Chapter 13-377: Foxy Ladies

The Hu Hsaio were a race of evil spirits whose heritage tied them to the Orient. Moving away from those lands rapidly changed their natures and weakened them, so even if one chose to follow the Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, or other ethnicities of the areas overseas, they would quickly return when they felt their powers waning.

They belonged to the Lower orders of the Celestial Bureaucracy, i.e., they were affiliated with the Dead, Damned, and Demons. Still, they were Fey, not demons, although the nature of their powers and abilities ranked them alongside succubus in their behavior.

Their most singular feature was when they were in their natural forms, they looked like beautiful fox-like anthros, with elegant ears, soft fur, and most importantly, bushy tails that could number from one for the very youngest of them, to nine for the most senior and powerful members of the species.

The kitsune, the fox demons, shared this multi-tailed aspect, but who had it first was a matter of conjecture, and the two species got along only tangentially.

The hu hsaio, however, were responsible for much of the dire reputation for evil, trickery, and duplicity associated with foxes.

Their standard tactic was to assume a charming human female form and seduce or romance their way into marriage with an agreeable mortal. Once they had the mortal’s love, they would use their gifts to further the mortal’s position in life, removing obstacles to his path of advance, and not incidentally giving themselves access to more wealth, status, and power.

Once they had reached an appropriate level, they would consume their husband’s soul as payment for the gifts they had bestowed upon him, and use his hapless love to spur their own evolution to a higher level, growing an additional tail and then going elsewhere to start the process over again.

A hu hsaio who was revealed was in a dangerous situation, as they needed to survive on the love of mortals to sustain themselves, not merely lust, which would slowly wear away their strength over time. One kept as a sex slave would rapidly wither away and die, and they knew it.

The number of tails that one had indicated their power and status among the race. As their tails grew, so did their charm and magical power. A Nine-Tailed hu hsaio was a dangerous and lethally charming creature, experienced with life and making bargains to further their status and schemes, while toying with the hearts of mortals and immortals alike.

They could also be Pact Grantors, another way of pulling in suckers to defend them and manipulate them. The Nine Veils of the Lotus Pact was one of the Enchantment Pacts, with only the most basic Wrath for offense, but replete with mind-bending and illusions to charm, dominate, and basically enslave one’s targets and rivals.

In the masculine-dominated society of the Orient, women willing to use that Pact to get ahead were not few, and formed an unseen secret society of dangerous and beautiful women pulling deadly strings behind the scenes. However, their beauty alone meant that there were men willing to dare those strings even if they knew of them... which only expanded and sustained the power of the hu hsaio.

The Cultivators were not immune to the blandishments or charms of the foxwomen, and could even be considered more susceptible, given their arrogant belief in themselves and willingness to indulge in otherwise forbidden things. Of course, getting love out of a Cultivator was difficult, but a foxwoman could easily sustain themselves out of the fondness of one, and they would earn a rich harvest if they stole one’s love. Having such a clever, beautiful woman as a spouse, concubine, or lover catered to Cultivator egos, and their skills at scheming and politics were very useful in the competitive world of the Daoists.

The Buddhists naturally had no use for them, and either chased them away or slew them outright.

That was naturally how Shvaughn had found the first one, languishing among the Sects of Shanghai during our storming of the city. The hu hsaio had tried to pass herself off as just another fleeing human, but Shvaughn had felt the aura of a secondary Pact Grantor, one empowered by another more powerful one of their kind, and acted promptly.

It turned out she had very little to fear from the two-tailed hu hsaio, and had Consumed her without much effort. This also got her access to the memories of the fox spirit, and Shvaughn had quite happily hunted down two more of them, a three and a four-tail, before they could flee properly.

The fox spirits were sinister and malicious, but they weren’t made of Sin like Fiends. Shvaughn had no problems dealing with them, and naturally enough enjoyed manifesting fox ears, tails, and fluffy fur if she so desired.

The hu hsaio were Fey, malicious spirits, and naturally enough could be Bound and Sealed. Appropriately enough, finding some additional volunteers to hunt them down in various locations wasn’t too awful hard. The knowledge of one led to the others, either as rivals or peers, and very rapidly, the hunters started climbing the ranking ladder of the hu hsaio hierarchy.

They were naturally scattered all across Southeast Asia, some even finding opportunities to infiltrate into India amid the chaos and displaced people there, taking over the identities of dead women or simply spinning out a lone survivor story whole cloth, and insinuating themselves into the rapidly evolving hierarchy getting reformed out there.

The hunt for fox-tails was on.

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Mei Suo had fled to Darwin when the Japanese Fleet evacuated what they could and headed to Australia. Since then, she had married three times, moving her husbands into positions of power, only to kill them when the time was right and she could blame it on others.

Her fourth kill was of her last lover, a Cultivator she had hidden from all those hunting him. His gratitude for her kindness was just the tonic she needed to claim her sixth tail.

She was romancing her fifth target, a valiant young officer heading to China to join the Penance Army, when she, both of her daughters, and three grand-daughters vanished from Darwin with a quiet word of explanation to Governor Yamamoto.

