Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Chapter 13

The news reached the ninth level three days after the cave-in. It wasn’t carried by official mandate. It came down with the lift crew, smuggled in alongside the rice sacks.

Zhao Kun had been expelled. A gambling debt, the Law Hall claimed. A quarrel with a service disciple that turned ugly, a reckless chase into an unsafe gallery, and a ceiling that chose the worst possible moment to give way. He had been carried down the mountain at dawn on a stretcher. Nobody had come to see him off.

"Gambling debt," Ruan Tie snorted. He was back from his week hauling on the fourth level, sitting on an overturned ore cart outside the barracks and tearing a steamed bun in half with far more force than the bun deserved. "You’ve never gambled a copper in your life, brother. You won’t even bet on which rat gets to the rice sack first."

"The Law Hall says I owed him money."

"Then the Law Hall is entirely full of donkey dung."

"Quietly, brother."

Ruan Tie lowered his voice to a rumble that only rattled the nearest cart. "Everyone on nine knows he had a knife. Everyone knows those hooded men weren’t from the sect." He shoved half the bun into Yan Shuo’s hand. "And everyone knows you walked out of the old workings while he got carried. They’ve started calling you the Ceiling’s Favorite."

Yan Shuo winced. "Please make them stop."

"Can’t." Ruan Tie grinned, his teeth flashing white against the mine dust. "It’s catching on."

’It’s a stupid name,’ Qin Wuyue observed in his mind, ’but a highly useful one. Lucky men are boring. Nobody investigates luck.’

Across the cavern, the Law Hall watcher sat on an upturned bucket at the mouth of gallery seven. He was eating his rice ration from a bowl in his lap with dedication. Not a single break. Not a single lapse in attention. He hadn’t left his post once in three days.

The inspection was announced at the start of the afternoon shift.

Steward Hao came shuffling out of his alcove by the lift, gripping a jade token in one hand. He wore an expression on his dried-plum face that Yan Shuo had never seen before. It wasn’t his usual weary indifference. It was sheer, naked alarm.

"Frost Lotus Peak," Hao barked to the cavern at large. "Elder Shen’s orders. They’re sending someone down to measure the vein." He glared at the gathered workers. "Somebody sweep the track. Somebody hide the dice. And if any of you so much as scratches yourselves in front of a core disciple, I’ll have you hauling slag until you’re dead."

The lift chains began to groan.

Every deep-shaft worker on level nine stopped what they were doing to watch the basket descend out of the dark. It was the regular ore basket—iron-banded, rusted, and filthy. It descended at its usual creaking, agonizing pace. Yet the figure standing inside it, one hand resting lightly on the heavy chain, made it look like an emperor’s palanquin.

Pale blue robes. Silver-white hair bound high with a pin of carved ice.

The basket thumped onto the stone. A thin, crystalline rime of frost spread out across the floorboards from her boots. The cavern’s stale, suffocating heat didn’t just fade. It retreated from her like a beaten dog from a raised hand.

Beside Yan Shuo, Ruan Tie made a high, strangled noise like a boiling kettle.

Su Lanying stepped out of the basket. She surveyed the grime of the ninth level with cool, unhurried interest, then turned her pale eyes to Steward Hao.

"Steward. Elder Shen requires a full measurement of the vein’s remaining strength, gallery by gallery. I will need a guide who knows the old workings."

Hao looked around the cavern. Suddenly, every single deep-shaft worker found something incredibly urgent to do with their hands.

Hao’s flat, unblinking gaze landed directly on Yan Shuo and stayed there.

"Seven is the oldest gallery on the level," the old man grunted. "He knows it best."

Yan Shuo had the distinct, terribly familiar feeling of a ceiling beginning to give way.

They walked down gallery seven together. The lantern swung between them, casting long shadows against the rock, while the Law Hall watcher trailed exactly thirty paces behind, still clutching his rice bowl.

For the first hundred paces, Lanying said nothing at all. She stopped every twenty steps, pressed a thin disc of white jade against the wall, and watched the faint light that bloomed inside the stone. Then she wrote a figure on a slip of paper and walked on. Her frost didn’t just chill the air. It left pale, fading footprints on the wooden rail ties behind her.

