Li Li (Shadow Hearts)

"At sunset tomorrow, the girl will die. All you can do is sit by and watch. How glorious... She'll be in agony until the very moment of her death. The same agony I tasted..."

- Li Li cursing Alice, as she did several random villagers every night.

Li Li is the vengeful wraith of a young maiden from the small Chinese fishing village of Dalian in the game Shadow Hearts. Li Li is haunts the village and takes out her wrath on one villager at a time during nightfall. Her pain and anger are exploited by the mad sage Dehuai who uses her as a pawn against the heroes.

Background
Li Li was the daughter of a fisherman in the small fishing village of Dalian in China. One day a tornado suddenly hit while her father and several other fisherman were out at sea. Li Li's father was her only living relative and stood on the docks praying fervently that her father would make it back, but her waiting appeared to be in vain. So it was that Li Li cried out, "Blue Dragon! God of Fishermen! Anyone! Please save my father's life. I will do anything!". To her proclamation lightning struck the water and the ocean suddenly became calm. Her father's boat suddenly returned with him safely aboard. But it seemed the gods of the sea were cruel for the price payed upon her father's return was that Li Li and her father switched voices, the hardy fisherman spoke in a Li Li's feminine and docile tone, while Li Li's voice was that of her father, deep and gruff. Her father was so embaressed of his new voice and ashamed of how his words would only taunt his daughter with what she had given up that from that day on he refused to speak again.

Later that year a theater troop came to Dalian and Li Li fell in love with a handsome young actor in it. Li Li and her father went to the village shamaness, 'Sea Mother' and begged her to help return her voice to normal so that she could speak to the young actor without scaring him off. Sea Mother tried every medicine, spell and prayer she knew but to no avail. Sea Mother's power could not contend with that of the curse Li Li had inadvertently invited on herself and the only way to lift it was to give up what she had gotten for it, namely her father's life.One fateful night Li Li returned to Sea Mother with a terrible tone in her gruff voice, she asked Sea Mother for the sharpest ceremonial knife she had so that her father wouldn't have time to suffer. Sea Mother knew Li Li loved the troop actor very much and she also knew there was nothing she could tell Li Li that she had not already considered and that wouldn't just make her feel worse so Li Li took the dagger and returned home. She stood over her father that night with the knife drawn, but she could not do it. The next night she did the same, always making up her mind to end the curse but by killing her father in his sleep but never able to go through with it and leaving the room with tears in her eyes. But what she sis not know was that her father was awake that night and each night, only pretending to stay asleep when his daughter entered his room, he wanted Li Li to be happy and was happy to die if it meant returning his daughter sweet voice to her, but he never told her, waiting for her to make up her own mind.

One day the acting troop was getting ready to leave the town and Li Li knew that if she did not confess her feelings for her love she would never see him again, so that night she snuck into her father's room as every night prepared to end the curse, but that night her father was not there. Her father knew one way or the other his daughter would leave with her love the next day and so he set out that night to catch some fish that only came out under the full moon and intended to leave the delicacy for Li Li and her love to take with them when he was gone. The horrible irony was that night the sea began to rage shortly after Li Li's father began his fishing and it tore apart his fishing boat. After the boat's wreckage washed up on shore the next mourning Li Li locked herself in her house and spent the whole day crying. Because her father was killed by the sea and not by Li Li she had not even been given her voice back and so she was left both cursed and alone. The actor went to Li Li's house to check up on the masculine voice crying out but he could not get in and would never know that the deep gruff cries were actually   Li Li's. Concerned but unable to get in the actor left town. By that evening Li Li's already manly voice had become hoarse from her constant crying making it sound truely fearsome. That night though something started to come out of the sea, sounding like a wet piece of meat slapping it's way across the ground and making it's way towards Li Li's house. It creeped it's way through the village and into Li Li's house...As to what happened next is unknown or if what came out was her father or something else. But whatever the case Li Li was gone the next day...