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Cho Su-Su had followed the great migration of the nineteenth century to the distant land of America and the many Chinese workers working on the railroads, roads, and ships that plied the West Coast.

The land was alien and hostile to her, but none of her traditional rivals were present, and the tens of thousands of native Chinese buffered her against the alien land, while the lack of women proved fertile ground for plying her wiles among the men.

She had gained seven tails, and was dreaming of ascending to the heights of power of her people with her final conquest, an underboss of the local Tong, when she vanished from her spacious apartment with no word of warning to anyone.

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Among the hu hsaio, her family was called the Six Whiskers. It was a reference to her daughters, three eight-tailed beauties who bowed only to their nine-tailed mother.

She had been in the mortal world for hundreds of years, buoyed by the power of her descendants and clan, whose fingers extended through dozens of powerful Chinese families. The power of her daughters allowed her to delay her return to the courts of the underworld for many, many decades after she had gained her nine tails. While she remained, none of her daughters could gain nine tails, it was true, but none of them dared defy her, and the mortal world was oh so much more interesting than the Courts, so she had no regrets in remaining.

The coming of the Westerners had given her a rare opportunity with their different culture, brutal greed, and capacity for violence and political maneuverings.

Her current guise was of a Eurasian woman, Baiali Manchester, who had reigned over her trading house and sweatshops ever since Chester Manchester went to feed one of her grand-daughters decades ago. She had used the position to secure her standard of living even as the influence of Hell grew in Hong Kong and an Angel screamed to protect the unknowing or uncaring inhabitants of this city, while Good souls were tricked into feeding themselves to Hell most delightfully.

The devils had known what she and her daughters were, but they had cared little for the fools the fox-women took, and the information network they commanded was always useful for ferreting out dissidents, more than enough to justify keeping them around.

That she had daughters entertaining the Daoists on the mainland and in Sects across half of China certainly hadn’t hurt matters. After all, the devils weren’t here to help protect the hapless mortals against the depredations of the Daoists. They were here to Damn as many souls as they could, and most of the Daoists were already doomed to go Down.

As for the hu hsiao, they were already servants of the Underworld, so Damning them was pointless.

The sudden intervention of outsiders, uprooting the servants of Hell with terrifying power and sacrificing them to their own Formation inside the mountain, was a delicious piece of irony, and it left an open landscape just made to seize power in. Her children had been motivating their lovers into places and positions of power, preparing them for harvesting.

It was the main reason she had not slipped past the Ward bleeding blood and ink across the sky, seeing a chance to make this entire city and its counterpart on the mainland hers, potentially a realm of her own.

She gasped again, feeling something jerk and fade away beneath her, as if a rope bridge beneath her was unraveling.

Her daughters, and all her descendants, were vanishing...

In truth, she had six daughters, the three youngest being six, six, and seven tails respectively, although no mortal had any idea of that.

Yesterday, they had begun disappearing. She had not realized what the problem truly was until the sudden vanishing of Tun-tun had send a cold pang through her as an entire section of her children was suddenly gone, and with them the power that allowed her to defy the call of the Underworld.

She had rapidly sent out alerts and messages to her other daughters outside the Ward, possible ever since that terrifying Westerner had come through and butchered so many of the Cultivators. In many cases she found only silence to her magical calls... and wild panic ensuing among the remainder as they were hunted.

Shenzen. Zhuhai. Huizhou. Dongguan. Daliang, Jiangmen, Guanzhou, and even the branch under her great-granddaughter among those fools on Taiwan was vanishing.

At the same time, she could feel the number of outstanding Pacts from the Warlocks bound to her descendants falling through her own Master Pact of the Nine Veils of the Lotus, dropping rapidly from any awareness... but not gone. They were still out there, but... missing.

It was time to flee, but to where? Something was hunting her children through the mortal world with uncanny speed and accuracy, and none of her normal sources of information were yielding anything. Those spies she had among the Chinese fighting against the Daoists, watching the Westerners lending their help to the effort... and the very Angel once imprisoned here laboring away with them, too, were uncharacteristically silent.

The thought of that Angel turning his gaze upon her minions, however distantly, and following them back to her, made all her hair stand on end.

She knew something was coming, and found herself suddenly unresigned to this happening. She didn’t want to face what was coming. It was time for her to retreat from this world, and leave her daughters to fight among themselves for the right to gain nine tails. With nine tails, she would attain a strong position in the Undercourts regardless, and it was certainly time to go.

But she could not go. The Shroud did not let her release her grip on the mortal world and fade back to whence she had come so many centuries before. Her footing was getting more and more unstable, such that it would have been hard to remain, seemingly by the minute...

“Ughk!” she gasped, as strands of connections to her bloodline went abruptly quiet.

All five of her remaining daughters had vanished at the same moment!

A crazed fear was growing inside her. She had to remove herself from here as rapidly as possible! She had Scrolls and magical Toys gained from haughty mortals who had nevertheless come crawling to her for her wisdom and advice, and even with the Ward up around Hong Kong interfering with Teleportation, she would quickly be able to flee and lose herself in the wide-open lands of Asia...