Back in Wuyuan City, the merchant district lay silent under the heavy cloak of midnight. The usual clamor of haggling traders and clattering carts had long faded, leaving only the occasional rustle of wind through paper lanterns and the distant cry of a night watchman.

  Inside a sprawling estate, its high walls lined with intricate carvings of prosperity dragons, the chubby merchant Sato lay trapped in restless slumber. His bed—a monstrous thing of polished rosewood and imported southern silk—was meant to be a haven of comfort. Yet tonight, it felt like a prison.

  Sato tossed and turned, his bloated frame sinking into the plush bedding as his fingers clawed at the sheets. His dreams were a feverish swirl of grasping hands, clinking coins, and the accusing whispers of men whose lives he had ruined. The air was thick with the scent of sandalwood incense, but even its calming fragrance couldn’t shield him from the visions haunting his sleep.

  Then—

  "Ahhh!"

  The scream tore from his throat as he bolted upright, his silk night robe clinging to his sweat-slicked body. His jowls trembled, and his beady eyes darted around the shadowed chamber, half-expecting specters to emerge from the ornate folding screens.

  For several agonizing minutes, Sato sat there, gasping like a fish dragged onto dry land. The pounding of his heart was deafening in his ears, each beat a drum of dread. A cold droplet of sweat traced the curve of his multiple chins before splattering onto the embroidered quilt.

  "Just a dream… Just another bad dream," he muttered, his voice hoarse.

  But the words rang hollow. For months now, sleep had become Sato’s greatest torment.

  Every night, like clockwork, the nightmares came—vivid, suffocating, relentless. They had begun the very evening he swindled that southern out of his leathers, a foolishly trusting man who had carried a fortune in hides..

  Sato had expected a modest haul, perhaps enough to line his sleeves with a little extra silver along with another child servant. But fate had handed him a king’s bounty—and in his greed, he had taken it all, leaving the man with nothing but broken promises and humiliation.

  He should have taken the boy, too. But, he had assumed that man would eventually return.

  The young boy—a skinny, sharp-eyed youth—had watched the exchange in silence. There had been something in that gaze, something that lingered even after they vanished into the encampment.

  That was when the dreams began.

  They started as shadows at the edge of his vision—flickering, half-formed. But soon, they took shape.

  The refugees he wronged.

  Gaunt faces, their sunken eyes gleaming in the dark. They clawed at him with skeletal fingers, their whispers rising into a chorus of despair:

  “You took my daughter for a handful of copper… How could you?”

  “We came to your city for safety, and you sold my son to the mines!”

  Then came the others—the merchants he had ruined with rigged scales, the farmers whose land he seized over unpaid debts, the wives and mothers who had wept at his gates, begging for mercy.

  They clung to him.

  Their voices slithered into his ears, dripping with venom and grief:

  “Give her back.”

  “You fed your belly while our children starved.”

  “The heavens see you, Sato. They always see.”

  For months, the nightmares had festered in Sato’s mind like a rotting wound, gnawing at his sanity. He was a man who had always slept soundly—untroubled by guilt, comforted by the weight of his wealth. But now, sleep was no longer a refuge. It was a trial, a nightly punishment he could not escape.

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  He had exhausted every remedy.

  The city’s finest physicians had prodded at his plump wrists, declared his humors balanced, and prescribed drowsy elixirs of poppy and valerian—useless concoctions that left him groggy but did nothing to silence the screams in his dreams.

  The temple priests had pressed joss sticks into his hands, urged him to kneel before the golden statues of the Heavenly Virtues, and chant until his voice grew hoarse. But the heavens remained silent. No divine absolution came—only the cold, unblinking eyes of the statues, watching him as if they knew.

  And then there was the pattern.

  Every time he bought another child—snatched from some desperate refugee family in exchange for a pitiful handful of coins—the nightmares that followed were worse. More vivid. More personal.

