The clock read 02:00 hours—the dead, heavy middle of the night—yet the Sheng Ri Huo Gua restaurant was teeming with people.
The newcomers didn't call the place an eatery; they called it The Scene. Yellow-and-black crime tape, the ubiquitous ribbon of human despair, crisscrossed the perimeter while police radios cracked with nervous static, spitting terse questions into the strange silence. Almost everyone present wore a uniform or the grim, tired face of officialdom: police officers, forensic technicians, medical examiners—all agents of the Thai government, moving through the carnage. And now, the cold, stiff presence of diplomacy—officials from the Chinese Consulate stood among them.
No curious gawkers or aggressive news crews had yet managed to breach the barrier. This absolute silence was no accident; it was by design. The person who raised the alarm had contacted the Chinese Consulate directly, bypassing the usual Thai police channels. Seeing that the incident involved both foreign citizens and international business interests, the Thai authorities placed a strict, official clampdown on the situation, smothering any potential messy, sensitive rumors that could damage tourism or diplomatic relations.
The source of the dread was Lü Cǎihóng (陸 彩红), a twenty-two-year-old Chinese student. She was the close friend—or, using the raw, dangerous word that always risks the heart—the lover of the missing waitress, Zhou Xīngyī. Lü Cǎihóng had maintained a constant digital tether to Xīngyī via chat, and this new, fragile love was the only reason the young waitress hadn't already left the country. Now, acting on the final, awful information gleaned from those messages, Lü Cǎihóng had delivered the truth—cold and raw, a message from the dark—straight to the Consulate's door.
Now, Lü Cǎihóng was forced to spill the sickening details of the night to the Thai police, relayed through a nervous interpreter, while silent, stiff-backed officials from the Chinese Consulate bore witness.
The student had followed the night's descent via chat—a lurid, real-time chronicle—until Xīngyī's last message described the monstrous transformation of the guests, followed by an abrupt, soul-freezing silence. At first, she dismissed the escalating horror as sick humor, a macabre joke. But when the silence stretched, growing cold and and heavy, and Xīngyī's phone went perpetually unanswered, Lü Cǎihóng raced to the location on her motorbike. She found a profound, choking emptiness—a void violently painted with massive, terrifying quantities of blood. That sickening sight convinced her; she immediately contacted the Chinese Consulate for help.
The chat logs painted a detailed trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to the abyss: from the arrival of the eerily generous old patron and the promise of a lucrative, after-hours banquet, through Xīngyī's nervous account of the chef's wicked substitution of meat broth into the vegetarian stock, culminating in the unholy, shattering laughter of the long table guests—and their final, hideous transformation.
Even with the horrific evidence screaming from the employee's direct message—a chronicle of monsters—the local Thai police refused to let their minds break. They clung to the mundane, favoring the grim theory of a rival "Grey Chinese" faction staging a violent, over-the-top business execution. The rational mind simply could not accept the fantastic, lunatic narrative laid out in the messages. The crucial, sickening fact: amidst all the thick, staining gore, not a single body—not a casualty, nor a corpse—could be found.
Initially, the officers suspected a staged event: a sickening theatrical display involving vast buckets of animal blood meant solely as a warning. Samples were scraped from the floors and counters, bagged, and sent immediately to the forensic labs—the first, desperate question echoing through the sterile halls: Is it human? Or is it something else entirely?
**Since the remaining employees could not be located, a cold new hypothesis began to set like cement: maybe this was a targeted assault, and the staff had been dragged away—though possibly only some of them, leaving others to rot in the sudden, chaotic emptiness.
Overall, the chat logs—filled with impossible, mind-breaking horrors—were too difficult for the regular officers to swallow whole. They were left scrambling to collect the hard, cold facts: the tide-marks of blood, the fingerprints on every slick surface, the footprints leading nowhere. Officers moved in a quiet, frantic swarm both inside and outside the gutted restaurant, searching for a human explanation where none seemed to exist.
At 2:30 a.m., a big black Hongqi sedan (红旗) rolled silently into the parking lot. A man, somewhere past fifty, stepped out of the passenger side with neat, clipped whiskers and a sharp, well-tailored brown suit that looked far too warm for the tropical night. He moved with a focused, urgent haste. A Chinese consular official met him immediately, and after a brief, tense exchange, the official led the newcomer straight to Lü Cǎihóng, who sat weeping openly on a chair at the front of the ruined shop.
