第 018 Ch.| The Night Before the Showdown

The Xuanzhao Sect's enforcement office in the market town sat in an unremarkable little courtyard of grey tile on East Street.

Lin Que did not go in. A pill-boy walking into a Xuanzhao Sect enforcement office for no reason would draw far too much notice. He sat the whole afternoon at a tea stall across from the office, ordered a bowl of the cheapest coarse tea, and sipped it slowly, waiting for Shen Ningshuang to come out.

This step he had turned over all night. To hand her the lead outright was too deliberate; but with Black Wind Hall's blade hanging over his head, he had no time to take the long way round and wait for those "matters out in the open" to drift before Shen Ningshuang's eyes on their own. He had to give it a push himself—only this push had to be made so that Shen Ningshuang believed she had followed the trail down by her own doing.

These past days he had weighed this woman, Shen Ningshuang, over and over in his mind. She was an outer-gate enforcer of the Xuanzhao Sect, half a year on this case; her suspicion ran deep, her eye was sharp. Half a year ago, in the back court of the Hundred Herbs, on the strength of a few words alone she had seen that something about him was "off." Against a person like that, to hide half and show half was steadier than hiding all or showing all—hide too tightly and she grows suspicious; show too much and she traces it back to him. What he meant to hand her was a true lead, paired with a reason that was false on the surface but true within.

At the end of the hour of the Monkey, Shen Ningshuang came out. Still that same blue close-cut garb, her brow and eyes cold as frost. The moment she stepped through the door of the enforcement office, Lin Que went up to meet her.

"Enforcer Shen."

Shen Ningshuang stopped, those cold eyes sweeping across his face, and recognized him: "The pill-boy from the Hundred Herbs. The one with the cursed pill."

"Old Wu's case," Lin Que said, eyes lowered, setting his words down one by one in safe places, "Enforcer Shen has worked it for half a year. But the rogue cultivators dying unexplained in the market town are not only the kind you've been looking into."

The tip of Shen Ningshuang's brow moved.

She had not expected that the moment this pill-boy opened his mouth, he would point straight at the fork in the road she had worked for half a year and never been able to untangle—the strange deaths in the market town came plainly in two manners, mixed together in one place, snarling her up so she could not press on.

"And the other kind—how do they die?" Her voice was level, but her gaze had already gone keen.

Lin Que knew well that the moment that question left her mouth, she had already bitten down on the hook—for an enforcement disciple who had worked strange deaths half a year, nothing was harder to bear than "another thread she had not yet found."

"They die from taking Black Wind Hall's rush pills," Lin Que said. "Their meridians eaten away, their channels forced to burst alive. These past six months, on West Street and in the South Market, more than eight have died. If Enforcer Shen is willing to examine those corpses—she will know."

He said little, stopping at the point. Who the dead were, where they had died, what the corpses looked like—he did not say a single word of it for Shen Ningshuang; to say it all would only have made him seem to know too much. He laid only the head of that thread lightly at her hand, and left the rest for those case-working eyes of hers to see for themselves. What he wagered was this: so long as Shen Ningshuang was willing to examine one corpse killed by a rush pill, the death-state of "meridians eaten away" would not fool the eye of a Xuanzhao Sect enforcer. One examination, and the thing Black Wind Hall had concealed for half a year would split open its first seam.

Shen Ningshuang stared at him, stared for a long while.

"You, a pill-boy," she said slowly, "why are you telling me about Black Wind Hall's affairs?"

This was the most perilous question.

Answered poorly, Shen Ningshuang would at once turn it the other way round: how would a pill-boy come to know so well about Black Wind Hall's rush pills, about the deaths of several rogue cultivators? Her suspicion would turn from Black Wind Hall onto him.

Lin Que had his answer ready long ago.

"Because I mend pills too." He raised his eyes, open and aboveboard. "Black Wind Hall's rush pills cut off people's road to life; my mended pills steal their trade. They cannot abide me. Enforcer Shen, this is… me borrowing your blade to guard my own life."

Half true, half false.

He was indeed being pressed by Black Wind Hall; but he did not say that Sun Heng meant to take him in, did not say that the seam of human lives was one he had deliberately torn open and handed to Shen Ningshuang. He set himself up as "a small pill-boy squeezed out by Black Wind Hall, looking to borrow the Xuanzhao Sect to save himself"—a reason that held together, sensible, and would stand up to scrutiny. A man who truly meant to harm Black Wind Hall would never so honestly admit "I have selfish motives"; precisely because he confessed his selfishness, Shen Ningshuang instead believed him seven parts in ten.

Shen Ningshuang looked at him coldly, looked for a good while, then suddenly let out a very faint snort.

"Borrowing a blade to kill, and saying it with such a straight face too."

As she said this, the corner of her mouth seemed, almost imperceptibly, ever so faintly to move—not a smile, but rather as though for the first time, toward this pill-boy she had been unable to classify in half a year of work, a little interest had stirred. An ant driven into a corner by a power, who neither wept nor begged, but turned his hand and dared borrow the Xuanzhao Sect's very blade to stab Black Wind Hall. This nerve, this calculation—it was hardly like a pill-boy at all.

"I am only pointing the ones who deserve to die at the one whose duty it is to handle them," Lin Que said. "The dead rogue cultivators are truly dead; the rush pills truly take lives. Whether Enforcer Shen looks into it is her affair."

Shen Ningshuang said no more. She turned to go, took two steps, and stopped again.

"You, pill-boy," she said, turning her face to the side, repeating once more the words she had spoken half a year ago, "are getting more and more off."

But this time, beneath the keenness in her eyes there was a trace of something else—like looking at a blade hidden inside the shell of a pill-boy.

