Chapter 47: The Corporate Occult
Consciousness returned slowly. The sterile scent of antiseptic filled her nose, accompanied by the low, steady beep of a monitor. She was lying on a firm cot, a thin blanket pulled up to her chest. The room was small, white, and unmistakably a medical bay, likely the one in the government headquarters.
A figure was slumped in a chair beside the bed, head bowed in sleep. It was Jian Feng.
Su Yao’s first instinct was a surge of annoyance. Of all the people to be playing nursemaid…
As if sensing her wakefulness, Jian Feng stirred, lifting his head. Dark circles hung under his eyes, but he managed a weak, wry smile. “You’re awake. Good. The bill for the Duwang University West Library archives just came in. Director Hao is having a stroke in his office. I think you broke the annual paranormal incident budget in under ten minutes.”
She tried to sit up. A dull ache throbbed through every particle of her being. “Where…?”
“Zhang Wei’s team tracked your phone after you stopped responding. They found you unconscious in the middle of what looked like a bomb site made entirely of shredded books.”
He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair. “What the hell happened? The residual spiritual energy in that room was insane. It felt ancient and rotten.”
Closing her eyes, Su Yao leaned back against the pillow. The memory of the Hell Realm Mandala and Dōman’s insane proposition surfaced with crystal clarity. “Ashiya Dōman happened.”
His eyes widened. “Seimei’s rival? The intel said he was extremely dangerous!”
“She,” Su Yao corrected flatly. “And ‘dangerous’ doesn’t begin to cover it. She’s a scorned, workaholic prodigy with a millennium-old inferiority complex and a plan to use me as an upgrade station.”
Su Yao gave him the abbreviated version of the meeting, the revelation about Seimei, the domain expansion, and Dōman’s ultimate goal of being reborn from her once she was ‘strong enough.’
Jian Feng listened. His expression shifted from shock to sheer, uncomprehending disbelief. “She told you to get stronger so she can be reborn as your—”
“Don’t say it,” Su Yao warned. Her voice was a low growl.
He wisely changed the subject, gesturing to an IV drip connected to her arm. “They’ve been pumping you full of high-grade spiritual concentrates. You were running on absolute empty. Your core was flickering like a dying lightbulb.”
“This is useless.” Su Yao looked at the IV with distaste. “My metabolism will burn through this diluted swill in seconds.” She ripped the needle from her arm with a wince. “I need proper fuel. The screaming wine Yumi forgot. The mountain god’s vintage that got blown up. Something with actual power.”
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, ignoring the wave of dizziness. Her encounter with Dōman had clarified one thing above all else. She no longer had room for petty squabbles or bureaucratic delays. Waiting, especially, was a luxury beyond her reach.
There was a rival Onmyōji who saw her as a cosmic broodmare, a possibly fake Seimei systematizing the city, and a snow woman married to a demon king in her refrigerator.
Flexing her fingers, Su Yao looked at her hands. Dōman wanted her stronger? Fine. She would get strong enough to make sure anyone ever saw her as a mere vessel again.
Things had just gotten much, much more personal.
Su Yao’s phone buzzed on the bedside table. She snatched it up, expecting another crisis alert or perhaps a passive-aggressive memo from Director Hao about budgetary concerns.
The message was from an unknown number. And the tone was unmistakably familiar.
Unknown: The confrontation was most therapeutic. Thank you, I hadn’t realized how much unresolved frustration I was carrying. You are an excellent listener, albeit a violently reactive one. I feel much clearer now.
Su Yao stared. Her exhaustion was momentarily burned away by a fresh wave of pure, unadulterated bewilderment.
Unknown: I will proceed with the dismantling of the false Seimei as per my original plan. My focus is renewed. However, in light of our, session, I have decided to share a piece of intelligence. You may find it useful, or at least, contextually amusing.
A file attached to the message downloaded automatically. It was a sparse dossier.
