Ch. 004| The Myriad Gate

The final bell rang, the eighth period over.

Lan Yingchen shouldered his bag and left the classroom. Inside the bag: the letter, the bronze mirror, the paper notebook.

Chen Naiwen, sitting on his left, looked at him. "Where are you off to after school today?"

"…Work," Lan Yingchen said.

"…Since when do you have a job?"

"It's temporary."

Chen Naiwen gave a small laugh and waved a hand. "All right. See you tomorrow."

Chen Naiwen didn't know. Chen Naiwen had read the letter during yesterday's morning self-study, and by now had already forgotten it.

Lan Yingchen walked out the school gate, turned left, and went down into the Huanling Line station.

---

The Huanling Line, from Yun'an Station to Huanling Park Station — four stops, about eleven minutes.

Lan Yingchen stood in the corner of the carriage and did not sit. He took the letter out of his coat's inside pocket again, smoothed it flat, and confirmed that the four characters — the Myriad Academy — were still there.

Still there. Every character still there.

Noon yesterday had come and gone, and the letter had not vanished. That was the answer the Academy — or Jiang Wanxin — had given him. He folded the letter back along its original creases, pushed it deep into the inside pocket, and pressed a hand to his coat to feel it lying against his chest.

The carriage announcement: next stop, Huanling Park.

---

He came up out of the Huanling Line station into a Yunjin autumn afternoon at 16:42. The sky was still bright, but the angle of the light had begun to slant. Above the station entrance hovered the holographic timetable for the Huanling Line evening rush; as people passed, the figures slid automatically out of their line of sight, then refocused on the next person along.

Lan Yingchen headed for Section 6 of Donghuan Road. The lane was past the third set of traffic lights. Lane 265. He turned in.

Just like yesterday — the lane was short, a convenience store on the left, a small alley across the way. At the end of the lane stood the little shrine: red shrine doors, tiled roof, two small stone lions.

He lifted his head and looked at the air above the shrine roof.

There it drifted: a ring. The gap fell between the three- and four-o'clock marks. Perhaps eighty metres away from him.

It hung there, the gap turned faintly toward the mouth of the lane, like an eye angled his way.

Lan Yingchen took out his phone and opened the thread with his mother.

Mum, something's come up tonight, I won't be home for dinner. Eat without me, don't wait up.

Having typed it, he held for three seconds and did not press send.

His thumb rested on the send key. He glanced at the screen, then glanced at the shrine doors across the road. Then he pressed it.

The "Read" mark did not light up. He put the phone away in his pocket.

He crossed the road and walked toward the shrine doors.

---

The instant Lan Yingchen set one foot across the shrine threshold —

the ring in the air moved.

It slid down from above the shrine roof, inch by inch shifting toward a point directly over the shrine doors, as though something were drawing it down, slowly descending, and came to rest directly above the shrine doors — the gap turning through an angle until it fitted exactly against the gap in the beeswax seal on the envelope in Lan Yingchen's palm.

Lan Yingchen froze for a second.

He looked up. The ring was directly over his head.

He looked down. The tabby cat raised its head, glanced at him, and went on grooming itself; the three old men did not look up. No one saw the ring move.

Lan Yingchen walked on into the shrine.

---

It was darker inside than out. The Earth God's statue stood at the very centre. The incense smelled of sandalwood, with something of aged wood underneath it.

Lan Yingchen did not pray. He passed to the left of the statue and went round behind it.

Behind the statue was a back door. An old wooden one, its paint peeling, looking as though it hadn't been changed in decades — hardly a proper doorway. It came only as high as Lan Yingchen's chest; you had to stoop to go through.

There was no lock on the door. No handle. Only a horizontal wooden bar across it.

Lan Yingchen tucked the letter back into his coat's inside pocket. He pushed the bar to the left, sliding it open. The bar did not catch. It slid very smoothly — as though someone pushed it every day.

He pushed the back door open.

---

What he expected to see: the small alley behind the shrine, washing lines, a plastic water bucket, perhaps a stray cat.

What he saw: a corridor.

Lan Yingchen stood before the back door, half his body still in the shrine, half already across.

Before him was a corridor.

The corridor walls — stone. Natural bluestone, the surface very faintly textured, as though hewn by hand.

The corridor floor — white marble. The edges a little irregular, worn smooth, cold underfoot. Not anything machined in this century.

The corridor ceiling — a shallow relief of dragons. A deep blue-green, the surface rubbed away in places by time, looking very old.

Lan Yingchen turned to look back.

The shrine was still there. The back door was still there. He could see the three old men at their prayers, could see the Earth God's statue, could see the light coming in at the shrine doors.

He turned back again to the corridor outside the door. The washing lines, the bucket, the moss in the corners that the alley behind the shrine ought to have had — none of it was there. Only the corridor.

