Ch. 007| Those Who Go In Don't Come Back

That gap had split open in Lin Que's heart days ago, and it would not close.

By day he cleared vats, mended pills, and dealt with Shopkeeper Zhou; by night he mended a Death-Black Pill or two—life went on as before. But the moment he grew still, that faint heat would well up beneath his left eye, very thin, like a thread with one end tied to his eye and the other tied to that gap in the pauper's burial ground west of the city, tugging gently.

That faint "answering"—once he had felt it, he could never wipe it away again.

He had gone to the western edge of the city twice, and neither time had he dared draw near; he hid far off, watching from an earthen slope outside the pauper's burial ground.

The first time, he saw a stray dog slinking through the brush toward the gap. A few steps from it, the dog suddenly froze, every hair on its body bristling, and bolted back with its tail clamped down for dear life—a beast's nose is keener than a man's; it could not "see" the gap, yet it could "feel" that the place was deadly.

The dog shot off a long way, then turned and barked wildly at that stretch of wasteland, its fur on end, refusing to come any closer. Watching it, Lin Que felt colder still—even a beast knew to flee, yet the 3 dead rogue cultivators had not even gotten the chance to flee. A man has a whole body of cultivation more than a beast, and yet lacks that beast's instinct for death.

The second time, he saw an old scavenging woman, basket on her arm, tottering deep into the burial ground to gather copper nails from rotted coffins. The direction she walked was straight toward the gap.

Lin Que's heart leapt into his throat.

He could not shout "there's a man-eating gap over there"—no one would believe him, and shouting would drag him in too. He picked up a stone by his foot, circled to the old woman's side, and hurled it with all his strength into the brush on her other side. The stone crashed down with a clatter, startling the birds in the thicket up into the air. The old woman jumped, grumbling and cursing, changed her course toward the noise, and skirted the gap.

Hiding behind the earthen slope, Lin Que's back was soaked in sweat.

Both times, he had seen the same thing clearly: that gap, a beast could avoid, but a man could not. Because a man could not see it. An ordinary person could walk right up to it without sensing the slightest thing amiss, take one step in, and be gone, clean and whole.

He understood the reasoning now. What remained was a single question: did he go in or not?

To go in was to wager his life. That gap had eaten 3 rogue cultivators, and even beasts dared not approach.

Not to go in, and the thing that answered him he would never, in his whole life, know for what it was. And Black Wind Hall was looking for him, the Xuanzhao Sect's false charge was still hung round his neck, and his days of saving to leave the market grew tighter with each one. If that gap truly held something his eyes could see and his hands could carry back—then it might be the one chance in his whole life he could ever seize, the one chance enough to turn his fortunes around.

He had reckoned the account in his heart. A mending formula sold for two or three spirit stones a sheet; to save up the 300 needed for an outer-gate examination token would take at least 1 year. In that 1 year, Black Wind Hall's Sun Heng need catch him only once, the Xuanzhao Sect's Shen Ningshuang need make that false charge stick only once, and his life would be at its end. One year was too long; he might not be able to wait it out.

But if the thing inside that gap could truly be brought out, then perhaps once would be enough.

Yet he could not go charging in with nothing but a pair of eyes and a beating heart. He had to know first whether such a place could be entered, how to enter it, and what he would meet once inside.

In the whole market, there was only one person he could ask.

---

That night he finished mending a broken formula and took it to Well-Bottom Lane. Han Bosheng was crouched against the wall as always; he took the formula and tossed Lin Que the spirit stones he was owed.

Lin Que was in no hurry to go.

"Old Han." He crouched down, close beside the old man, and said as if in passing, "I hear the pauper's burial ground west of the city hasn't been peaceful lately. A few rogue cultivators dead, dead clean and whole, and even the Xuanzhao Sect can't get to the bottom of it."

The hand with which Han Bosheng was tipping back his wine paused for a moment.

Only a moment—then, as if nothing had happened, he tipped it back: "People die at burial grounds. Strange?"

"The strange part's the way of dying." Lin Que said slowly. "No wounds on the body, meridians not burst, eyes open. As if they'd run into something they couldn't see."

It went quiet for a spell at the foot of the wall.

The old man's clouded eyes settled, for the first time, squarely on Lin Que's face, and looked for a long, long while—long enough to raise the hairs on the back of Lin Que's neck.

"Boy," Han Bosheng suddenly dropped his voice, the everyday muddle in it gone, "you've seen it."

Lin Que did not answer. But neither did he deny it.

Han Bosheng let out a long breath reeking of wine, as if breathing out something pent up in his chest for many years.

"That 'place I shouldn't have gone into' when I was young," the old man began slowly, "was this kind of place. In the ground, in the hills, in old houses—now and then one splits open. Other people can't see it; only a very few, born that way, can."

In his clouded eyes rose a sliver of an old, old dread.

"Inside that place, there are things. Some are treasures, fortunes that can lift a man to the heavens in a single step; some are death. Of the 7 who went in with me back then, all of us went for the treasures. The one who came out alive was just me."

As the old man said this, his voice was frighteningly level, yet the hand holding the wine gourd was trembling faintly.

