Although not as unconventional as the following novels, the narrative still features a great deal of the graphic violence, horror and mystical passages that characterise the later works, although the dark comedy elements are less in evidence here.
Some time later, Chia begins to suspect that her brother may have survived what she had hoped was their final battle after Nyak's deadly servants, the Silver Brethren, invade her home on Black Dragon Mountain.
Mortal Mask, which was acclaimed a 'masterpiece' in the Clute/Grant The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, is essentially a deeply layered ghost story that plays out a host of metaphysical themes in a narrative that drives Chia relentlessly to the edge of damnation and an impending apocalypse.
After encountering the sole disaffected member of Crucifer's followers, a man renamed Judas, Chia and Nua head for Yang Ti's southern capital of Chiang-tu (modern Yangzhou).
It is in Chiang-tu that Chia discovers that Crucifer and his disciples have been transformed into non-human entities by a buried power in Shadow Hill (the site of the Buddhist monastery in Spirit Mirror) and have drawn Yang Ti and his court into an alternative and terrifying reality which threatens to absorb the world.
A review of the second book in Interzone described it as "pure torture"; they criticized the description of the gore and the lack of horror, noting that "Chia hovers lifeless in a void where she should have shone vivid against darkness."