Lan Yingchen drew a deep breath, stepped out through the back door, and entered the corridor.

Behind him the back door stayed open. He could still see into the shrine.

But he knew that once he had walked in, there would be no going back.

The shrine was still where it stood, and the back door was not even locked. He could turn around at any moment and walk back to those three old men, that stick of sandalwood, the red lamp before the Earth God. He simply knew, clearly, that he would not turn back. His feet were already stepping on into the corridor.

---

Lan Yingchen took the phone from his pocket.

Terminal messages — no signal. Calls — no signal. Network — none.

The signal bars were entirely empty — not even the "Searching" that shows when no cell tower can be found. As though a phone had never once been switched on in this corridor.

That terminal message he had just sent his mother outside the shrine — there was no telling whether it had gone through. The "Read" mark would never light up now.

Lan Yingchen put the phone back in his pocket.

---

The corridor was far too long for the shrine's footprint.

Lan Yingchen walked perhaps two hundred paces — already far beyond the whole depth of the shrine building. Earlier it had taken him only about fifteen paces from the shrine doors to the statue.

The corridor had not yet ended.

Stone walls, white-marble floor, dragons overhead — all of it ran on, broadly unchanging, though the details shifted by small degrees. The dragon reliefs changed roughly every twenty paces: each in a different posture from the one before, even the number of claws differing.

He was no expert, but one thing he could tell — these dragons had not been carved by people of a single age.

Some lines were thick, banks of cloud curling about the dragon's body as though hacked straight out with a blade; some were exceedingly fine, every scale distinct one from the next, the cutting steady as breath that had never paused; some reliefs were so deep the dragon's head seemed about to thrust clear of the stone; some were nearly flat intaglio, only the outline to be seen.

The wear on the stone differed too. On some the sharp corners still stood, the edges keen; others had whole faces rubbed away by time, rounded until you could not tell they had ever been chiselled.

To fake age, the most you could do was make the whole corridor the same kind of old. Gaps of wear like the ones before him meant someone had genuinely, in different ages, chiselled out a stretch each, and then joined them together along this one corridor. Lan Yingchen could think of no other explanation.

The corridor had no windows, yet there was a faint light. Lan Yingchen looked up for its source — he could find none definite. The whole corridor seemed to glow of "itself," very lightly, like moonlight — but moonlight is cold, and this was warm.

He remembered what the letter had said: at the end of the corridor is the Myriad Academy.

All right. Then he would walk to the end.

---

Around the four-hundredth pace, the corridor began to change. The faint light ahead grew brighter.

Lan Yingchen quickened his step. At the four-hundred-and-twentieth pace, he came out of the corridor.

Outside was — the Main Court.

Lan Yingchen stood at the entrance to the Main Court, stopped, and did not move.

Before him was a vast central courtyard, about the size of two football pitches. The ground was flagstone, irregular, as though pieced together out of different ages. At the centre stood a tower.

The tower was white, of some material he could not name, like something that caught and threw back the light. He could not judge its height — ten storeys and more, anything was possible. Its top vanished into the low-lying cloud.

"The White Tower." Not a word the letter had used, but Lan Yingchen knew it the moment he saw it.

The Main Court held more than one style of building — he looked round once, and in each of the four directions there was an entrance and a flight of steps: far down a corridor on his right, the spire of a Gothic clock tower; on his left, the outline of stone steps climbing to a summit; ahead and to the right, the glare of desert and an archway. Every direction was visible, yet none was "truly near" — each lay behind a thin veil of haze, the distance impossible to measure.

Lan Yingchen realised something — he was most likely no longer in Yunjin. And yet the shrine was still joined on behind him, the back door open, and he could still smell that stick of sandalwood. To say he was not in Yunjin did not seem right either. He gave up trying to work out whether he was still in Yunjin or not; that corridor had already made the question unanswerable.

---

Lan Yingchen did not go straight toward the centre. He went on standing at the mouth of the corridor, watching.

After about a minute, he began to notice — from the other three directions of the Main Court, people were coming out.

The first came out of the corridor by the Gothic clock tower — a white woman, red-brown hair tied back, a deep-green long coat, about his own age. She glanced up at the White Tower, then looked round; her gaze passed over Lan Yingchen, paused perhaps half a second, no expression to it, and moved on to look elsewhere. Lan Yingchen knew the type. There had been one in his class in middle school. Old family.

The second came out by the desert archway — a Middle-Eastern girl, perhaps sixteen, dark-brown hair, a deep-blue robe with a woven sash at the waist. She looked at Lan Yingchen for about three seconds, dipped her head slightly as though in courtesy, then turned away and went on toward the centre of the Main Court. In those three seconds her gaze drifted over him for a moment, then seemed to pass through him and settle on some place behind him; Lan Yingchen turned to look back without thinking, and behind him there was only the corridor.

