. Chung-Ling looked at the ground and saw the footprints that the so-called fox spirit left behind. He crouched down to get a better look at them.

“Those fox footprints are very deep. It almost looks like someone intentionally put them there. Hold on a minute… they look more like cat footprints.” Chung-Ling said to himself.

“I concur. Everybody, don’t listen to this fake clairvoyant’s bunch of lies.” Ko-Jit informed, pointing at him. The clairvoyant decided to leave instead of arguing back.

“Everyone, don’t believe me if you don’t want to, but when it gets worse, I fear it could be too late for you to make your escape.”

After hearing both sides of the story, the villagers were just as perplexed as at the start.

Part 13

Hours later, it was night again and the streets were deserted and quiet at Keel-Ga village. The sky was now pitch black and alone out in the street was Keel-Yi-Niu, the man who laughed at the fox spirits. He was carrying a lantern with one hand, and a pot of wine with the other stumbling slowly down the street. The scene was frighteningly similar to the first incident.

“Fox spirits?” he laughed out loud to himself. “Tell them to come out and meet me!” He kept on laughing loudly as he walked down the silent street taking a sip of wine. All of a sudden, he saw a big dark shadow fly past on the wall to his right. He quickly turned to his left but saw nothing. As he was looking about, a white figure flashed behind him leaving only the sounds of its fluttering cloak behind. The man heard this and immediately turned around but once again, he saw nobody. The white figure had circled him and ran past behind him again. The old man scanned in all directions, all he could see was an empty street. He gave a loud sigh and said to himself “Stop scaring yourself…” and tried to compose himself again.

He pivoted round to face the original direction he was travelling at to continue his journey but as soon as he turned round he walked no further. Standing in front of him was the devil-like fox spirit. The fox spirit’s eyes was wide open with an intimidating stare. The beast’s mouth was slightly opened revealing his sharp yellow teeth. The man opened his mouth to cry out in horror but no sound came out. He stood still with his agape mouth as the fox spirit lifted his claw up into the air ready to strike. Before the fox spirit had struck him, the man grabbed his chest in pain. His heart was beating too fast… he was having a heart attack. The fox spirit did not even need to touch him and he was already down on the floor, motionless. Dead.

Part 12

The next day there was a lot of commotion inside “Ko-Xing’s Inn”. The young watchman from yesterday was sitting on a chair in the centre, still shaking, surrounded by a large group of people. They were all talking about the fox spirit encounter.

“Oh my God, that sounds so scary. It’s giving me goosebumps.” One of the people said. Ko-Jit didn’t believe in those things. He was the only one in the room not frightened.

“Come on, Don’t scare yourselves.” Ko-Jit loudly said. “Your chickens could have been killed by wild dogs. You could have just saw wrong and confused the shadow of a tree to be a fox spirit.” pointing at them as he explained.

“No, that’s not right,” the young watchman said. “I saw the fox spirit with my own eyes.” Then he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the wounds. “And how could you explain my cuts?”

Everyone looked at Ko-Jit and asked “Yea. How do you explain that?” Ko-Jit was contemplating when a man in the corner of the room started to speak. “I knew it. I knew it… this is what you call the Eviction Gambit”

Everyone turned to look at him. He was an old person carrying a fan with two servants around him. He had a sign next to him that he carried around with the words “Master of Clairvoyance” written on it. A clairvoyant was a person who was able to predict future events before it happens that cannot be perceived by the senses. Most of them however, just spoke nonsense tricking people’s money for a living.

“What are you babbling on about?” Song-Ho snapped.

“What will come, has to come eventually,” he said in a calm voice. “Lately I’ve had a feeling that something was wrong, and so I tried to figure out what it was. Of course, I was able to work out what it was with my powers. A disastrous event was heading for Keel-Ga village.”

Everyone gasped in horror after hearing the words of the clairvoyant.

“What exactly did you figure out though?” asked Chung-Ling.

“This year is an unlucky year, I noticed a white meteorite fly towards the centre from the West. The Red Phoenix God is flying to the south, and the Dark Turtle God is heading North-East. As soon as it’s past September, the trap is set.” Everyone listened to him, confused at what he was saying. “Also our village, Keel-Ga, is situated to the East. The Dark Turtle will strike, someone will definitely get hurt. Adding to that, the Dark Turtle is associated with Yin and Yin associates with darkness and the supernatural.”

Despite the fact no one fully understood what he said, everyone knew it was bad and were very worried.

“You’ve been talking for quite a while now and I still don’t have any idea of what you just said,” Ko-Jit exclaimed. “Where is the connection with what you said and the Eviction Gambit?”

