Ch. 035| The Blighted Ground

That pattern, Lin Que had seen while changing Senior Brother Chen's medicine.

Chen's meridians were injured at that threshold of the sixth layer, burst from within. These few days, tending his qi, that pair of eyes had looked in along the burst—at the deepest place of the burst, the qi-channel was scorched black, and within the scorch-black a strand of pattern, exceedingly fine, exceedingly faint.

That pattern, Lin Que recognized.

Qi deviation is qi run wild, is bursting, is burning; but this one strand of pattern lay quietly coiled at the deepest place of the burst, its lay of the same course as those "clean" man-eating edges he'd seen in that rift at the pauper's burial ground—as if something had brushed lightly across the meridian, and where it brushed, a small patch had emptied out.

That trace of cold in his heart climbed up, bit by bit.

That one stroke drawn out of the sixth layer of the Xuanzhao Breathing Art, he'd seen in the deep scrolls—it was cut by a human hand, with an opening stroke and a closing stroke. But this one strand coiled in the burst before his eyes had no opening, no closing—more as if that cut flaw had "come alive" for an instant at the very moment Chen practiced to the sixth layer and crashed into it, and brushed away a patch from the meridian itself. The technique of the brushing was exactly the same as a rift eating a man.

The flaw of the art, and the rift—were they one and the same thing?

The moment this thought rose, Lin Que himself shuddered first. Too big—too big for him to catch just now. He withdrew his eyes, let his fingertip rest a moment on Chen's wrist, gave no sign, and pressed this thread into the deepest place in his heart.

What he could grasp for the present was that one line of Madam Chang's—"blighted ground cropping up more and more."

---

The chance came three days later.

Brewing the herb-lodge's wound-medicine called for a flavor of fresh iris root, which grew only in the stream-stone crevices on the shaded north slope of the Xuanzhao Sect's back mountain; what was bought at market was all stale stock, poor in medicinal nature. The old man who managed the medicines grudged the hard mountain road, and no one would go; Lin Que volunteered to gather it, and the old man was only too glad, allotting him half a day for it.

The shaded slope of the back mountain was a place the Xuanzhao Sect's disciples did not go by ordinary days. The terrain was steep, the woods dense, and further in, a stretch of jumbled stone slope the locals called the "blighted ground"—saying it was uncanny there, that livestock going in sometimes vanished, and gatherers of herbs, hunters, all skirted round it.

Iris-gathering was real, but this trip, more than that, he meant to take those eyes and see this blighted ground clearly.

The further in he walked, the stiller the woods. At first there were still birds; past the mid-slope, the birdsong thinned, and even the insects' chirr grew sparse. The stream flowed among the jumbled stones, sounding especially clear—still enough to make the roots of one's ears crawl. Livestock, birds—these unwitting things—had perhaps sensed this place's wrongness earlier than men, and skirted it early. Lin Que softened his steps, and the heat beneath his left eye, without his knowing, had risen.

Past that thicket of dense wood at the stream's head, the jumbled stone slope arrived.

He'd barely stood firm at the slope's mouth when the heat beneath his left eye rose with a rush.

---

The whole slope was full of gashes.

Others coming to this jumbled stone slope would at most sense a stretch of nameless twisting wrongness, the backs of their necks crawling, yet could not see clearly whence that crawling came. They were gashes torn open from nothing, floating among the jumbled stones, in mid-air, as if someone had drawn countless shallow cuts across the skin of heaven and earth with a blade, faint to near-transparency—to a common eye only a knot of indescribable shimmer, but under Lin Que's left eye alone the edge of each and every gash was distinctly discernible, all giving off that familiar, crawling faint glow: that "clean" glow, the glow that wipes a thing smooth, hide and hair, leaving not even blood.

He stood without moving, counting them one by one: those near the slope's mouth, those behind the jumbled stones, those hanging in mid-air, those flowing along the ground's skin… counting to the dozen-and-somethingth, he gave up.

Too many.

That gash at the pauper's burial ground—when he'd first seen it, that whole waste-hill had held just that one, hidden exceedingly deep, and he'd circled most of a day before finding it. But on this blighted ground, half an acre round, a dozen-odd leapt into his eyes.

And every one of them was different.

Some gashes floated quietly, the glow of their edges even and faint, as if asleep; some opened and closed, the glow at their edges flickering with it, as if breathing—and those that breathed were the fiercest; that one at the pauper's burial ground which had eaten three human lives was one that breathed. Some were big as door-leaves, a man's height tall, black and deep within, bottomless, seeping cold outward; some were small as a palm, faint as if to scatter, their breath faint too, flickering along the stone crevices.

Lin Que's gaze halted on one big gash hanging in mid-air.

That gash was a good half-fathom tall, the glow of its edge breathing heaviest. In that knot of black depths within the gash, something was moving, exceedingly slowly.

He held his breath and looked in along those eyes—it was a beetle-like living thing, palm-sized, a layer of blue-black hard shell on its back, the shell-face pitted and pocked, creeping inch by inch along the gash's inner wall. That creature's whole aura was unlike ordinary vermin—the aura of a thing soaked long in the "clean" glow until it too had become half a monstrous thing.

The bone-shell worm.

In that gash at the pauper's burial ground, he'd come face to face with a mouth-guarding aberration—that thing was "clean" grey all over, without eyes or mouth, its vital gate hidden in a hollow seam at its body's middle, and back then he'd nearly fallen into its hands. This bone-shell worm before his eyes was yet another wholly different kind of vicious thing.

