Summary for Session 3

Feng Po works for a man named Paul Chin, who is flagrantly guilty of violating China's child labor laws. Sitting in his ugly little office in Guangzhou, Po gets to work hunting for some way to get Paul out of this terrible mess.

After some preliminary digging, he makes a strange and (by the standards of Paul not going to prison) disappointing find: photographs of Paul being arrested back in 1989. The arrest is for what is broadly defined as "counter-revolutionary activities," but a bit more digging turns up that Paul was involved in some sort of cult, just before he settled down and became a businessman.

A little more digging turns up that Paul got away with only a slap on the wrist, and this peaks Po's interest. He decides to do some research on who sentenced him and why, and heads down to the local precinct to get information. After some negotiation, he ends up with a folder full of information on the "Ghost Eater cult crackdown of '89."

Reading it, Po learns that Paul rolled over on his fellow cult members and turned them over to the police, meaning that he got off light while other members were subjected to the death penalty or lengthy imprisonment. While it's tough to find names in the messy file, one does come up: Zhao Lai-Fu, the name of the officer who conducted the investigations and instigated the arrests.

Asking a few more questions, Po finds out what happened to Zhao Lai-Fu: he was arrested and later executed for killing two of his fellow cops using his bare hands and two attack dogs.

Feeling that that information won't help him, Po digs deeper into the cult itself, and learns some basics on the cult (mostly incomprehensible psychobabble fading into theological befuddlement), but also, interestingly, learns of another man who walked away from heavy incarceration: Zheng Zihong. The only information Po can dig up on the man is an address, so he decides to head over.

Po walks to Zheng Zihong's place, which turns out to be a tacky mystical curio shop. Zihong starts ranting about enlightenment, the Ghost Eaters, and something called the Ebon Dragon, which Po hasn't heard of before, though several photos showed a black dragon in the background. For a while, he speaks straightforwardly: the Ghost Eaters are planning to kill Paul for his betrayal.

Zihong then veers off-course, grilling Po on his religious beliefs. Reluctantly, Po admits to some sincere piety, specifically in the area of reverence for the ancestors. Apparently impressed, the old mystic tells Po the true nature of the Ghost Eaters--that they kill ghosts, and the meaning behind them. Although Po doesn't yet understand the Dark or the full import of what the Ghost Eaters do, he understands the next part: if he wants an employer tomorrow, he needs to find Paul before the Ghost Eaters do and extract their revenge for his treachery. He takes off at a run.

While determined to get to Paul before the cult does, he finds himself cut off at every turn by strange, chanting figures. He tries to call a cab, and they blow right by him. He flees and gets a cab, but ends up in a huge traffic jam. Taking off again, he runs halfway across town, and gets another cab, only to have it get blindsided in a police chase. Po ducks just as the driver of the car (a criminal, apparently) pulls out a gun and starts shooting. Several cops gun him down, and Po keeps running, stumbling sick and dizzy into an alley, still trying to reach Paul, and trying to avoid the weird chanting figures.

After a half-hour of stumbling through back alleys, Po finally reaches an open-air market, closed for the night, with a fish place that Paul likes to frequent. Though he spots a man chanting nearby, he heads into the fish place--only to find that he just accidentally walked into American Restaurant, the preferred hang-out of a particularly awful Tong specializing in organ trafficking.

Fortunately for Po, the Tong members are all too surprised and amused by his sudden appearance to kill him, so Po has a chance to run away, re-orient himself, and try again, this time heading for the correct fish place. Sure that he has the right place, he heads in.

He then wakes up, lying in his own vomit, feeling even worse. Standing up, he finds that the fish place has become an abattoir. Blood and skin are everywhere, and everyone inside has been skinned alive and converted to a sick sort of Sea World exhibit. Twine, wire, boards, and knives have been used to twist people into seal-like or fish-like shapes, with other skinless people playing the role of the host or the audience.

After some understandable dry-heaves, Po tries to flee, but runs smack into a man trying to get in: one of the Ghost Eaters. The cultist had been sent to kill Paul and extract vengeance, but (what Po doesn't know yet) Po got there first, robbing the Ghost Eaters of their revenge. However, the cultist in question is too incoherent and terrified of Feng Po to explain the situation properly; instead, he babbles about his cult being unmade by Po's actions, and then flees. Po realizes that it's now early morning.

Looking around the small restaurant, Po tries to piece things together. He finds a few points of interest. Paul is in fact there, very dead, clutching a strange camera made of jade and bamboo. Po also turns up a strange box near where Paul normally sits, full of strange jade idols that are "screaming," for lack of a better word. He also notices that the mangled people in the fish place aren't random patrons: they're all Paul's friends or co-workers, including Jimmy Wu, one of Paul's assistants who was responsible for the whole child labor scheme. Po observes that Jimmy is still alive, though barely. Content, he takes the box of idols and Paul's camera, and leaves.

Feng Po arrives home after a short trip, feeling revitalized. After a much-deserved shower, he turns on the television and finds that a manhunt has been initiated, just before there's a rumble and the power goes out. Growing curious about the jade idols, he opens the box and finds that, with sufficient concentration, he can communicate with the chalk-white figures that are the mythic complement to the prosaic world's tiny jade figurines.

The figures bow to Feng Po, in a show of profound respect. The figures, coupled with Zheng Zihong (who arrives unbidden), explain to Feng Po what he has begun to suspect: he killed Paul and his co-workers. Po has always respected the ancestors and funerary tradition, and when he found out what Paul was doing, he broke.

Unable to procure enough poor children for his company's sweatshops due to competition from various gangs, Paul had turned to the children of ordinary families--but those who had lost one or another parent. Using his box and jade idols, he tortured the spirits of the dead parents until the children surrendered to work in his shops, knowing that the police would not help them and that they could not abandon their parents, even in death.

Paul revealed this secret to an exhausted Feng Po, whose rage at this violation of sacred law caused him to rise up, kill everyone who had taken any part in this sacrilege, and horribly mutilate them. Zihong helps Feng Po realize this, and then asks his final question: why someone, or some god, would bring these events about.

The true answer is that the angel Gideon and another fallen angel sought to destroy Manaechus, the Dark Serpent of Vengeance, and gain its power for themselves. To do this, Gideon performed a complex rite and used Feng Po to commit an act of vengeance, preventing Manaechus's cult from doing so and siphoning away the Dark Serpent's power, mortally wounding him. However, Zihong doesn't get to answer this question, as when he does so, the mortally wounded Manaechus makes its appearance, writhing and thrashing in its death fury.

Feng Po and Zheng Zihong flee, scrambling out of the damaged apartment building, but then they see an incredible sight: Manaechus is flanked by two great and terrible winged creatures--fallen angels--who proceed to kill and devour the Imperator, and claim his power for their own.

One devil leaves, and Feng Po hesitantly approaches the other--the fallen angel Gideon. Feng Po is the new Power of Vengeance. Gideon offers Po his hand, and the two walk away as the ghosts above celebrate their freedom.