The man in the brown suit asked the girl several questions, his gaze unwavering and cold, before taking her phone to read the chat logs himself. His expression, already severe, tightened with palpable dread as he scrolled. When he finished, he let out a long, heavy sigh, placed his hands behind his back, and began to pace the reception area. He walked straight toward the bloody interior of the restaurant, phone still open, studying the horrific texts and glancing up at the scene, trying to overlay the madness of the digital narrative onto the brutal, physical reality before him.
"Who is that?" one of the Thai officers hissed, nudging the Consulate's interpreter.
"Ah. That's Senior Detective Lin Feitian ( 林 飛天 ), courtesy name Bǎoyòu (保佑 which means 'Protection'). He's a special liaison officer," the interpreter explained. "He was supposedly on holiday here in Thailand, but the Consulate brought him in to consult on this case." The interpreter lowered his voice, switching fully to Thai: "He's not an ordinary man. The staff at the Consulate whisper he comes from a long line of Maoshan Taoist priests. They say he possesses strange skills and deep knowledge of occult matters. That unbelievable, awful chat log must have hooked him straight through the gills—he's paying special attention to the impossible parts."
Another hour crawled by. The Chinese detective, Lin Feitian, circled the restaurant, a dark, hunched figure lost in methodical thought. Occasionally, he pulled out a small, dog-eared notebook to scratch down new observations, or flipped through pages already filled with his strange, cryptic script, before finally summoning the remaining officials and the girl back toward the blood-soaked heart of the disaster.
The active duty personnel were few now: most of the Thai officers had gone, believing the situation to be a mundane, if bloody, gang conflict, and even some of the Chinese consular staff had vanished. But Lü Cǎihóng remained, her face pale and set in grim grief, joining the tight, nervous circle of listeners.
Detective Lin stood perfectly still, waiting until the final nervous whispers died and every eye was fixed on him. He spoke in Mandarin, a single interpreter standing ready to translate his words for the couple of remaining Thai officers guarding the perimeter.
"What I am about to relate to you," Detective Lin began, his voice sober and heavy with foreboding, "I know will seem uncanny and grotesque. But you must listen carefully. This transcends the matter of a simple restaurant massacre; it involves wide-ranging danger to ordinary people. No matter how bizarre or improbable it sounds, you must tolerate the details. Every single conclusion is drawn from painstaking study of the chat logs and the gruesome scene itself. I cannot compel you to believe, but I urgently require your full cooperation."
Lin continued, his face tight with the sheer weight of the admission, "First, The late-night patrons were not human. And the one who placed the initial reservation—the man who guaranteed this terrible feast—I believe was not human, either."
"I estimate the ten guests seated at the round table were the Nine Star Gods (Jiǔ Huáng Dà Dì:九皇大帝 ), accompanied by the God of the Year (Tai Sui Ye: 太岁爷 )." Lin paused, letting the scope of the claim sink in. "As for the sixteen at the long table—the ones that twisted and devoured the staff—I am certain they were the Sixteen Night Walkers (Shi Liu Xun Ye: 十六巡夜). And the benevolent old man who made the reservation, the one who promised the midnight banquet? He was, I conclude, the God of Wealth (Cai Shen Ye: 财神)."
A collective, shocked murmur immediately followed his declaration. The detective raised a hand, cutting them off before the sound could gain purchase. "Hear me out," Detective Lin urged, his voice tight. "No critiques, not yet. I know this sounds too far gone, too utterly weird for all of you. But the evidence points this way. Consider this a damnable folk tale, then, but one I believe. I will lay out the theory for all of you now." He let out a slow, uncomfortable sigh before continuing.
"The ancient scrolls of the Shanhaijing (山海經 Classic of Mountains and Seas) recorded sixteen non-human entities known as the Erbai (二八). They were bound hand-in-hand, roaming as night inspectors for the Yellow Emperor, protecting the humans under his dominion from harm. The Shanhaijing speaks only of their strange, linked forms. But there exists a second, fouler record—the Taoist texts that speak of the terrible corruption of these Sixteen Night Walkers. After the Yellow Emperor ascended to Heaven, these beings—immortal, ageless, and unable to cease their duty—were left unleashed and autonomous upon the world. Over the endless passage of time, they became infected by the ugliness and black malice of humanity. They mutated into vicious, cold-hearted devils, concluding in their broken logic that mankind was irredeemably wicked. Thus, they began to hunt and feed upon the very humans they were meant to protect! I believe these are the sixteen guests who arrived holding hands..."