  Last night, he had dreamed of a little girl—the same one he had purchased just that afternoon. In the dream, she stood at the foot of his bed, her hollow eyes leaking shadows as she whispered:

  “You took me from my mother… Why?”

  And then, as always, the others came.

  The refugees. The beggars. The broken.

  Their voices slithered around him, a chorus of the damned.

  “You promised us food.”

  “You swore my son would be safe.”

  “You lied.”

  Sato clutched his silk sheets, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His chamber was too hot, the air thick with the cloying scent of incense—but he dared not open the windows. The darkness outside felt alive, waiting.

  “Why… why is this happening to me?” he whimpered, his voice cracking like a child’s. “What did I do to deserve this?” he whispered to himself, nearly crying.

  Even now the merchant didn’t understand the consequence of his actions, still no guilt for what he’s done. He felt like a victim in all this still.

  Sato had spent his whole life believing that wealth was righteousness, that power excused all sins. The strong took, the weak suffered—that was the natural order. He had never lost sleep over his schemes before. Why now?

  Sato got out of his bed and paced the length of his opulent bedchamber, his silk slippers whispering across imported Qingshan carpets worth more than most peasants earned in a lifetime. The morning light streaming through the latticed windows did nothing to dispel the shadows beneath his bloodshot eyes.

  "Calm down, Sato," he muttered to his trembling reflection in a polished bronze mirror. "The famous healer from the Windrider Clan arrives today with her people. They're here to trade, and I'll pay whatever it takes to secure her services." His jowls quivered as he forced a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Surely that healer can cure... these dreams."

  ??????????????????

  Sato did not know it, but his torment had a name—a yin curse, a basic but insidious qi based curse that fed on the darkness of one’s own soul. No mortal healer, not even the famed physicians of the Windrider Clan, could lift such an affliction. Only a cultivator, one who walked the path of qi and spiritual refinement, could cleanse it.

  But cultivators were rare in Zan.

  The curse was simple—it amplified nightmares in proportion to one’s sins. Every act of greed, every betrayal, every child torn from their family fed the curse, making the dreams more vivid, more suffocating. That was why purchasing slaves made the nights unbearable—each transaction piled fresh karma onto his soul, and the curse delighted in punishing him for it.

  Sato had brought this upon himself, though he would never admit it or know.

  Months ago, when he stole Kai’s leathers, the sly shadow fox Yinying had slipped into his tent. She had come for one thing—the map Kai had demanded. A simple theft should have been the end of it. But before vanishing into the darkness, the fox had paused, her violet eyes glinting with mischief.

  Sato had humiliated Kai, and Yinying was not one to let such an insult go unanswered.

  With a flick of her tails, she had woven the curse into Sato’s fate, a parting gift for his arrogance. Had he been a cultivator, he might have sensed the disturbance in his spirit. But Sato, blind to the workings of the unseen world, had merely brushed off the chill that ran down his spine that day—the moment the curse took root.

  The irony was bitter. The curse could have been lifted with ease—a single session of qi purification, a talisman of cleansing, even a minor cultivator’s intervention would have sufficed. But Zan had no public cultivators willing to aid a man like Sato, and he was too proud, too terrified, to journey south where the sects and wandering adepts dwelled.

  So the nightmares persisted.

  The only respite came in fleeting moments—when, by rare chance, he performed some act that generated positive karma. A beggar fed, a debt forgiven, a child returned. These small mercies temporarily suppressed the curse, granting him a night or two of uneasy silence.

  But Sato was not a man inclined to kindness. And so, the shadows in his dreams grew sharper. The voices grew louder. And the fox’s curse ensured that, one way or another…

  He would pay for every person he wronged.

  (Author's Note: Just putting this here for when a bot scrapes and repost without my permission. Hey there! You're reading a story by me, Saberfang. This was likely taken from royal road or scribble hub. If you like my work please read it on those websites or on patreon at patreon.com/user?u=83747391)