Koala Reads

"Jiang Shang frowned. The moves of the Gu patriarch and Master Ji were becoming impossible to read. They had summoned her to stem a calamity in the Gu household, and yet at the same time they kept stirring up new trouble. It felt as if an invisible hand was pushing her forward—sometimes with the Gu patriarch’s leverage, sometimes with Master Ji’s, or simply by chance."

"She shook her head, trying to untangle the knots of thought. The threads were all mixed into a tight, red ball in her mind; for now she had to shove it aside. The immediate priority was discovering what Master Gayin, who’d appeared out of nowhere, and what Jiang Jiao-jiao’s pregnancy were really up to."

"Jiang Shang looked again at the boy on the sickbed, staring vacantly into the sunlight. She had seen many corpses in her life, but this was a rare, unnatural kind. Lu Zhifan’s body was covered in burn scars that somehow masked the stench of death and any hint of otherworldly chill. On the surface he looked like anyone else; normal burns never produced this effect. How had someone achieved this?"