The day before he was born, a Green Dragon showed itself on Qinglong Mountain.

Then the Green Dragon fell into the level lake and threw up a great swell. His mother had been down by the lakeside washing clothes. She got the fright of her life, her belly started twisting on the spot, and the child came early by several days. That very night, she gave birth to him.

People said that when he came into the world, green vapor spread over the roof of the Chen house. The sky changed. Deep in Qinglong Mountain, stretching a hundred li, dragon cries rolled through the woods and stone, long and unbroken, like something ancient refusing to sleep.

At noon the next day, the four greatest feng shui masters from the provincial city all arrived at the Chen house together. Every last one of them fought to take the boy as a disciple. These men were famous in their day, real heavyweights in the trade. No one knew where they got word of the child’s birth, only that once they heard it, they came running. For a time, the whole village packed itself around the Chen house to watch the show, grinning and congratulating Chen Dad on getting such a precious son. Chen Dad was so full of pride he handed out ten jin of the tobacco leaves he’d grown himself. The place was loud as a fairground.

But the strange part came fast.

Before nightfall, all four feng shui masters bolted out the door one after another, each fleeing faster than the last, like dogs with fire on their tails. One of them, Algernon Norwood, threw down a single line before he ran:

“This child bears a Heaven-Severed Fate. Calamity will dog him all his life. Even if the Green Dragon has altered his destiny and forced him into this world ahead of time, it still won’t save him.”

Later, people found that the four masters had not left at all.

They had all hanged themselves on the eastern dragon-head position of Qinglong Mountain.

Each corpse wore a face twisted beyond words. Their features were savage with terror. The blood in their bodies looked as though some evil thing had sucked it clean. Every one of them looked like he had seen something so dreadful it broke his soul before it broke his neck. In the end, though, nobody could find the reason. The matter was handled as suicide, and that was that.

Not long after the four masters died, the sky had only just gone dark when another evil thing happened.

The green vapor over the Chen family roof vanished in an instant, clean and sudden, like it had been wiped away by a hand. In its place, black qi curled and hung there. Several baleful stars above shone with a wicked brightness that made the scalp crawl.

Then, from Qinglong Mountain behind the house, foxes came pouring down.

More than a hundred of them.

In the blink of an eye, the Chen family’s fence walls were covered with foxes of every color.

A foul reek swept over the whole village, rank and musky, so strong it stung the eyes shut. Fowl and livestock died in droves. Quite a few village dogs rushed to block the foxes, only to be swarmed, their throats ripped open. Blood ran all over them. They died hard, and ugly.

The old men in the village all sighed and said the same thing: there had only ever been dogs going up the mountain to hunt foxes. Never once had they seen foxes come down the mountain to bite dogs to death. The Chen family must have birthed some unnatural demon-thing. Qinglong Mountain’s spirit could not abide that baby, so it had sent foxes down to kill him.

Once those words were spoken, the crowd scattered in less than the time it took to smoke a pipe. A moment ago the Chen house had been packed and noisy. The next, it was dead quiet, still as standing water.

Chen Dad did not even have time to clear away the tables, benches, and stools in the courtyard. He hurried to bar the doors and windows, then lit oil lamps all through the house.

All at once, the yipping and chattering of the foxes outside stopped.

Silence.

Then one fox walked out from the pack.

Its fur was pure white.

It stood on its hind legs and walked upright, step by step, like a man. It came forward, and just like a man, it raised a paw and knocked on the courtyard gate.

From the crack in the door, Chen Dad saw the whole thing.

The sight nearly stripped his soul out of him.

His head went blank right there. He could not make sense of it. A moment ago he had still been floating in joy. He had gotten a precious son. Then in a single turn, that precious son had become, in everyone’s mouth, a demon thing.

In the end, he forced himself out.

When the white fox saw Chen Dad appear, it pushed the courtyard gate open by itself and came two steps farther in. Its eyes glowed green, eerie as grave-fire. It kept giggling under its breath. Then it even copied a human and cupped its forepaws together in greeting, as if it had truly come to offer congratulations.

The white fox laid down two things on a table.

A slip of paper.

And a jade pendant.

The pendant was soaked through with green qi, the sort of green that made a man think of burial goods dug out of an old tomb.

