Jianmen recognized instantly what caused the multiple rebuild attempts of this house to fail - it was partially because of the cheap materials used by those who tried, but more importantly, it was because of the “memory” of this place.

Just as Jason and Caroline and Jianmen himself had encountered before, a lot of times, when an incident involving the use or collision of super power such as magic or Xuanli was used, it would leave an “imprint” on the time and space where this incident happened. The stronger the powers used, the clearer the imprint, which would form into a piece of memory in this space and time. In relatively rare occasions, the memory will have its own influence on the world. And when this happened, sometimes it would trigger memory replays of past events, sometimes invisible forces would occur within the area that would “push” the current environment in the direction of the past image. The latter was the case here, and the fact that all rebuilt houses on top of this ruin always fell back into its old shape was proof of this effect being present.

When Jianmen was here many decades ago, he battled against a fallen god, drove it back temporarily to its original plane, then lost a hand while battling against a believer of this fallen god, who stumbled upon a scroll with karmic pollutants trapped inside.

The way down the basement was quite rough for any normal human on a wheelchair, but it was so much so for Jianmen, he just pushed a small wooden lever on the side of his left armrest, and the wooden wheelchair just became more shock resistant and his chair wouldn’t shake as much when the wheels fell down and clashed the ground from uneven grounds.

Though the entire building above the ground had collapsed entirely, the basement was mostly intact, just that the ceiling was broken allowing Jianmen to enter directly, and Jianmen immediately felt the presence of a stronger energy field, emitted by the “memory” of this place.

“Now, where can I reach you…?” Jianmen rolled around in the basement as well as the hidden room underneath the first basement room, and finally settled on a corner directly beneath the broken and collapsed fireplace on the first floor.

“Fireside chat it is.” Jianmen raised his hand, the broken fireplace just fell down through the roof once again to the corner before him, then he raised his left hand, and threw a small ball of orange and golden flame into the fireplace.

There were a few pieces of wood inside the fireplace already, so Jianmen did not have to find fuel for his fire. And when the flames were ignited inside the fireplace, Jianmen took out a few folded paper sigils and threw all but one into the fire, then he opened up the final one and stuck it to the top of the fireplace.

The orange and golden flames turned into a vortex inside the fireplace, and the opened paper sigil started slowly burning from the lower end. While waiting, Jianmen took out his own flask and took a gulp, right before placing a small jade bottle in front of the fireplace.

“You… it’s you!” before long a hoarse voice came from the vortex, and before Jianmen could answer, a pale long spike shot out from the center of the orange and golden vortex, aiming right at Jianmen’s face.

“Ching!” Jianmen tilted his head sideways and caught the spike with his bare fingers, and he just grabbed onto it with a firm grip as it seemed to be a part of whatever entity from the other side of the vortex. The entity on the other side tried to retrieve the spike, but Jianmen had locked his wooden wheelchair in place, himself in the wooden wheelchair and refused to just simply let go: “You know, ugly faces, or whatever your name is, I could just close this fucking portal now and make a nasty sword out of your limb. I’d bet it’s worth quite a lot of money.”

The entity roared with anger and tried to pull its limb back or attack Jianmen once again. But the vortex was only so wide and it allowed only one of these spikes to go through, and Jianmen’s grip was quite unwavering and it was not able to pull it back, so it was just like a frustrated monkey with its hand trapped in a jar.

“Now, calm down, stop trying to attack me, so we can talk.” Jianmen said.

“You have my word, mortal. I’ll let you live, for now.”

“Good.” Jianmen let go of the spike, and let the entity take it back. Then a small stream of smoke came from the center of the vortex, and formed into the shape of a wide head with several faces on it.

“What do you come to me for, mortal?”

“I am here to ask you if you would like to make a deal with me.” Jianmen said: “A deal sworn with True Words, and thus bound by the laws of the universe. I came with a small sample of what I am willing to offer in the deal, in exchange for your contributions in an upcoming fight.”

“How DARE you take me for some low level daimon that would just descend into your petty mortal battlefield at a price?! How dare...”

“Check on the quality of that ‘price’ first.” Jianmen had started to lose patience as the opened paper sigil was almost halfway burnt, and he threw the small jade bottle into the center of the vortex.

The entity on the other side went silent, and wouldn’t reply for a while.

“What, do you need help examining that as well? I thought you’re pretty sharp with the conduit crap you just pulled?”

“Where have you found this?” the entity asked after a long pause.

“That’s none of your concern. The important takeaway is that there’s more where it came from, and you can have enough to heal your wound from your fall a little, and let you off your believers’ souls for a while.”

I am back! Thank you very much my dear readers for all your patience!

--- Egao Chan