The entire room—even the interpreter—wore a look of stunned, vacant incomprehension at the depths of this lunacy. Yet, they kept listening to the lore. The dense, strange narrative detailed the ravages committed by the Sixteen Night Walkers. They roamed freely in the dark, consuming people indiscriminately, leaving villages gutted and dead. These old damnations, Lin explained, were later rationalized by modern scholars as outbreaks of disease—epidemics that wiped out towns—but they were, in truth, the vicious handiwork of sixteen devils who had simply decided that evil was good.
The incident was such an outrage, it drew the attention of the Heavenly Pantheon, forcing the high gods themselves to intervene and attempt suppression. But these Sixteen were primordial—built from the raw, uncut stuff of eternity, essence older than the mountains. The deities, for all their dazzling, cold power, could not strike them dead.
This dark corruption finally burned its way back to Huangdi (黃帝), the Yellow Emperor, their original creator. Though he had long since ascended to the stars to take his place among the Nine Star Gods, he was forced to descend and face his own terrible progeny.
The Sixteen Night Walkers paused, recognizing the faded echo of their Master. But he was changed. The warm, human stench of their old creator was scrubbed clean, replaced by the cold, blinding scent of Divinity. They did not strike him, but they would not obey. Huangdi, whether from inability or a paternal inability to destroy his creation, could not strike them either. The confrontation became a maddening, celestial stalemate.
Left with no other weapon, the Heavenly Host devised a plan of subtle, spiritual poison. The Emperor, aided by the other Star Gods, poured their divine influence into a relentless campaign of soft coercion—luring, comforting, persuading, and outright deceiving the monsters. They managed to successfully shepherd the fiends out of the dense, beating heart of the Central Plains.
They locked them away in a lightless, deep subterranean vault beneath the sparsely settled Southern Seas region. To ensure their eternal confinement, the Nine Star Gods entrusted the key to the sixty rotating annual deities, the Tai Sui Ye (太岁爷), scheduling a grim, never-ending patrol.
Furthermore, they commanded the Taoist priesthood to lead migrations out of China, spreading the rite of purifying vegetarian abstinence. This was built into a sacred, annual custom, maintained across centuries for one terrible purpose: to deceive the sixteen monsters. They must believe that humanity—the source of their corruption—had redeemed itself, that mankind now lived purely, never taking life, consumed only by fasting and prayer.
To contain the monsters' restless, predatory violence, the Gods agreed to the annual, awful charade: bringing the Night Walkers to the mortal realm on the final night before the Great Fast ends. There, they would witness the "purified" humans and consume the chaste, vegetarian offerings. This single, carefully orchestrated deception bought the gods one more year of uneasy peace, ensuring the Sixteen Night Walkers remained calm in their confinement.
As for the extravagantly generous old man, the one who bought the midnight feast? Detective Lin concludes he was Cai Shen Ye(財神爺), the God of Wealth. His hasty departure, his inability to await his guests, suddenly makes a hideous sense. With the exception of the presiding Tai Sui Ye, the entire party—from the Nine Star Gods to the Sixteen Erbai—were elemental beings, primal forces—the kind of company that even a God of Prosperity might fear to keep.
Cai Shen Ye, the God of Wealth, being a deity of later origin, and holding no direct custodial authority over the Sixteen Night Walkers, simply dared not remain among such ancient, potent company. The celestial etiquette—the younger must not sit equally with the older—was a tether he feared to break.
"All of this," Detective Lin admitted, letting out another heavy, rattling sigh, "I found in the ancient texts of my craft, or heard in whispers carried by the wind. I never once believed a damn word. But seeing what we see today, with the blood still wet on the floor, I cannot afford not to believe."
A Chinese official, his face pale and carved by confusion, asked: "If this lunatic reality is true... how the hell do we stop it?"
Lin Feitian shook his head slowly, turning the dreadful reality over in his mind. "The failure is ours," he stated, the words sounding heavy as stone. "Mankind made the fatal mistake. We fed them the forbidden broth—the broth fouled by meat—and their rage has turned our simple restaurant into a ground zero of divine catastrophe. To end this quickly, I see only two paths." He raised one trembling index finger into the dim air.
