Ch. 049| The Afterimage

Back from the Listening-Rain Tower, Lin Que turned Madam Chang's words—"scrambling to make up a sum, and trouble's near"—over and over in the herb-lodge for two whole days.

The people behind it all were racing a deadline. The jade-token buyers were hoarding stock like mad, the scrolls were being pressed hard—all of it rushing to fill some sum he still couldn't see. Those who scrambled to make up a number, Madam Chang had said, were often the ones about to bring trouble down. By the time he slowly built himself up, slowly grew strong, whatever lay behind that door would likely be long finished.

But that door of the forbidden court—he couldn't get near it yet.

These two days, delivering medicine to the northernmost reach of the outer gate, he'd used the errand to circle the forbidden court twice from a distance. That stone house sat at the very heart of it; the outer yard was ringed by four inner-gate disciples, one guarding each corner, their eyes never once slackening. Lin Que tried to edge closer—still a good twenty paces out, and the gaze of the disciple guarding the east corner snapped onto him. He dropped his head at once, playing a menial hunting for a path, and skirted away, a thin sweat breaking out across his back.

Four pairs of eyes, one to a corner, all covering one another, not a single idle moment among them. The one sword in his sleeve could split the plank door of that stone house, could pierce a guard's throat—but it could not get past those four pairs of eyes. Draw it, and the disturbance would be too great; it would be the same as drawing the whole forbidden court down onto himself.

However sharp the sword, it couldn't break this deadlock. What he lacked was something else—a body-art that could slip out from under those four pairs of eyes, soundless, unseen. Skill like that wasn't to be found down any ordinary road.

He touched the bone-pick in his sleeve. Beneath his fingertip, the stroke of sword-intent that could strike a vital gate across empty air lay quietly coiled—that thing, too, had been no one's teaching, no one's ware; he'd fetched it back with his own hands, out of a rift in the blighted ground.

The skill he was after—the rifts, perhaps, held that too.

---

These past few days of herb-gathering, he'd kept one extra thing in mind—not the herbs, but the rifts.

The day before last, on the slope of the back mountain, that familiar patch of grey-green had appeared again.

It was the very little beast he'd scooped out of the panting rift and tucked into his robe to carry out. It crouched on a jumble of stones, a pair of bright eyes fixed straight on him; and when he recognized it, it did not flee. Lin Que softened his steps and eased closer, and it rose and darted up the slope—its shape wavered, trailing a faint string of afterimages, like a leaf swept along on the wind, so light it never touched the ground. That kind of body-art he had never seen on any running beast.

It bolted across the rubble, glanced back at him once, slipped into a narrow rift along the western edge of the blighted ground, and was gone.

Lin Que chased to the rift's mouth. The rift neither panted nor drew breath; his tempered left eye swept in—and deep within, there was a point of light. Not the "clean" white glow of an ordinary rift, nor the warm luster of a rift crystal. It was the same light as that stroke of sword-intent, before.

In the rift, once again, something lay sealed away.

Yet he halted at the rift's mouth, in no hurry to go in.

How had this little beast happened to appear at the very moment his worry was deepest, and led him to a rift with something hidden inside it? Lin Que couldn't say; he only felt, faintly, that something somewhere wasn't right. But the light in the rift was real, plain, the same as that stroke of sword-intent before; the door of the forbidden court waited, and Madam Chang's "trouble's near" pressed at him too. In the end, he pushed that nameless wrongness down.

When he looked back, the little beast on the rim of the rift had already shrunk into a crevice in the stone, its shape lost.

He found a day the herb-lodge gave him off-duty, and gathered Han Bosheng and Xu Qinghe, and stole up to the west rift of the blighted ground.

At the rift's mouth, that vile, stifling air came rolling at their faces, and Han Bosheng's expression sank. "The rifts of the blighted ground I've dodged half my life. The air of this one is fouler than any of them." He shot Lin Que a glance—he'd learned well enough that those eyes of the lad's could see, inside a rift, what others couldn't. "Those eyes of yours—what are you seeing in there?"

"Something," Lin Que said, gazing into the depths of that narrow rift at the light only he could see. He still couldn't say for certain what it was; he only knew it was the same light as the rift where he'd found the sword. "I have to go in to see it clear."

"I'll come with you." Qinghe divided out the newly-drawn rift-probing talismans, her fingertips pausing as she passed one over.

"You can reach the mouth, but not the bottom." Lin Que shook his head. "The path inside—only I can see it. I have to walk it alone."

