Ch. 051| The Door-Crack

Over three days, Lin Que drilled that skimming art on the back wall of the herb-lodge no fewer than a hundred times.

The first two days, three times in ten he'd fail to clear the wall's crest, and the sound of his landing would startle the sparrows in the trees. By the night of the third day, that breath finally came smooth—he could skim over the two-zhang wall in a single breath, clear the top, land soundless, holding in even the faint scrape of his toe meeting the ground.

But drilled as smooth as it was, when the hour of the Ox came and he stood, in truth, at the foot of that high wall of the forbidden court, his palms still seeped with sweat.

The herb-lodge's back wall was only two zhang, and beyond it an empty yard. This wall of the forbidden court stood over three zhang, and beyond it were the men who bore the stock, the guards over the yard, that stone house. Fail to skim over, or skim over and land with a sound—and the stock-keepers, the watch inside the wall, would be on him at once. He wouldn't even leave a corpse behind: Bai Heng had said the living men carried into that stone house, not one had come out. He would be the next.

Lin Que pressed himself into the shadow at the southeast corner of the forbidden court's outer wall, and ran Bai Heng's slip of paper through his mind once more.

The torch atop the wall swayed. The disciple of the old watch went down yawning, and the new one who came up was rubbing his eyes, leaning against the parapet, not coming to his senses for a while yet.

Now was the moment.

Lin Que drew his breath, drove it from the Gushing Spring point through his whole body in one draw, touched a toe to the wall's foot—and his body drifted up, grazing over that three-zhang crest, and came down into the darkest shadow of a stock-heap inside the wall. Steady, without a sound.

He was in. This forbidden court, which he'd circled a half-month outside and never once got near, was now beneath his feet.

---

He did not dare move; first he crouched in the shadow and looked the outer yard over once.

The yard was not large, piled full of stock-heaps under blue cloth. In its center, all alone, stood that stone house—four-square, windowless, only one heavy wooden door, which at this moment stood open. A grey, hazy air seeped out from within, floating faintly over the yard.

Two stout men bearing stock were carrying the yard's stock, load by load, in through the stone house's door.

To see clearly inside the stone house, Lin Que had to shift up to the front of that open door.

He kept to the shadow of the stock-heaps and edged forward, inch by inch. Halfway there, one of the stock-bearers, a load on his back, came straight toward him.

Lin Que held his breath and shrank his whole self into the gap between two heaps of stock.

The man passed with his load three feet from him, his heavy, labored breathing right at Lin Que's ear. He carried on him a grey smell, the same as the stone house's, mixed with sweat. The man did not look this way; he carried his load straight into the stone house, came out empty-handed, and went off toward the stock-yard.

Not until those footsteps had gone entirely away did Lin Que dare let out, very lightly and very slowly, the breath he'd held pent at his chest.

He edged on forward, up behind the heap of stock nearest that stone house's door. Any farther, and there was no cover.

Through that narrow gap between this heap of stock and the doorframe, he could see inside the stone house.

Lin Que's left eye looked in, along that door-crack.

Inside the stone house it was darker than the outer yard, only a few dim yellow lamps lit at the very back. That grey haze coiled thicker in the room, everything seen through a veil.

But by that lamplight he first saw clearly—in the center of the room, in a row, stood five or six wooden beds.

On each wooden bed, a person was bound.

Living people. Each one bound rigid, something stuffed in their mouths, some with eyes open, some closed, all their chests still rising and falling.

Before the bed at the very back stood a figure in a long robe, its back to the door. The room's grey air coiled about it; the figure's face, the color of its long robe, what it held in its hand—Lin Que could make out none clearly. He saw only that the figure raised a hand and moved it, slowly and with great method, over the body of the one on the bed, like the most patient embroideress running a needle, stitch by stitch, across a length of cloth.

Lin Que's left eye flared, all at once, burning until the sockets ached.

He could not make out the figure's technique. But these eyes of his could see the thing happening in the living body on the bed.

The qi through that man's body had been smooth, alive. As the figure's hand moved, a flaw split open, out of nothing, along the man's qi-meridians.

That flaw, Lin Que knew. Its opening stroke, its course—he'd seen them countless times in the Breathing Scroll, in the monthly-allotment pills, not a hair's breadth off. He'd seen the flaw carved into dead scrolls, the flaw set into dead pills. But this one was cut into a living man who still drew breath.

Lin Que's breathing stopped.

The figure's hand still moved. That cut-in flaw deepened, a shade at a time. The man's chest heaved violently a few times, then slowly went flat—that once-smooth breath, dammed and tangled by the flaw, could no longer run a whole full circuit.

At that moment, the figure straightened slightly. By that dim yellow lamplight, Lin Que saw clearly the half of its face hidden in the grey air—at the corner of its mouth hung a streak of dark red.

Blood.

He bent over the man, and that motion of the hand, look on look, like embroidering, like cutting—was in truth, off that still-breathing body, eating the man's flesh and blood, mouthful by mouthful, into his own mouth. Those "qi-deviation dead" carried into the stone house were being fed to him.

The man on the bed was still alive. His eyes were open, his mouth stuffed tight, a thread of sound wrung from his throat, so fine it was all but inaudible and yet could not, no matter what, be let out—he knew he was being eaten, and yet could not so much as cry out.

Yet the figure was not the least bit hurried. He bent over, mouthful by mouthful, as unhurried and patient as at the most ordinary of meals.

