Series: Yaseki Monogatari, Book 1
Author: Baptiste Pinson Wu
Artist: Christian Benavides
Release Date: April 2nd, 2025
Preorder Link: https://amzn.to/4fTn91O
Blurb
For centuries, the Yaseki have fought the corrupted souls who seek to plunge Japan into darkness. But the fragile balance is now shifting toward the forces of evil.
Ren Fudō, a young Soul Hunter blessed with the blood of the kami, receives a mission from Amaterasu Ōmikami. This simple errand is a spirit-given chance to pay off his debt to the Yaseki.
But as he and his new companion, a shrine maiden possessed by a violent land kami, take to the road, Ren remembers that spirits never give for nothing. The mission turns more dangerous and crucial with every step.
The future of Japan now rests on their shoulders, and an army of Yōkai stands on their path.
Excerpt
Chapter Four “First Hunt.”
“Any second now,” Ren said to himself. He lowered his stance to a crouch. Suzume followed his lead, and both stood no higher than the tall grass of the plain.
The lion-dog suddenly straightened up and froze, her muzzle pointed toward the edge of the pond. She barked and ran after whatever caught her attention. A shriek pierced the sky as if a crow and a toad had screamed at the same time. Then, a bunch of similar calls answered it, and the pond came to life.
The kappa, six of them, jumped out in as many directions. The girl gasped. One of them had jumped in the river and was coming their way. It was fast, so fast that it seemed to run on the water. So fast that all the girl would see was a green-blue shape, the size of a regular dog, with a turtle shell on its back.
“Now!” Ren shouted as he left the cover of the grass and leaped toward the moving shape.
The beast shrieked in surprise and meant to alter its course, but this only slowed it down, and Ren smacked his scabbard in the kappa’s face, sending it reeling backward in a jet of blood. The hunter did not let it go. The kappa was on its feet faster than Ren had expected and, this time, met the attack, jumping at him with its claws and beak wide open.
The claws caught nothing, and the beak closed on the scabbard as Ren slammed it in the yōkai’s mouth. In the same movement, he pushed the kappa against the bank of the river and stabbed it through the shoulder, pinning the creature to the earth on its back. It shrieked and moaned, and its hands moved to the sword. Blood poured on the blade as the kappa tried to remove it, but Ren was stronger, and the creature soon gave up with a last moan of despair.
The hunter then remembered the girl. Panic hit him for a heartbeat before he saw her right behind him, drenched up to the waist, still clutching the spear against her chest. She looked petrified at the sight of the kappa.
“Good,” Ren said between two heavy breaths. The chase had been short but energetic. “You followed. Now,” he went on but stopped to catch his breath again. “Now I will let it go, and it will probably attack you. Just open yourself to your kami and kill it.”
“No,” the girl said in a panic. “No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Ren replied patiently. “It’s a young one, it’s wounded, and I’m right here.”
“No,” she repeated. “I can’t kill it. I can’t—it’s just a child.”
Ren followed her gaze and observed the kappa. Like any of its kind, it looked like the mixed breed of a frog and a turtle, shorter than both of them and afraid. Its face was crisped with fear and pain, and its eyes were full of terror. It could not speak yet, but it would beg if it could. Of course, Ren understood the girl would take pity on it. Even he felt sorry for the creature. Its chest rose frantically, and it kept looking from him to her with a glint of hope for not being dead yet. There was not even a trace of hatred on this face, just fear.
“Suzume,” Ren said, “this is a yōkai. We have to kill it.”
“I can’t,” the girl said right away, shaking her head.
“Suzume!” Ren barked, taking her attention away from the child kappa. “Don’t look at it like this. It’s a monster. It will grow. Another year and it will start hunting, and what do you think it will hunt? Do you remember the boy we saw earlier? This,” he said, pointing his scabbard at the beast, “will tear that boy apart. And it will be your fault.”
Tears swelled at the corners of her eyes and soon fell in two lines, reaching the sides of her chin. They did not stop Ren. He had to push her to do it.
“You have to kill it,” he went on. “And you know what, you’re not even killing it. You’re just liberating its soul so that we can purify it. You’re doing this thing a favor.”
“I know,” she said, sobbing. “I know, but I can’t. Ren, it’s just a child.”
“Fine!” Ren barked. “If you don’t want to reimburse your debt, it’s up to you.”
He pulled the sword from the kappa, who slid into the water and covered its wound with its webbed hand. It looked shocked to be alive and observed the two humans with apprehension. Ren knew it would either try to flee or attack one of them, and since he had hurt it, the kappa would most likely come after the girl. He counted on it, and the sword in his hand was ready to draw more blood.
The young yōkai observed the young man, then the girl standing a step behind him, and stopped on her. Its face wrinkled in a snarl, and its beak seemed to clench as if the creature readied itself for action. Fear and confusion gave way to hatred, and the kappa tensed, about to pounce on the girl.
Ren had been ready, and his grip on the sword tightened. But before he could move, the kappa rocked brutally against the riverbank, where it gasped in pain. The hunter had not even seen the spear strike, but there it was, jutting from the beast’s stomach, held from the girl’s outstretched arm. The kappa died on it. Its head lolled, drooling brown blood over the pole.
“I didn’t think you had it in—” Ren started saying as the cross-blade sucked out of the yōkai’s body, leaving a bloody gap as big as a hand. “—you.” Ren spoke the last word slowly, and whatever else he might have said got stuck in his throat.
The girl facing him was no longer Suzume. It was the same body, the same clothes, the same freckles, but everything else belonged to another being, starting with the violence in her eyes. They shone with a green glint, and her smile, usually so light-hearted, turned into a vicious smirk at the sight of the kappa slowly sliding into the ground.
The girl seemed to stand straighter and taller, and her grip on the spear was both lighter and more assured. She shook the blood from the blade in one expert strike, unbothered that most of it landed on Ren’s shirt. In fact, she looked as if she had not noticed him. Ren had met enough spiritual beings to develop a sense of their nature, and this one, he felt, was strong. Strong and dangerous.
“Sugi?” he asked.
Her green eyes darted from her victim to him. They held no friendship. Slowly, very slowly, he drove his sword back into its scabbard.
“I’m a friend of your host,” he said as he lowered himself and dropped the blade against the river bank. “See? I mean you no harm.” Ren held his hands palms forward but received no reaction. “You are scaring me a little right now, and you are drinking Suzume’s energy away, so I’m going to need you to let go of the spear and liberate her, all right?”
He gently took a step in her direction, left hand forward to grab the pole just behind its cross-blade. But a few inches from it, the girl stepped back and drew her arm, ready to strike. Ren read the bloodlust in her green eyes and swallowed hard.
“Shit,” he said.
About the Author
Because life’s nothing without a good challenge, Baptiste decided to ditch regular-paying jobs to become an author, write on tremendously popular topics like Ancient China, or Samurai fighting Zombies, and publish all those nerdy, historical fiction novels from Japan. To preserve what’s left of his sanity, Baptiste spends great chunks of time visiting historical sites, bothering his Chinese wife with questions related to her culture she has no answer to, and wrestling with two untirable creatures called children, who, he believes, have been sent on earth to test the limits of his previously mentioned sanity.
When all of these fail, coffee, whiskey, a fuming bowl of ramen, or an episode of his favorite historical drama (currently Shōgun) do the trick.
His novels are packed with action, grumpy characters, brotherly love, and blades, lots of blades. They are set in ancient, brutal times where martial skills, stubbornness, and an appetite for trouble guarantee bloody adventures that might end up shifting the future of a realm or two.
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