---

Once into the rift, that stifling air settled over him at once. Han Bosheng and Qinghe followed as far as a somewhat wider stone chamber, then stopped—farther in, the rift walls pinched so close a man could only pass sideways, and that path, to their eyes, simply did not exist.

Han Bosheng pressed a stub of fire-stick into his hand, his face none too easy. "The air in a stifling rift is thick; this won't burn for long. Weigh the risks yourself in there—if you're not out by the time an incense stick burns down, Qinghe and I can't reach you at the mouth. We'll have no choice but to fall back alone."

Qinghe said nothing, only pushed the last rift-probing talisman into his hand. Her fingertips were colder than usual, and gripped a touch tighter than usual too.

Lin Que took it, and edged sideways, inch by inch, toward the point of light only he could see.

At the end of the narrow passage, the way opened out into a dim stone grotto.

The stretch of ground in its center looked, to ordinary eyes, utterly plain; but in Lin Que's left eye, it was riven with dozens of pale rifts, one packed against the next, the kind that "cleanly" devours a man, splitting the grotto in two. An ordinary man walking to this spot would see only level ground, take one step out—and lose half a leg.

And on the far side of that deadland, an afterimage hung suspended.

The afterimage of a person, sprung up into the empty air, one foot on nothing and one just touching down, sleeves flung wide, the whole figure like a leaf caught up by the wind, so light it never touched earth. That posture of gathering breath and leaping was fixed forever in mid-air—a body-lightening art that had drifted here, along the rift, from somewhere very far away.

Lin Que stared at that afterimage, and the wrongness he'd pressed down at the rift's mouth floated up again now, cold clear through.

He'd fretted two days in the herb-lodge, and what he'd fretted over was exactly this—that he lacked a body-art to get past the guards' eyes. Fretted to the breaking point, and that little beast had led him to this rift; and what was sealed within it was, of all things, a body-lightening art—not a hair's breadth off, precisely the thing he needed.

That stroke of sword-intent, too, had come just so, back then. Once was luck; this was the second time. Too smooth—smooth as though someone had laid the very things he lacked, one after another, along the road ahead of him.

What that "someone" was, and what they were after, was farther than a seventh-layer Qi Condensation menial could reach, and farther than he dared think. He felt only that here, deep in this grotto, the light around that afterimage—the light only he could see—was still and quiet, as if it were gazing back at him. As if it had long known that he would step in.

Whoever left it had, most likely, meant to skim across this deadland; had skimmed halfway, run out of breath, and never come down again.

Lin Que stood on this side of the deadland, and let his mind-sense trace the force-path of that afterimage. The shape of that skim, its landing point—he saw them clearly; only the leap itself—how one was meant to draw a breath up from the Gushing Spring point in the sole through the whole body—broke off partway along the path. With the breath drawn short, a man could neither skim far nor land steady.

In his mind, inch by inch, he joined up that broken stroke.

Only this half-move was mended across a full ten feet of deadland. The fine details—how the afterimage drew its breath in, where it set its foot down—couldn't be made out clearly from afar; short of standing right before it, he couldn't mend the whole.

And that afterimage hung, of all places, on the far side of the deadland. To reach it, he could not go around the man-eating pale rifts underfoot—he had to skim across them himself, on a body-lightening art he'd mended only halfway and never once used, not even on flat ground.

Lin Que stood at the deadland's edge, and layer upon layer of sweat seeped down his back.

Every pale rift underfoot he saw with perfect clearness—but clear as it was, this half-move of body-lightening he had never yet used, not even on level ground. His first use of it, and he'd have to wager his life on this ten feet. Lose the wager, and half a leg would stay behind in these pale rifts, the same end as the man who left this afterimage.

He thought again of Madam Chang's "trouble's near."

Slow—there was no longer time for slow.

Lin Que stepped back two paces, ran the half-move's method through his mind once more, drew a breath, and sank it to the Gushing Spring point—

His toe touched down on the rift's rim.

His body sprang up, light and drifting, like the man in that afterimage, and skimmed toward the far shore. The "clean" white glow of the pale rifts underfoot grazed past the soles of his shoes—one, two, three—he dared not look down, only fixed his stare on the afterimage across the way and drove all the breath in his body forward.

Skimmed across most of that ten feet, and the mishap came.

That half-mended breath could not, in the end, be sustained. The true qi he'd drawn up through his whole body scattered all at once, and his body was yanked violently downward, as if by a hand from mid-air—down toward that man-eating deadland.