“Of course they are related.” he quickly replied. “Do you guys still remember? At the start of this year, the forest in the mountains up north had been burnt down due to a big forest fire. Inside the forest, the homes of many foxes were destroyed forcing the foxes to leave. I suspect that a fox spirit has made its way down south to Jinan. Also our village is being shined upon by the star of death, no wonder why this place is so full of Yin… That’s right. The fox spirit must want to make our village its new home, That is why its called the Eviction Gambit. I predict that the disaster is unavoidable and bound to happen.”

Chung-Ling was thinking hard about what he said whereas Ko-Jit just stood there annoyed, still not believing a word he says. Everyone else believed what the clairvoyant said though and were starting to panic. Chung-Ling shouted and told them to stay calm and then he started speaking.

“I just wanted to tell you all that yesterday night, Ma-Gut and I also… saw that fox spirit.” Everyone in the room gasped.

“She, she… she really looked like she could fly! But we can’t say for sure she is a fox spirit… even though many strange things do happen in this world… I managed to catch a slight glimpse of her… and even till now, I have a very strange feeling about it.” He put on a puzzled face at the end of his sentence.

“What weird feeling? Weren’t you scared?” Song-Ho questioned him.

“I wasn’t scared at all, Mrs Ko. Instead, I had a very strange feeling in my heart.” Chung-Ling was finding it hard to explain how he felt. “When I saw her… I felt like… I knew her. No wait, no, no. It should be more like I felt close to her as if I knew her. I still feel kind of weird right now.”

The clairvoyant started nodding. “Exactly, exactly. Fox spirits love to spellbind and captivate people’s hearts, putting them in a trance before sucking the life out of them.”

Everyone was flabbergasted, listening carefully to every word he was saying.

“I say your talking a load of nonsense and deceiving everybody here.” Ko-Jit shouted pointing at him.

Without warning, a loud laugh echoed across the room smothering all the other people’s voices. Everyone looked in the direction from where the laugh came from. It was a man which looked like he was in his early 50’s with a moustache, looking half drunk.

“I, Keel-Yi-Niu, have been around for about 50 years now, and I have never heard of any Fox spirits or Fox ghosts. If they really do exist, tell them to come and see me. I’ll build a temple for them, what do you say?” He laughed.

“Mr Niu, do not speak ill of them. You are digging your own grave.” the clairvoyant quickly warned.

“I’m not scared of them. If they are brave enough, tell them to come out and meet me tonight!” the man yelled followed by a loud long laugh.

Part 11

In the same night over at a small village called “Keel-Ga” near Jinan, the sky was as black as coal and the streets were silent and eerily deserted. Everyone was back at home at this time. A young watchman was patrolling the streets carrying a lantern and a gong with him looking out for anything suspicious. He was shouting warnings like “Be careful of fires” and “Be careful of thieves” as he hit the gong while walking about. As he advanced down the street, he noticed a person sitting alone on a chair with her back to him dressed completely in white. He guessed it was a young woman by the hairstyle the person had. He slowly crept up to her, wondering what she was doing and asked “Hey, its late at night, why aren’t you home?”

She kept her back to him and didn’t reply. She slowly put on her white hood and proceeded to sit there silently. The watchman was slightly scared now and stepped closer and anxiously asked

“Are you all right?” He was puzzled by her silence then he looked down and saw something which petrified him. A long white furry tail was poking out from the side of the white cloak swaying from side to side. All of a sudden, the white cloaked woman stood up and turned around to face him. The watchman screamed in terror when he saw her face. She was no human. The monster had frightening red eyes which seemed to have the ability to suck the soul out of the living, accompanied by a white furry snout. The beast’s mouth was slightly opened, showing triangular shaped teeth, sharp as knifes which looked ready to bite into him. The beast resembled a fox, only much more petrifying. Chinese mythology states that all evil spirits have the ability to take on the form of humans to hide themselves and to get closer to us easily.

The watchman fell to the ground with fear, crawling backwards slowly staring at the beast in horror. He started panicking, wanting to run but his legs were frozen with fear. A claw whipped out from under the cloak and went straight for the watchman’s chest. The watchman closed his eyes in fear as the nails sunk into his chest. Before the beast could kill him though, voices of people not far from here echoed down the street. The fox beast decided to run, not chancing the risk of being caught and when the watchman opened his eyes again, the beast had vanished. It was almost as if it was just a dream, but he knew it wasn’t. He looked down and saw his clothes had been torn. On his chest, he saw three long, diagonal deep cuts which were still bleeding. The beast had left its mark on him.

