Ch. 036| Nine Lives

On the day of the ten-day rest, before the sky had fully lightened, Lin Que went down the mountain.

His duties at the herb-lodge broke for one day at the end of each ten-day span, and this was the most legitimate chance he had to leave the Xuanzhao Sect. Where the mountain path ended, past the stone archway, lay the market town below the mountain. People hurrying to the morning market poured in with their carrying-poles—vegetable-sellers, hide-buyers, talisman-stall keepers, their calls all tangled into one. Lin Que, a half-empty herb-basket on his back, blended into the crowd, unremarkable.

He turned first into the talisman shop in West Lane.

Xu Qinghe was cutting paper inside. Hearing the door, she looked up; seeing it was Lin Que, the hand holding her cinnabar brush paused, and her habitually cool brow softened for the briefest instant before drawing back in.

"I took you for someone come to hurry an order." She set down the brush and poured him half a cup of coarse tea, her fingertips lingering a moment on the cup's rim before withdrawing. "You come down the mountain at this hour—not to buy talismans."

"To find someone." Lin Que took the tea but did not hurry to drink. "An old broker who buys up broken formulas for mended pills. From over in the market ward. Have you seen him around this market lately?"

Qinghe thought a moment. "There's an old man. Drifted in half a month ago; every other day he's swilling cloudy wine at that 'Chen's' by the market mouth, and asks everyone he meets about the back-mountain—which slope livestock go into and never come out of, what year whose lad went picking mushrooms and vanished. Asks uncanny things." She frowned. "I took him for a rogue cultivator gone mad chasing treasure. You know him?"

Lin Que already had his answer.

An old broker who bought broken formulas, drifted in half a month ago, asking only after the man-eating places of the back-mountain—in this market there would not be a second such man.

"I know him." He drank the tea and set down the cup. "My thanks."

But Qinghe did not let him leave just yet. She looked at him, something probing added to those cool eyes. "You come all this way down the mountain to seek out an old man who asks only after the man-eating places of the back-mountain—what you're after is likely that blighted ground on the back-mountain too."

Lin Que's hand on the cup paused. This one he could trust—the flaw in her family's talisman he had exposed with his own words, and watched her mend it back. He did not hide it all. "That blighted ground has rifts across the whole slope, and there's stock inside the rifts. I mean to go in and hunt. I lack someone to draw talismans, and I lack a way to turn the stock into spirit stones."

He left the words that would move her most for last. "That stock can mend flaws. Your Xu family's Green Seal-Script Talismans, flawed line after line—I can see where the flaws lie; all that's wanting is matching stock to fill them. And that stock is there, in the rifts."

Qinghe's hand on the brush stopped. Her family's Green Seal-Script Talismans had been flawed for six generations; she had mended for three years and recovered only a scattered few lines—and now, hearing "the stock in the rifts can mend them," the force pressed down in those cool eyes brightened inch by inch. After a while she set down the brush. "I'll go in with you. Leave the trading of gear to me—I know Madam Chang's channel well. Find a good roost to lodge in, and send word."

She asked no more, and bent to cut paper—two cuts, then she stopped. Few who went into that blighted ground came back alive; she knew this, and this time it was he who meant to burrow in.

She pulled out a sheet of yellow talisman-paper, traced two more strokes than usual, and drew the core's blue glimmer a shade thicker. Handing it over, her fingertips lingered at the talisman's edge, and she did not raise her eyes to him. "A ward against evil—I've drawn it dense. That slope carries heavy malignance… don't push your luck. Once you've stock enough to trade, come out." Her voice had softened half a degree without her noticing. Then, as if catching the wrongness of it, she hastily drew that coolness back. "Waste it, and I won't draw a second."

Lin Que took it only for her instruction on how to use the talisman, tucked it solemnly into his sleeve, thanked her, and turned to leave the shop.

He did not look back—and did not see the girl's hand holding the cinnabar brush, laying down not a single stroke for a long while.

---

Chen's was a half-collapsed wine tavern at the market mouth, four greasy low tables set beneath its awning.

At a glance, Lin Que picked out Han Bosheng at the table in the farthest corner.

The old man was thinner than when Lin Que had last seen him back in the market ward, in an old ramie shirt washed grey, back slightly stooped, holding a table to himself—a pot of cloudy wine and a dish of boiled beans before him. He looked less like a man drinking than one basking in the bit of sunlight leaking through the awning's cracks, eyes half-shut; and whoever passed before him, from beneath those muddy lids he gave a sweep.

Lin Que sat down across from him.

Han Bosheng did not even lift his eyes. "This table's taken."

"Han Nine-Lives." Lin Que called out low.

The old man's hand, over a bean, stopped. He looked up; his muddy eyes turned twice across Lin Que's face—first a blank start, then that wrinkled face slowly cracked open into a grin of yellow teeth. "…It's you, boy."

He looked Lin Que up and down; those old eyes, well-used to reading men, narrowed and swept once around him, and the smile thinned.

