Capturing My Demon King Costar

tw: non-explicit prostitution 

---

Yao Shen's first instinct is to jump back in shock at the grisly sight, but then he remembers poor Sun Yi, and how she didn't pose any threat, and tries to steady his breathing.

"Sorry to disturb you," Yao Shen says, approaching the woman in the bed quietly. "Is there something we can do to help you?"

The woman scoots back up the bed, drawing her knees up her face and wrapping her arms around her legs tightly. "What do you want from me?"

Yao Shen inspects her more closely and notices she's wearing a modern version of a qipao, it's cheaply made and awkwardly cut, the complete opposite of the elegant, fine version the female ghost king wears. It's hard to tell because of all the blood running down her face, but the woman must have been around middle-age by the time she died.

He kneels down by her side and asks, "Ma'am what happened to you?"

"I didn't see anything, I didn't see," she says, shaking her head.

Yao Shen shoots Xin Hulei a perplexed look. This woman is clearly too traumatized to explain anything about her current condition.

Yao Shen isn't even sure she knows she's dead.

"How did you end up here?" Xin Hulei asks, his tone much less friendly than Yao Shen's. 

The woman's head shoots up in the direction of his voice, and while she keeps cowering, something in Xin Hulei's tone makes her answer him. "It was that man...he made me, made me do it."

"What man?" Yao Shen asks, confused by the whole disorganized account.

Xin Hulei pulls him up from the floor by the back of the shirt and towards a corner of the room.

"She died under very gruesome circumstances," he tells Yao Shen, nodding towards the sobbing woman.

"Like Sun Yi?"

Xin Hulei shakes his head. "No, she stayed behind because she had unfinished business, this woman can't handle the circumstances of her death, for one reason or another."

Yao Shen chances another look at her hunched form, sobbing rivers of blood that disappear from the white duvet before ever staining it.

"Are there usually these many ghosts around? Or is just Gao Wu bringing them out?" Yao Shen asks, looking into Xin Hulei's dark eyes.

Xin Hulei has his arms crossed in front of his chest and a thoughtful look on his handsome face. It's a good look on him, and Yao Shen is momentarily distracted. 

It takes him a moment to come out of his reverie and notice Xin Hulei is speaking.

"...something must be happening in the Underworld."

"Sorry, what was that?" Yao Shen asks, slightly shamefaced.

The corner of Xin Hulei's lip hooks up. "Am I distracting you?"

"Shut up, this is not the place," Yao Shen says, shooting the woman on the bed a look over his shoulder. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like she's paying them any attention.

The faint trace of amusement doesn't leave Xin Hulei's face. "As I was saying...while it's undoubtedly Gao Wu's presence that's making them visible when that's not their intention, it's still odd for so many ghosts to be walking around unchecked."

Something flashes in his dark eyes, a trace of childish giddiness to it, almost. "After all, it is the Underworld's job to collect the souls of the dead and prepare them for the cycle of reincarnation."

"So you think something is going on in the Underworld that prevents them from doing what they should?"

Xin Hulei nods. "I think there's some internal strife going on, some kind of power grab between the kings, which is making it so they aren't keeping an eye on ghosts as they should." He nods towards the woman with the empty eye-sockets. "Who knows how long she's been dead? Why haven't Black Impermanence or White Impermanence(1) come for her?"

His words make sense, and it would explain why he has seen only four kings, while it looks like there should have been ten(2).

There's also the question of whether anyone is replacing him as the tenth king, or if his post is  still empty. In any case, there are at least five other kings that Yao Shen hasn't met yet.

Maybe there's more to the ghost kings' demands for him to get rid of Xin Hulei as fast as possible than an old grudge.

Maybe it's something that can tip the scales in their favor in whatever internal power struggle they have going on.

Something to think over.

"You can send her to the Underworld, right?" Yao Shen asks, recalling that Xin Hulei offered to do so if Jia Hao bothered Yao Shen. 

