Ch. 033| Traced to Him

At noon on the third day after Lin Que came back down the mountain, someone bearing a sword came to the herb-lodge.

The herb-lodge had only ever known medicinal air and groaning. The moment the sword-bearer entered and leaned that plain-scabbarded long sword against the door-frame, the few injured in the lodge who could still move fell silent, and one even instinctively turned his face away. Outer-gate disciples, seeing this blue drill-garb of the enforcement office, shut their mouths tighter than before any managing steward—behind this garb lay the authority to fix a man's staying or going, to record a man's merits and faults.

The newcomer was a young woman, in the blue drill-garb of a Xuanzhao Sect enforcement disciple, her waist bound trim. Her brows and eyes were exceedingly spirited, the bridge of her nose straight, her lip-color pale; that face was beautiful, but beautiful like a sword just drawn from its scabbard, that one dared not look at long. She stood in the doorway and swept a glance around, her gaze resting a moment on each sickbed, and settling at last on Lin Que, crouched before the herb-roller.

Both of them paused.

Lin Que recognized her first—Shen Ningshuang. That case of the rogue cultivators' strange deaths in Qingqi Market, she had investigated; that thread of the rush pill taking lives at Black Wind Hall, he had handed into her grasp, and she had sealed the hall's premises that same night. Parted in the market, and he'd not thought to meet her again in the Xuanzhao Sect.

Shen Ningshuang's gaze pinned on his face for two breaths, and that trace of astonishment quickly sank away.

"The pill-boy of the Hundred Herbs Pill Shop." She opened, her voice not loud. "How are you here?"

"I entered the outer gate to serve." Lin Que set down the herb-roller and stood straight, hands at his sides. "Entered the gate at the assessment. Now I do odd jobs at the herb-lodge."

Shen Ningshuang did not take up the words. She swept another glance over the injured in the lodge—seven or eight beds, most of them lying there disciples hurt by qi deviation. Her gaze halted on that innermost bed of Senior Brother Chen's.

"In the outer gate this past half-month, of those deviating forcing the sixth layer, one dead, two ruined." Step by step she walked to Chen's bedside, her boot-soles pressing the ground, neither hurried nor slow. "I'm charged with investigating this."

She stopped before Chen's bed and bent to look at that still-sunken face. Chen's meridians were injured; these days he slept more than he woke, and not even a statement could be got from him. Shen Ningshuang laid fingers on his wrist-pulse, her brow knitting—she could tell where this man was hurt, but could not ask out how he'd been hurt.

"The two dead ones I examined. This living one won't wake." She straightened. "I did hear, though, that this last one to deviate was pulled back from the gates of hell by a herb-lodge menial, with a single needle."

She turned her head, her gaze pinned on Lin Que's face.

"That menial is you."

---

Lin Que's heart sank, but his face did not move.

"A blind cat that ran into a dead mouse, no more." He kept his eyes lowered. "You follow the counterflowing qi with your fingers, feel for the most blocked spot and stick the needle in, vent a seam, and the qi retreats on its own. Whether it lands or not is half luck."

"A blind cat." Shen Ningshuang repeated the two words, the corner of her lip drawing an exceedingly cold arc. "When I investigated Old Wu's strange death in the market, you wore just this same look of knowing nothing. Yet afterward that thread of a human life at Black Wind Hall leaked, of all places, out of your mouth."

She took a step forward, and that plain-scabbarded long sword swayed with her.

"The third day after Black Wind Hall fell, you vanished from the market. I even sent someone to ask at the Hundred Herbs Pill Shop back then, and the shopkeeper only said you'd 'sat the outer-gate test and gone.'" Her gaze pinned him. "I took it merely for coincidence. Now the outer gate has deaths one after another, and that menial who saved a qi deviation is you again."

Word by word: "Lin Que, you are a man who's always circling at the edge of a heap of corpses."

Lin Que did not argue.

Arguing was useless. This enforcement senior sister was heavy with suspicion; she'd never truly trusted him since back in the market. The more he argued, the more she'd feel there was something in it.

But he had seen it now too—she was not investigating this case smoothly.

Beneath that trim bearing of an enforcement disciple, a knot of unclearing gloom pressed between her brows. Her manner of questioning was not that of one gripping a clue and chasing it down, but rather that of one who'd hit walls all around, could grasp no thread, and could only turn back to re-question bed by bed.

"How long has Senior Sister been investigating?" Lin Que suddenly asked.

Shen Ningshuang paused: "What business is it of yours."

"Senior Sister has investigated half a month and come down to the herb-lodge to question the injured." Lin Que kept his eyes lowered, his voice set very level. "If the higher-ups truly let Senior Sister investigate freely, what should be turned over now are the secrets of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art in the Archive Hall, and what should be asked after is the crucial aperture of forcing the sixth layer."

Shen Ningshuang's pupils contracted all at once.

The lodge went still for an instant. That sword leaning against the door-frame did not move; but her gaze fixed on Lin Que had changed—before, it was a case-investigator's eye upon a suspect; now, there was something else in it, as if for the first time she were seriously sizing up a thing she'd thought she'd seen through.

"A floor-sweeping menial," she said word by word, "is clearer on where this case is stuck than the people of the enforcement office."

---

Lin Que knew he'd spoken that line too heavily. But without speaking heavily, he couldn't move this stone.

"I'm no man of the enforcement office." He said. "I'm only a new hand doing odd jobs, watching the injured carried in one by one at the herb-lodge. Watch enough, and you see something wrong."

"Wrong where?"