Chen Dad gripped his wood-cutting blade and strode forward with a shout. He began setting fires around the courtyard too, trying to drive the foxes back with flame. But a fishy, rotten stench hit him in the face. His skull spun. His chest turned over. He spat out a mouthful of black blood and had no choice but to stagger back inside.

Then the white fox in front of him let out a sigh.

And it spoke in a human voice.

“Today, this old one has specially brought my young daughter’s birth particulars for a betrothal. Your boy will become my girl’s husband. With my protection, he can live to eighteen. Otherwise, even with the Green Dragon changing his fate and forcing his birth ahead of time, he still cannot escape the Heaven-Severed Seven Killings Fate. He has no road left to live. I fear the Chen family line will be cut off as well. Nod your head. Quickly.”

A fox had opened its mouth and spoken.

Chen Dad’s fear grew so sharp it stabbed into his bones. His head buzzed. His tongue knotted. He could not force out a single word.

But somewhere inside him, one stubborn thought still held.

How could a man marry a fox?

So no matter what, he did not nod. He did not agree.

The white fox curled the right corner of its mouth and gave a crooked, eerie smile. Then it turned and left.

After Chen Die caught his breath, he picked up the slip of paper. One look, and his whole face drained white. The birth date and hour written on it matched a time from three hundred years ago.

His hands shook.

He flung the paper to the ground like it had burned him. Then he grabbed that jade pendant and hurled it straight into the lake in front of the house.

Before long, ugly talk spread through Chenjia Village.

People said the foxes had set their eyes on the child. Said the boy would drag the whole village down with him. Said he was a death star, a cursed thing, a jinx hanging over everyone’s head.

Some even went to Chen Die and said it to his face.

“Since the fox wants your kid, just toss him up on Qinglong Mountain.”

“You two are still young. You can always make another.”

Chen Die spat and cursed right back.

“To hell with your mother. Your son’s the death star.”

“Damn you. Why don’t you throw your own son up the mountain?”

He did not save them any face.

Three days passed.

At last, Chen Die and Chen Ni made up their minds. They would take the baby and slip out of Chenjia Village in secret. Go somewhere no one knew them. Start over. They had even thought it through—change their names, hide their past, and let the child live out his life in peace.

For this plain, hard-working couple, that was the best road they could think of.

Before leaving, they cried more than once.

Building a family from nothing was no easy thing. That brick house alone had swallowed more than three years of sweat and blood. Every wall in it had their labor in it. Every tile had cost them sleep.

But no matter how hard it was to let go, it was still better than waiting to die.

So Chen Die took the lead. He carried a firewood chopper on his back. Chen Ni held the swaddled baby in her arms. The three of them headed out along the path through Qinglong Mountain.

That road felt longer than ever.

Chen Ni had only just given birth. Her body was weak, her steps slow and unsteady. Even so, she gritted her teeth and kept walking, holding the baby tight as if loosening her arms for a moment would let fate snatch him away.

Qinglong Mountain stretched for more than a hundred li, running east to west. Trees packed its slopes thick and close. In the deep parts, mist coiled all year round, draping the ridges like scales over a giant green dragon. That was how it got its name.

Leaving from the Chenjia Village side, the road should lead to a ferry at the town. From there, one could take a boat for a stretch to reach the county seat, and from the county seat ride farther on to Jiangcheng, the great river town by the Changjiang.

That route was one Chen Die and Chen Ni knew well.

Yet after more than two hours on that familiar road, they still had not walked out.

They had chosen to leave at noon on purpose, when the sun stood strongest overhead, thinking that under broad daylight no evil thing would dare show itself. They walked in one breath, not stopping much, not looking back.

But somehow, without either of them noticing when it happened, the sun had already tilted west.

Then the sky dimmed.

A cold gloom rolled down all at once.

Chen Die’s scalp went numb. Sweat burst from his back. He stopped dead and looked around, panic crawling up his chest.

“The child’s mother,” he said, voice tight, “something’s wrong. Feels like we can’t get out. We’ve been ghost-led.”

The words had barely left his mouth when both of them saw it.

On a peach tree by the roadside hung that clear, gleaming jade pendant.

It swayed lightly in the wind.

That same pendant had been thrown by Chen Die into the bottom of the lake with his own hands.

“Jiu... jiu...”

A fox’s cry drifted from the brush by the road. Thin, sharp, and strange.

A surge of anger and guts rose in Chen Die all at once. He yanked the chopper free and charged over.