Lin Que knew she would look into it. A person like Shen Ningshuang could not abide a grain of sand in the eye; the thread of rush pills taking lives—once her hand touched it, the ledger of human lives Black Wind Hall had hidden for half a year could be hidden no longer.

The tiger had been let loose.

About loosing the tiger, Lin Que had no certainty in his own heart either. This tiger Shen Ningshuang might not bite only Black Wind Hall—that as she worked her way along she might turn back and take this "pill-boy who knows Black Wind Hall's inner affairs all too well" into her jaws as well, was hardly impossible. But for now, he had no better card. Sun Heng's blade was already at his throat; rather than wait to be taken in, better to wager once, and stir together two heads far larger than his into one place.

---

By the time he returned to his rented room, the night was deep.

He first dropped the door bar dead into place, then dragged a long bench to brace against the door, its legs jammed hard against the door panel. These past days, watched by someone, he could not even sleep at ease; he always felt that any small stir outside the door might be coming for him.

He turned the oil lamp brighter, poured the spirit stones from his bosom out onto the table, and by the light counted them one by one. The spirit stones were of uneven grade, a few of them still the broken chips earned from mending formulas, gathered together in one heap. The count done, it was still that same number—he was still some dozens short of the principal for that examination-qualification token in the black market. Those few dozen were the heaviest weight pressing on his chest. Mending formulas he could still do, but with Black Wind Hall watching and Sun Heng's deadline falling tomorrow, he had no time to save them up slowly, one by one.

He put the spirit stones away again into the hidden pouch against his body, then took out that green-jade paperweight and set it down beneath the lamp.

The jade was an unremarkable old stone, coated in dust. But beneath his left eye, that wisp of pure qi roamed slowly within the jade, bright and perfectly clear. He closed his eyes a moment and turned this pair of eyes upon himself—the flaw of the fifth layer of Qi Condensation lay across the meridian beneath his left rib, like a break that had not been rejoined. This wisp of qi in the green jade could fill it exactly.

But he did not set to it. To mend this flaw took stillness, took the right time. With the market town in such turmoil these past days, he could not go into seclusion at such a critical juncture; should he suffer qi deviation halfway through the mending and be unable to move, he would be, come tomorrow, a slab of meat for anyone to slaughter. That wisp of pure qi could only wait within the jade for now, until he had endured through tomorrow.

He dragged an old cloth bundle out from under the bed and packed into it the belongings he had gathered over this time—that tattered Breathing Scroll with its worn-frayed edges, a few mended pills wrapped separately in oilpaper. Last of all, he felt out that sharpened wooden splinter, whittled when he went into the rift, which had pierced an aberration's vital gate; that spot of dark brown on the splinter's tip would not wash off. He tested it with his thumb—still keen—and hid it well against his body. Once the market town fell into chaos tomorrow, he might not get away with any ease; what could be set in order, he set in order tonight, ahead of time.

His packing done, he walked to the window and peered out through the gap in the boards. The alley was pitch-black; he could not make out whether anyone was there.

At that very moment, footsteps sounded in the alley.

Not fast, not slow, treading on the bluestone slabs, one after another, coming toward this row of rented rooms. Lin Que's hand pressed down on the wooden splinter at once, his whole body pressing into the shadow of the wall's corner, holding even his breath down.

The footsteps stopped outside his door.

The door panel was rapped lightly three times—two short, one long. Only then did the tautness in Lin Que's back ease by half: it was Lai San's signal.

He moved the bench aside and pulled the door open a crack. Lai San slipped in, his face gone pale, pressing his voice low: "Sun Heng tonight, with his men, went knocking door to door on a few of the rogue cultivators on West Street who've bought mended pills off you. What they asked was all the same one thing—where you live."

Lin Que's heart sank.

"I didn't say, and Lame Yu didn't say either," Lai San panted. "But West Street's got so many mouths, not every one of them can hold out. The way Sun Heng's carrying on, he doesn't look like he means to wait for three days from now."

Sun Heng meant to move ahead of time.

Lin Que steadied himself, then asked again, voice pressed low: "On the Xuanzhao Sect's side—was there any stir tonight?"

Lai San was taken aback. "What are you asking that for? …There really was, though. On my way here I passed through the South Market and saw two of the Xuanzhao Sect's blue-robes carrying two corpses covered in white cloth into the coroner's shop. Word is, they were rogue cultivators who died from rush pills."

The string in Lin Que's heart, drawn taut these past days, moved ever so slightly. The Xuanzhao Sect was examining corpses through the night—the thread he had quietly handed to Shen Ningshuang had, after all, stirred. The Xuanzhao Sect's blade and Sun Heng's fist were now in a race.

"I understand," Lin Que said. He felt out two copper coins and pressed them into his hand. "These days you keep out of the way too; don't run errands for me anymore."

But Lai San pushed the copper coins back: "That pill you mended before—my mother's still taking it now." Dropping that line, he slipped out into the night again.

Lin Que braced the long bench dead against the door once more. This one trip of Lai San's had torn away half of that bit of "three days' buffer" he had wagered on—Sun Heng's blade was even faster than he had reckoned.

Outside the window, the market town's watch-drum struck the third watch.

He blew out the oil lamp and lay down on the bed in his clothes, the wooden splinter gripped in his hand, eyes open. Now that Sun Heng's men had gone knocking door to door asking where he lived, there was no telling which moment they might come treading through the night to this very door—he dared not close his eyes. Come the first light of tomorrow, whether this market town would let him go or keep him, the answer would be revealed.

【Ch. 018 End · the Xuanzhao Sect enforcement office, East Street / the rented room in the west of the town】