Unknown: The organization known as ‘Yamato.’ I was a consulting member for a brief period, several years ago. I left when I determined their ultimate ambition was pedestrian. They seek world domination. How tedious. I have no interest in governing the dull. I only wish to surpass my senpai. They are, however, connected to the false Seimei’s operations. Consider this a professional courtesy from your therapy patient.
The messages stopped.
Su Yao lowered the phone. Her hand trembled slightly. She was unsure if she wanted to scream, laugh, or find Dōman and strangle her with her own priestly robes.
Jian Feng, seeing her expression, cautiously asked, “Bad news?”
“She...” Su Yao began. Her voice was dangerously quiet. “She just thanked me for being her therapist. Said our fight was ‘therapeutic.’ And then she gave me the Yamato on a silver platter because she thinks their goal of world domination is ‘pedestrian’ and ‘tedious.'“
Jian Feng blinked slowly, processing this. “So the second most powerful Onmyōji in history is now our irritable but semi-cooperative informant? Because you helped her work through her millennium-old workplace frustrations?”
“Apparently,” Su Yao said, slumping back against the pillow. The absurdity was a physical weight. She had been a pawn in a celestial rivalry, then a target for a systemizing sorcerer, then a potential vessel for a reincarnation. And now, a spiritual therapist who got paid in terrorist intelligence.
She looked at the dossier on her phone. It was real. There were names, dates, and former safehouse locations. It was the break they needed.
“Tell Zhang Wei,” she said. Her voice was thick with a weariness that went to the bone. “And tell Director Hao he can take the library damages out of my... whatever passes for a cosmic being’s paycheck.”
Su Yao closed her eyes. The path forward was both clearer and more insane than ever. She had to get stronger, stop a fake Seimei, deal with a demon king’s wife in her fridge, and now, somehow, manage the emotional well-being of a rival who saw mass destruction as a form of stress relief.
All I really wanted was that screaming wine.
Her initial exasperation gave way to a cold, focused clarity as she scrolled through the dossier Dōman had provided. It was a beautiful, chaotic, and revealing mess.
The Yamato was a coalition of convenience, a gathering of various powerful, often ancient, factions and individuals who had all, for their own reasons, bought into the same methodology: the creation and manipulation of supernatural entities.
Dōman’s file broke them down by motive.
- Faction 1: The Hundred Demons.
Their stated goal was the most straightforward: the “crowning of a true leader.” They believed the modern world of cultivators and spirits was weak and fragmented.
They sought to use the Yamato’s soul-forging and monster-creating techniques to build an ultimate being. A new “Emperor” or “Shogun” of the supernatural world who would unite all factions under a single, powerful banner. The Nue had been their pet project.
- Faction 2: The Wild Hunt.
This group, which seemed to include remnants of ancient warrior clans and youkai with predatory natures, had a simpler, more visceral goal: “an endless supply of worthy prey.”
They saw the modern spiritual landscape as a game preserve that had been allowed to grow thin. For them, the Yamato’s operations were a way to stock the hunting grounds. They wanted the thrill of the chase to be forever available.
- Faction 3: The Aesthetes.
This was the most bizarre and, in some ways, the most telling category. Dōman had included a sub-label: “See also: Alan Mask.” This faction was driven by a desire to fulfill specific, often obsessive, mythological or personal fantasies.
They wanted to see their favorite stories made real. Catgirls, legendary beasts, perfect historical recreations. They saw the Yamato’s soul-forging as the ultimate artisanal tool, a way to sculpt reality to match their desires. Their end goal was a world that catered to their particular tastes.
The faction had originally called itself the Moonlight Sculptor, a name they were forced to abandon after losing an aggressively litigated trademark lawsuit. That rebrand had done little to temper their ambitions, only their public-facing aesthetics.
“The Yamato is a consortium of shareholders,” she murmured to Jian Feng, who was watching her intently. “They all agree on the company’s core product of creating monsters, but they all want to use the product for completely different reasons.”
Jian Feng blinked. “Different how?”
“One faction wants to build a CEO, another wants to use the product for corporate team-building exercises, and the third just has a really weird and specific fetish for the product itself.”
