Chapter 2: Chapter 2
~1.9k words · 2026-06-22
# Chapter 2: The Taoist at Dawn
The needle slipped.
Dr. Fang watched the blood bead form on Mrs. Chen's temple, a perfect ruby against beige foundation. His hand had never trembled in thirty years. Not during the war. Not during his first solo surgery. Not when he'd cut that first spirit skin from a wailing ghost in his basement.
But the needle had slipped.
"Sorry," he said, pressing a cotton ball to the tiny wound. "Didn't sleep well."
Mrs. Chen's eyes were fixed on the mirror. She didn't feel the prick. She never did. They never did, three days after the procedure. The nerves were still regrowing.
"It's remarkable, Doctor." She touched her cheek, the skin there smooth as river stone. "I look like I did at twenty-two."
You look better, Fang thought. At twenty-two, she'd had acne scars and crow's feet from too much sun. Now her face was porcelain. Flawless. Empty.
He finished the injection — a simple filler, nothing supernatural — and peeled off his gloves. The morning light cut through his office blinds, striping the floor in gold. Outside, Shanghai was waking up. Delivery scooters whined through wet streets. A billion people starting their day.
None of them knew what he kept in the cold room three floors below.
"Come back Thursday for the final check," he said. "The swelling will go down by then."
Mrs. Chen floated out on a cloud of gratitude. Fang watched her go, noting the way her reflection in the hallway mirror seemed to lag behind her body by half a second. He'd installed special mirrors throughout the clinic. Silver-backed, with iron filings worked into the glass. Taoist standard issue, circa 1987, available on Alibaba for two thousand yuan.
The mirrors didn't stop the spirits. Nothing stopped the spirits. But the mirrors showed him which patients were still human.
Mrs. Chen's reflection caught up with her just before the elevator doors closed.
Fang let out a breath he'd been holding since dawn.
---
The first patient of the day was never the problem. It was the waiting room that worried him. The waiting room, and the old man who'd been sitting in it since six AM.
Fang checked the security feed on his phone. The man was thin, ancient, dressed in a gray Mao suit that had gone shiny at the elbows. He sat perfectly still, hands on his knees, watching the door like a cat watches a mouse hole. No phone. No book. No water. Just waiting.
The nurses had tried to take his name three times. He'd smiled at each of them, showing teeth stained brown by decades of tea, and said nothing.
Fang's assistant Li Wei appeared in his doorway. "Doctor, your eight o'clock is here. Should I bring her back?"
"What about the old man?"
"He refuses to give his name. Says he'll see you when you're ready."
Fang's right hand twitched. The one that had slipped with the needle.
"Let him wait."
---
The morning passed in a blur of consultations and minor procedures. Fang's days were methodical. Fillers and Botox for the wealthy wives of Pudong. Laser treatments for socialites who'd spent too long in the Maldives. And one new consultation — a woman named Zhao Liling, forty-four, who wanted the full transformation.
The special one.
He saved those consultations for the end of the day, when the clinic was quiet and his hands were steady.
Zhao Liling sat across from him, her hands clasped in her lap. She was beautiful in the way all his patients were beautiful — carefully constructed, impeccably maintained, held together by discipline and expensive creams. But her eyes were tired. The eyes of a woman who'd spent twenty years pretending she wasn't getting older.
"Dr. Fang," she said, "my husband left me for a girl from his office. She's twenty-eight. He says he wants someone who matches his energy."
Fang nodded. He'd heard this story before. He'd heard every variation.
"I want to look like I did when we got married. Can you do that?"
"I can do better."
He showed her photos. Before and after shots of women who'd come to him with sagging jaws and hollow cheeks, and left with faces so tight they seemed to glow. The photos were real. The results were real. The method was not.
"How does it work?" she asked.
Fang smiled. "It's a proprietary technique. Stem cells from the patient's own fat tissue, combined with growth factors and a special collagen matrix. The recovery period is three days. After that, you'll look fifteen years younger. Minimum."
The lie was smooth. Perfect. He'd been telling it for seven years.
"What's the catch?"
"Price. One million yuan. Half upfront, half upon completion."
She didn't flinch. She wrote a check on the spot, her hand steady.
Fang took it, his own hand still trembling slightly.
---
The old man was still in the waiting room when Fang left at seven.
The nurses had gone home. The reception desk was dark. But the old man sat in the same chair, same position, hands on knees, watching the door.
Fang locked the front entrance and walked past him.
"You have a cold room, Doctor."
Fang stopped.
"Third floor below the clinic. Kept at four degrees Celsius. Perfect for biological samples."
Fang turned. The old man hadn't moved. His eyes were black in the dim light, black as wet stones.
"I'm a medical professional," Fang said. "Biological samples are part of the job."
