Ch. 009| Turning Back

Shen Zhaoye stood before the door about 1 minute.

He read the sixteen characters once more.

Whoever enters this door
know the dragon and turn back
hold the mirror and enter
the soul returns at thirty-one

Old Ge had said it—"No matter what sound is behind me, none of you turn around." The gate-verse read "know the dragon and turn back."

Both rules said the same thing: go when it's time to go.

The "gully you shouldn't walk into," handed down by word of mouth from Old Ge's grandfather's generation—three generations, not one of them had walked the gully through, and not because they were cowards. It was because they knew.

And now Shen Zhaoye knew too.

Whoever knows, by the rule, turns back.

He wrapped the bronze mirror back up in cloth and tucked it into his coat's inner pocket. He didn't mean to set the mirror in the recess—nor to leave it before the door. The Ge family rule, "drop one of the things you brought up the mountain," he'd decide how to handle once he was past the dog-bark line.

Dropping something in this gully might just be opening another mechanism for someone else.

Shen Zhaoye did one more thing before the door—he took the fire-spill from his pocket, struck it, lit it, raised it before the door.

The fire-spill's red light fell on the door's face, drawing out long the shadows in the cut strokes of the sixteen seal-script characters.

He wanted to see one thing—whether the door's designer had left another hint beside the line "hold the mirror and enter."

The fire-spill's red-leaning long-wave light had a developing effect on certain ancient "luminescent-mineral incisions." His grandfather had once used the same method to bring out the hidden carving in a Song-dynasty tomb of the Shen family.

But on this door, no luminescent carving surfaced.

Meaning the designer had left no other hidden route. The sixteen characters were the whole rule.

Shen Zhaoye pinched the fire-spill out and put it back in his pocket.

He crouched and, with the tip of the sapper spade, scratched into the dark-green stone before the door a tiny mark, the same shape as the hand-drawn fengshui compass of his Shen family.

Not for the door to see—for himself.

If one day he came back here and saw this mark, he'd know he'd once reached this door. The memory in his head might be "altered" by some means, but the scratch in the stone wouldn't.

Mark made, he returned the spade to his hip.

Shen Zhaoye dialed the miner's headlamp to its dimmest notch and stepped back two paces onto the platform. Then two more. Then, back to the door, started up the steps.

As he retreated, he held no scruple about "not turning around"—that rule was something Old Ge said about "farewells," not about "withdrawing."

But he didn't actually turn around either.

He only used the edge of his vision to make sure the bluestone face of the door stayed still.

---

Up the steps.

Each step 30 centimeters high, and the Han-clerical numbers on the left-hand wall ran the other way this time—rising from zero, climbing toward the passage.

Zero, one, two, three…

At twenty, he reached the passage.

Passing the gate-guards, he stopped about 10 seconds.

The bronze sword in the right-hand gate-guard's grip—before going down the steps, he'd looked at it, the edge wholly free of corrosion. Now he looked again.

First he shone the headlamp straight on, then angled it from three sides.

The blade as a whole was unchanged—the verdigris pattern, the clay grip, the curve of the scabbard, all consistent with before.

But on the middle of the blade, near the scabbard, was a tiny bright patch, as if someone had "wiped" something across it.

The bright patch was about 4 centimeters wide.

Same system as the claw marks.

When he'd gone down the steps, this bright patch hadn't been there.

Meaning during the time he'd spent reading the sixteen characters at the door and peering through the seam at the throne—some "thing" had walked this passage, passed this sword, and grazed the blade once with claws or teeth.

The grazed spot wasn't random—it was the middle of the blade, where a swordsman's hand would rest.

As if something had been trying to "take" this sword.

But the gate-guard's right hand held the clay grip tight; the sword hadn't been taken.

"Wanting to take it but unable to" was itself a signal.

Meaning that "thing"—during the time Shen Zhaoye spent down the steps reading the sixteen characters—had briefly passed the gate-guard, wanted to take the weapon, but couldn't budge it because of the figure's clay structure.

It knew the sword could kill it.

Or, more precisely: it believed the sword could kill it. The clay wouldn't open, so it gave up. But that meant it was "preparing to make contact with something it believed it needed to guard against."

That something, by the timeline, was most likely Shen Zhaoye.

Shen Zhaoye filed the observation in his head. Didn't write it in the notebook.

He went around the gate-guards and on into the figure array.

---

Into the back half of the array—the twenty pairs with counterclockwise scale patterns.

He walked faster than before. He knew the paving's sound-absorbing quality now; the dark-green slab ate seventy percent of his footsteps.

The thirtieth pair, the twenty-ninth, the twenty-eighth…

He counted the figures' numbers under his breath.

At the sixteenth pair, he stopped.

The thirty-first.

From the outside—the figure's position, its shell, the cant of its head—all consistent with when he'd left.

Only the direction of the vertical pupils was different.

When he'd left, the thirty-first's vertical pupils had aligned with the other figures, facing the center axis of the cave.

Now the thirty-first's vertical pupils—faced the bottom of the cave.

Toward the bluestone door.

What the figure "faced" was the spot where Shen Zhaoye had just stood reading the sixteen characters, peering through the seam at the throne.

It had been watching him the whole time.

Shen Zhaoye switched off the miner's headlamp.

The instant the light went off, the figures along both walls within view lit their vertical pupils. The lighting sequence was the same as before—starting from the pair nearest him, spreading toward the far end at light-wave speed. The far end past his sightline, whether it lit, he couldn't confirm.

But this time the direction of the spread within view had reversed.

Before, it spread from "beside him" toward "the bottom of the cave."