"I can, but it won't be like having the Impermanences guiding her soul, and I can't guarantee she'll end up in Youdu." He shrugs. "If she's unlucky she can end up in the wilds and have her soul ripped to shreds."

That sounds...unpleasant. "Can she get better?"

Xin Hulei let's out a snort. "From having her soul destroyed? No, it's going to prevent her from ever reincarnating."

Is that what Yao Shen's 'exorcism' skill will do too? He directs the question at the System but gets no answer. Which doesn't surprise him. Sometimes he feels like the System has a life of its own and only occasionally drops in on him.

"Any alternatives?" Yao Shen asks, feeling sorry for the poor woman, who hasn't yet stopped sobbing.

"Yes, she realizes she's dead and goes of her own volition. Not everyone is escorted by the Impermanences." 

"How can we make her realize that?" Yao Shen asks, skeptical.

If the empty eye-sockets aren't enough of a clue, Yao Shen doubts anything they say is going to make things clear for her.

"We show her," Xin Hulei says, walking back towards the bed, and wrapping his left hand around the woman's shoulder.

She sits up straight in bed with a jolt, her empty eyes looking up at the ceiling.

His right hand Xin Hulei extends to Yao Shen. "Let's go, I can't sustain this for long."

The moment their fingers touch the world dissolves around Yao Shen, like a surrealist painting pulling everything towards a central vortex around the ghost woman.

---

When Yao Shen next opens his eyes, he's standing in much the same hotel room, except the mood is much more lively.

There are several men sitting around in the living room area, smoking, playing a game of cards -- possibly poker.

Yao Shen and Xin Hulei are watching all of this from a corner of the room.

Next to each man is a pretty young woman wearing a qipao not unlike that of the ghost woman. Some of them have their soft arms linked with the men by their side, others are sitting on the armrests so the men can rest their hands on their bare thighs, a couple are sitting directly on the laps of their patrons, arms wrapped loosely around the men's sweaty, red necks.

Yao Shen understands the situation at once. "Prostitution?"

Xin Hulei nods, his lips thinning. "Our ghost is the madam," he says, nodding towards the corner of the room, where the ghost woman is now mixing drinks by a drink cart, her face artfully made, although the makeup is unable to hide the ravages of time on her round face.

She must have been a pretty woman once, but it's plain to see the makeup is trying to hide several years of excess.

Yao Shen takes a look at the girls hanging like cheap jewelry from the arms of the men who paid for them, noticing their empty eyes and sallow faces. He fears it's not only drink and cigarettes they have been abusing.

It turns his stomach, he can't help glaring at the ghost woman even though she can no more see him than the girls and their clients.

"All of a sudden I'm not that sorry about her death," Yao Shen grumbles, looking pityingly at the vacant eyed-girls. "Look at what she's making them do."

Xin Hulei gives him a searching look, his dark eyes glinting like flintstones in the gloom. "Things are never that simple," he says. "Who knows the circumstances who brought her here."

Yao Shen doesn't comment, keeping his opinion to himself while watching the revolting scene unveil.

The ghost woman finishes preparing the drinks and brings them on a tray to the men. One by one they each take a cup. The last man takes a swig and immediately spits everything out.

"What kind of swill is this?" he asks, his bloodshot eyes almost bulging out of their sockets as he glares up at the ghost woman.

She stammers and bows apologetically. "Ah, dear guest, I apo-"

The man cuts her off by trowing the porcelain cup at her feet, shattering it into several pieces. 

Another man laughs and slaps one of the girls on the thigh, making her yelp. "These girls are more like wilted flowers than the fresh peonies we were promised, and now the drinks aren't good either."

The first man smirks. "Get us some real drinks, we're paying a lot of money here."

Yao Shen can tell by the cold look in his eyes, that he and his drinking companions were only looking for an excuse to get the old madam out of the room.

---

(1) Black Impermanence and White Impermanence escort souls to the Underworld.

(2) There is some variation regarding the number of kings of the Underworld, depending on religion. I'm going with ten just because, please don't take this novel as an accurate representation of Chinese folk beliefs, Taoism or Buddhism.