"Yes." The old man stood, his joints cracking like dry wood. "But most doctors keep their samples in containers. You keep yours in jars. Glass jars. With iron lids."
Fang's heart stopped. Just for a second. Just long enough for him to feel the cold spreading from his chest.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Your wife knows." The old man walked toward him, his steps soft on the marble floor. "She found one, didn't she? Three years ago. A jar in the freezer, labeled 'steamed dumplings.' She opened it."
Fang remembered that night. The screaming. The police. The way his wife had looked at him, her face pale as bone, as she held up the jar containing a woman's face.
He'd told them it was a silicone model. Teaching purposes. The police had believed him. His wife had not.
"She doesn't live here anymore," Fang said.
"No. She lives in Hangzhou, with her mother. She's afraid of you, Doctor. But she's more afraid of what you keep in the basement."
The old man was close now. Close enough for Fang to smell him — tea, incense, and something else. Something metallic.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Zhang Wei. I'm a Taoist priest. I've been tracking you for six months."
Fang laughed. He couldn't help it. The absurdity of it — a Taoist priest in a Mao suit, tracking him like some kind of monster.
"You think I'm a demon?"
"No." The old man's eyes didn't blink. "I think you're a man who made a deal. I think you found a way to harvest the skin of the dead and use it to make the living young. I think you've done it hundreds of times. And I think the spirits you harvested want their skins back."
Fang's laughter died.
"The first one will come tonight," the old man said. "She's been waiting for three years. Her skin is on a woman named Chen Li Hua. A woman you treated in March."
Mrs. Chen. The first patient of the day.
"The skin remembers, Doctor. It remembers who it belonged to. And when the spirit wants it back, she'll take it by force."
The old man reached into his pocket. Fang flinched, expecting a weapon. But Zhang Wei pulled out a talisman, yellow paper with red characters painted in what looked like blood.
"This will protect you. For tonight."
"Why would you help me?"
The old man smiled. His teeth were brown, but his eyes were kind.
"Because you're not evil, Dr. Fang. You're just a man who made a terrible mistake. And if the spirits take you, they'll keep taking. They'll take your patients, your nurses, your security guards. A hundred innocent people will die because you couldn't leave well enough alone."
The talisman hung in the air between them.
Fang took it.
"Don't lose it," the old man said. "And don't let her touch your skin. If she touches your skin, she'll wear your face next."
He walked away, his footsteps echoing in the empty lobby.
Fang stood alone, the talisman burning in his hand, and tried to remember how to breathe.
---
He went home to his apartment in the Jing'an district. Seventeenth floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A kitchen he never used and a bedroom he never slept in.
He spent most nights in the cold room.
But tonight, he sat on his leather couch, the talisman in his lap, and watched the security feed from the clinic.
The cameras showed empty hallways. Silent rooms. The cold room, with its rows of jars, each one containing a face suspended in clear fluid.
He'd counted them this morning. Two hundred and forty-three jars. Two hundred and forty-three spirits whose skin he'd stolen.
Two hundred and forty-three women who wanted their faces back.
The clock on his wall ticked past midnight.
The lights in the clinic flickered.
Fang leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the screen.
A woman appeared in the hallway. She was naked. Her body was smooth, featureless, like a mannequin. No hair. No nails. No face.
She walked toward the cold room.
Fang's phone rang.
He answered without looking at the caller ID.
"Doctor." The old man's voice was calm. "She's inside."
"I see her."
"Don't go to the clinic. No matter what you see, don't go."
The woman stopped in front of the cold room door. She raised her hand — her smooth, featureless hand — and pressed it against the glass.
The door unlocked.
Fang's blood turned to ice.
"I didn't do that," he whispered.
"I know." The old man sighed. "She's been inside before. She's been inside a hundred times. She knows every lock, every code, every weakness."
The woman entered the cold room. The camera showed her walking past the jars, her head turning as if she were looking for something.
She stopped in front of Mrs. Chen's jar.
The jar labeled "Chen Li Hua, March 15."
She reached through the glass.
Fang watched, his mouth open, as her hand passed through the jar like it was made of smoke. She pulled out the face — the beautiful, perfect face he'd harvested from a spirit in the Huangpu River — and held it up.
Then she turned to the camera.
And she put the face on.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't perfect. The skin stretched wrong, the eyes too wide, the mouth too large. It was a mask worn by something that didn't understand human anatomy.
She smiled.
Her teeth were Mrs. Chen's teeth.
"I want my skin back, Doctor," she said.
Her voice came through the phone and the camera at the same time, a stereo whisper that made the hair on Fang's arms stand up.
The talisman in his lap burst into flame.
Fang dropped it, stamping out the fire with his bare feet. When he looked up, the security feed showed the cold room empty.
The woman was gone.
But the door to her jar was open.
And on his phone, the call was still connected.
