第 004 Ch.| The Dog-Bark Line

The seam was 1.5 meters wide. They turned sideways and squeezed through.

He Sanjin went first, Shen Zhaoye behind. The miner's headlamp threw light against the rock on both sides of the seam, and on the surface of the stone you could see very shallow, regular gouges—like something had shaved them out one piece at a time, except the direction of the gouges didn't match the angle of human cutting. It looked more like something had raked them out, over and over, with claws or teeth. The gouges sat about 4 to 5 centimeters apart. Shen Zhaoye held his finger up against them—about the width of his own finger.

Human fingers couldn't scratch stone this evenly.

"How wide's the seam?" He Sanjin asked.

"1.5 meters," Shen Zhaoye said.

"A man can pass. A horse can't," He Sanjin said.

"It wasn't made for people to walk through."

"Made for what to walk through?"

Shen Zhaoye didn't answer. He Sanjin waited 3 seconds, then finished it himself. "Fine. I get it. You don't want to scare me."

"If I scared you, would you leave?"

"No," He Sanjin said. "But don't scare me anyway."

The seam ran on for about 80 meters, then opened up all at once. Ahead was still a gully, but the width widened from 1.5 meters to about 3. The ground changed from loose gravel to flat-laid stone.

The paving was blue-gray flagstone—laid exactly the way the stone-slab lane back in the village was laid: joints running northeast to southwest.

Shen Zhaoye crouched and ran a hand over the stone surface. It had been worn smooth, but the center was smoother than the sides—which meant whoever walked here didn't spread out, they stuck to that one line down the middle. Walking the center like that was usually a "procession" formation.

"The people of the Ge village—were they moved out through this gully?" He Sanjin said.

"Maybe not moved," Shen Zhaoye said. "Maybe driven out."

"Driven out why?"

"They knew too much."

---

The gully was V-shaped.

The rock walls on both sides were steep, the highest points over 20 meters. The floor was about 3 meters wide, sloping faintly downward as it went in—by Shen Zhaoye's eye, dropping about 3 meters for every 100.

They didn't walk fast. Shen Zhaoye watched the compass as he went. The needle had been trembling between one and two degrees ever since they'd entered the seam, same as the stretch of mountain trail that morning—the "earth-vein breathing" state. No sudden jump.

After about a kilometer, Shen Zhaoye stopped.

"He."

"Mm."

"What do you hear?"

He Sanjin switched off his headlamp, closed his eyes, and listened for 5 seconds.

"I don't hear anything."

"Birds?" Shen Zhaoye said. "This altitude in the Qinling, this season, this hour—there should be at least three kinds of birdsong."

He Sanjin opened his eyes again.

"No birds. No insects either. And the wind stopped even earlier."

The wind was something Shen Zhaoye hadn't caught right away—after they'd entered the gully the mountain wind outside was blocked, and inside it was almost dead still. But no wind wouldn't quiet the insects. Insects had nothing to do with wind.

For the insects going silent, Shen Zhaoye could think of two possibilities: a higher-order predator nearby; or the field of this place was something even insects wouldn't go near.

In the Dragon-Stirring Fragment, First Half, he'd seen a note in his grandfather's hand: where insects don't sing, something sleeps in the earth.

Meaning: something large is asleep underground.

Shen Zhaoye also noticed the surface vegetation. The moss along the rock walls was paler in color, at least one shade lighter than the deep green outside the gully. Moss was sensitive to humidity; pale color usually meant the humidity was unstable—maybe some kind of gas was moving through the place, but not water vapor.

He scraped off a patch of moss with the tip of his sapper spade and brought it under the headlamp.

"He," Shen Zhaoye said.

"Mm."

"This moss isn't right."

"How?"

"The rhizoids are turning white." Shen Zhaoye flipped the moss over. "Moss absorbs water through its whole body—the rhizoids shouldn't lose color. Fading like this means it's been dry a long time. But this season in the Qinling, the stone faces dew over morning and night. This stone has no dew marks at all."

Shen Zhaoye pressed his hand flat against the spot where he'd scraped the moss away.

The stone's temperature was close to his palm's—not the way stone should feel in the morning.

"The stone's about as warm as my hand."

"Sun's only been up a little while," He Sanjin said. "Stone needs a full day of sun to get this warm."

"Right," Shen Zhaoye said. "My guess—there's a heat source underground. The dew got steamed off, the rhizoids baked white."

He Sanjin took out a cigarette. Didn't light it.

"We're not inside a tomb," he said. "So why's it warm underground?"

Shen Zhaoye didn't answer.

---

On the Ge family's map, the first little cross-mark, by Shen Zhaoye's estimate, should sit about a kilometer and a half in from the seam.

They kept walking.

The paving underfoot began to change. The originally regular blue-gray flagstones broke off at a certain point—ahead, the joints turned to run east-west, a different angle from the earlier northeast-southwest.

At the break, a small mound of earth sat on the ground.

The mound was new—three years old at most. Not large, not even up to Shen Zhaoye's knee. A flat stone was pressed on top of it.