But whichever kind, now, looking from afar across the gash, those eyes of his saw far more clearly through it than at the pauper's burial ground. The bone-shell worm's whole body of blue-black hard shell—blade could not cut it, fire could not burn through it; only at the root-joints of the six legs beneath its belly, where shell and shell would not close, was a thread of soft seam left—that was the flaw in its carapace, and also its vital gate. A sharpened wooden pick, stabbed into that thread of soft seam, and this worm was finished.

Seeing through it was one thing. Across the man-eating gash's edge, avoiding the dozen-odd gashes around, to truly stab that one pick into the soft seam beneath its belly, was another.

Madam Chang had it right. The rifts cropped up this half-year were uncannily many; and within the rifts, they were not empty either.

Lin Que crouched down against the big stone at the slope's mouth, not daring to go further in. As he watched, a wild hare darted down the slope, bounding along, making for a tuft of green grass in a stone crevice.

That hare was but two feet from a waist-high gash.

Lin Que's heart lifted—he could see clearly the edge of that gash; the hare could not.

The hare's forepaws latched onto that tuft of grass, and its hind half-body just then swept across the gash's edge.

Just that one brush.

That half of its body, hide and hair, soundlessly "vanished," cleanly missing a patch, the cross-section smooth as if pared by the swiftest blade, not even blood in time to well. The front half of the hare pitched forward, twitched twice, and was still.

Lin Que pressed against the stone and for a long moment did not move.

Those three strangely-dead rogue cultivators at the pauper's burial ground—Old Wu, the Zhou herb-peddler, the big fellow of the North Granary—back then "cleanly" missing a patch, dead without cause or clarity, had vanished just so. Blundering by chance against the edge of a gash others couldn't see clearly, not even knowing how they themselves had died.

He instinctively shrank back—his heel just about to fall, and the heat beneath his left eye gave a sudden leap.

He froze.

Half a foot behind his heel, hugging the stone-face, was a gash exceedingly faint, exceedingly fine, small; just now, intent on the big ones up the slope, he'd not noticed it. That gash was faint to near-scattering, yet the thread of "clean" glow at its edge could not fool those eyes of his. Step back half a pace more, and what vanished would be his own heel.

Lin Que drew his foot steadily back to its place, a layer of cold sweat seeping from his back.

This blighted ground—to look at, treasure everywhere; in truth, graves everywhere.

---

Lin Que pressed against the big stone at the slope's mouth, in no hurry to leave, tracing the gashes of this blighted ground one by one into his heart—which breathed, which slept, which had beside it a narrow path one could sidle through.

Tracing and tracing, the bone-shell worm in that big mid-air gash moved.

The worm seemed to have scented the blood; its blue-black hard shell arching and arching, it crept from the gash's inner wall to the tear, paused, then wholly probed out, landing on the jumbled stones, somewhat bigger than it had looked within the gash. Its six jointed limbs spread and slowly edged toward that half-hare-corpse; reaching it, a pair of mandible-pincers clamped down, and, backing away, it dragged the half-hare, hide and bone, back into the gash—dragged it into that "clean" glow, and gone.

Lin Que pressed against the stone, not stirring, his very breath pressed to the lightest. Only when the glow of that big gash had smoothed once more into a dead stillness, and the worm had shrunk back into the gash's depths, did he feel that the garment on his back had already been soaked through with cold sweat.

That worm was but seven or eight paces from where he crouched. Instinctively he felt at his sleeve: a few sharpened wooden picks, a length of short rope on the herb-basket.

Now this whole slope of a dozen-odd gashes—within the gashes who knew how many more such things were hidden. On these few implements, plus a pair of eyes that could see but not strike, to go in alone was to hand over one's life for nothing.

He looked no more into the gashes. The sun slanted west; he withdrew to the streamside stone, gathered that tuft of fresh iris root full, and packed it into the herb-basket—the pretext of this trip had to be done in full.

---

On the road down the mountain, the lower he walked, the more the birdsong in the woods came back bit by bit, and that knot of gloom pressed on his chest loosened somewhat.

Reaching the mid-slope, he came face to face with two basket-carrying herb-gathering women. At the sight of that stretch of jumbled stone slope ahead, their faces changed; they skirted far around it, and one of them even made a warding-off gesture at her breast, muttering low to her companion: "Don't go that way—the year before last the Wang family's lad went in to gather mushrooms, and to this day he's not been found…" The companion hurriedly tugged her sleeve, spat twice, as if afraid saying this too much would draw evil spirits, and the two hurried their steps, rounding on down the mountain. Lin Que shouldered his herb-basket and stepped aside to let them pass, saying nothing—they wouldn't know that he was the very one who'd come down whole and entire from that place "not to be found."

Others, at the sight of that place, walked round it.

Lin Que stood at the roadside and looked back once more at that stretch of jumbled stone slope—the whole slope of gashes floated distinctly under his eye, opening and closing; while in those two herb-gathering women's eyes, there was only a stretch of indescribable uncanny distortion, unable to tell which was a gash, where a foot could fall. This whole blighted ground—the one who could see it clearly was him alone.

He felt at that rift crystal in his robe, carried twenty-odd days and scalding the hand all along, turned, and quickened his step toward the mountain road's end, toward the market.

There was a man there who'd been into a rift, come back alive, and taught him "don't be greedy, don't linger, leave a way back"—an old rogue cultivator.

Han Bosheng.

【Ch. 035 End · the Xuanzhao Sect's outer gate · the blighted ground on the back mountain】