"The first method: fight fire with a different, more terrible fire—summon their ancient, primordial opposites. The natural, slaughter-bent enemy of the Sixteen Night Walkers is the Jiuli Tribe (九黎) demons."
"Legend says the Jiuli were a horde of eighty-one fierce brothers, led by Chiyou (蚩尤) himself. Their sheer monstrousness is terrifying: they have copper heads, necks of iron, are huge in size, equipped with two razor-sharp horns and ears bristling with hair like knife blades. They possess four eyes, six arms, and the hooves of cattle, feeding on sand, stone, and metal. The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, created the Night Walkers specifically to guard his lands against these unrelenting, terrifying demons, who constantly defied defeat and returned to raid. The Jiuli would certainly kill the Sixteen Night Walkers. But there is a grave risk: they are creatures of pure, raw destruction and have a natural, hungry appetite for human annihilation. Unleashed and beyond control, they could easily turn this single disaster into a double calamity for all mankind."
Detective Lin stopped, his breath catching, and slowly raised a second, iron-hard finger toward the ceiling.
There is another coin to flip in this desperate game, another terrifying second option believed capable of obliterating the Sixteen Night Walkers: the mythical Yinglong Dragon (应龙). This primal, deep-lore beast is the ancient engine that defeated and ultimately destroyed the Jiuli demons. But the Dragon's power is a hammer meant for mountains, its destructive force far too vast, its destructive capacity beyond human comprehension. Should a conflict break out while the Dragon is contained within a populated area, the collateral damage—lives, brick, and glass—would be catastrophic. It is a price we dare not name, unless the darkness gives us no other choice.
"Ah, Detective Lin," the interpreter translated, his voice tight. "How precisely do these two mythological beings differ in function? And are they both absolutely guaranteed to handle the sixteen demons?"
Lin stroked the tight hairs above his lip. "Yes. Both the Jiuli and the Yinglong are weapons that can kill the Sixteen Night Walkers. To grasp the sheer, crushing difference between them, let me offer you a clearer analogy."
"Think of the Sixteen Night Walkers as the Town Watch, or a patrol unit. Their inherent capability is limited to immediate containment, a shout in the dark. They are built for warning and resistance, designed to hold the line just long enough for the bigger guns to deploy. They do not possess the capacity for annihilation."
"The Jiuli demons, however, are shock troops. The Army. Their essence is war, clearly designed to engage and overwhelm the enemy. Their power is a step above mere containment. But the Yinglong Dragon? That is the thermonuclear option. The kind of fire you drop, and the result is a massive, blinding flash: BOOM! All resistance is absolutely, permanently silenced, but the reality left behind is utter, pulverized ruin. Yes, the monsters are gone, but you've traded one nightmare for an apocalypse of your own making."
The interpreter swallowed, looking at the assembled staff, his face drawn by the terrible calculus. "If the cost of using the Jiuli is a risk of total societal collapse, and the cost of the Dragon is guaranteed oblivion... then the essential, heart-stopping question remains: What, in God's name, do we do now?"
Lin Feitian turned his gaze toward them, his eyes holding the strange knowledge he possessed. "That was merely Option One," he stated, his voice ringing with sober warning. "I told you there were two paths available right now... The second path, gentlemen, is Appeasement."
A confused, disbelieving rustle went through the few listeners. "Appeasement? You mean... sacrifice?"
"Yes. Ritual appeasement. It is the way our kind has dealt with the things that walk outside the natural order since the dawn of time. We are weak, frail things, ill-equipped to meet true demonic power head-on. When you cannot fight or kill, the only choice left is submission—a careful, calculated bowing of the knee meant only to buy us time and a better opportunity."
The detective, a descendant of the Maoshan line, paused, gathering the remaining air in the room. "Listen closely," he urged. "The purpose of this sacrifice is twofold: to soothe the immediate rage of the Sixteen Night Walkers, and, simultaneously, to petition the Nine Star Gods and the Tai Sui Ye (God of the Year) to return, to pacify the fiends, and drag them back to their eternal cell. But the offerings for the Night Walkers must be prepared precisely, exactly as written in the old, terrible texts. You must listen carefully now, then split up and gather these components as fast as humanly possible."