He Sanjin lifted the stone away.

Underneath was a paper slip. Badly weathered, the writing almost illegible, but two characters could be made out:

First

The slip was rice paper, the writing done with a brush, the ink faded but the strength of the stroke still readable—written by someone who'd practiced calligraphy for over ten years. Shen Zhaoye held the slip up at an angle to the headlamp and could see very faint traces on the back, gone over and over—as if it had been written, blotted out, written again. What remained at the end, the word "First," was a considered choice.

Not a mark someone had scrawled offhand.

"Old Ge's father left 'bone' at the last cross," Shen Zhaoye said. "So if the Ge family laid the first cross too—"

"Then somebody from the Ge family laid down all seven?" He Sanjin said.

"At least someone who knew the rules and walked the full seven by the rules." Shen Zhaoye tucked the slip into his notebook. "But Old Ge said—his grandfather went into the gully, left nothing, never came back; his father went in once, left the bone, brought a shoe back out; he himself never went in. Three generations of Ge, and between them they left only one thing."

"So who left the other six."

Shen Zhaoye didn't answer.

Under the slip, half buried in the earth—

was a bronze mirror.

About 15 centimeters across. The mirror face down, the back up. The pattern on the back was blurred by age, but at the center was a raised knob. Shen Zhaoye had never seen the shape in any period's catalog of bronze mirrors—not the round knob of the Han, not the twin knobs of the Tang.

The knob's form was more like some animal coiled, though the detail had worn away. Shen Zhaoye angled the headlamp across the knob, and in the raking light he could just make out its outline—the way it coiled was the same as the winged scale-pattern motif he'd seen earlier on the broken stone pillar.

Head down, tail up, wings folded flat against the body on both sides.

A marker from the same system.

"Not the Ge family's 'gold,'" Shen Zhaoye said.

"Not laid by the Ge family?" He Sanjin said.

"Old Ge said the seven things match the seven crosses. The first cross gets 'gold.'" Shen Zhaoye lifted the bronze mirror carefully and weighed it in his hand. "This mirror's about an ounce."

"An ounce?" He Sanjin said. "Then it isn't gold."

"Bronze," Shen Zhaoye said. "In the Ge family's seven things, 'gold' and 'bronze' are two separate items—gold is gold, bronze is bronze. A bronze mirror set at the first cross, where gold's supposed to go, is wrong by the Ge family's rules."

He Sanjin stopped, took the cigarette down from behind his ear, didn't light it.

"Wrong—meaning what?"

"Meaning this mirror wasn't laid by the Ge family," Shen Zhaoye said. "It was someone else. Someone who knew the seven crosses, knew the seven things—but didn't know gold and bronze were separate. Or knew, and mixed it in on purpose."

Shen Zhaoye turned the bronze mirror over and looked at the face.

The face was brighter than the back.

It shouldn't have been—a bronze mirror buried for who knows how many decades, the face should be badly oxidized. But the face of this one looked like it had been wiped, the reflectivity startlingly high.

Shen Zhaoye put the miner's headlamp on the face and watched the reflected spot of light.

The spot didn't land on his face.

---

Shen Zhaoye turned the mirror face slowly. The spot followed, but its path was wrong—an ordinary mirror's spot moves along a surface (rock wall, ground, a face), but this spot drifted out into the air, to a point about 2 meters from him, and stopped.

At that point, there was nothing he could see.

Shen Zhaoye turned the face again to confirm it wasn't an illusion. The spot left, went around, and came back to that same point in the air.

Like there was something in the air only the mirror could see.

"He," Shen Zhaoye called.

"Mm?"

"Come look at this."

He Sanjin came over. Shen Zhaoye tilted the mirror face up slightly; the spot moved along its path through the air and finally settled on a point about 1.8 meters above the ground.

"The spot shouldn't stop in midair," He Sanjin said.

"Right. Unless there's something at that point."

He Sanjin put out a hand and grabbed at where the spot was.

He caught nothing.

Shen Zhaoye set the mirror on the mound, walked over to the spot himself, and felt around with his hand. His fingers passed through the spot with no resistance at all.

But he noticed—when his fingers passed through that point, the air had a faint coolness, like a low-temperature draft going by.

Not cold. Maybe a change in field density—only "maybe"; he hadn't measured yet.

He took the dragon-seeking compass from his pocket and raised it to the height of the spot.

The needle swung 40 degrees counterclockwise.

40 degrees—8 times the 5 degrees at the shrine, almost 3 times the 15 degrees going through the tunnel. Shen Zhaoye had never seen this reading anywhere in the Dragon-Stirring Fragment, First Half.

He moved the compass 50 centimeters out from the spot.

The needle returned to its one-to-two-degree tremble.

He moved it 50 centimeters back toward the spot.

The needle jumped to 40 again.

In and out twice. The reading held.

But one point only proved there was a "point" here; it proved nothing about what shape that point connected into. Shen Zhaoye moved the compass 50 centimeters above the spot, then 50 below, then 50 to each side—every time it crossed the height and axis of the spot, the needle jumped 40 degrees; away from it, back to one or two.