The "clean" white glow underfoot was inches away; Lin Que watched, wide-eyed, as his own left foot began to fall into a pale rift. In that flash of an instant, his right hand shot out, and his fingertips clawed for their lives at the stone wall beside that afterimage—a nail tore loose, blood seeped out, but that clawing borrowed a thread of force. He wrenched his falling body a half-foot toward the far shore.

Half of him crashed hard onto the stone. His left leg still hung over the deadland's edge, the toe of his shoe "cleanly" shaved away by a pale rift, a neat cut, taking a good part of the sole with it.

Half an inch more, and it would have been half a leg.

Lin Que lay sprawled on the stone, gasping in great mouthfuls, his chest hammering like a drum, so shaken in the aftermath that his fingertips trembled.

He propped himself up, and only now saw clearly—in the stone crevice beneath that afterimage's foot, a withered skeleton was half-embedded. The bones were blackened, one leg gone clean at the knee, the cut neat, exactly like the pale rift he'd nearly fallen into a moment ago. The skeleton's finger-joints were still dug deep into the stone wall—the very spot where he had clawed, just now.

Whoever left this afterimage had, in that year, skimmed to this same spot, run out of breath, dropped half a leg into a rift, and never managed to cross. That clawing before death, and Lin Que's clawing just now—the same place, differing only by that thread of force, that half-inch.

By just that much, this withered skeleton would have been him.

But he had made it. That afterimage was right before his eyes, three inches away. This close, every last thread of the qi-path in that leaping art stood out plain to see. He held his breath, and joined up, inch by inch, that stretch he'd bought with his life in mid-air and yet left unmended, down to the very end.

The instant the broken end joined through, the "intent" of that art poured, like a gust of wind, along his mind-sense into the meridians of his whole body. That half-move of a moment ago now mended into a single whole art of "skimming," and settled into his body.

---

Lin Que braced against the stone wall and slowly stood.

Across the way, Han Bosheng and Qinghe still waited at the stone chamber. This deadland, this afterimage—neither of them could see. To go back, he'd have to skim this ten feet of deadland once more.

But this time, he had something to stand on.

He drew a breath. It rose from the Gushing Spring point clear through his whole body, smooth and unbroken, no longer failing halfway. His toe touched the stone wall, his body sprang up—light and drifting, steady, and he skimmed across that man-eating deadland and came down on the far shore, soundless underfoot, like a leaf drifting down.

That sinking, that plunge of a moment ago, were gone entirely. An art of skimming across the ground without a sound, from beginning to end, had settled into his body.

Those several pairs of eyes guarding the forbidden court's gate—he'd had nothing at all to stand on before. Now, that door he couldn't get near had suddenly drawn a stretch closer.

He skimmed back along the way he'd come to the stone chamber. Han Bosheng and Qinghe were still keeping watch there.

"Well?" Qinghe came up to meet him, and at one glance saw the shaved-off toe of his shoe, the blood on his fingertips, one side of his clothes gone to dust, and her face changed. "You've hurt yourself again?"

"Just skin." Lin Que shook his head. "It was perilous in there—I nearly didn't come back." He looked at these two who had tied their lives to his, and did not swallow the truth back down. "But the thing I was after—I've got hold of it. That door I can't get through—there may be a way now, before long."

That skimming force, in the end, he did not let show. "As for what it is, and where it came from—I haven't sorted it out myself yet. Until I have, let me set it aside—not to hide it from you, but because I truly can't put it clearly; say too much, and I'd only draw down disaster on you instead."

Han Bosheng narrowed his eyes and studied him a good while. When the lad came out, his breath was steadier than when he went in, his feet lighter than when he went in—the old man had seen that long since. Yet Lin Que hadn't tried to fob them off with some "there was nothing in there"; instead he'd laid what could be said, what ought to be said, right out in the open. The old rover gave a grunt, but there was no needling in it. "Keeping some cards close, to shield the rest of us from harm—that reasoning I understand. Let's go."

---

The three withdrew from the blighted ground. Under the light of day, Lin Que narrowed his eyes.

He glanced down at the shaved-bare toe of his shoe, and as he stepped, drew that still-raw skimming force a little deeper into his bones. On the mountain road back to the herb-lodge, he walked lighter than usual—so light that even he was not yet quite used to it.

【Ch. 049 End · the back mountain of the Xuanzhao Sect · the west rift of the blighted ground】