In all his life, Lin Que had seen men who spat blood in qi deviation, seen aberrations crawl up out of the pauper's burial ground. But a living man, eyes still open, breath still coming, eaten down mouthful by mouthful by another thing like this—he did not understand what that thing was, and did not dare think further.

His stomach churned; he pressed down hard on the reek surging up his throat, and only just kept from making a sound.

His gaze shifted from that figure, bed by bed, to the one nearest the door.

The one bound on that bed, Lin Que knew.

He was an outer-gate disciple. Some days back, drawing water in the menial-chores court, Lin Que had seen this youth—that time the disciple had been laughing with someone, saying that in another half-year he'd be able to strike for the sixth layer, his face bright with the kind of joy of one who's never yet run headlong into a wall.

Later, word came that he'd struck for the layer, gone into qi deviation, and been carried off. Later still, no one spoke of him again. Everyone took it that he, like those others in qi deviation, had died.

He had not died. He was here, eyes open, mouth stopped, bound rigid on the bed nearest the door, waiting for that figure to move, bed by bed, up to him.

Those open eyes stared straight up at the roof, unblinking. The brightness of before was long gone. What was left was the thing that shows in a man's eyes only when, clear and wide awake, he watches himself about to be eaten down mouthful by mouthful, and cannot move so much as a finger.

Lin Que crouched behind the stock-heap, the bone-pick in his sleeve gripped until his knuckles went white.

Rush in. The two words struck once against his chest.

But rush in, and what could he do? The two stock-bearing men at the door, with the skill of the Qi Condensation realm, his one sword could fell. But that figure with its back to the door—a thing that ate a living man down mouthful by mouthful, in full view, and unhurried about it—what was its origin, what realm, could these eyes of his that had seen every kind of flaw even find one flaw upon it, Lin Que could not reckon in the least. He recognized only one thing: a thing like this was in no way something a seventh-layer Qi Condensation menial could afford to provoke.

And there was still a yard full of watches, a three-zhang wall. Rush in this door, and even if he saved the one youth nearest the door, he could not save the five or six beds; the door would close behind him, and he himself would be the man on the next bed.

---

At that moment, from the far side of the outer yard, came the sound of footsteps.

The watch at the southeast corner—the scant half-cup of tea of its changeover had run out. The new patrol, in even step, was making its round this way.

Lin Que's heart went cold. The gap he'd come in by was closing. Not leave now, and he'd be pinned between this patrol and that stone house, with no way out.

He was about to fall back to the wall's foot through the shadows—

The figure in the stone house, its back to the door, its hand, suddenly stopped.

The figure, slowly, turned half its face aside.

The grey air coiled about him; Lin Que still could not make out that face. But he could feel that the half-face turned this way was set toward the door—as though it had sensed, beyond the door-crack, a gaze that should not be there.

Every hair on Lin Que's body stood on end.

He did not look a second time. His mind-sense strung to the utmost, he fell back along the shadow of the stock-heaps, step by step, toward the wall's foot, his very breathing cut off. Those patrolling footsteps drew nearer and nearer; the torchlight already reached the edge of the stock-yard.

Fallen back to the wall's foot, he waited for the instant the patrol turned and put its back this way, drew a breath, touched a toe to the wall's foot—and his body sprang up, skimming to the wall's crest.

Skimming to the highest point of the crest, the breath he'd drilled three days still nearly scattered—his body sank. He clenched his teeth, held that breath by main force, barely cleared the parapet, and came down on the grass slope beyond the wall.

His landing, in the end, carried a bit of sound.

Inside the wall, the patrol gave an "Mm?", his step halting, and cast a light this way.

Lin Que pressed himself flat against the grass slope, not daring to draw a hard breath.

The torchlight swept the wall's crest twice over, then moved away.

"Just a stray cat." The patrol inside the wall muttered it, and his footsteps went off.

Lin Que lay in the grass, his chest hammering, unable to move for a good while. Not until that heavy wooden door creaked shut again inside the wall—shutting that room of grey air, those five or six wooden beds, that figure feeding off the living, all back into the dark—did he dare, at last, let out a long breath.

---

On the mountain road back to the herb-lodge, the night wind was very cold, scraping in gust after chill gust across his sweat-soaked back.

Lin Que walked very slowly. Those wooden beds in the stone house, that youth's open eyes, that streak of blood hanging at the corner of the figure's mouth—they followed him the whole way, and could not be shaken off.

He had broken in, and in the end, all he had done was see. On his own, he could not save the five or six on those beds, could not overturn that stone house, could not sever the source of the flaws filling the whole mountain.

And that figure with its back to the door, the one who did the work, was nearly finished. Once he was done and gone, this stone house, these people, the source of it all, along with that youth with the open eyes, would all vanish with him.

He had to be quick. But one man could not be quick.

At the end of the mountain road, the market town still showed a few lit lamps. Lin Que stopped at the fork—left was the road up the mountain, back to the herb-lodge; right went down.

He stood a while, then turned right, and took the road down the mountain, his step quicker than on the way up. The night dew was heavy, soaking the hems of his trousers; he paid it no mind at all. What he'd seen tonight through that door-crack pressed on him so he couldn't sleep, and couldn't wait for dawn.

【Ch. 051 End · the outer gate of the Xuanzhao Sect · the forbidden court】