Ch. 037| Open for Business

That old pill-kiln was harder to find than Lin Que had thought.

Han Bosheng had not lied—at the foot of the slope, in the loose rock, the half-collapsed kiln was wrapped tight in vines, and from outside it was just a heap of stone overrun with wild kudzu. Had Han Nine-Lives not been standing at the kiln's mouth waving him over, Lin Que, passing alongside with his herb-basket on his back, might not have recognized it either.

"The back-mountain herb-gathering duty, I've taken it on as my own." Lin Que ducked into the kiln and set down his basket. "The old man over the herbs balks at the rough mountain paths—he's only too glad to have me go. From now on, my coming to this slope is aboveboard."

Inside, the kiln was airier than it looked. The half that had caved in had caved open into a skylight, letting in the daylight; on the half still standing, Han Bosheng had already cleared out a place to rest—he had built up a fire-pit, stacked dry firewood in one corner, and set two chipped clay jars into a hollow in the stone wall; that spring-eye seeped from a crack in the rock, pooling into a shallow puddle of clear water.

"A roost I holed up in the better part of a year—I could find my way about it with my eyes shut." Han Bosheng crouched by the fire-pit, poking at a small heap of charcoal. "All it lacked was someone who could take me into the rifts. Twenty years' wait, and here it is."

Footsteps came from outside the kiln.

Xu Qinghe lifted the vines and came in, in trim, narrow-sleeved short garb, not the scholarly long robe she wore about the shop. A bulging bundle was slung across her back; on entering she first swept a glance over the ruined kiln, brow faintly knit, but in the end did not object.

---

"The things are traded back." Qinghe set the bundle on the stone slab and undid it.

Lin Que came over to look. Inside were the goods the Guangyuan Company had traded for with that rift crystal: a bundle of fine-steel needles filed dead-straight, two coils of good tung-oil cord, a small packet of fire-tinder, three antidote pills sealed in wax, and a palm-sized porcelain vial—Qinghe said the Guangyuan Company had thrown it in, a salve for dispersing bruises and knitting flesh.

"Madam Chang gave a fair price." Qinghe said. "That rift crystal, after trading for this set of handy gear, left sixty spirit stones over." She set a small cloth pouch before Lin Que. "She asked nothing of its origin, only said—from now on, stock like this, the Guangyuan Company will buy it all."

Sixty spirit stones.

Back in the market ward, Lin Que had scraped and near sold his life away to save the three hundred coppers for a token to leave the ward. And now one crystal gouged out of a rift, traded for a set of gear, still left sixty over. This road was broader than he had thought.

When he had first spread this plan out in the talisman shop, Lin Que had not been sure whether she, a shopkeeper, would truly burrow into this man-eating slope. And now the person had come, and the goods were traded and ready.

Qinghe checked over that bundle of fine-steel needles one by one, picked out a few handy ones and pinned them at her wrist, and, as if seeing what was in his mind, said without lifting her head: "My family's set of Green Seal-Script Talismans, flawed line after line, waits on stock from the rifts to mend it. If I don't come up, am I to wait idle in the shop?" She raised her eyes, a force pressed down in those cool eyes. "It's understood—I'm here for my own affair, not to run your errands."

Lin Que nodded. That he believed. Qinghe had never risked herself for another.

Han Bosheng gave two low chuckles at the side and poked the charcoal to a blaze. "One who can see the rifts, one who can draw talismans, one who's crawled through the rifts for his life." He stood and brushed the ash from his trousers. "Settled. This venture opens today."

"Say this first, before we open." But Lin Que held him back. "The first time, we pick the smallest, least conspicuous rift. Those big ones up on the slope—we don't touch a single one."

The grin on Han Bosheng's face stiffened. "Boy, it's in the big rifts the stock is fat…"

"Han Nine-Lives, what was the first thing you taught me?"

"…Don't be greedy." Han Bosheng rubbed his nose, sheepish. "Back then it was that one mouthful of greed that cost me four lives. All right, all right, we pick the small one."

Qinghe put in coolly from the side: "Well taught, at least."

Han Bosheng shot her a glare, got no advantage of it, and sullenly cinched his short blade tighter at his waist.

Qinghe did not understand much of these things. Born of a talisman-scribing house, she took the matter of rifts only for the source of the rift crystals and strange materials on the market.