This time it spread from "beside him" toward "the cave mouth."

The signal within view was following him.

Shen Zhaoye switched off the light again and ran a reverse test. He deliberately walked two steps toward the bottom of the cave, stopped, then switched off the light.

The vertical pupils within view still lit starting from the pair nearest him, spreading toward "the cave mouth"—unrelated to his position.

Possibly related to the direction he "meant to go"—a working hypothesis, not yet directly verifiable. But if it held, then the signal system wasn't merely passive sensing; it was active inference.

Shen Zhaoye switched the headlamp back on.

Every vertical pupil went dark.

He filed one line in his head—this passage wasn't a pure physical structure; it was a device that could, in some sense, "think." What it "thought" about was whoever entered this cave.

If the device was "thinking," then there was "data" to read. Shen Zhaoye tried a third move—he switched off the miner's headlamp and shut his eyes tight.

Light off, 5 seconds, he opened his eyes again.

No light through his eyelids, no heat, no sound, and the compass needle in his pocket didn't swing either. Whether the vertical pupils had lit in those 5 seconds, he couldn't confirm—a man with his eyes shut couldn't verify "something meant to be seen" in the first place.

He gave up on the move as soon as he'd done it. With no observable synchronized evidence, there was no way to push the signal's nature any further. Shen Zhaoye filed no conclusion in his head, and put nothing in the to-be-verified zone.

He went around behind the thirty-first and shone the miner's headlamp down through the 8-centimeter crown hole.

The face inside the figure—still there.

But the expression had changed.

The first time he'd looked, the lips had been slightly parted.

Now the lips were closed.

---

Shen Zhaoye stood behind the thirty-first about 15 seconds.

He confirmed one thing in his mind—the visible parts of that face: position, skin color, hair ornaments, forehead ornament, silver pin—all exactly as before. The cut at the base of the skull was out of view from this angle, as before.

Only the lips were different.

From parted to closed took the active contraction of muscle.

A dead person's muscle doesn't contract on its own.

Unless—

Shen Zhaoye held the inference a beat in his head, didn't write it in the notebook, didn't write it into the "conclusion zone" in his head either.

Left it in the "to-be-verified zone."

Some things in his head he didn't want to confirm too fast himself.

But he did one thing—

He touched one corner of his handkerchief to the lips of that face and wiped them lightly.

When the corner came away, there was a very faint red on it.

Cinnabar, lip rouge, or blood—three possibilities, indistinguishable by eye. But the color was brighter than what he'd seen before, back at the door.

As if this face had had the color of its lips "touched up" during the time he was away and back.

Who'd painted it—he didn't know. Nor whether it was done with a brush.

He folded the handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. This corner he meant to keep, to analyze the composition in a lab once he was out of the mountains.

He took the headlamp away, turned, and walked toward the cave mouth.

Every step slower than before—he was using his hearing to check whether anything was following behind.

The sound-absorbing quality of the array's back section meant that even if there were footsteps behind him, he couldn't hear them.

He'd walked about 50 meters when he stopped short.

Not because he'd heard anything.

Because he'd seen something.

On the paving underfoot was a set of footprints that hadn't been there when he walked in.

---

The footprints lay on the passage's center axis. Direction—toward the cave mouth.

The same direction Shen Zhaoye had just been walking back.

The footprints' starting point—Shen Zhaoye lit the way behind him stretch by stretch—they vanished about 30 meters back.

Meaning some "thing" had set out from somewhere in the array, following him out toward the cave mouth.

That "thing's" current position was between Shen Zhaoye and the cave mouth.

The shape of the prints was peculiar.

Not the alternating left-right of a human gait.

Two feet side by side—like walking in hops, or like an upright reptile advancing on its hind legs.

The spacing between prints, about 1.2 meters. Farther than an ordinary person's stride.

Between the two prints of each set, a very shallow drag-mark ran along the ground—extending from the middle of the two prints toward the bottom of the cave, about 30 centimeters long.

As if something had been dragged along with the feet.

Maybe a hem, maybe a belly-plate, maybe a tail.

Shen Zhaoye set the miner's headlamp to its brightest notch and looked farther.

The footprints' direction ran on toward the cave mouth.

He crouched and studied the detail of one set of prints.

The shape of the "foot"—five toes clearly placed, the proportions close to a human's, but the middle third toe was about 1 centimeter longer than the other four on either side.

A human's third toe is usually a little shorter than the neighboring second and fourth. This set was the reverse.

Not human. But not entirely not human either.

A kind of "foot that looks a lot like a person's, but with the proportions wrong."

The drag-mark between the two prints—he scraped the surface of it lightly with the tip of the sapper spade.

Inside the mark were extremely fine markings, like ripples on water.

The same pattern as the ripples on the surface of that dark-green slab in the back section of the passage.

Meaning some part of the thing that had dragged through here shared its origin with that slab's surface pattern.

In other words—that dark-green slab "not in any Chinese mineral catalogue" and the "thing" that had just dragged across the paving might be the same system.

The slab was the "material" this group of things used to pave their own road.

Shen Zhaoye added one more line in his head—this passage wasn't simply a "figure array," nor simply a "ceremonial corridor." It was this group of things' "road"—they went from one place to another, always along this one.

He was standing on their road now.

Shen Zhaoye filed the observation in his head.

Then he stood and shone the headlamp on toward the cave mouth a stretch farther.

The footprints' direction ran on toward the cave mouth.

Meaning that "thing" was already between Shen Zhaoye and the cave mouth.

It had blocked his way back.

【Ch. 009 End · before the stone door of the main chamber → on the way back through the figurine array】