Dalian
Yuri Hyuga, Alice Elliot and Margarette Zelle arrive in the village of Dalian fifteen years after Li Li had vanished. The three crashed in the ocean juist on the edge of the Dalian docks in a plane they and stolen from a Japanese military base. Alice and Yuri were being chased by both the Japanese military and a local wizard named Dehuai, botho f which wanted to kidnap Alice to weaponize her supernatural powers to use against the other. Yuri had saved Alice from a British Warlock acting on Dehuai's behalf for the first attempted kidnaping and Margarete was a spy that had chanced upon the two as she was sabotaging a Japanese base when the Japanese were trying to kidnap Alice for their own purposes. While fleeing the Japanese military they were attacked again by a dog that was possessed by Dehaui. Though they defeated the dog the soldiers had surrounded Alice and Yuri in the meantime, Margarette's solution to the problem had been to hijack a plane and fly the three off.

After the crash Yuri Alice and Margarette made there way into the tiny town only to find the villagers had been cursed and observed the Sea Mother preforming last rites for the freshly departed. Alice felt bad for the fishermen but Yuri noted how if the village had earned a curse there was nothing to be done on there part. They rested from their trip and left that night, shorlty after going outside they heard a horrible crying imitating through the night air, standing at the edge of the village was woman in silken robes glowing with Malice and speaking in hoarse masculine voice, Li Li's ghost. Having heard the evil spirit haunting the village was anmed Li Li the heroes presumed that the woman was the the spirit in question. Li Li cired and then cackled content that she would not need to hunt down anyone tonight and that a some victims had willingly come to her to be sacrificed. Li Li noted that Alice had a pretty voice, which reminded her of her orignal voice and so Li Li decided Alice would to be the victim that night and layed a curse upon her. Alice collapsed in pain and Li Li vanished.

Yuri and Margarette rushed Alice into a near-by house, the Sea Mother's as it turned out. Sea Mother layed Alice out on her bed and tried a few healing techniques but already knew they would not work. Sea mother told them though that she had already sent for a traveling exorcist who was likely to arrive that night, she was certain that where she had failed the exorcist's spiritual power would be able to undo Li Li's curse. While they waited Sea Mother told Yuri and Margarette the Li Li's sad story that had occured fifteen years prior.

As Sea Mother was finishing up the story the exorcist arrived, Yuri recognized the exorcist, Zhuzhen Li, a knowledgeable Taoist adept who first warned them about Dehuai when they were trapped in another haunted village called Zhaoyang and helped them cleanse the village. Zhuzhen was supprised to see Yuri and Alice again but wasted no time healing Alice. Luckily Zhuzhen was strong enough to lift the curse before Alice died the next day but he was more concerned with lifting the curse on the village altogether rather than just curing the folks one by one. Zhuzhen decided that is was fate that he had run into Yuri and Alice again and so he decided to travel with them fro mthat point on and so the for heroes went out se if they could find the source of the curse. Soon they found a small patched of cursed land that looked like it once housed a shrine, Zhuzhen told his friends that the shrine of the Blue Dragon been violated in Dalian just as the shrine of the Black Tortoise had been violated in Zhaolang before it was over-run by evil spirits. Zhuzhen said the village of Dalian must have payed tribute there for years but it looked like a bolt of lightning had struck it breaking the totem, Yuri realized that must have been the bolt of lightning that struck fifteen years ago as Li LI was praying, meaning that Li Li's curse was not that of the Dragon God but the work of the mad sage who was trying to kidnap Alice. The heroes fought off the spirit King Yamaraja, who was bond to Dehuai's service with the shrine's destruction and in so doing lifted the curse on the village.

The heroes made arrangments then to geto ut of town with a Smuggler Boss. She and her crewman took their pay up front and assured them she would have them out of town and to safety soon. The Smuggler boss however was in truth Lt. Col Kawashima, head of the Japanese military stationed in China and she had made her way to Dalian posing as a smuggler to lure Alice and Yuri on a ship so she could just sail them straight to her headquarters in Shanghai.