Han Bosheng, blade cinched, was for once in a talkative mood, and told her low: "Girl, rifts come in grades too. The common sort that open in the wilds—shallow, lone, a single one, their qi mild-tempered—rogue cultivators who band up, the bolder ones, dare go in and gather a little stock to trade for coin. The rift crystals and strange materials on the market, nine in ten come this way; it was this bowl of rice I ate when I was young."

"But this place is blighted ground." He jerked his chin toward that end of the slope, his look darkening. "The rifts are dense and fierce; an ordinary man can't even stand steady here, let alone gather stock—those who 'went in and were never found,' ten in ten fell here. The fiercer the rift, the fatter the stock, and the less others can get in; a place like this, without Lin Que's eyes to lead the way, I wouldn't dare set foot on the slope's mouth."

Qinghe followed his gaze to that ghastly-pale slope of loose rock, and across her cool brow, for the first time, came a trace of gravity.

---

The loose rock at the slope's mouth showed pale under the afternoon sun.

Han Bosheng and Qinghe stood side by side at the slope's mouth, looking off in the direction Lin Que pointed—and saw nothing but a slope of loose rock and a few clumps of withered grass.

Han Bosheng squinted and stared a long while, yet the nape of his neck went cold in waves, that unnameable malignance boring into the seams of his bones. He had gone in and out of rifts all his life and knew the smell of this "blighted ground"—but smell was one thing; where exactly the rifts lay, which step could be trod and which could not, those old eyes of his could not make out a single one.

"I don't see a thing." he said low, though the hairs on his back stood up.

"You shouldn't—that's right." Beneath Lin Que's left eye, that heat rose. "These rifts, the mortal eye can't see to begin with." Across the whole slope the rifts floated faintly in his sight, one after another, of varying depth. The nearest, waist-high, "breathed," opening and closing; the line of "clean" light along its edge was coldly, piercingly bright—that kind was the deadliest, and even he dared only skirt it from afar. In mid-air hung one the size of a door-leaf, still and unmoving, but its gash so deep it sank his gaze. At the slope's foot, a few no bigger than a palm, faint enough to be dispersing, lay hidden beneath the loose rock, sleeping soundly.

He raised a hand and, very slowly, pointed them out one by one: "The ones that breathe, the big one in mid-air—keep well clear of them all. Under your feet, go as I point, stop when I say stop, not half a step more—brush a rift's edge, and hide and hair, silently, a piece of you is gone."

Qinghe drew a yellow talisman, pinched it once between her fingers, and the paper caught fire without flame, turning to a very faint blue glow that spread two feet along the ground and then dispersed. She stared at the ground the glow had swept across, her color faintly shifting: "My qi-probing talisman goes awry at this slope's mouth. The qi on the talisman is drawn off strand by strand, as if by something."

"What's drawing off your talisman's qi is those rifts," Lin Que said. "Your talismans lose their aim at a rift's edge. From now on, when you lay a talisman, I have to point out for you first where there's no rift, and then you set it down."

He fixed on a sleeping small rift at the slope's foot.

That rift was faint enough to be dispersing, the line of "clean" light along its edge even and weak, as if sound asleep. Compared with the few that breathed, this one was the most placid. For the first opening, they picked this least conspicuous one.

"Follow me." Lin Que took the first step.

---

The three of them, hugging the narrow path Lin Que pointed, edged step by step to the small rift's edge.

The rift was not large, half a man's height, black and deep within, seeping out a thread of chill. Lin Que looked in along its edge—the rift was not deep, and at its end a blurred shadow lay curled.

That shadow moved.

A thing the size of a mountain badger crawled out of the rift's shadow. It should have been an ordinary mountain beast, but its fur had shed away in ragged patches, the flesh beneath it a bruised blue-black, one hind leg dragging along the ground, lurching as it walked. Most frightful was the qi about it—scorched, disordered, spurting out in fits, like a furnace whose fire had gone wrong.

"A qi-deviation beast." Han Bosheng drew a sharp cold breath and set a hand on the short blade at his waist. "A mountain beast lingers too long at a rift's edge, flaw-lines bore into its meridians, and it runs its own qi awry—and becomes this foul thing. That disordered qi all over it burns the meridians on contact; it mustn't be touched."

The qi-deviation beast scented the living, rolled a string of un-beastlike screeches from its throat, and arched its back to spring.

