Ch. 009| Looting the Treasure

Lin Que crouched in the shadow of the broken wall, his mind racing.

The aberration crawled slowly, but it did not avoid the fractures—it went straight for the broken jade. He would have to go around, to dodge; on foot he could never overtake it. By the time he circled there, that thing would have the jade "guarded" tight.

He had to make that thing leave the broken jade first.

He felt at his sleeve. The wooden markers, the mended pill, half a piece of dry rations… and that one rush pill of Hu Biao's.

The aberration had no eyes; it went by "sensing"—sensing breath, sensing movement. A moment ago it had paused for so long, facing where he hid, because what it sensed was that heat in his eyes.

A pill held qi. The qi of a revived death-black pill was even, while the qi of a rush pill was dry and surging, far fiercer than that of a mended pill.

An idea took shape in Lin Que's mind.

But there was only one rush pill. If he threw it and failed to draw that thing away, he would have no second chance—he could only watch it guard the broken jade to death. He shut his left eye, scalding hot and streaming tears, steadied himself, and measured the bearings over and over in his mind—he had to throw it to a spot between that thing and the broken jade, yet off to the side, to make it turn its head, without drawing it any nearer to the broken jade.

He pinched the rush pill, gathered what little strength his arm had, and hurled it far off, toward a direction away from the broken jade.

The rush pill cut an arc through the deathly silent rift and landed with a crack on a length of broken beam floating in the air. That speck of dry, fierce pill-qi, in this dead place where even color itself had "dissolved," was like a tuft of fire lit in the dark night—glaringly conspicuous.

The aberration's "head" jerked sharply to one side.

It halted its advance toward the broken jade, turned about, and quickened its humping movement toward that tuft of "fire."

It worked.

Lin Que did not move at once. He waited until the aberration had humped forward a few more steps, until its whole "body" had veered toward that tuft of fire, until he was sure it could not turn back for the moment, before he leaned out from the shadow of the broken wall. There was only this one chance. The rush pill's qi would not burn long; once the qi dispersed, that thing would at once remember what it truly guarded.

Lin Que hesitated no longer.

Fixing his eyes on the dense cluster of fractures underfoot, his left eye in fierce pain, he saw each man-eating fracture clearly, and, picking out the thin lines of "solid" ground between fracture and fracture, he darted toward the broken jade step by step, swift yet utterly steady.

The farther forward he went, the denser the fractures grew. By the end, he could scarcely find a single whole patch of "solid" ground underfoot; it was all man-eating fractures crisscrossing, woven into a net. His left eye ached as if it would burst, tears mixed with threads of blood running down, his vision blurring in waves. He could only rely on the last shred of clear sight those eyes had left, finding footholds on that net of death in fissures fine as hair.

For two of those steps he leapt across almost with his eyes shut—it hurt too much to keep them open, so he could only jump blind by the positions he had fixed in memory a moment before. The instant he landed, he did not know whether he had trodden on "solid" ground or stepped into a fracture, until the firm touch came up through his soles and he dared to draw a breath.

A drop of sweat slid down his chin and fell beside his foot—and it too was soundlessly "eaten" by a faint, fine fracture, leaving not even a wet mark. Lin Que looked at the vanished bead of sweat, and his heart went cold—if a man stepped on it, that was just how he would be gone, without a sound. He dared not let his mind drift again; gritting his teeth, he pressed that deadly fear down beneath his feet and went on forward.

Seven or eight steps of distance, and he crossed it as though a lifetime had passed.

At last, he stood before the broken jade.

The jade hung in midair, half a palm in size, and within the lustrous white of its body that wisp of living qi was breathing slowly in and out, opening and closing with the flaw. This close, the "answering" was no longer a mere thread; it had welled up and wrapped his entire left eye.

Lin Que reached out his hand.

The instant his fingertip touched the jade, his left eye went off with a roar—

That blow was less like pain than like something bursting open at the bottom of his eye. In one instant, he "saw" too much.

He saw that within the depths of his own eyes there seemed to lie hidden some trace he could not name, and it stirred, from afar, together with that flaw upon the jade, like two things separated by a vast distance that had suddenly recognized each other. In that instant he even had the dazed sense that between this jade, that aberration, and these eyes of his, there was some connection he could not put into words—but the thought came too fast; it scattered the moment it surfaced, and he could not grasp it, nor did he dare to think on it.

That instant was too brief, too brief for him to seize. The next breath, those images crumbled and scattered, leaving only the searing, blazing pain in his left eye and the warm, smooth jade in his palm that he had at last taken hold of.

Gasping for breath, he clenched the jade hard into his fist.

The moment the jade was in hand, the "answering" that had led him all the way suddenly went still. No longer calling from far off, it pressed against his palm, quiet and calm, as if it had acknowledged a master, as if it had always belonged in his hand. This stillness unnerved him more than the calling had—he could not tell whether he had gained this jade, or whether this jade had been waiting all along for him.