"We must secure their quiet immediately. I believe they are still nearby, glutted and lurking in the immediate shadow of their carnage. But if we allow them to endure past this coming dawn, they will scatter and roam, becoming impossibly difficult to trace until another scene of mass, blood-soaked devastation forces them back into the light!"
Detective Lin Feitian then laid out the cold, ritual requirements from the ancient book. The text demands living sacrificial offerings and sacred grains. For the animal sacrifice, you must procure a fur-bearing beast; before presenting it upon the altar, you must daub the beast entirely with the fresh blood of a male bird. As for the grains, there are five crucial varieties required: kaoliang, ji rice, hulled rice, millet, and wheat. And one thing above all else is absolutely non-negotiable: A piece of ritual jade, a vessel that has previously been used to honor the high gods, must be brought to this ceremony.
Once the required supplies are gathered—and may the gods pity them if they are not—the altar must be erected. Incense must be burned, candles lit, and sacred talismans given over to the flame, a desperate plea for the attention of the High Gods in the heavens. Then comes the real terror: a solemn covenant of apology must be read to the Sixteen Night Walkers, admitting the blasphemous mistake the humans made by fouling their vegetarian food with meat. The reader of this decree must bind themselves with a lifelong shackle: a vow never again to eat meat or take the life of any living creature. This oath, once spoken, cannot be broken—a contract written in the cold, unforgiving language of fate.
Upon completing the formal appeal, the cloven offering (the hairy beast) must be interred, head first, into the cold ground, followed by the five sacred grains and the single piece of jade vessel. This ritual, once consummated, is believed to summon the Sixteen Night Walkers back to the scene... a terrifying necessity. In the same breath, the Nine Star Gods and the God of the Year must be called upon to intervene. This dreadful gamble, Lin had asserted, was the only way to avoid a full-scale, devastating disaster, carrying with it a significant chance of success.
The senior detective finished his grim exposition and immediately barked orders for the dispersal of the group to gather the arcane supplies. He would personally undertake the invocation of the Star Gods and the God of the Year—a sacred task that required him to first beg the gods' forgiveness for man's failures. "We must pray," he said, his voice dropping slightly, "that the Yellow Emperor—the creator of these things, and now one of the Nine Star Gods—will still possess some small, primal influence over his own twisted creations. If he can compel them to return to their prison, this horror will finally pass from mankind."
Lin let out a heavy breath, but the sigh died stillborn in his throat. His listeners—the remaining police, the diplomat, and the weeping girl—were frozen solid, paralyzed by the sheer impossibility of his demands, and not a single one moved.
"What in God's name are you waiting for?!" Lin roared, his patience snapping like a dry twig. "Move! Now! Go get the damn things!"
The spokesman stepped forward, his face a miserable sheet of apology and incomprehension. "Forgive us, Detective. But many of the ritual items—the 'fur-bearing beast,' the blood of a male bird... where do we even begin to find these things? Could you give us a specific location, sir?"
The query came from a Chinese official—one old enough to know real fear when he tasted it—his voice tight with clerical anxiety.
"Ah, yes. My mistake," Lin conceded, a grim, impatient acknowledgment of his own oversight. "It was the haste, the terrible, smothering haste. Listen up, gentlemen—and you, Miss Lü—get your pads and pens ready. You must secure these items—these crucial tools against the rising dark—and you must do it before the first, guilty light of dawn paints the east!"
"The ritual demands its components, precise and chilling: Find a young goat—a symbol of stolen innocence—and coat it entirely in the fresh, still-warm blood of a male pigeon. The five sacred grains—sorghum, ji rice, unhusked rice, millet, and wheat—can be scavenged from any shop dealing in religious paraphernalia and occult supplies. The jade vessel is simpler but no less vital: seek out an ancient Chinese shrine. Any artifact will serve—a cup, a bowl, a delicate tea saucer—provided it is hewn from true jade. We require just that single, precious piece."
Detective Lin spat out the instructions with harsh, rapid intensity. Around the room, notebooks materialized—cheap, spiral-bound things—and frantic officials scribbled wildly, trying to trap the lunatic logic on paper.
"The male pigeon?" A high, nervous voice cut through the silence. It was another Chinese official, hands raised slightly, pleading for clarification on this necessary, blood-soaked detail. "How do we identify it?"