Lin Que's left eye concentrated, looking in along that creature's disordered qi—the qi about it was a snarled mass, and only beneath the left forequarter, below the shoulder blade, was there one place where the qi-channels twisted into a dead knot, scorched-black, burning: the source where it had first run afire and burst open. The knot was still there, undispersed.

That was its vital gate.

"Left foreshoulder, below the shoulder blade." Lin Que barked low. "All its qi runs wild out of that knot—seal that, and this whole body of fire disperses. Qinghe!"

Qinghe already had a talisman in hand. She flung her arm out, two talismans flew from her fingers, and slapped onto the loose rock; the blue glow on them flashed, and a wall of sluggish, clinging qi rose from the ground out of nothing. The qi-deviation beast, halfway through its lunge, forepaws as if stepping into mud, jarred to a sudden halt.

But that qi-wall held only an instant. The line of "clean" light at the rift's edge bored strand by strand into the talismans, and the blue glow visibly faded. Qinghe's face went white: "My talisman's qi is being drunk by the rift—it won't hold a breath!"

Lin Que's heart sank. He had reckoned the talisman would trap it three breaths; now it was not even half a breath. The qi-deviation beast wrenched a forepaw free, the qi-wall split open a gap, and the creature screeched and sprang again.

No time to reckon.

"Han Nine-Lives, flip its left side!" Lin Que was already surging in.

Han Bosheng closed the distance, old but steady-handed, and with the flat of his blade struck hard into the beast's shoulder-socket, tipping it over, baring its left shoulder. In just that instant of the flip, that scorched, disordered qi grazed Lin Que's wrist, searing in, as if branded with a hot iron. He grunted low but did not pull his hand back—the fine-steel needle in his grip had already fixed on that scorched-black dead knot below the shoulder blade, and drove hard in.

The needle's tip struck the knot dead center.

The qi-deviation beast shuddered all over, and that scorched, disordered qi that had spurted the whole way "phut"—leaked away, like a stopper pulled. It twitched twice, slumped onto the loose rock, and did not move.

Lin Que shook his numbed wrist; where the disordered qi had burned, a welt had swelled up red, throbbing hot. One sleeping, least-conspicuous small rift, one first, weakest aberration, and it had near cost him himself. Qinghe's hand, gathering her talismans, paused; she said nothing. But Han Bosheng grinned. "Flaying a beast alive beats flaying a dead one."

---

The fire-pit in the kiln was fed more wood.

Han Bosheng crouched beside the qi-deviation beast and set to skinning it with practiced hands. From the scorched-black shoulder-knot he gouged out a hard core the size of a fingernail, dark as ink-jade, and weighed it in his hand. "The qi-deviation beast's qi is all congealed in this knot. This thing, the tool-forgers and the pill-refiners both scramble for—the Guangyuan Company will buy it." He tossed it to Lin Que. "First takings."

Lin Que caught the ink-core and rubbed his thumb-pad over it, cold to the touch. His left eye swept across it—the dead, still flaw-qi within the core ran opposite to the living-qi he had used mending the Breathing Scroll at his left rib. This thing could not mend his art.

But in that one instant just now, as he drove the needle in, he had glanced deeper into the rift.

At the black, deep end of that sleeping small rift floated a point of light. The "clean," man-eating light at the rift's edge was coldly, piercingly bright; this point was far gentler, glowing faintly with a congealed living-qi—of the same kind as the living-qi in that broken jade years ago, only far thicker.

The flaw at breaking the sixth layer of Qi Condensation—he had traced its mending method from the deep scrolls, and what it lacked was just such qi-conducting living material.

That point of light was there, at the end of this rift.

"That's enough for today." Lin Que tucked the ink-core into his robes, his face betraying nothing. "First opening—don't be greedy. Finish flaying this one, then back to the kiln."

Han Bosheng's flaying hand paused, and he peered up at him. "Boy, your eyes have set on something again."

An old drifter was an old drifter after all. Lin Que did not hide it. "There's a thing at the rift's end—I want it." He paused. "But that place is deep; I have to probe clear whether that rift wakes and whether there's anything else inside before I dare go for it. Today, just mark the spot."

Qinghe pressed the last protective talisman back into her bundle and, at his words, looked up—giving that slope's foot, which to the three of them was only a stretch of ordinary loose rock, a glance, and then a glance at Lin Que.

"Next time," she said.

【Ch. 037 End · Xuanzhao's back-mountain · the old pill-kiln of the blighted ground → the small rift at the foot of the slope】