This question came urgent. Shen Ningshuang herself felt the lapse, but the words were out and could not be taken back. She'd investigated half a month, hit walls half a month, and now, of all things, had let something slip before a newly admitted odd-jobs disciple.

Lin Que weighed his words and picked out what could be said: "Those who deviate forcing the sixth layer—Senior Sister takes it to be each man's foundation falling short, doesn't she?"

"That's what the higher-ups say." Shen Ningshuang's voice turned cold. "The Pill Hall, the Archive Hall, the supervisor managing the outer gate—asked down the line, it's all one line: foundations vary, and where one is stuck at which layer is each man's fate. I can dig out nothing else."

"But does Senior Sister herself believe it?"

Shen Ningshuang did not answer. She did not believe it. Had she believed it, she would not be standing in this herb-lodge now.

"The one who died, I examined the corpse." After a long while she said in a low voice, as if pressed down long and spat out for the first time. "The meridians burst from within, the same as ordinary qi deviation. But the place where they burst—it happened to be, for every one of them, at the very same crucial aperture. Three men, foundations deep and shallow unlike, fire fast and slow unalike, yet all fell at the same spot. Where is there such a thing as 'each man's fate'?"

Lin Que kept his eyes lowered and made no sound, his fingertip tightening ever so slightly on the herb-roller's wooden handle. That spot her corpse-examination reached—he knew it—but this line, he could not take up a word of.

"I handed the examination results up." Shen Ningshuang went on, that pressed-down fire showing through a little. "The Pill Hall said I don't understand qi-refining, an outsider watching for the fun of it; the Archive Hall said that's a true-lineage art, not for the enforcement office to comment on; the supervisor Pei, managing the outer gate, called me in and dropped a line—'The enforcement office investigates human lives, not arts'—and told me to go look into whether someone had poisoned or tampered, 'and not to drag it onto the art.'"

She gave a cold laugh.

"One case, and three gates with one voice herd me onto the road of 'it's not the art.' The more in unison they herd, the more I believe—on the side of the art, there's surely something that won't bear the light."

---

"In investigating the disciples who deviated forcing the layer, has Senior Sister looked into—" Lin Que weighed his words, passing out Du's thread, passing it out most carefully, "—those who were ruined and went out of the gate?"

Shen Ningshuang raised her eyes.

"The dead yield no statement; the ruined are still alive." Lin Que said. "I hear that in the past two years there were also those ruined forcing the sixth layer who went out of the gate. One of them, out of the gate, wouldn't accept his fate, and asked all around after the secrets of forcing the layer. Later—walking a mountain road at night, he missed his footing and fell into a ravine, his face smashed to pieces."

Shen Ningshuang's expression congealed, bit by bit.

"Missed his footing." She chewed on the two words—the two words the people of enforcement hear most, and believe least.

"Which year's disciple? What surname? Where is the man buried?" She pressed, one question after another—the enforcement office's manner of interrogation.

But Lin Que reined the words in: "I'm a new odd-jobs hand; idle talk I've heard, not to be taken as true. Senior Sister is a person of enforcement; whether it can be investigated to fact, Senior Sister may weigh for herself."

He passed nothing further out. Further down was the place that disciple had asked out before his death—was "the one collecting the scroll"—a thing traded for with a life, and paid back with a life. He had yet to make out which side this sword of Shen Ningshuang's pointed toward: whether she truly meant to investigate to the end, or would investigate a stroke or two and, giving the higher-ups an account, let it rest.

Shen Ningshuang stared at him, as if seeing through this trick of his of keeping half a line back. She was silent a good while, then suddenly said:

"The higher-ups gave me this case with a limit. Three days." Her voice was very low, yet very steady. "If after three days it's still 'each man's foundation at fault' and the case can't be closed, someone else takes it over—someone willing to follow the higher-ups' meaning and write the case-file up as an 'accident.'"

Lin Que raised his eyes.

She'd passed the bottom of her being time-limited, being sidelined, to a newly admitted odd-jobs disciple—this move was, like his passing half a line and keeping half a line, the same wager. Wagering that what the other gripped in hand was more than what she'd investigated.

Shen Ningshuang stared at him a long while.

"You're just the same as back in the market." At last she withdrew her gaze and took up that sword leaning against the door-frame. "You speak only half a line, and leave the other half waiting for me to dig out myself."

She turned to go, and at the door halted, not turning her head.

"That one smashed to death in the ravine—what was his name?"

"Surnamed Xu." Lin Que said. "A disciple of the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate, two years back."

Shen Ningshuang noted the word, and as she was about to lift the curtain, turned to look at him once more.

"That needle you gave the Chen boy—Supervisor Pei summoned you in person." She said. "He'd not stoop to reward you, summoning a menial. Henceforth in this herb-lodge, keep your hands and feet clean—the one watching these few beds isn't only me."

Lin Que lowered his eyes: "Many thanks for Senior Sister's counsel."

She said no more and lifted the curtain out. The shadow of that plain-scabbarded long sword swept past the door-seam, sharp as if to cut a slit in this afternoon's light.

Lin Que crouched back down before the herb-roller.

She'd traded that line "Supervisor Pei is watching you" for the half-thread he'd just passed—this enforcement senior sister, whether she believed him was still hard to say, but she'd already traded with him a first time. One whose investigation had been pressed down halfway by the higher-ups and limited to three days—what she could least bear was those two words, "missed his footing." She would go investigate that man surnamed Xu.

【Ch. 033 End · the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate · the herb-lodge】