The Festival of Flame

By Chris Wong Sick Hong

China has been invaded by the British. Fa Xui, a supernatural assassin, strikes back against invading Europeans and their gods. Will he succeed?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WSH Creative, LLC
• Release date: Jun 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386653004

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The Festival of Flame

Symbols could only contain the infinite for so long. That was the great flaw in Western magic. They treated the occult like science, another force to be mastered like galvanism or alchemy. Fa Xui’s own symbols, traced lightly in chalk on the wooden floor around him, were instead echoes of the immutable laws of the universe. As soon as they were no longer needed they would dissolve, leaving no record of their brief existence. Nothing in Heaven-and-Earth was permanent and it was arrogant to believe otherwise.

Ever since the guizi had arrived in their ships filled low with opium and demonic mechanisms, they’d chased nothing less than the destruction of the Middle Kingdom. The drought in Shangdong, followed by vicious floods uprooting hundreds of thousands, was only the most obvious sign of Heavenly displeasure.

Even this house, which was once and should still have been a bright and intricate flower, one among hundreds in the garden of Beijing, was a sign. The cracking plaster walls, hastily thrown up to please the Europeans, bore soot