"Your qi's changed." Han Bosheng lowered his voice. "A herb-lodge odd-jobber, and in half a year your qi's shot up this much—that's no ordinary thing. Boy, inside this Xuanzhao Sect you've likely stumbled onto some heaven-sized fortune."

Lin Que did not take up the remark; he simply poured the old man wine and laid his purpose plainly on the table.

"I've come to find you over a piece of business—I want to bring you in on it."

Han Bosheng's hand over the beans stopped again. "Business?"

"That blighted ground on the back-mountain of the Xuanzhao Sect—you've likely heard of it already." Lin Que pitched his voice very low. "I've been there. Rifts across the whole slope, drifting one after another over the loose rock and in mid-air. An ordinary man who goes there feels only that the place is uncanny, gets gooseflesh, dares not approach—yet can't make out that they're rifts, still less where he can set his feet. Brush against one, and hide and hair, silently, a piece of you is gone. I saw with my own eyes a wild hare graze a rift's edge—half its body was simply gone on the spot, before the blood could even well up. Those the foot-folk say 'went in and were never found'—that's likely how they went."

The idleness on Han Bosheng's face drew in, inch by inch. He had gone in and out of rifts all his life, and knew better than anyone what that "silently, a piece gone" was.

"The treasures in the rifts you know better than I—rift crystals, strange materials; folk are near coming to blows over them now." Lin Que went on. "But that slope is a graveyard end to end, and there are ferocious things coiled in the rifts that blade and spear can't pierce. Go in alone, and I'd be throwing my life away for nothing."

He looked at Han Bosheng, word by word.

"In all this world, of those who've gone into a rift and come out alive, I know only you. So I've come to find you—the rifts of that blighted ground, I mean to hunt in them, but going in alone is a death sentence. Others there can't tell where the rifts are or where they can stand; those rifts, I can see clearly. I read the path; you bring the experience—dodging the dangers, dealing with the fierce things. Only then does the trip come off."

The clamor of the morning market outside the awning was held far off.

Han Bosheng stared at him; a sharp light flashed through those muddy eyes, and suddenly he snorted a laugh.

"You've the nerve to ask, all right." He set down his cup. "That slope others flee from as fast as they can, and you not only mean to burrow in, you want to drag me along." His tone turned, and those muddy eyes pinned onto Lin Que's face. "Back in the market ward, you traded me a crystal out of a rift for the truth of the Black Wind Hall—of those who've been into such a place and still come out whole, hide and hair, you're the only one I've seen in my life. I sensed then that there was something off about those eyes of yours, and today you've said it out yourself."

He leaned forward. "Those rifts you see clearly—is it only the path you see, or do you see through the fierce things coiled inside too?"

Lin Que did not hide it from him. To bring a man into a venture and keep things hidden—neither of them would go far.

"I can see the edges of the rifts, and I can see the gaps on those fierce things that won't close—those are their vital gates." He lowered his eyes. "How I came by these eyes, I can't explain even to myself. What I can tell you is this much."

Han Bosheng slapped his thigh, those muddy eyes lit with a frightening brightness.

"No wonder. No wonder you came out whole." His voice trembled. "I've gone in and out of those rifts all my life, and it was all luck that I lived, and quick retreat—where the rift's edge lay, where the thing's vital gate lay, not once did I ever see it clearly."

He stared at Lin Que, then, after a while, said hoarsely: "I'll not hide it—I've squatted in this market half a month meaning to snatch a road to fortune while rift-stock prices have gone mad. But these old bones of mine don't have those eyes; go in and it's a death sentence, so I've just been idling here, wearing myself thin." He grinned. "Those eyes of yours are the very thing I lack."

"The old drifter's rule: see through it, don't speak it through." He waved a hand. "You can see—that's enough. This venture, I'm in."

---

"That blighted ground, I know it." Han Bosheng lowered his voice. "Twenty years ago, hiding from debts and from enemies, I holed up on that back-mountain the better part of a year. At the foot of the slope, in the loose rock, there's an old pill-kiln—a derelict kiln where an earlier dynasty refined medicine, half-collapsed, covered over with vines; from outside it's just a heap of loose stone. Inside it's dry, with a spring-eye of living water, sheltered from the wind. Back then I holed up in there, using that blighted ground to scare people off—others dared not approach, so it became the steadiest roost of all."

Something stirred in Lin Que.

A derelict kiln no one dared approach, that the authorities couldn't find, pressed up against that cluster of small rifts—for hiding men, stockpiling stock, refining things, nothing could suit better.

"Is the kiln still there?"

"Built of stone; it won't collapse all the way." Han Bosheng grinned. "The vines will only be thicker."

Lin Que drew out the rift crystal he had carried in his robes for over twenty days and, under the cover of his sleeve, showed the old man a corner of it. That faint, ghostly glimmer flashed once in the awning's shadow and was gone.

Han Bosheng's pupils contracted.

"This thing, I've never dared move." Lin Que withdrew his hand. "A herb-lodge servant carrying it to trade for spirit stones—one question about where it came from and I'm exposed. Now there's a channel in the market—the woman proprietor of the Guangyuan Company buys stock, asks nothing of its origin, gives a fair price. I'll put this piece out, trade it for gear I can use: good picks, cord, fire, antidotes, things to guard myself. All I have on hand now is a few wooden picks and a length of short cord—the eyes alone are of no use."