A wisp of living qi seeped, ever so faintly, through his palm into his meridians, and a soothing ease spread through his whole body. That wall, stuck for nearly two years, which he could not push through no matter how he tried, was lightly tapped by this wisp of living qi and loosened by a hair's breadth—far from broken, yet that one loosening let him "know," clearly and certainly: the living qi within this jade could mend that flaw in his cultivation. Old Han had not lied to him. Within these fractures, there truly lay a fortune that could lift a man to the heavens in a single step. And this fortune, at this moment, was clenched in his palm.

The copper coins and spirit stones he had earned these days were saved up one coin, one stone at a time, slow as a crawl. This jade was different—it was a life picked back up, and a wall picked back up too; the realm he had been stuck at for nearly two years might, by this, be pushed past in a single night. But this thought flashed only once in his heart before the fierce pain in his left eye cut it short. He could barely keep his footing now, let alone ponder fortune in this man-eating place.

The spot where the jade had been set was a small clot of congealed, half-transparent crystal, loosened when the jade was drawn away. Lin Que knew it—he had seen a drawing of this thing in the corner of a tattered scroll; it was called rift crystal, formed when the qi within a rift congeals over long ages, fine material for both pill-refining and tool-forging, and beyond price out in the world.

He gouged out that clump of rift crystal too and tucked it, together with the jade, into the breast of his robe against his skin.

The moment he tucked it in, the greed in his heart all but slipped its leash—among those broken walls and ruined things hanging in the air, there might well be other good things hidden yet. But Han Bosheng's first rule went off in his mind right then: don't be greedy; talk of it once you've made it back out.

He gritted his teeth and did not spare another glance.

The very moment the jade left its place, the whole field of fractures stirred.

The grayish-white "ground" underfoot surged without wind, like a pot of water on the verge of boiling. The ruined things hanging in midair began to sway faintly. The instant the breath that had been "answering" him broke off, this dead place seemed suddenly to "wake," sensing that someone had moved the thing it guarded.

In the distance, the aberration was gnawing, head down, at the lingering qi of that rush pill. In a flash it stiffened, its whole "body" whipping around violently toward Lin Que.

The eyeless "head," for the first time, turned squarely "upon" him.

Lin Que's scalp prickled, and he spun and darted back along that string of wooden markers down the way he had come, fleeing for his life.

The thing behind him gave chase, ten times faster than before. The speed defied all reason—it had no legs; it "slid" along the ground, following the black furrow it had plowed, soundless. No footsteps, no panting, only the light tearing sound of that grayish-white "ground" being ripped open, like cloth rending, each one closer than the last.

Where it crawled, the man-eating fine fractures were churned apart in all directions, and the path he had memorized went to chaos in the blink of an eye. As he darted, Lin Que kept his eyes fixed on the ground. The wooden markers were still there, but the path between them had been churned beyond recognition: what had been "solid" ground now split into fractures; what had been fractures was now churned till he could not tell their depth. He could only rely on those eyes near to burning through, finding a living path again step by step amid the chaos.

The hemp rope at his waist was still there. That speck of grayish-white light at the exit shone, far off.

He darted in the direction of the hemp rope, the one thing he still trusted. The thing behind him had drawn so near that the back of his neck went cold—the black it dragged, its edge sweeping across the footprints he had just left, and that string of footprints, together with the wooden markers stuck there, was wiped clean in an instant, as if it had never existed.

A step slower, and what was wiped away would be him.

Just then, a stretch of path ahead that had been "solid" ground was jolted by the backwash that thing churned up, and split open with a crack into a fresh fracture, lying right across his feet.

There was no stopping his stride.

Lin Que set his heart, kicked off hard with his left foot at the edge of the splitting fracture, and flung himself forward, his hands catching a length of broken beam floating in the air; borrowing that bit of force, he barely swung past the fresh fracture. Dragged by him, the broken beam swayed. He dared not stop; the moment he landed he rolled, scrambling and crawling on toward the exit again, his palms scraped raw on the broken beam's edges, stinging fiercely—he felt none of it.

That swing left the hemp rope chafing painfully at his waist. Yet it was just this chafe that reminded him the rope was still there, the way back still there. Han Bosheng's third rule—leave a way back—had, at this moment, truly and surely saved his life.

In his left eye, that "net of fractures" that had still been fairly clear began to dazzle and whiten, going dark in waves. From the moment he entered the rift it had been scalding, tempering itself, and by now it was like an oil lamp near burnt dry, its light flickering, leaping, ready to go out at any moment. Once the eye went out, he would no longer see those man-eating fractures, and he would be just like Pill-peddler Zhou and Old Wu—one wrong step, and clean gone into this dead place.

That speck of grayish-white light at the exit was still a dozen or more steps off. A dozen steps, on an ordinary day, no more than a few blinks of the eye; at this moment, it was as though a whole road through the Yellow Springs lay between.

He knew it in his heart: these eyes would not hold out much longer. Once the eye went black, he would be just like those who could not see the fractures—another wide-eyed blind man in this dead place.

【Ch. 009 End · Inside the Rift】