"So, what do we do now?"  Ma Qianle asked.  They'd found where the whatever-it-was was hiding out, but they still had no clue what it was.  Furthermore, it seemed as if it were capable of impeding Wei Yaling's powers, for reasons Ma Qianle didn't understand.

Wei Yaling crossed her arms and cocked her head.  "Well, that depends.  There are three options here."  She extended three fingers and counted down with them as she listed the possibilities.  "First, the summoner hasn't noticed us. Second, they have noticed us and haven't felt the need to come deal with us. Third, they have noticed us and have been preparing an ambush this whole time."

Ma Qianle grimaced. "So what would you say the odds are on that first option?"

"Almost nothing,"  Wei Yaling replied without the slightest bit of hesitation.  "How confident are you in your defensive spells?"

Ma Qianle expected this answer.  Even after several weeks he hadn't been able to fully absorb all of the information regarding exorcism, spellcasting, and the ghost realms that had taken up residence in his brain courtesy of the jade slip, but he still knew a little about warding one's energy to hide it from others.  Knowing the ward was there made it easier to break through it, as did being in close proximity to the source.  The fact that whoever — or whatever — was on the other side of that door was still able to prevent Wei Yaling from sensing it said something about the degree of power involved.  It was just his luck that his first official assignment as a mortal agent would turn out to be one of the rare nasty ones.

"Would you back out of this if I said I'm not?" Ma Qianle asked with an even tone belying his racing heartbeat.

Wei Yaling grinned as she reached for the sword on her back.  "What do you think?"

Ma Qianle rolled his eyes.  "Right."  He wiped his sweating palms on his pants.  Given that he had never trained in any sort of weapons before, he was sticking with hand to hand combat for now, so he didn't have any weapons to ready.

"Relax," Wei Yaling said, sensing Ma Qianle's nervousness.  She clapped a hand on his shoulder.  "Sure, it doesn't look great, but Boss wouldn't have sent you in alone with me if he weren't confident we could handle it."

Surprisingly, this did go a small way towards allaying Ma Qianle's nerves.  Wei Yaling's confidence in his ability to fight the shuigui hadn't turned out to be misplaced, so he could only trust that it wasn't misplaced this time either.  He supposed he could turn tail and run away at this point if he really wanted to, but a part of him wanted to know what he really could do.

"Right," he said again, nodding this time.  He settled into a defensive stance and signalled his readiness to Wei Yaling.  She gestured a countdown with her empty hand, and when it hit zero, sent a blast of raw energy into the closed door.

The door wasn't so much blown off its hinges as it was simply blown to pieces.  The two set themselves against an expected retaliation, but nothing happened, so they waited.  And waited.  And waited some more.  

Finally, a woman's voice floated out the gaping doorway.  "Are you going to come in, or did you just blow the door up for fun?"

Ma Qianle and Wei Yaling exchanged a look, then Wei Yaling spoke.  "Don't you think you're insulting our intelligence a little?  Did you expect us to walk into a room that an unknown enemy has had time to fill with all sorts of traps?"

The woman laughed.  "On my soul, I haven't laid any traps.  If I lie, may I be dispersed completely, never to be reborn."

"Well if you put it that way…"  Wei Yaling immediately strode into the room, though she didn't sheathe her sword.  Ma Qianle, baffled, followed after her.

[What…] he started, switching back to mind speech.

[That's one of the strongest oaths a ghost can make.  If she's willing to make it, she's not lying,] Wei Yaling responded back in kind.  [Still, don't drop your guard.]

As the two fully entered the room — a spacious bedroom suite, as it turned out — , the speaker came into view, seated in a comfortable armchair.  She was perhaps in her 30s, with looks that could easily have landed her any leading lady role she wanted were it not for her bruised cheekbones and scar-freckled arms.  She wore a silk nightgown and had her long hair pulled over one shoulder in a loose braid.  She was spattered all over with blood, especially her hands, which looked like she had been finger painting with it.  There was also something...off about her.  Ma Qianle could sense heavy yin and resentment rolling off of her in waves, but there was something else there too that he couldn't identify.

"You don't need to look so tense, I just want a moment to plead my partner's case," the woman said, a small smile curling her lips.

Well.  That would explain one thing about this whole affair.  There were two basic types of possession.  The first was your classic hostile takeover situation.  A ghost would forcibly invade the body of an unwilling mortal, taking control over the body and, if the victim was lucky, suppressing the original soul.  If they were unlucky, the original soul would be cast out of the body entirely to take the place of the ghost.