But before he got far, a vine hooked his leg.

He crashed down hard.

The fall smashed him flat into the dirt, leaving his nose bruised and his face scraped raw. By the time he struggled back to his feet, dizzy and cursing, there was not even a shadow of a fox left to see.

“Child’s father...” Chen Ni’s voice trembled. She looked around at the darkening woods, and the last bit of hope in her eyes broke apart. “It has to be that white fox. That beast that talks like a person. It knows we’re trying to leave. It won’t let us out of here.”

Her lips shook.

“Our child really has been tangled up by foxes.”

The weight of it hit her clean through. Tears fell in heavy drops, one after another. At that point, she was almost resigned.

The husband and wife tried again and again to find a way off that winding road, but no matter how they walked, they could not leave it behind.

In the end they could only slump by the roadside, clutching each other and weeping bitterly.

Night came fast.

With darkness swallowing the mountain, they had no choice but to carry the baby and turn back the way they came, returning home in defeat.

And then that voice came again, cold and sly, floating in the dark like a needle under the skin:

“If you agree, then put the jade pendant on the baby.”

“If he becomes the Hu family’s son-in-law, he won’t suffer for it.”

That shrill voice came again, needling into Chen Dad and Chen Mom’s ears, sharp as an awl, with that same cold threat hidden underneath.

That very night after they got home, the jade pendant showed up again by the baby’s pillow.

Clear as water. Cold as ice.

Chen Mom picked it up with shaking fingers and looked close. There were words carved on it.

Sylvia Ashford.

By then, they understood it plain enough.

The foxes had fixed their eyes on the child.

From that day on, Chen Mom cried till her eyes stayed swollen from morning to night. Chen Dad aged in a blink. In just a few days, half his hair had gone white. He hardly spoke. When he did, his voice sounded dry and cracked, like old firewood splitting in the stove.

After that, foxes started showing up in their yard day and night.

One here, one there. Sometimes crouched on the wall. Sometimes lying under the eaves. Sometimes circling the gate with green, glinting eyes.

The Chen family courtyard had all but turned into a forbidden patch of ground in the village. Nobody else dared come near. And it wasn’t just fear—people simply could not get close. The nearer they came, the colder their backs turned, the weaker their legs got, till they had no choice but to retreat.

Two days later, the child’s whole body turned burning hot.

Not warm. Not feverish.

Burning.

Like a branding iron pulled fresh from the coals.

His skin scorched red, his breath thin and ragged. Worse still, it felt as if an invisible hand had clamped around his throat, squeezing tighter and tighter. He could not catch breath. He could not even cry. His little face purpled from the strain, and the sight of it near tore Chen Mom’s heart out.

She sat by the bed, holding back sobs, then finally asked in a trembling voice, “Child’s father... how about... how about we let the baby wear the jade?”

Chen Dad’s face went stiff at once.

He stood there by the doorway, fists clenched, the veins on the back of his hands standing out. His eyes were bloodshot. He ground his teeth and said, word by word, “There’s no such thing under heaven as a man joining blood with a fox. If there’s truly no road left, then our whole family drinks poison and dies together. If we can’t gather in peace in this life, then we’ll wait for the next one. But we do not bow to a fox demon.”

His chest heaved. The more he spoke, the harsher his voice became.

“To marry into a fox clan? I’d be shaming my father. Shaming the ancestors.”

Chen Mom broke down and begged him, tears pouring nonstop.

But Chen Dad still would not agree to put the jade on the child.

He stared at the foxes slipping in and out of the yard, silent and grim, then sat under the eaves and smoked dry tobacco for half the night. One pipe after another. Smoke wrapped around his face, but it could not hide the despair in his eyes.

At last, he made his choice.

He went out and dug up roots of deadly duanchang grass, then came back and boiled a whole pot of bitter medicine.

The broth bubbled and rolled in the iron pot.

Gulu, gulu.

The sound was heavy and dull, like a death knell beating in the dark room.

By then, the child’s breathing had grown weaker and weaker. Chen Mom had cried so much she was nearly blind. She sat beside the bed, one hand clutching the child, one hand covering her mouth, as if afraid that one more cry would shatter the whole house.

And right then, a man came to Chen Family Village on Qinglong Mountain.

His name was Thaddeus Graves.

Later, he became the child’s master.