It was a bright and sunny day.
After two whole days of rain and gloom, the city of San Jose finally had a pleasant change in the weather. The Division agents were still busy dealing with the ruins of what used to be a historical building and a really out of place Chinese restaurant. This entire restaurant building, used by a clan of lycans as a place of worship and energy pool, was turned into a giant sinkhole radiating foul and unstable energy. Which meant that there would be numerous expensive isolation arrays around the building, and the residents of the entire area had to be permanently relocated.
Josephine Wong stood in front of the remnants of the walls erected by Jason, staring into the space enclosed within. There were still shadows of people, lycans and ghosts appearing then quickly disappearing inside, even through the walls and layers of isolation array she could still hear their moans, curses and screams.
These according to what Pei told her, were very likely the dreams and nightmares of those swallowed by that energy, which were quite many by even a rough count based on the reports of the missing local persons.
As the liaison from Division in this area, she had definitely heard of a supposedly godly entity named "Night Lord" that the lycans and vampires worship. And logically speaking, just like many other cults and worshiper groups of some kind of demon or evil god, this kind of faith was supported by sacrifice. Normally, making sure that these operations do not happen, or at least not to an unacceptable scale was in part the duty of a liaison and the whole Division, but under the circumstances, there was not much she could do besides suppressing the expansion of this kind of operation as much as possible for as long as possible.
When she became a liaison of this area, her predecessor intentionally left out a lot of the core intelligence he was supposed to hand off to her, and there were indications that this petty and somewhat vengeful predecessor had removed or destroyed some core documents when he left. Thus, Josephine Wong had to rebuild a lot of major parts of the intelligence network and reconnect with some of the local vendors and players. But while she was doing this, the players at the Exalted Bondsmen had already covered a lot of their tracks, leaving her without much information or lead to follow up on.
During this journey, making deals with Jianmen and seeking his help became a common thing - he was willing to provide a lot of help, as long as she was willing to repay him in some way, either by providing him information, knowledge, or just bartering material.
It was delicate and complicated.
"Ms. Wong." Just this moment, Agent Beckman came to her: "We just finished the reverse tracing, Ms. and Mister Chaver are ready and they could head to one of the sites of sacrifice - they said they are good to go."
"How is Alexander? And Vivian?" Josephine Wong thought for a short moment, then asked the agent about the other two members of her team - they were assigned to guard and keep watch on a local Division facility during the battle, in preparation for any unforeseen changes of events. And there it happened, a group of powerful attackers launched an assault on the facility. These attackers did not succeed, but the Division suffered some casualties.
"Both insist that they want to join and help, against medical advice."
"Put them on standby and have healers look after them while they wait." Josephine Wong thought for a short moment and said: "Brief them later."
"Understood."
Josephine Wong took another hard look at the walls and isolation arrays in front of her and the foul energy that was contained within. Then after a slightly frustrated sigh, she turned and was about to meet with her students and head for their next destination - another site of sacrifice built for the lycans and vampires.
A tingling feeling shot from her forehead and across her whole body - something she had not felt for quite a while. It was the feeling of something, or someone trying to find out where she was using the most direct, unsubtle and maybe even inconsiderate means - by doing a divination on her, without even trying to hide the attempt, something very untoward and impolite for power wielders of her level.
But the next instant, Josephine Wong could feel a sense of urgency and eagerness from this attempt, with no hint of malice or ill will. It felt more like just a rush of an action, naively passionate almost.
"Who is it?" Josephine Wong readied her spell for retaliation - even if there was no hint of bad faith, it was still the prudent thing to do: "Reveal yourself and your intentions."
"I actually can't, not directly, not right away." A slightly distorted voice came from the space before her, and slowly, an almost entirely transparent human-shaped shadow appeared: "It appears to be something - something about me."
"Jianmen?"
"Ye - Yes. And I am terribly sorry I can only show up this way." The shadow said, with his posture in a state of unease and wonderment: "Order - too much order seemed to have a side effect of grinding existence down to some of its basic components and concepts. And I - if I were someone born and raised in this world, I'd have a better time. But I'm not - ultimately I am not from here and my existence could be more or less of an abnormally. So I have a question for you, for you are my anchor, please answer me honestly - "
"I know what your question is." Josephine Wong's voice started shaking, and her eyes became red: "The roots to your existence are not here, so you'll need permanent anchors in this reality. My answer is yes." Her voice grew louder and more stern with every word: "Yes! I want you here. This world needs you; your inn needs you; your students need you. I need you. You, will, stay! If I'm ever so clear: You will stay!"
The shadow solidified, and for a very short moment, Josephine Wong could see a chain connected to the back of its head lit up and then disappeared.
Jianmen checked his body, his mind and his own karmic flow - he had finally made it back to the world, as himself, and not just something that lingered between the lines of existence and nil.
The second thing Jianmen does, was pull Josephine Wong into his arms: "And I want to."