Ch. 003| Where the Royal House Fled South

Four in the morning.

Shen Zhaoye woke.

No one had disturbed him, and there'd been no dream—that thing inside him that kept time had called him awake on its own. One of the aftereffects of long stretches spent in tombs: however worn out he'd been the night before, four in the morning was the bell his body clock had set. His grandfather called it "the fenjin man's tail of the Rat Hour"—walk enough tombs and a man gets calibrated by the energy fields to a fixed time.

The bamboo cot was a little hard. He Sanjin had his back to him, breathing steady but slow—truly asleep.

Shen Zhaoye didn't get up at once. He lay there and ran back over what he'd seen before the shrine the night before at the third mark of the Pig Hour.

The characterless stele before the shrine, ground down to the stroke-remnants of "Emperor's Gate."

The shrine doors had never been opened—he'd crouched outside for 20 minutes, and that muffled thud inside the shrine hadn't sounded again, nor had the doors moved.

Setting the two together and thinking it over, he arrived at a conclusion: there had to be a passage beneath that shrine—an entrance running to the earth-veins, one no person used.

If so, that shrine wasn't a shrine. It was a lid over a breath-vent.

Shen Zhaoye noted the conclusion in his head, didn't write it into the notebook.

Some things, once written down, get seen by others.

Nearly five outside. There was the sound of a fire being lit in the main hall—Old Ge was up.

Shen Zhaoye lifted the hemp quilt off the bamboo cot and sat up gently. He Sanjin grunted, rolled over, and slept on.

Shen Zhaoye pushed open the inner-room door. Old Ge was crouched before the earthen stove in a corner of the hall, stirring the fire with a sprig of pinewood. The flame was already up, and fine bubbles were starting at the bottom of the iron kettle in the stove.

"You're up early," Old Ge said.

"The shoe you told me about," Shen Zhaoye said.

Old Ge glanced at him, pushed the pine sprig into the stove mouth, and stood.

"Come with me."

---

The shrine hall was at the village's tail, three houses down from the brick house Old Ge lived in.

Getting there meant crossing a flagstone lane. The flags were bluestone slabs, worn slick by foot traffic. Shen Zhaoye watched the joints between the flags as he walked—every slab's seam ran the same direction, northeast to southwest. This hadn't been laid at random; it was aligned to some axis. Whoever in the village understood stonework would know how that axis was to be laid.

Old Ge's generation hadn't laid this lane. Whoever laid it was earlier than even his grandfather.

The hall door was low, only half his height; getting in meant stooping.

Inside was cleaner than Shen Zhaoye had thought. A single offering table at the center, no spirit tablet on it, only a coarse porcelain bowl holding three cooked grains of rice. To the side of the offering table, a small woven rattan box.

Old Ge opened the box.

Inside there was only a single shoe.

Embroidered, a woman's, single, left foot. The sole worn badly, the embroidery on the upper a white crane on a blue-green ground, ancient, the threads of the crane already gone yellow.

"The year my grandfather died was 1923," Old Ge said. "He died in the gully; the body never came back. Only this shoe was brought back from the gully. The shoe wasn't like this to begin with—"

Old Ge turned the shoe over carefully, sole up.

On the outer side of the sole was an extremely fine mark, like something had bitten it.

"There's something inside the shoe," Old Ge said.

Shen Zhaoye took tweezers from his pocket.

From inside the shoe he drew out a sliver of grayish-white bone, about 1 centimeter long.

The bone shard wasn't heavy, but its density was higher than common animal bone. Shen Zhaoye set it in his palm and shone the miner's headlamp across it from the side.

The shard's surface had gnaw marks. But the manner of the gnawing was wrong—insects leave pitted points, rodents leave spiral grooves. This mark was parallel, with direction—like something had scraped it over and over with its teeth from one fixed angle.

"My father said this was chewed by something," Old Ge said.

Shen Zhaoye didn't answer. He put the shard back in the shoe, turned the shoe carefully right-side up, set it back in the rattan box.

"Uncle Ge," he said, "this shoe's embroidery isn't late-Qing or Republican."

Old Ge looked at him.

"It's earlier," Shen Zhaoye said. "Early Qing, or the end of the Ming. My grandfather's grandfather embroidered this kind of flower, and left a master pattern with the Shen family."

Old Ge said nothing, closed the rattan box.

---

Back at the brick house, He Sanjin was awake.

"I heard the thud in the middle of the night," He Sanjin said as he dressed. "That sound from the shrine."

"I went and looked," Shen Zhaoye said. "The shrine doors didn't open."

"Then how'd the sound get out."

"Under the shrine—there's maybe another mouth."

He Sanjin stopped 3 seconds, finished his buttons, looked at Shen Zhaoye.

"The gully we're going into—does it connect under the shrine?"

"I don't know," Shen Zhaoye said. "But I can guess."