"The first one reached out to grab a piece of jade floating in midair. The moment his fingers touched it, his whole arm was just gone, clean at the root, no blood. He looked down at his severed shoulder, and before he'd even come to his senses, he crumpled. The second went to pull him, slipped underfoot, and fell into a crack none of us had seen, without even time to make a sound." Han Bosheng took another pull of wine. "7 men, and from going in to only me left was less than the time it takes to eat a meal. How did I get out? I didn't dare take a single thing; I backed out hugging the very footprints I'd come in on, step by step. This life of mine, I got back by 'not being greedy.'"

He fixed his gaze on Lin Que and added one more thing: "And there's something else, more important than anything. In a place like that, now and then something will 'answer' you, as if it knows you, as if it's calling you. The more it calls you, the more you must not take—a crack that calls to a man is the crack that most wants to keep him."

Lin Que's heart sank, inch by inch.

"You want to go in, don't you?" Han Bosheng looked at him. "I can't stop you. No one who can see that crack has ever been stopped—the crack calls to you, like a thread tied to your eye, tugging it day and night. I understand."

Lin Que's pupils contracted. "Like a thread tied to your eye"—this was exactly what he had felt these past days.

"I'll only tell you a few things to keep you alive." Han Bosheng held out a withered finger. "First, don't be greedy. When you see a treasure, look first how far it is from you, whether you can get back or not; if you can't get back, no matter how valuable it is, don't reach for it. Second, don't linger. The air of that place harms a man if you take it in too long—it harms the places you can't see. Third, before you go in, leave yourself a way out, and burn the way you came into your memory—going in doesn't mean coming out."

He drew back his hand and became again that muddled old man: "Remember it, and you may yet keep your life. Forget it, and you'll be the fourth body at the pauper's burial ground."

Lin Que carved these few words into his heart, one character at a time.

As he was leaving, Han Bosheng suddenly called him back: "Boy." Lin Que turned. The old man looked at him, that sliver of dread still unfaded in his clouded eyes: "If you really go in, and really come out alive, don't tell a single soul what you saw or what you took. In this market, the people who'll kill for that kind of thing are crueler than that crack."

---

After he went back, he began to prepare.

He found a coil of thin hemp rope, long enough that one end could be tied to that old pagoda tree at the mouth of the burial ground and the other fastened at his own waist—this was the way out Han Bosheng had spoken of. He mended 5 Death-Black Pills and hid them on his person, so that if his qi were harmed inside, he could mend a breath of it. He whittled a dozen or so wooden tags, meaning to plant them along the way and mark the path back out. He also tucked away Hu Biao's rush pill and half a ration of dry food.

In his rented room, he checked these things over again and again. He tested the rope and tested it once more, afraid it would break partway; the wooden tags he whittled pointed at one end and flat at the other—the point good for planting, the flat end good for recognizing; the 5 mended pills he wrapped separately in oilpaper, afraid they'd be crushed together. He even faced the wall and, eyes shut, rehearsed it several times over: how to pay out the rope, how to plant the tags, how to back out along the rope when something felt wrong.

It was not that he was unafraid. He was very afraid. But the more afraid he was, the finer his preparations. Those 3 life-saving words of Han Bosheng's he turned over and over for a whole night: don't be greedy, don't linger, leave a way out. In the end they meant the same one thing—you go in in order to come out.

He told no one. Not Lai San, not Lame Yu; and though Han Bosheng knew, he had not told him which day he would go. One more person knowing was one more measure of the risk it would leak out.

He set the day for 3 days later. Shen Ningshuang was still investigating those few deaths, and that she would trace them to the burial ground was only a matter of time; if she set people there first, he would have no chance left. Black Wind Hall's Sun Heng was also going about asking after the "cursed-pill apothecary boy"; his days of hiding in the market were few.

If he was going in, he had to go soon.

---

3 days later, before the sky had lightened, Lin Que slipped past everyone's eyes and reached the pauper's burial ground west of the city.

Beneath the old pagoda tree, he tied one end of the hemp rope tight and fastened the other at his waist, gave it a tug—solid. The wooden tags, the pills, the dry food, were all on him.

Treading the dew, step by step, he walked up to the edge of that empty stretch of wasteland.

His left eye warmed, and that gap went "wrong" again, the air twisting, the grass leaning toward that one spot. Deep in the gap, that faint thing was still answering—a heat, an answer—as if waiting for him.

Lin Que drew a deep breath.

For the first time in his life, he was about to walk into a place from which those who go in do not come back.

His toes halted at the edge of the wasteland, only half a step from that twisting air. The hemp rope hung heavy at his waist, the one tie between him and the world behind him. In his heart he went through Han Bosheng's 3 words once more, and felt again for the mended pills and the wooden tags against his body.

Behind him was the market slowly brightening, was Black Wind Hall, was the Xuanzhao Sect, was a dead end narrowing the longer he walked it. Before him was this man-eating crack, and that faint thing in the crack that he could see and that others, most likely, could not. Those who could see this crack were few to begin with, and those who dared go in fewer still; he was not necessarily stronger than those men—only that he had readied a rope, readied wooden tags, and kept Han Bosheng's three life-saving words in mind—so that, compared to those who blundered in empty-handed, he held those few more measures of hope for coming out alive.

He thought of Han Bosheng's words, "a crack that calls to a man is the crack that most wants to keep him." Now he understood—this crack had long since called him in, and it was not for him to stop himself.

He raised his foot.

【Ch. 007 End · Well-Bottom Lane → the pauper's burial ground west of the city】