Part 10

It was late at night now and the sky was pitch black and Ko-Jit was getting ready to leave the police station and head home. When he stepped outside the police station, he heard someone call his name. It was his best friend Chung-Ling.

“Why are you still here? Why don’t you go back home?” Ko-Jit questioned.

“Well I hurt my hand, if I went home earlier, my parents will ask countless questions about it.” he replied. “Also, I saw those constables from earlier casually walking out from the police station, why did they get released so fast?”

Ko-Jit angrily answered “Our boss, Ngai Chung.. said we had to help them.”

They continued to chat as they headed back home. “No way, they’re corrupt. Where’s the fairness in that? By the way, you’ve caught many thieves and solved many cases, you should be the one that’s the official, how did he get that spot?”

“That Ngai Chung, hasn’t even been here for one month, and he’s already made a mess of our police station. Wherever he goes, he causes trouble and thinks he’s the best.”

Chung-Ling stopped and wondered “What about Official Chi-Yeun? He doesn’t care?”

“He won’t do anything.” Ko-Jit replied. Chung-Ling was wondering why. Official Chi-Yeun was higher rank than Ngai Chung, surely he could do something about it.

“Didn’t you know that Ngai Chung is Cheng Jung-Bong’s nephew?” Ko-Jit replied, and started walking again. Chung-Ling immediately understood. “No wonder how he got to that rank at such an early age.” he said to himself. He ran a few steps to catch up with his friend, “People always help their own people, behind the doors of the police station, they’re all one big family.”

“Whoever has the most power can control everything. The citizens keep getting bullied by them. If one day, I become the highest ranked constable, I will arrest every thief in the world, and arrest all the corrupt officials. The first one I’ll arrest is Ngai Chung!” Ko-Jit said out loud.

“I believe in you,” Chung-Ling said pointing at him, and continued “The thing I hate most is corrupt Officials, but my father just has to make connections with them. That Cheng Jung-Bong for example, give him a little bit of money and he’ll close their shop down! All those workers lost their jobs now.”

All of a sudden, they saw a white blurry figure speed past them high on the rooftops in front of their eyes. Ko-Jit quickly started chasing the person. With one kick off the wall, he soared onto the rooftops, only a few steps behind the white figure. “Wait for me!” Chung-Ling yelled, as he ran after them down on the streets. The white figure was running fast, jumping from roof to roof, but Ko-Jit wasn’t far behind. The mysterious person then jumped right across the street, to the building across, and Ko-Jit tried to follow, but fell a little short. Luckily he managed to grab onto the edge of the roof and pull himself up but the mysterious person was no where to be seen.

Chung-Ling was still running about on the streets, wondering where they both had went to. He ended up at the great door to the city. He had no clue where they were so he stopped to take a look around. Behind him, in the sky, was the mysterious figure, flying across the sky. She was a young woman with long black hair, almost down to her waist. She had a small fringe in the front, with the rest tied into two ponytails at the sides. She had a pair of big round blue eyes and a tiny nose matched with a small mouth. Her clothes was as pure as snow and she resembled a goddess. She was looking down at Chung-Ling, staring at him all the time during her parabolic flight across the dark sky.

Chung-Ling thought he heard something so he turned around and caught a glimpse her. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He got a feeling that he had seen her before. He only saw her for half a second and then she was already over the wall which surrounded the city. Chung-Ling stood there, frozen, thinking about her.

“Are you OK?” a voice came from behind. It was Ko-Jit.

“Did you see the person dressed in white?”

Chung-Ling snapped out of his thoughts, and told him she went over the wall. Ko-Jit quickly ran in the direction Chung-Ling pointed at and Chung-Ling followed behind. Ko-Jit continued running until he ended up in the forest. He looked around but there was no one. He had lost track of her. Chung-Ling caught up with him after short moment, out of breathe.

“How’s the situation, Ma-Gut? Where is she? Where?” he panted.

Ko-Jit turned to him and frustratingly said “She managed to escape.”

“What? No way! Even you couldn’t catch her with your amazing Kung Fu skills? Then she must be the best of the best at Kung Fu.”

Ko-Jit replied “If that person ain’t a Kung Fu master, he must be a spectral.”

“A spectral?” Chung-Ling stuttered frighteningly with his eyes wide open.

“Why are you scared? I’m only kidding. Such a coward.” Ko-Jit joked, and headed back to town. Chung-Ling looked about curiously still thinking about the mysterious woman.