"Trade for the gear, hole up in that old pill-kiln," Han Bosheng carried on, the light in his eyes growing hotter, "you read the rifts, I dodge the danger; pick the sleeping small rifts, take on the derelict, weak things first, get rift crystals and strange materials, come out and trade, go back in—"

His words broke off abruptly, that heat receding, replaced by the wariness of a man of the drifting world. He swept a glance left and right beyond the awning, and pitched his voice almost past hearing:

"Boy, one thing has to go first. These six months rift-stock prices have gone mad, and it didn't fall from the sky." He tapped the tabletop with a withered finger. "The rift crystals and strange materials on the market are all being quietly gathered up by one buyer with a mutton-fat jade token at his waist—pays high, asks nothing of origin, and whoever won't sell to him, their cart meets trouble halfway down the road. This stock-trade is only so big, and he's got it watched dead-tight. We hunt these rifts on the sly and push the stock out, and this extra batch of stock with no provenance—sooner or later he'll notice, and he's bound to trace who's producing it. Follow that trail and it digs straight to your head, straight to that roost. And if that roost gets sniffed out, the Xuanzhao Sect's mountain-wardens, or that buyer's men—either one falling on us is more than you and I can swallow."

The mutton-fat jade token again.

Lin Que lowered his eyes. The silencing palm-print on Senior Brother Du's shoulder, Senior Brother Xu fallen dead in a mountain gully—the hand that pinned down the ruined cultivators and forbade them to speak wore, at its waist, just such a jade token. And now even the stock coming out of the rifts, that same hand was gathering in.

That hand reached further than he had thought.

Yet this trip, he had no choice but to make.

What Lin Que cultivated was a tattered art—every layer of its realm snagged on the stroke someone had cut away. To break through, he needed material carrying pure qi, material that matched that flaw, to fill it a fraction at a time. Such material was rare; an outer-gate disciple like him could get no sect spirit-pills, no great-clan treasures. What lay within his reach now was only these man-eating rifts.

Without going into the rifts, those eyes of his that could see the flaws would be no more than the sight without the mending.

This thought he pressed to the bottom of his heart, and did not raise with Han.

"That hand's reach, I've noted it." Lin Que set down his cup, his voice level. "But the stock in those rifts, traded out, is spirit stones—the capital to turn my fortunes around. The risk of provoking that hand, I accept."

Han Bosheng looked at him, the wrinkles on that old face smoothing out one by one; at last he tipped his head back and drained the cloudy wine in his cup, setting it down hard.

"Done. Count me in."

---

The sun leaned west; Lin Que had to get back before the mountain was closed.

As he rose to go, Han Bosheng rummaged a while in that grubby satchel and drew out an old leather pouch the size of a palm, pushing it across to Lin Que. The pouch was worn to a shine, its corners oil-blackened, its drawstring broken and spliced again.

"Open it."

Lin Que loosened the drawstring. Inside were a dozen or so sharpened bone-picks, each honed smooth, their tips carrying a dim, oily sheen; also a coil of very fine tung-oil cord, a small pinch of fire-tinder, and two hard, dried miasma-warding pills.

"This is the gear I went into rifts with when I was young." Han Bosheng's voice sank. "Bone-picks are harder than wooden ones; they'll drive into a shell-seam. Tung-oil cord, meeting the 'clean' light at a rift's edge, parts half a breath slower than common hemp rope—and that half a breath might just be a life." He paused, and something hard to name crossed those muddy eyes. "The four who went in with me never got the use of these. They've sat in this satchel of mine twenty years."

Lin Que tucked the pouch into his robes, against the rift crystal. Heavy with weight.

"The trading of gear I've entrusted to a talisman-drawer—the rift crystal, traded through the Guangyuan Company into things I can use, she'll bring up." Lin Que said. "When I find a pretext to get out, I'll come to this old pill-kiln to find you. Down from the slope's mouth, in the loose rock, the derelict kiln under the vines."

"I'll go clear out the kiln first." Han Bosheng stood, back stooped, and tucked the pot of leftover wine into his robes, loath to pour it out. "Remember my three rules: don't be greedy, don't linger long, leave a way back. However sharp those eyes of yours, they're set in a mortal body—seeing a vital gate isn't the same as taking the life."

He dropped these words, put his hands behind his back, and slowly melted into the crowd of the dispersing market; that dust-grey figure swayed once and was lost.

Lin Que stood beneath Chen's awning, the old leather pouch in his robes still warm with the old man's body-heat. He undid the few hastily-whittled wooden picks from his sleeve and swapped them in one by one, setting them alongside the dozen or so polished bone-picks, and tied the drawstring tight again.

The sun pressed against the ridge. He shouldered his herb-basket and set off up the mountain path. That old pill-kiln under the vines—from now on, there would be someone waiting for him inside.

【Ch. 036 End · the market town below Xuanzhao Mountain · the West Lane talisman shop → Chen's tavern】