The second type was a willing possession.  This happened when a ghost practitioner summoned a ghost and invited it into their own body for the purpose of achieving some goal they weren't able to reach on their own.  This was more of a partnership-the ghost could control the body, but only if the original soul allowed it to.  This sort of possession was also much harder to break, as the original soul wasn't constantly fighting to expel the invader, weakening its hold on a body that it didn't belong in.  This was clearly what had happened in this situation.

"Spirit possession has been banned for millennia, and you've used it to kill on top of all of that.  What case could you have to plead?"  Wei Yaling asked, a cold tone in her voice that Ma Qianle had never heard before.

"I didn't do a single thing that that bastard didn't do to her.  Every bruise, every cigarette burn, every broken bone is one that this body has suffered at his hands.  And that's not even taking into account the mental damage he's done to her.  It's too good a death for him."  The ghost spoke with the woman's voice, filled with a fiery venom that spoke of deep seated hatred, and she had an ugly, vicious look on her face.

Wei Yaling frowned and pointed her sword at the woman.  "You know we can't let either of you go."

The ghost sighed.  "I had hoped you would be able to see our side of things but I suppose you couldn't, could you."  She rose from the chair.  "I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way," she said and lunged, not towards Wei Yaling, but towards Ma Qianle.

She was fast.  Ma Qianle didn't even have the smallest hope of dodging the attack.  But Wei Yaling was faster.  Before he was able to even see her move, Wei Yaling was in front of him, blocking the attack of the nails that had suddenly grown long and sharp as metal with her sword.  [Stay out of the way and leave the fighting to me!  I can't harm this body, but I can try and drive the ghost out.  I need you to try to weaken the bond between them.]

[Got it,] Ma Qianle sent back.  He backed away and began the preparations for his incantation.  This one was a complex one, more so than any he had tried outside of a training situation so far, and he couldn't afford any mistakes.  He was the weaker one between him and Wei Yaling, and the ghost clearly knew it.  She kept trying to break Ma Qianle's concentration, to run him through with her nails or batter him with her heavy blows, but each time Wei Yaling intercepted her before she was able to harm him.

A tense few minutes passed.  Though Wei Yaling was skilled, the ghost was skilled too, and she was not able to separate the extra soul from the body.  'There's something we're missing,' she thought.  'Something here is holding me back.'

Finally, Ma Qianle finished his spell.  With a final hand seal, he gritted out the final line of the incantation under the strain and pushed a heavy wave of energy towards the woman.  The ghost fought it, but under the combined pressure of Ma Qianle's spell and Wei Yaling's swordwork, it lost its hold and was blasted backwards out of the woman's body.  As the woman fell to her knees, a jade pendant on a thin chain fell out from beneath her nightgown.

'That jade...it couldn't be,' Wei Yaling thought in amazement.  "Ma Qianle!  Get that pendant away from her!"  she shouted, trying and failing to hurt the now separated ghost.

Ma Qianle approached the woman who was now collapsed on the ground.  Contrarily, with the departure of the ghost from her body, she seemed to have lost all vitality.  Where before she stood tall, and confident, she now seemed to shrink in on herself.  As he got closer, Ma Qianle realized she was weeping.

"No, please!" she sobbed, shaking her head and clutching the pendant in both hands.  "Please, I don't want to hurt you, I just wanted to kill him!"

Ma Qianle hesitated, torn.  He would have had no problem fighting the woman as she had been before, with the ghost controlling her actions.  As she was now, this battered, broken thing, he couldn't bring himself to hurt her further.

"Ma Qianle!"  Wei Yaling shouted again.  Unable to do anything to the ghost, she was hard pressed.

Steeling himself, Ma Qianle turned back to the woman on the ground and, before he could change his mind again, pulled her up and into a restraining hold and pulled the pendant from her hands.  As the delicate chain around her neck snapped at the force of his pull, he thought he heard her whimper out a soft "I'm sorry," and then was struck with a wave of dizziness.

Stars and black spots danced together in his vision, and he thought his head was going to split from the sudden pain.  His stomach roiled, threatening to bring up the breakfast he'd eaten some hours before.  All the strength sapped out of his limbs as he collapsed to the ground, incapable of holding himself up.  

In Ma Qianle's clouded sight, someone dashed in front of him, a whirlwind of flying sleeves and floating hair.  He held a spear in both hands that seemed to shine, though it could have been a trick of the light and Ma Qianle's addled brain.  Without a moment's hesitation, the man ran the woman through, then turned to look at him.  As the last of his consciousness left him, Ma Qianle could hear the man calling his name from somewhere far, far away.