"I'm not a kid," Ma Qianle replied, staring at the strange woman in front of him.  There were so many things to address about the situation that his brain simply decided to pick one at random and spew a response before he had time to think properly.

The woman's grin didn't fade at all. "Compared to me, every single mortal on this planet is an infant.  Don't take it personally."  She patted Ma Qianle's shoulder companionably as she barged past him and into the apartment.

Ma Qianle stared dumbfounded as the woman wandered around his living room as if she were an invited guest instead of an intruder.  "How did you get in here?"

She paused her rifling through books and looked at him with a slightly incredulous expression.  "Obviously through the door." 

Ma Qianle took the book away from her and put it back on the shelf as she shrugged and wandered over to the couch.  He turned to follow her, saying, "Somehow I doubt you have a key to the building."

She winked conspiratorially.  "I never said the door had to be open for me to go through it."  She picked up Ma Qianle's half-drunk beer and sniffed at it.  Ma Qianle rushed over, barely rescuing the bottle from her clutches as she tipped it to take a drink.

"Who do you think you are?  You come in here and act like this is your house, claim you can walk through walls, try to drink my beer!  Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call the police right now and have you arrested! You're trespassing!"  Ma Qianle exploded, his calm cracking at the woman's brazen behavior.

The woman brushed the threat off with a wave of her hand.  "Simple, they can't see me.  They'll just think you're some crazy guy wasting their time."  After saying this she turned serious. "Weren't you expecting me though?  You should have been warned there would be a trainer coming by."

Ma Qianle's irritation snagged on her first sentence.  'They can't see her?  And she said she walked through the door, literally.  It couldn't be...right?'  He thought back to the almost forgotten meeting he still hadn't convinced himself was fake.  "You...are you from that liaison office or whatever?  I thought all that was a dream, nobody has contacted me once!"  

She frowned.  "No way, we sent you a notification last week that I'd be coming.  Let me see your tablet."  She leaned towards where Ma Qianle was still standing, hand out expectantly.

Ma Qianle cocked an eyebrow. "You mean the tablet I haven't been able to find since the day I woke up in the hospital?"

"You can't find it?  You clearly still have it though..."  She thought for a moment, then brought her palm to her forehead.  "Don't tell me...you never learned how to summon it, did you?"

"When would I have learned?  That Lei just handed it to me and told me not to worry about losing it."

The woman shook her head. "Honestly, he's good at his job but he forgets mortals don't know these things.  Look, follow after me."  With this, she placed her hands together in front of her as if in prayer. Then, she twisted them so that one palm sat over the other and the fingers of each hand rested on the opposite wrist.  Finally, she slid her hands apart, fingers dragging over the palms until they ended up fingertip to fingertip.  In her upturned hand sat a familiar looking wooden tablet.  "Got it?"

Ma Qianle tried copying the motion.  A faint heat flashed in his palms, and sure enough, there, in his hand, was the tablet.  He stared at it blankly for a moment, thinking of all the embarrassing things he had tried to get the thing out, when it was so simple.  He shook his head, shrugging off the invasive thoughts, and noticed that the blackened seal over his thumbprint was glowing faintly around the edges.  He prodded it with a finger, and a voice suddenly sounded in his head. 'This notice is to inform you that Impermanent Wei Yaling will arrive on the 13th day of the 9th lunar month to conduct your training as a mortal agent.  Please prepare ahead of time.' 

Ma Qianle looked up at the woman still lounging comfortably on his couch.  "So, you're Wei Yaling then?"

Her grin returned. "The one and only!"  She tossed her tablet off to one side, and it vanished.  "You can just throw it wherever, it'll go back where it came from unless you specifically hand it to someone else who can see and touch it.  It'll glow like that whenever you've got a message. You'll feel a wave of heat when you get one, just like when it was first sealed.  You can use it to send messages too, but we'll get to that later."

Ma Qianle dismissed the tablet and thought back to the previous week.  Sure enough, there had been a wave of heat just like the one he'd felt while in the underworld, but Ma Qianle had happened to have a mild cold at the time and thus didn't think anything of it.  'I suppose I'll have to pay attention from now on,' he thought.  

Finally having accepted the situation in his head, he sat down on the couch beside Wei Yaling.  "So, what sort of training is it I've got to do?  I still don't actually know what a mortal agent actually does."

"We'll get to that too, but first things first, you'll need to change. The clothes you've got on aren't really suitable for training in," she replied.

Ma Qianle looked down at himself.  He had pulled off his shoes, unbuttoned his collar, and rolled up his sleeves when he'd gotten out of work, but hadn't yet changed entirely.  The clothes were suited to working in an office, but were entirely inappropriate for anything even remotely physical.  

"Give me a minute," he said as he stood and headed to the bedroom. A few minutes later, he reappeared, having traded his button down and slacks for athletic wear.

Wei Yaling looked him up and down.  "Perfect!  Follow me, we can't do this in here."  She stood and headed back to the still open door to Ma Qianle's apartment. Ma Qianle barely had time to grab a light jacket and his keys before she disappeared down the hallway.

She led the way through the streets, but not for long.  Their destination turned out to be the same lakeside park he'd been in when he'd had his accident those months ago.  He looked sceptically towards the water.  It was mid-October, and the weather had cooled down enough that he'd almost certainly end up with hypothermia if he fell in again.  

"I'm not here for another swim, am I?" he said.

"Nah, nothing that exciting this time.  Sit down," Wei Yaling said.  She rummaged in a small pouch that hung from her belt, and pulled out a round pill that looked like a shining silver grey pearl.  "Do you know how to meditate?" she asked.

"Mm," Ma Qianle nodded.  He'd taken a course on religions when he was in college, and one of the class activities had been attending a seated meditation session at a local Buddhist temple.

"Good."  Wei Yaling took a seat next to him and handed him the strange pill.  "When you're ready, eat this, then start meditating.  It's nothing harmful, don't worry, it will just help speed some things up."

Ma Qianle took the pill in hand and settled himself into position.  'Well, here goes nothing,' he thought and popped it into his mouth, closing his eyes.

Immediately the pill vanished in his mouth, and he felt a cool sensation begin to spread out from his stomach.  Rather than the relief of a cool breeze on an especially hot day, this was the chill of a damp autumn morning, with fog and the scent of rotting leaves.  If he was being honest, it wasn't exactly pleasant, but at the same time it wasn't really unpleasant either.  It simply was.

He focused on the sensation as it travelled through his body.  From his stomach, it split into two and moved, one up to his heart and the other down to a position just below his navel.  From these two loci, the chill spread out tiny tendrils like creeping vines, spreading throughout his body.  When it reached the tips of his toes and the ends of his fingers, it suddenly sprang back, the vines drawing back to the centers from which they'd come.  The lower mass of cold bled slowly into the upper one, and then stretched a thicker vine even higher, finally settling between his eyebrows.  At last, the cool sensation dispersed, diffusing into a comfortable nothingness.

Throughout the process, Wei Yaling was watching as the energy travelled through Ma Qianle's body.  She could see as it focused, spread out, and focused again, before finally integrating into Ma Qianle's own.  When she judged the process complete, she spoke.

"Open your eyes."

Ma Qianle did as instructed.  In front of his eyes was a nightmare of blood and shattered bone.