"Doctor." The old man's voice
The needle slipped.
Dr. Fang watched the blood bead form on Mrs. Chen's temple, a perfect ruby against beige foundation. His hand had never trembled in thirty years. Not during the war. Not during his first solo surgery. Not when he'd cut that first spirit skin from a wailing ghost in his basement.
But the needle had slipped.
"Sorry," he said, pressing a cotton ball to the tiny wound. "Didn't sleep well."
Mrs. Chen's eyes were fixed on the mirror. She didn't feel the prick. She never did. They never did, three days after the procedure. The nerves were still regrowing.
"It's remarkable, Doctor." She touched her cheek, the skin there smooth as river stone. "I look like I did at twenty-two."
You look better, Fang thought. At twenty-two, she'd had acne scars and crow's feet from too much sun. Now her face was porcelain. Flawless. Empty.
He finished the injection — a simple filler, nothing supernatural — and peeled off his gloves. The morning light cut through his office blinds, striping the floor in gold. Outside, Shanghai was waking up. Delivery scooters whined through wet streets. A billion people starting their day.
None of them knew what he kept in the cold room three floors below.
"Come back Thursday for the final check," he said. "The swelling will go down by then."
Mrs. Chen floated out on a cloud of gratitude. Fang watched her go, noting the way her reflection in the hallway mirror seemed to lag behind her body by half a second. He'd installed special mirrors throughout the clinic. Silver-backed, with iron filings worked into the glass. Taoist standard issue, circa 1987, available on Alibaba for two thousand yuan.
The mirrors didn't stop the spirits. Nothing stopped the spirits. But the mirrors showed him which patients were still human.
Mrs. Chen's reflection caught up with her just before the elevator doors closed.
Fang let out a breath he'd been holding since dawn.
---
The first patient of the day was never the problem. It was the waiting room that worried him. The waiting room, and the old man who'd been sitting in it since six AM.
Fang checked the security feed on his phone. The man was thin, ancient, dressed in a gray Mao suit that had gone shiny at the elbows. He sat perfectly still, hands on his knees, watching the door like a cat watches a mouse hole. No phone. No book. No water. Just waiting.
The nurses had tried to take his name three times. He'd smiled at each of them, showing teeth stained brown by decades of tea, and said nothing.
Fang's assistant Li Wei appeared in his doorway. "Doctor, your eight o'clock is here. Should I bring her back?"
"What about the old man?"
"He refuses to give his name. Says he'll see you when you're ready."
Fang's right hand twitched. The one that had slipped with the needle.
"Let him wait."
---
The morning passed in a blur of consultations and minor procedures. Fang's days were methodical. Fillers and Botox for the wealthy wives of Pudong. Laser treatments for socialites who'd spent too long in the Maldives. And one new consultation — a woman named Zhao Liling, forty-four, who wanted the full transformation.
The special one.
He saved those consultations for the end of the day, when the clinic was quiet and his hands were steady.
Zhao Liling sat across from him, her hands clasped in her lap. She was beautiful in the way all his patients were beautiful — carefully constructed, impeccably maintained, held together by discipline and expensive creams. But her eyes were tired. The eyes of a woman who'd spent twenty years pretending she wasn't getting older.
"Dr. Fang," she said, "my husband left me for a girl from his office. She's twenty-eight. He says he wants someone who matches his energy."
Fang nodded. He'd heard this story before. He'd heard every variation.
"I want to look like I did when we got married. Can you do that?"
"I can do better."
He showed her photos. Before and after shots of women who'd come to him with sagging jaws and hollow cheeks, and left with faces so tight they seemed to glow. The photos were real. The results were real. The method was not.
"How does it work?" she asked.
Fang smiled. "It's a proprietary technique. Stem cells from the patient's own fat tissue, combined with growth factors and a special collagen matrix. The recovery period is three days. After that, you'll look fifteen years younger. Minimum."
The lie was smooth. Perfect. He'd been telling it for seven years.
"What's the catch?"
"Price. One million yuan. Half upfront, half upon completion."
She didn't flinch. She wrote a check on the spot, her hand steady.
Fang took it, his own hand still trembling slightly.
---
The old man was still in the waiting room when Fang left at seven.
The nurses had gone home. The reception desk was dark. But the old man sat in the same chair, same position, hands on knees, watching the door.
Fang locked the front entrance and walked past him.
"You have a cold room, Doctor."
Fang stopped.
"Third floor below the clinic. Kept at four degrees Celsius. Perfect for biological samples."
Fang turned. The old man hadn't moved. His eyes were black in the dim light, black as wet stones.
"I'm a medical professional," Fang said. "Biological samples are part of the job."
"Yes." The old man stood, his joints cracking like dry wood. "But most doctors keep their samples in containers. You keep yours in jars. Glass jars. With iron lids."