Jian Feng exhaled slowly. “That’s the most terrifying business model I've ever heard.”
“It explains everything,” Su Yao said. A grim smile was on her lips. “There is no single leader to unify them, their operations sprawl without cohesion, and their ranks are filled by children raised in orphanages and converts pulled from other sects. They're gathering R&D resources and a consumer base for their different visions of the future.”
Su Yao let out a short, sharp laugh that held no humor. “Well, at least we've established one thing. None of them actually want the world to end.”
Jian Feng looked at her, confused. “That’s a good thing, isn't it?”
“Is it?” Su Yao countered. Her smile turned wry. “An apocalypse is clean and simple. You fight it, you win or you die. This?”
She gestured with her phone. The dossier glowed on the screen. “This is so much worse. They want to run the world and turn it into their own personalized theme park, each with their own preferred ride.”
Her energy returned alongside her simmering frustration as she began pacing the small medical bay.
“The ‘Hundred Demons’ want to install a dictator. The ‘Wild Hunt’ want to turn humanity and the spirit world into their personal safari. The ‘Aesthetes’ want to remodel reality to fit their favorite manga. They're all fighting over the blueprints of a house to add a new wing, a dungeon, or a kink room.”
Su Yao stopped and looked at Jian Feng. “It means they're going to be careful and methodical. They're invested in the world continuing to exist, just under their own annoying terms. It makes them more patient, insidious, and infinitely more difficult to rally people against because the threat is a future of managed, personalized madness.”
The scale of the problem felt both more manageable and infinitely more complex. She was facing a board of directors for a company called ‘New World Order, Inc.’ And they could not agree on the mission statement.
She looked at the dossier again. The path was clear, but it was now a labyrinth of conflicting agendas and bizarre motivations. Defeating them would be a protracted campaign of destabilizing their alliance and pitting their childish, selfish dreams against each other.
It was, she had to admit, a fitting kind of hell. One made of paperwork, territorial disputes, and the petty squabbles of immortals who had too much time and power on their hands.
Su Yao’s grim smile widened into something genuinely amused, though it was an amusement that danced on the edge of cosmic despair. She looked from the dossier to Jian Feng’s bewildered face.
“You know? The best part,” she announced. Her voice was laced with a terrible irony. “The absolute, cherry-on-top-of-this-shit-sundae best part, is that I don’t have to be here.”
Jian Feng stared. “What?”
“The government. Director Hao. Zhang Wei. They brought me in. They convinced me that this was a matter of national spiritual security, an invasion by a hostile foreign power by presenting the Yamato as Japanese invaders, here to despoil our land and steal our souls.”
Su Yao let out a sharp, barking laugh. “But they’re not.”
She scrolled to a specific page in Dōman’s file, highlighting the list of key figures. The names were a global grab-bag: a disgraced French alchemist, a Brazilian rainforest shaman exiled from his tribe, a former Silicon Valley tech CEO obsessed with transhumanist mythology, a Russian oligarch with a collection of stolen relics.
The “Yamato” name was just a brand, a piece of aesthetic packaging chosen by the original Japanese founders who were now a minority on the board.
“Their ‘HQ’ might be in Japan,” Su Yao said. The truth settled in with liberating, infuriating clarity. “But their shareholders are everywhere. They just happen to be operating on our turf.”
Such implications were staggering. All this time, the bureaucracy, the red tape, and the sheer domestic nature of the obstacles should have been a clue. She was trying to fight a hostile business environment.
“So, what does this mean?” Jian Feng asked, hesitantly.
“It means,” Su Yao said, standing up and stretching. A new, dangerous lightness was in her posture. “That I am reevaluating my contract. I was hired under false pretenses. The client misrepresented the nature of the threat. I might just have to file a grievance.”
A wicked grin spread across her face. “Let Director Hao and his agents handle their own corporate espionage. My original grievance is with Li Xuan, the one who poisoned me. This Yamato mess is a side-quest that metastasized.”
