Ch. 013| It's Not Your Fault

That flaw had stayed lit behind Lin Que's eyes for two days.

On the third day, he went to West Street anyway.

For two days he had turned it over and over—was it worth it. An unfamiliar daughter of a clan, a talisman-flaw that had nothing to do with him; was it worth letting out, in front of her, the eye he had kept hidden his whole life?

But that flaw—he saw it the moment he closed his eyes. To see a flaw, to know how to mend it, and yet to force himself to pretend he saw nothing—that was harder to bear than going hungry. Besides, the Xu family's signboard, "a talisman-script clan," ruined though it was, was still a stepping-stone for him: an apothecary boy about to leave the market for somewhere larger, a stone out of reach for now but sure to be of use sooner or later.

Weighed all ways, this trip was worth it.

Xu Qinghe's stall sat in a corner of Talisman-Stall Lane, even more deserted than last time. Talisman paper was spread across the table, but for half a day not a single customer came—the name "the Xu girl whose talismans break" had gotten around. She sat behind the stall, her back held perfectly straight, but her eyes were fixed on that stack of talisman paper in a daze.

Lin Que came to a stop before the stall.

"How much to draw a talisman?"

Xu Qinghe looked up, saw a half-grown apothecary boy, and her brow drew together almost imperceptibly. "Which kind does the customer want?" Her voice was level, carrying that held-up courtesy of clan folk. "Though… my talismans haven't been steady lately. If you're in a hurry to use one, Wang Er's stall at the head of West Street is more reliable than mine."

Even when soliciting business, she put the ugly truth first. Ruined though she was, this girl didn't cheat people.

"I'm not in a hurry," Lin Que said. "I just want to watch you draw one."

Xu Qinghe was taken aback. People in the market either came to beg for a talisman or came to laugh at her. This apothecary boy looked like neither.

What she didn't know was that, standing here, the little heat beneath his left eye had been held down the whole time, not daring to stir. What he feared was not failing to see, but seeing too clearly—if he stared at her talisman to her face and lost himself in it, he would give himself away instead.

"The lady's talismans—do they each break at that very last turn?" Lin Que didn't wait for her answer and added, "The third turn."

Xu Qinghe's face changed.

She stared at Lin Que, and that held-up courtesy split along a crack. "You… how do you know?"

"I make my living in the market mending broken formulas and reviving spoiled pills." Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and pitched his words toward the safe side. "Mend enough of them, and you start to tell one thing apart—whether something was ruined by its user, or was missing a piece from the womb. A broken formula lacking one guiding herb—no matter who blends it, it can't be made whole. The lady's talismans break at the same place on the third turn, every single one. That's not a matter of craft."

He raised his eyes and looked at her. "It's this talisman method of yours that's missing a stretch."

Xu Qinghe froze where she stood.

Half a year. She had practiced to the point of forgoing food and sleep, copying out the family's Green Seal-Script Talisman over and over, checking each stroke against the ancestral manual, not a hair off. And still the talismans broke. The people of her birth-clan said her talent had hit its ceiling, said the Xu talismans ended in her hands, urged her to accept her fate. She wouldn't, and couldn't find where the error lay—she knew better than anyone that she hadn't drawn it wrong, but she had no proof, and could only watch herself be called "the Xu girl who ruined the family."

And now, an apothecary boy from the market stood before her stall and, with one weightless sentence, named the very place that had kept her from sleep night after night for half a year.

"You're saying… the talisman method itself is missing a stretch?" Her voice shook a little. "This is the Green Seal-Script Talisman my Xu family has passed down for 6 generations. 6 generations have drawn it just so, and never once…"

"Never once did anyone draw to the third turn without breaking?" Lin Que asked.

Xu Qinghe opened her mouth and had no answer.

She suddenly remembered that her grandfather, while he lived, had often sighed while drawing the Green Seal-Script Talisman, "This talisman is hard to complete"; in her father's generation, drawing 7 out of 10 to completion was reckoned a master's work. She had always taken it to mean only that her own generation fell short of the forebears… but if the talisman method itself was missing a stretch, then weren't all the generations of the Xu family pressed down by this one flaw?

The thought was too large—so large that for a moment she dared not follow it any further.

"I don't believe it," Xu Qinghe said, staring at him, but in that "don't believe it" there was no longer any ground beneath her. "Empty words—anyone can say them."

"Then draw one," Lin Que said. "Draw to the third turn, and stop."

Xu Qinghe clenched her teeth, spread out the talisman paper, and lifted the brush. One stroke, two strokes… at the third turn, following Lin Que's word, she stopped.

"Right there." Lin Que looked at the unfinished talisman, and the little heat beneath his left eye quietly rose—the break in that qi-channel, clear as day. But he couldn't say "I see it," and only pointed to that place at the third turn on the talisman. "Your qi runs to here, and then there's nothing pulling it onward, isn't there? Like walking along and finding the bridge under your feet has dropped away a stretch."

Xu Qinghe's pupils contracted sharply. That sensation of "the qi going hollow for an instant right here"—she had drawn for half a year and never spoken of it to anyone, because she couldn't put it into words. And yet this apothecary boy had said it.

The little half-belief, half-doubt in her heart was struck to pieces by that one sentence. How could a medicine-seller know a sensation she couldn't explain even to her own sect-fellows? She wanted to argue back, opened her mouth, and found that she was, in fact, a little afraid—afraid that what he said next would be true.