"Guess."

"It connects."

He Sanjin lit a cigarette. "Wonderful. The place I slept last night had a breath-vent right under it."

Old Ge came in from the main hall, a sheet of sheepskin paper in his hand, worn dark brown by the years.

"My grandfather left this," Old Ge said. "My father passed it to me by mouth; I pass it to you by mouth. Once it's passed, it's gone. Village rule."

The paper lay spread on the table. Hand-drawn, in charcoal. Old Ge pointed out each mark to Shen Zhaoye: the village shrine a cross, the two mountain hollows one a single vertical stroke, one a double; the dry gully a U-shape; the broken stone pillar an X. Scattered along both sides of the gully were seven small crosses.

"Those seven crosses are where things were dropped," Old Ge said. "We Ges have a rule for going into the mountains—whatever you carry in, on the way out you drop one thing at one of the seven spots. Seven kinds: gold, silver, copper, iron, jade, cloth, and the last is bone."

"What happens if you don't drop?" Shen Zhaoye asked.

"My grandfather was the one who didn't drop," Old Ge said.

"What did your father drop?"

"Bone," Old Ge said. "He dropped it at the last cross, to bring my grandfather's shoe back."

Shen Zhaoye looked at the map and compared it against his own one-to-two-hundred-thousand topographic map.

The lay of the mountains on the two maps matched so precisely he had to stop and look again. The Ge grandfather understood the fenjin craft. At the least he understood the land-survey method in the craft's teachings—enough to draw the lay of the mountains in charcoal to a degree nearly identical with modern surveying.

This wasn't something an ordinary mountain-village elder could draw.

"Uncle Ge," Shen Zhaoye said. "Did your grandfather and my family ever cross paths?"

Old Ge rolled the map up and handed it to him.

"He never mentioned your family," Old Ge said. "But he told my father, if anyone surnamed Shen ever comes to the village, give him this map—and don't ask him for money."

Shen Zhaoye tucked the map into the inner pocket of his coat.

Old Ge took the embroidered shoe out of the rattan box again, wrapped it in cloth, and handed it to Shen Zhaoye.

"Take it," Old Ge said. "My father never said how to use it, only said, 'The shoe has to go back to where the shoe was supposed to be.'"

Shen Zhaoye took it. The cloth bundle wasn't heavy.

---

Less than an hour after the sun came out, the three of them left the village.

They walked a mountain trail. The grade was gentle, but the path wasn't straight, winding along the contour lines. Shen Zhaoye watched the compass as he walked—the needle trembled faintly between 1 and 2 degrees, as if listening for something.

Not the fifteen-degree wide swing of entering the breath-vent, nor the five-degree still deflection before the shrine. It was a needle-state Shen Zhaoye had seen in the Dragon-Stirring Fragment, First Half but had never once met in the field.

His grandfather had written a line of small print on that page: "The needle trembling faintly—that's the earth-vein breathing."

About 40 minutes' walk brought them to the first mountain hollow.

Old Ge stopped.

From his pocket he drew 3 sticks of incense, a yellow talisman, and a small bronze bell.

He planted the incense in the earthen mound at the hollow's mouth. The yellow talisman he lit on the flame of the 3 incense sticks, burned to ash, and scattered the ash into the cracks at the hollow's mouth. The bronze bell he shook three times, then put back in his pocket.

"I see you off to here," Old Ge said.

"Thanks, Uncle Ge," He Sanjin said.

"Don't look back at me," Old Ge said. "Whatever sound there is behind me, neither of you turn around."

Shen Zhaoye nodded.

Old Ge turned and walked back the way they'd come. Shen Zhaoye and He Sanjin crossed the hollow's mouth and went down the other side.

About ten steps out, He Sanjin said in a low voice: "What's he doing behind us right now?"

"I don't know," Shen Zhaoye said. "Uncle Ge didn't want us turning back—he must have his reason."

"I kind of want to turn around."

"So do I," Shen Zhaoye said. "Don't."

Past the first mountain hollow, the ground suddenly opened out.

Shen Zhaoye stood at the edge of the open ground and looked for about 2 minutes. River-valley deposits leave cobbles; the down-dropped edge of a fault has a fracture zone—this stretch of ground had neither. Under the thin grass was a packed soil layer bearing the marks of being tamped by human hands.

Someone had leveled the mountaintop flat.

The open ground was about one hundred 50 meters square, a natural rock wall to the north, joining the dry gully to the south.

"Leveled," Shen Zhaoye said.

He Sanjin drew on his cigarette. "How long ago?"

"At least two thousand years," Shen Zhaoye said. "The depth of the grass roots, the degree the soil layer's hardened, the water-scour marks at the edges—the nearest dynasty they can match to is before the Han."

"Before the Han?"

"Qin, or earlier."

He Sanjin flicked his ash into the grass at the edge of the open ground, said nothing.