The third came down the stone steps — an African woman, dark-skinned, her hair plaited into a few fine braids, small bone studs in her ears. She did not look at Lan Yingchen. She walked to a spot beside the centre of the Main Court and stopped, pressed her palm flat to the ground, lowered her head for a few seconds as though greeting the earth, and then walked on.

The three of them each walked toward the centre of the Main Court, a few paces apart, none speaking, none looking at any of the others. Lan Yingchen did not go over either.

---

Lan Yingchen turned his eyes back to the way directly ahead. Behind the corridor he had come out of were stone walls, white marble, dragon reliefs. In other words — the one he had walked was "the Eastern one."

Beside the mouth of the Eastern corridor stood a stone with words carved on it: the Eastern College · this way.

Beside the words was a bronze guide-marker, pointing to a narrower passage on the left.

Lan Yingchen looked in the direction the marker indicated. At the far end of the passage an Eastern boy stood facing him, hands quietly clasped before him, waiting.

Lan Yingchen walked over.

The boy was perhaps seventeen, lean. A dark-grey long-sleeved top with black trousers. His hair was cut neat. His expression was plain, neither warm nor cold, like someone trained from childhood "not to put feeling on his face."

Seeing Lan Yingchen draw near, the boy spoke:

"You're Lan Yingchen?"

Lan Yingchen stopped. He nodded. "Yes."

"I'm Ge Zhiheng," the boy said. "We share a room."

Lan Yingchen did not answer at once. He took Ge Zhiheng's measure — he couldn't tell what year he was in, couldn't tell where he came from, couldn't tell how long he had been here.

But one thing was clear — the way Ge Zhiheng stood there waiting for him was too steady. Hands clasped before him, shoulders relaxed, eyes level, like someone who had stood in this passage many times before and received many a person just out of the corridor and still dazed. A new student does not wait for a roommate like that.

"…How did you know I'd arrive today?" Lan Yingchen asked.

Ge Zhiheng raised an eyebrow a fraction. As though the question did not surprise him, but he did not mean to answer it head-on either.

"The Allocation Team told me," he said. "Come with me. I'll take you to the room."

He turned and began to walk.

Lan Yingchen followed.

---

The passage was narrow, just wide enough for the two of them side by side. The walls were stone, the ceiling wood, the white-marble floor running on. Every few paces, on either side, was a small niche, and in each a little lantern — and what burned in it was real fire. The flame was very faint and did not waver, as though held fixed by some rule.

As he walked, Lan Yingchen wanted to ask questions and did not know which to begin with. He chose the smallest.

"…How long have you been Seeing?" he asked.

Ge Zhiheng did not answer at once.

They had gone about ten paces before he said: "…Three years."

Lan Yingchen made a note of the number.

"And you?" Ge Zhiheng asked.

"…Eight days," Lan Yingchen said.

Ge Zhiheng's feet stopped.

The passage fell quiet. The little lantern in the niche, its flame still motionless.

Ge Zhiheng turned his head and looked at Lan Yingchen. The first time, straight on.

His gaze was neither cold nor warm, but held something Lan Yingchen could not for the moment read — like "I know you won't understand, but I'm going to say it anyway."

"…Eight days," Ge Zhiheng repeated. As if confirming it.

"Yes."

Ge Zhiheng looked at Lan Yingchen for about five seconds.

Then he said:

"The rest of us — from first Seeing to walking into this corridor, it's three to five years on average."

Lan Yingchen did not respond.

"The shortest I've heard of was eleven months," Ge Zhiheng said. "And that was a senior on the Allocation Team, not a new student."

"…"

"You got here in eight days. It isn't that you Saw early. It's that you were found too early."

---

Lan Yingchen was taken aback.

"…What do you mean?"

Ge Zhiheng did not answer. He turned and walked on.

"Come with me. The room's just ahead."

Lan Yingchen did not follow at once.

He stood where he was and thought for about three seconds. In the passage there was only the sound of his own breathing. The little lantern in the niche did not stir.

The point of what Ge Zhiheng had said, Lan Yingchen caught it. "Found" — Ge Zhiheng had put the subject somewhere outside Lan Yingchen himself. The fast one was at the other end of the passage, the thing that had sent the letter. Across those eight days it was that thing exerting itself, not him walking quickly.

Something more urgent than the Academy's normal procedure had reached out and hauled him in from eight days out.

Lan Yingchen checked the letter in his coat's inside pocket once more. The letter was still there.

He caught up with Ge Zhiheng.

【Ch. 004 End · the Donghuan Earth-God Shrine → the Myriad Academy corridor → the Main Court → the Eastern College passage】