Fang's heart stopped. Just for a second. Just long enough for him to feel the cold spreading from his chest.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Your wife knows." The old man walked toward him, his steps soft on the marble floor. "She found one, didn't she? Three years ago. A jar in the freezer, labeled 'steamed dumplings.' She opened it."
Fang remembered that night. The screaming. The police. The way his wife had looked at him, her face pale as bone, as she held up the jar containing a woman's face.
He'd told them it was a silicone model. Teaching purposes. The police had believed him. His wife had not.
"She doesn't live here anymore," Fang said.
"No. She lives in Hangzhou, with her mother. She's afraid of you, Doctor. But she's more afraid of what you keep in the basement."
The old man was close now. Close enough for Fang to smell him — tea, incense, and something else. Something metallic.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Zhang Wei. I'm a Taoist priest. I've been tracking you for six months."
Fang laughed. He couldn't help it. The absurdity of it — a Taoist priest in a Mao suit, tracking him like some kind of monster.
"You think I'm a demon?"
"No." The old man's eyes didn't blink. "I think you're a man who made a deal. I think you found a way to harvest the skin of the dead and use it to make the living young. I think you've done it hundreds of times. And I think the spirits you harvested want their skins back."
Fang's laughter died.
"The first one will come tonight," the old man said. "She's been waiting for three years. Her skin is on a woman named Chen Li Hua. A woman you treated in March."
Mrs. Chen. The first patient of the day.
"The skin remembers, Doctor. It remembers who it belonged to. And when the spirit wants it back, she'll take it by force."
The old man reached into his pocket. Fang flinched, expecting a weapon. But Zhang Wei pulled out a talisman, yellow paper with red characters painted in what looked like blood.
"This will protect you. For tonight."
"Why would you help me?"
The old man smiled. His teeth were brown, but his eyes were kind.
"Because you're not evil, Dr. Fang. You're just a man who made a terrible mistake. And if the spirits take you, they'll keep taking. They'll take your patients, your nurses, your security guards. A hundred innocent people will die because you couldn't leave well enough alone."
The talisman hung in the air between them.
Fang took it.
"Don't lose it," the old man said. "And don't let her touch your skin. If she touches your skin, she'll wear your face next."
He walked away, his footsteps echoing in the empty lobby.
Fang stood alone, the talisman burning in his hand, and tried to remember how to breathe.
---
He went home to his apartment in the Jing'an district. Seventeenth floor. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. A kitchen he never used and a bedroom he never slept in.
He spent most nights in the cold room.
But tonight, he sat on his leather couch, the talisman in his lap, and watched the security feed from the clinic.
The cameras showed empty hallways. Silent rooms. The cold room, with its rows of jars, each one containing a face suspended in clear fluid.
He'd counted them this morning. Two hundred and forty-three jars. Two hundred and forty-three spirits whose skin he'd stolen.
Two hundred and forty-three women who wanted their faces back.
The clock on his wall ticked past midnight.
The lights in the clinic flickered.
Fang leaned forward, his eyes fixed on the screen.
A woman appeared in the hallway. She was naked. Her body was smooth, featureless, like a mannequin. No hair. No nails. No face.
She walked toward the cold room.
Fang's phone rang.
He answered without looking at the caller ID.
"Doctor." The old man's voice was calm. "She's inside."
"I see her."
"Don't go to the clinic. No matter what you see, don't go."
The woman stopped in front of the cold room door. She raised her hand — her smooth, featureless hand — and pressed it against the glass.
The door unlocked.
Fang's blood turned to ice.
"I didn't do that," he whispered.
"I know." The old man sighed. "She's been inside before. She's been inside a hundred times. She knows every lock, every code, every weakness."
The woman entered the cold room. The camera showed her walking past the jars, her head turning as if she were looking for something.
She stopped in front of Mrs. Chen's jar.
The jar labeled "Chen Li Hua, March 15."
She reached through the glass.
Fang watched, his mouth open, as her hand passed through the jar like it was made of smoke. She pulled out the face — the beautiful, perfect face he'd harvested from a spirit in the Huangpu River — and held it up.
Then she turned to the camera.
And she put the face on.
It wasn't beautiful. It wasn't perfect. The skin stretched wrong, the eyes too wide, the mouth too large. It was a mask worn by something that didn't understand human anatomy.
She smiled.
Her teeth were Mrs. Chen's teeth.
"I want my skin back, Doctor," she said.
Her voice came through the phone and the camera at the same time, a stereo whisper that made the hair on Fang's arms stand up.
The talisman in his lap burst into flame.
Fang dropped it, stamping out the fire with his bare feet. When he looked up, the security feed showed the cold room empty.
The woman was gone.
But the door to her jar was open.
And on his phone, the call was still connected.
"Doctor." The old man's voice