He walked to a position 2 meters off to the side of the spot, held the compass vertically, and brought it slowly up from the ground.

At 1.8 meters off the ground, the needle jumped 40 again.

Higher up, past 3 meters, it steadied.

He did it again 2 meters off the other side of the spot—same thing, the jump at 1.8 meters, steady above 3.

Three vertical axes, all jumping in roughly the same height band. But Shen Zhaoye hadn't tested whether the gaps between the axes were continuous, nor any positions farther out beyond the three.

Field-density discontinuity band. Vertical. Three axes, all consistent.
Height band roughly 1.8 to 3 meters, edge width estimated under 10 cm.
Shape unconfirmed—could form a single plane, could be parallel vertical curtains.
Mirror-visible, compass-measurable, invisible to the eye.

"The Dog-Bark Line," Shen Zhaoye said.

"Huh?" He Sanjin said.

"Old Ge said the dog starts barking at a certain spot, then barks once more and runs," Shen Zhaoye said. "My guess—a dog's hearing is broad, it can pick up infrasound. If there's something on this band putting out infrasound, the dog would catch it before a man would."

"We're standing on that band right now?"

"Probably," Shen Zhaoye said. "I haven't measured the shape enough yet—maybe it connects into a plane, maybe not. But the mirror throws a spot at all these points, and the compass jumps the same reading on all these axes, so at least these spots are the same thing."

He paused.

"As for what's on the other side—my guess, what you step into may not be the same world."

---

He Sanjin didn't speak right away.

He took a cigarette from his pocket, lit it, drew a mouthful, breathed it out.

The smoke left his mouth, drifting upward along its usual path for about half a second.

Then it stopped and hung there, not moving.

The spot where it hung was the same point Shen Zhaoye had just measured with the mirror.

"Hell," He Sanjin said.

He took a step to the side and breathed out again. The second mouthful didn't stop—it drifted off the way wind should carry it.

Only on the line that crossed the spot did the smoke stop.

He Sanjin stubbed the cigarette out on the blue-gray flagstone underfoot and twisted it twice with his sole.

"Zhaoye," he said. "If you're going in, you tell me one thing first."

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me how you plan to cross."

Shen Zhaoye picked the bronze mirror up, wrapped it in cloth, and stowed it in an inside coat pocket.

He filled the hole he'd dug back in, pressed the flat stone back into place, restored the mound to how it was. The mirror taken, the slip into the notebook—the rest of what was under the mound, he didn't keep digging.

He'd stopped the moment he hit the mirror. Dig deeper and he'd leave a trace, tell whoever came after, someone was here, and they found it.

"Ge family rule—you bring something out of the mountain, you leave one thing behind," Shen Zhaoye said. "But Old Ge never said whether something you pick up on the way in counts."

He Sanjin gave him a look.

"You want to take this mirror across the line?"

"No. I want to see what happens."

He tore a sheet from his notebook, balled it up, and threw it at the spot.

As the wad passed through that point, its path shifted by 3 centimeters—like some unseen, directional current had nudged it.

The wad landed on the flagstone on the far side of the spot.

Shen Zhaoye walked over and picked it up.

The wad felt different from before—the surface cooler to the touch, maybe three degrees lower.

Shen Zhaoye put the wad back in his pocket.

"I go first," he said. "You wait here 5 minutes. I don't come back, you head to the village, find Old Ge, tell him we sited the third kind of vault right."

He Sanjin froze for 1 second.

"Sited it right?"

"Sited it right," Shen Zhaoye said.

He Sanjin didn't move at once. He crouched, relit the half-smoked cigarette, drew deep. This time he steered the smoke away from the spot, breathing it out behind Shen Zhaoye's back.

"5 minutes," He Sanjin said. "You go past 5 and I'm coming after you."

"Don't come after me," Shen Zhaoye said.

"Why?"

"If I'm gone past 5 minutes, it means I can't get back. You come after me and you can't get back either. Then nobody returns to the village and Old Ge never knows we crossed this line."

He Sanjin looked at him, said nothing.

Two seconds passed.

"5 minutes," He Sanjin repeated.

Shen Zhaoye dimmed the headlamp one notch, drew a deep breath, and walked toward the spot.

A half-step from it, he stopped. He put a hand out, forward, slowly—

The instant his fingertips met the spot, no resistance, but a very light sensation, like a ripple spreading on water, traveled up from his fingertips.

He pushed his whole hand in.

Nothing.

He pushed the other hand in too. From the wrists down, he felt a thin layer of field density against his skin, spreading like a water-ripple, but no resistance.

Shen Zhaoye took a step forward.

He Sanjin, standing where Shen Zhaoye had been, watched—the instant Shen Zhaoye's body crossed the spot—

the half of him past the spot and the half of him this side of it: the direction of his shadow changed.

The angle between the two directions was 70 degrees.

【Ch. 004 End · inside the gully's stone seam → the Dog-Bark Line crossing point】