She picked up her jacket, slinging it over her shoulder. “Tell Zhang Wei the intelligence is his. He can have fun untangling their shareholder meetings. I’m going home to check on my fridge, and then I’m going to find a way to get truly, cosmically drunk. The fate of the global supernatural economy can wait.”
Su Yao walked out of the medical bay, leaving Jian Feng amidst the beeping monitors. The weight of a misplaced war was lifted from her shoulders. She had been fighting the wrong battle all along. Now, it was time to refocus on the one that actually mattered: her own.
Her newfound sense of liberation lasted for all of about thirty seconds, the time it took her to stride from the medical bay to the headquarters’ main corridor. Then, it curdled into a familiar, hollow frustration.
The problem is, she thought. The words echoed in the vast, silent space of her mind. I don't know where to look for Li Xuan. And the truth behind my poisoning.
The Yamato had been a convenient, noisy, all-consuming target. They were a tangible enemy to focus her ancient rage upon. Now that she had mentally dismissed them as a legitimate focus for her vengeance, the landscape of her existence felt terrifyingly empty.
Where does one even begin to investigate a millennia-old betrayal?
Dig up Li Xuan’s ancient tomb? (If he even had one. The man was slippery.)
Scour the celestial records? (The bureaucracy there made Director Hao’s operation look like a well-oiled machine, and she had a strained relationship with the heavenly clerks.)
Hunt for the ‘great something grandmother,’ the possible true poisoner? All she had was a theory, born from her chaotic intuitions, without a name to anchor it.
She had no leads. All she had was just a gut-deep certainty that the story she had believed for centuries was wrong, and a cinematic lie she had seen in a movie theater.
The irony was exquisite. She was one of the most powerful beings in the city, perhaps on the entire mortal plane, and she was as lost as a mortal teenager. Power was useless without direction.
Su Yao stopped walking, leaning her forehead against the cool, reinforced concrete of the wall. Her fight with Dōman had been clarifying, but it had also drained her. The government’s resources were now, in her mind, off-limits for her true quest. She was on her own.
Her hollow frustration crystallized into a single, sharp, and terrifying question.
And what then?
What would she do if she actually found the truth? If she stood face-to-face with Li Xuan, or the mother of his children, or whoever had truly held the poison cup? What if the truth was something that could shatter the fragile, fused existence of Su Yao and Xiao Ling completely?
What if the universe itself was hiding it from her because she simply couldn't survive knowing?
Her mind, desperate for any anchor, any path forward, caught on a different, older memory. One rooted in creation rather than betrayal.
What was I doing before I died?
The answer came instantly, flavored with the phantom taste of divine peaches and phoenix marrow. Su Yao was hosting the Eternal Banquet, presiding over a court of hedonistic marvels. She was, always, perfecting her craft.
I was brewing the ultimate alcohol.
The thought was a spark in the void. It was a path to herself, to the being she had been long before the poison and the slander, before the truck and high school reduced everything to a cosmic farce.
Yumi’s forgotten screaming wine was a pale, chaotic imitation. The lost mountain god vintage was a stolen relic. They were substitutes, compromises.
What if I did that again? To forge a nectar so perfect, so imbued with her own restored power and intent, that it would be an event in itself, a statement.
It would be a project, a reason to gather ingredients from the forgotten corners of the world to channel her fury and grief into an act of sublime creation instead of destruction. The work itself would force her to heal and become stronger just as Dōman had so crassly ordered. But for her own purpose.
Perhaps the act of recreating the Ultimate Jade Mountain Brew would stir the echoes of the past. It might attract the attention of those who remembered her glory. Or it might serve as the ultimate bait, a scent on the spiritual wind that the guilty would find irresistible.
A slow, genuine smile, the first in what felt like an eternity, touched her lips. It was the smile of an artist who had decided her next masterpiece would also be a weapon.
“Fine,” she whispered to the empty corridor. “Let’s brew a drink. I will make a vintage so potent it could intoxicate a god. We will see who comes to the table.”
Su Yao turned on her heel. Her direction was clear. She was going to create a reason for history to come to her.
First, she needed a kitchen that could survive the process.