"Alone," Lin instructed, his voice dropping slightly, "they're indistinguishable, but watch them in the teeming, filthy flock. The cock is built heavier—a pugnacious brute—with a broad skull, a stout beak, and a thick, low stance. If you cannot track the physical markers, watch the courtship: the male bobs his head, plumes his tail low, and lets out a deep, rattling coo when sighting his hen. Find that mating ritual, and you will find your target."
Detective Lin stopped talking, the silence after his words a heavy, crushing thing, and felt a wave of profound weariness—the soul-deep exhaustion of preaching the gospel of monsters to an uninterested flock. It was predictable, but crushing all the same: both the Chinese and Thai authorities were young, cynical, and utterly rooted in the mundane, having likely never heard these dark legends. Lin knew the whole story was impossible, a mad fantasy that twisted the brain. The physical evidence offered nothing but pools of anonymous, drying gore painted across the restaurant floor, coupled with the lurid, unbelievable chat history scraped from a dead girl's phone—the last testament of a doomed love affair.
Detective Lin knew the feeling well: if someone had told him this unholy fairy tale cold, he'd have been just as quick to dismiss it as lunacy. But the time for rational doubt had evaporated like cheap smoke. This was life-or-death urgency, and Lin forced the words through his teeth.
"I know this sounds utterly impossible," Lin demanded, his voice strained, "but for God's sake, listen, and move fast! Get these items! If we fail, the price is catastrophe, because those Sixteen Night Walkers have corrupted into pure, hungry demons, and they will unleash a wave of horror that will not stop for years!"
The detective's voice cracked, and he abruptly cut himself off!
It was because the man's head had simply vanished.
Blood jetted from the severed neck, spraying upward in a horrific, crimson fountain. The headless torso—a study in bespoke brown suit—tumbled backward, convulsing in a sickening, final dance before settling into a cold, still heap on the floor.
And there, rising out of the shadows behind the officer's cooling body, were the Sixteen Horrors, silent and rank, grinning with dreadful, malevolent glee.
...THE END...
***
The chilling entities we call the Sixteen Night Walkers (frightening nocturnal entity) were yanked straight from the bones of ancient Chinese myth. Their creation was specifically inspired by the deity Erbai (神人二八) found deep within the formidable Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing). This dread scripture—the South-of-the-Sea section—spells out their peculiar, linked existence:
"有神人二八,連臂,為帝司夜于此野.在羽民東.其為小人頰赤肩.盡十六人."
These beings, the Erbai, were bound wrist-to-wrist (連臂), assigned the cold, unending duty of inspecting the night for the Emperor.
Our theory—the one involving primordial, divine beings twisted by dark circumstance into flesh-eating devils—is, admittedly, an immense act of fabrication. There is no intention here to blaspheme the source text; just a fascination, a terrifying, hungry curiosity, for the bizarre and grotesque creatures chronicled in those pages.
For those keeping score, the Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海经) is believed to date back to the time of the Qin Dynasty, compiled into its familiar, often chilling form during the early Han Dynasty. It stands as one of the world's first and darkest records of true geography—and the strange, breathing things that inhabit it.
The celestial beings that stalk through this narrative—Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, the Nine Star Gods, and the sixty rotating Tai Sui Ye—are not phantoms conjured for a story, but genuine, recognized forces drawn directly from ancient Chinese cosmology and enduring worship.
At the heart of this confrontation between gods and monsters lies a fundamental spiritual battle manifested through the annual, stark observance known as the Festival of Vegetarian Abstinence. This is a chilling mandate for purification, demanding the absolute sacrifice of flesh (meat) and the complete banishment of the Five Pungent Herbs (garlic, onions, lao kiau, chives, and tobacco). By observing this cleansing fire, humanity strives to achieve a terrifying clarity—a pure state of body and soul—that placates the ancient, powerful Celestial Star Deities.
But the ritual often escalates beyond simple fasting. In certain regions, the fervor spills into a visceral, terrifying spiritual theater: practitioners invite the raw, overwhelming force of divine possession—mediums enter trance states to become temporary vessels of the gods. These possessed spirits engage in startling street processions to bestow blessings upon the panicked populace. This intense, demanding festival is a tapestry woven from the deep roots of ancient Chinese mythology and the immediate, local folk terrors of the Southeast Asian world.