The two went down off the open ground and crossed the second mountain hollow. The second hollow was deeper than the first, its mouth narrow, the rock walls on both sides steep—they had to go through sideways.

Past the second mountain hollow was the dry gully.

---

The dry gully was a U-shape. Thirty meters wide, 2 meters deep, the bed surface paved over with bluestone. The bluestone had been long ground by river water, corners rounded, water-pattern marks on the surface. But this river had been dry a long time—there were no cobbles at all down the center of the bed, no alluvial layer either.

Only bluestone. Slab joined to slab, laid very flat.

Shen Zhaoye walked to the center of the bed and tapped a bluestone lightly with the handle of the sapper spade.

"Tock."

Hollow.

"Hm?" He Sanjin came over and gave one a tap too.

"Tock."

Shen Zhaoye walked 20 meters along the bed, tapping every three steps. Every one was hollow.

"Not a river," he said. "A channel."

"A channel?" He Sanjin said.

"A man-made channel, covered over with slabs," Shen Zhaoye said. "Hollow underneath—there should still be a watercourse structure. What we're standing on isn't a riverbed; it's the channel's roof."

"A channel from two thousand years ago?"

"Earlier than that," Shen Zhaoye said. "For pre-Qin, pre-Han hydraulic work to reach this scale, there's only one possibility."

He Sanjin waited for him to finish.

Shen Zhaoye set the compass on the bluestone.

The needle didn't move.

"Imperial works," Shen Zhaoye said.

At the end of the dry gully, they saw the broken stone pillar.

Not a pillar. A broken stone column. About 5 meters tall, the upper half fallen to the ground, the lower half still standing.

The standing section was a single block of bluish-gray granite, its base buried in the bed's bluestone, the joint a mortise-and-tenon—no cement and no mortar.

Shen Zhaoye walked up before the standing section and tilted the miner's headlamp upward at a slant.

There was carving on the column's body. Badly weathered, but legible.

What was carved was a coiled thing with a scale pattern.

But it had two wings.

"A dragon?" He Sanjin said.

Shen Zhaoye didn't answer. That coiled thing did have scales. But the way it coiled was wrong. The Chinese dragon is the looping responding-dragon form, head and tail circling back; the Western Dragon is wings spread wide—this carving matched neither. Its head pointed down, its tail up, its wings folded flat against the sides of its body.

Shen Zhaoye had never seen this posture in any compendium of dragon designs.

As though waiting for something.

Shen Zhaoye traced the shape of this carving and recorded it in the notebook.

Then he walked a full circle around the stone column.

The fallen section of the column lay with its underside against the bed's bluestone. Shen Zhaoye crouched and shone the miner's headlamp onto the column's underside.

There were carved characters on the underside.

Regular script, five characters, but the strokes were strange—the lines uneven in thickness, as if cut with animal bone, not an iron tool.

Shen Zhaoye looked for 3 seconds.

Regular script took shape in the late Eastern Han and matured in the Wei-Jin period. A dry channel from the Qin or earlier couldn't possibly have original regular-script carving beneath it. These five characters were carved later—at least four or five hundred years after the works.

The animal-bone cutting method was still in use by some into the Song; after the Song it grew rare. The upper bound on the later carving's date was roughly the Song.

The earliest regular script could be used maturely to carve stelae was the Wei-Jin; the latest the animal-bone method was still in use was the Song. The later carving happened somewhere between—cut in the Wei-Jin and it was only a few hundred years apart; cut in the Song and it was over a thousand.

Shen Zhaoye traced the carved characters out:

Where the Royal House Fled South

"The royal house fled south?" He Sanjin said. "Which dynasty?"

Shen Zhaoye shook his head.

"In Chinese history, there are records of the royal house fleeing south—the Eastern Jin, the Southern Song," Shen Zhaoye said. "But not a single one of them passed through this gully in the northern foothills of the Qinling."

"Then whose is this?"

"I don't know," Shen Zhaoye said. "But these five characters, and that winged scale-pattern image, and this dry channel we're standing on—"

He stopped a moment.

"Add in the Ge family's shoe, the shrine in the village, the 'Emperor's Gate' stroke-remnants before the shrine. They belong to one system."

He Sanjin pressed the cigarette butt out on the ground and looked behind the stone column.

"Where we're going—it's right behind this column."

Shen Zhaoye looked up.

Behind the column, the gully ran on inward. But the entrance was different now—narrower than either of the two hollows they'd crossed, the rock walls on both sides not like natural formation, more like a fissure pried open by something.

The fissure was about 1.5 meters wide, enough for one person to pass sideways.

Shen Zhaoye took the embroidered shoe out of the cloth bundle and looked at it.

He wrapped it back up and put it away in the luggage bag.

"In we go," Shen Zhaoye said.

【Ch. 003 End · the Ge family shrine hall → before the broken stone pillar】