The Headless Immortal

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Jingle!

The wind chimes rang out with a chill.

Creak.

The old glass door was pushed open from the inside. Swept in with the howling night wind was a gaunt young man clad in a black overcoat.

He surveyed the little shop.

An old-fashioned, bulbous lamp cast a dim yellow glow. Under its light, all sorts of odd and curious goods crowded both sides of the narrow corridor, extending into the shop’s shadowy depths behind the counter.

A DVD player was spinning a kung fu movie that had been released two years earlier.

Cramped, yet orderly.

“We’re closed for the night, sir,”

A young man in a shirt emerged from behind the counter, a half-worn martial arts novel still pinched between his fingers.

“Are you Mr. Lu, the shopkeeper?”

The youth’s gaze dropped to the shopkeeper’s feet; noticing his limp, he visibly relaxed.

Lu Xun, as he was called, now scrutinized the visitor, nodding. “That’s me.”

The youth’s face was pale, blood yet to be wiped from the corner of his mouth. His eyes flickered swiftly, but never lost track of the door behind him and the depths behind the counter. “My brother told me I had to come here.”

He strode quickly to the murky glass counter.

Thud.

Like a magician, the youth produced a box, a foot square, placing it on the counter. It was hard to imagine how a man with empty hands and only an overcoat could produce a box nearly thirty centimeters on each side from—who knew where.

Lu Xun was unsurprised. He glanced at the box—a creation of unknown te