The sleek, black warhorse ate up the miles, its powerful strides blurring the desolate plains into a monotonous smear of frost-hardened earth. Duan Wujiu rode with a singular focus, the chill wind biting at his exposed skin, yet he felt none of it. His mind was a tempest of calculating suspicion. The impossible mask, the boot prints, the stolen grain manifests—the details aligned along a singular contour. Against reason, they pointed toward the crippled exile in the quarantined outpost, Mo Jiyue, whom he had written off as a ragged survivor. Meanwhile, in Kuyao, the biting wind carried the scent of pine smoke mixed with something acrid and unnatural. Mo Jiyue, seated in her sturdy, custom-built wheelchair, watched the flickering orange glow against the twilight sky. Suo Ning stood beside her, a hand gripping the timber frame of her chair, eyes tracking the ridgeline. “Governor Pang's men,” Suo Ning murmured. “They're torching the perimeter markers. Not just the wooden stakes, but the dry thorn hedges along the northern ditch. Clearing ground, or smoking us out under cover of quarantine orders.” Jiyue observed the methodical destruction through a spyglass. Small, dark figures moved with torches between the smoldering brush. “They want clean lines of sight,” she said. “An incursion once they assume the pestilence has run its course.” Her fingers tapped the armrest. “Careless work. They mistake retreat for ruin.” The farmers, drilled over weeks of rehearsals, fell back toward the inner cellars without shouting. The sacks of barley from Wujiu’s caravan sat half-empty in the granary pit. Another freeze would exhaust the store. “Suo Ning,” Jiyue said, her voice dropping to a low, calm register, “gather the remaining flash-powder, the green-pigment sachets, and the sound-makers. We’re going to give Governor Pang’s thugs a show they’ll never forget.” Suo Ning’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. He knew her methods, her theatrical flair for the dramatic. “The north side?” “The northern gulley. Station the ones with trained lungs. We need layered wailing, not scattered shrieks. Tell them to mimic the rattle of dry throats choking on blood.” Minutes later, the scene was set. Jiyue’s wheelchair was positioned strategically behind a low, earthwork barrier, offering her a clear view of the approaching arsonists. Suo Ning and four laborers, cheeks darkened with charcoal and crushed soot, crouched behind the dirt rampart. The frost cut through their hemp tunics. The raiders advanced past the smoldering boundary stakes. They hauled bulky linen packs—foraging gear, or salt and lime meant to sterilize the ground. Their leader, scarred across the brow, signaled toward the wooden palisade. “Now!” Jiyue hissed. Suo Ning threw the first handful of flash-powder. It detonated with a sharp *crack*, followed by a billow of sickly green smoke. The powdered copper and iron filings ignited in midair, spitting streaks of sulfurous green fire through the dark. At the same moment, dried gourds packed with river pebbles rattled in erratic, percussive bursts. Then the cellar hands opened their throats. A dozen voices tore through the basin—hoarse, rhythmic shrieks mimicking asphyxiation, rising and dropping in pitch like dying cattle. The copper flare flared higher, washing the trench in bilious light. The intruders halted. The leader took two hurried steps backward into the mud. The jade-colored flare, the chemical stench, the rhythmic howls rolling from the dark—nothing matched an ordinary contagion. It resembled something drawn up from the grave. A few of the thugs, less disciplined, dropped their heavy sacks, their hands flying to cover their ears. The scarred leader bellowed an order, but the rattle of the gourds and the echoing howls swallowed his voice. A torch fell into the slush. One raider wheeled around, scrambling back toward the treeline; two others broke immediately after. The retreat turned disorderly within seconds. Men tripped across the charred ditch, dropping canvas packs and resin torches into the snow as they bolted south toward the county road. Their footfalls receded into the gravel. The jade glare sputtered out, leaving only the red embers of the thorn hedge and the low rush of the north wind. Suo Ning exhaled. “Packs abandoned. Looks like dried meat and salt.” Jiyue nodded toward the ditch. “Haul them behind the palisade before the smoke clears.” A lone rider broke through the shadows of the ravine. Duan Wujiu drew rein at the outer trench. His gaze took in the dropped packs, the smoldering embers, the lime-green residue coating the frozen brush, and the sharp bite of sulfur in the air. Then his eyes found Mo Jiyue, seated quietly behind the earthwork. She sat upright, hands resting on the wheels, watching the perimeter like a stage manager inspecting an empty platform. The notion that had driven him from the capital hardened into certainty. There was no pestilence here. Only stagecraft.

Demons of Flash and Smoke