"Add a stroke," Lin Que said. "At the place where it breaks, first put in one very light stroke to pull the qi across, then join it back to that original last stroke."

"Where is there such a way of drawing? The ancestral manual has no such—"

"What the ancestral manual is missing is exactly this one stroke."

The words were brazen. To doubt the ancestral manual of a talisman-script clan passed down 6 generations was to say, to her face, that six generations of Xu forebears had all been mistaken. At another time, Xu Qinghe would have driven him off long ago. But the broken talismans she had drawn for half a year, the unwillingness clenched in her heart, weighed more than her clan's dignity. She wanted to know whether—even by one part in ten thousand—the fault might truly not lie with her, but with this talisman.

Xu Qinghe stared hard at him, stared for a long while. Then, as if wagering on something, she lifted the brush again, added at the break of the third turn a very light pulling stroke, and carried it on into the last stroke.

This time, the brush ran to the end without a stall.

The cinnabar finished steadily on the talisman paper, and the lines of that Green Seal-Script Talisman shone faintly all over—it was complete.

That pulling stroke had been laid down so light, so light it could scarcely be seen. Yet it was this one stroke that quietly caught the qi—which had broken at the third turn before—and drew it across. Xu Qinghe had drawn the Green Seal-Script Talisman until it was second nature, and when this stroke fell, she herself froze first—at the moment the qi-channel joined beneath her brush, her whole hand had a feeling of "smoothness" she could not name, as if, in a dead-end she had walked for half a year, she had suddenly felt out a door in the wall.

Xu Qinghe cupped that talisman in her hands, her hands trembling. Half a year, and this was the first complete Green Seal-Script Talisman she had ever drawn.

She stared at it for a long while, as if she dared not believe it. Then she took up a second sheet of talisman paper and drew another—following what Lin Que had said, adding a pulling stroke at the third turn.

It came out again.

She drew 3 in a row, every one complete. By the third, her hand had stopped trembling, but tears fell with a soft splash onto the talisman paper, blurring a small patch of the cinnabar.

She raised her head and looked at Lin Que, the rims of her eyes gone red. The breath she had held for half a year—everyone had said it was she who fell short, she who had drawn the Xu talismans into ruin—and now, all at once, someone had said it aloud for her: the fault was not hers.

"This half a year," she said, her voice catching, "everyone said it was I who fell short. That it was I who drew the Xu family's talismans into ruin."

"It isn't that you fall short." Lin Que said softly. "It's that this talisman was born missing a stroke. You drew it right. You only… kept pitting yourself against a flawed talisman, all this while."

Xu Qinghe turned her face away and swiped quickly at the corner of her eye. When she turned back, she had reined in her feeling; only the look she gave Lin Que had changed utterly—gone from it was the earlier slight she had shown an apothecary boy, and into it had come a probing she herself could not quite name.

Lin Que felt a little uneasy under her gaze. He was used to looks of slight, looks of wariness; this look, with its probing and even a touch of gratitude, was one he met for the first time.

"Who on earth are you?" she asked. "An apothecary boy—how do you understand the qi-channels of talisman lore?"

"I don't understand talisman lore." Lin Que took half a step back and reined in his words. "I only understand 'flaws.' Who carries a flaw, what thing is missing which piece—I see it a touch truer than others. As for the rest, I can't say."

The words were half true, half false, yet no fault could be picked from them.

She gazed at him a good while and, in the end, asked no further. Born of a clan, she had met no few people of strange gifts, but she had never met one who, knowing nothing of talisman lore, could name with a single glance the break in a talisman's qi-channel. There was something in this apothecary boy she could not see through; but since he wouldn't tell, she would not dig down to the root. In these few years of ruin, she had long since understood one truth: that another would lend you a hand at all was a kindness beyond measure.

She put away the finished talisman with care, looked at Lin Que again, and seemed to settle on some resolve.

"This debt of kindness, I, Xu Qinghe, have noted." She paused, and the probing in her eyes slowly sank into something else. "You say this talisman method is missing a stretch… then the Xu family's ancestral manual—might there be other flaws as well? Have all the generations of my Xu family been, by someone…"

She did not go on. But in those unfinished words lay a shadow she had only just glimpsed—far larger than that one broken talisman of her own.

What she was thinking was: if this talisman method had been missing a stroke 6 generations ago, then who, back then, and why, had laid a hand on the Xu family's ancestral manual? Was it dropped in the copying, or had someone intentionally cut out a stretch? The Xu family's fall, from its height to this day—had it fallen on this very flaw that no one could see? These were things she had never even dared to think before, and an apothecary boy, with one sentence, had lifted the lid on them all.

Something stirred in Lin Que's heart.

The clan's door—the door he sought—seemed to have loosened a crack of its own accord.

He wanted to see the ancestral manual: half to sell this kindness more solidly—mend the flaws of the entire Green Seal-Script Talisman, and what the Xu family owed him would be more than the debt of a single talisman; the other half was the doubt that grew ever harder to hold down in his heart: his scroll, the Breathing Scroll, was missing a stretch, the Xu family's Green Seal-Script Talisman was missing a stretch—in this market, in this whole world, might the "methods" missing a stretch be far more than these two? The thought, once it rose, startled even him.

"Your family's ancestral manual," he said slowly, "would it be convenient to let me take a look?"

【Ch. 013 End · the West Street talisman stall】