Yan Shuo carried the lantern and kept his eyes strictly on the iron track.

"You are very quiet, junior brother," she said at last.

"I’m a guide, Senior Sister. A guide’s job is to be quiet."

"A guide’s job is to be useful." She pressed the jade disc to the wall again. It glowed so faintly she had to cup her hand around it just to read the light. "How far does the vein run past this point?"

"Another three hundred paces. Then it splits into the old workings. Most of what’s left is in the walls past the red markers."

"And how long have you worked down here?"

"A little over two weeks, Senior Sister. And most of that was spent recovering in Medicine Valley."

"Two weeks." She wrote down a figure with a sharp stroke of her brush. "And already you know where the vein splits, where its strength lies, and exactly what lies past the markers." She glanced at him sideways, her pale eyes catching the lantern light. "You must be remarkably observant."

"There isn’t much else to do down here, Senior Sister. You can count the rail ties, or you can count the threads in the wall."

"Which do you prefer?"

"The threads. They don’t creak when you step on them."

The corner of her mouth moved. She looked away before it could become an actual smile.

’Careful,’ Qin murmured in his mind. ’She’s warming you up.’

’I know.’

’I’m not sure you do. You’re actually enjoying this.’ Qin teased him.

He was, a little. He firmly decided not to think about that.

They reached the red markers.

Beyond them, the tunnel ended in a brutal, raw wall of fallen shale. Steward Hao’s workers had cleared enough to drag Zhao Kun out, and not a single stone more. The broken crossbeam still jutted from the rubble like a snapped collarbone. At its foot stood what was left of the fourth prop: a black, rotting stump about knee-high.

Lanying walked past the paint markers without a second of hesitation. She crouched gracefully beside the stump and held the lantern close to the ruined wood.

Yan Shuo stopped exactly where he was.

She studied the stump for a long time. Then she reached out and touched the wood with one pale fingertip, tracing a clean, sharp diagonal gash across its face.

"The Law Hall’s official report," she said, her voice echoing softly in the dead end, "says the props on gallery seven gave way on their own."

"They were very old, Senior Sister."

"So I see." She ran her finger along the sheer cut again. "This one, however, seems to have received some encouragement."

The lantern hissed in the damp air. Thirty paces back up the tunnel, the watcher’s wooden spoon scraped loudly against his bowl.

Yan Shuo kept his voice perfectly even. "I was running for my life in the pitch dark with a heavy pick in my hand. I swung at absolutely everything I passed. I don’t remember hitting it."

"At knee height. Precisely where the post was the weakest." She looked up at him over her shoulder, her eyes pinning him in place. "With three men chasing you, in the dark."

"Then I was very lucky."

"So everyone keeps telling me." Lanying stood up and smoothly brushed the frost from her knees. "The Ceiling’s Favorite. Did you know they are calling you that on the fourth level now?"

"I’ve politely asked them to stop."

"I highly doubt they will." She studied his face in the flickering lantern light. Her cold suspicion hadn’t vanished, but it had begun to soften into something else. Interest. "If someone came at me in the dark with a knife, junior brother, I would pray to be half as lucky."

It was the closest thing to a genuine compliment he had ever heard from her. He bowed his head low, entirely because he didn’t trust what his face might show.

She took her final measurement on the walk back, pausing a little above the red markers where the vein’s threads were the faintest. The jade disc barely registered a glow. It was practically dead stone. She looked at it for a long, heavy moment before writing the final figure down.

"How bad is it?" Yan Shuo asked quietly.

Lanying hesitated. He could visibly watch the arithmetic in her eyes as she decided whether a service disciple was owed an honest answer.

"A year," she said finally. "Perhaps even less. Elder Shen prayed for two." She tucked the folded slip into her sleeve. "After that, this vein will be nothing but dead stone. The Azure Cloud Sect will be surviving entirely on whatever scraps the Chi Clan chooses to feed us."

"And the Chi vein?"

"Arrives after the wedding." Her voice went perfectly, unnervingly flat. "Not one week sooner. Not one day sooner. The Chi Clan was explicitly clear about that."

Yan Shuo filed the information away in the dark. A sect with barely a year of qi left to breathe, and a replacement vein that would only be delivered once its brightest, most talented disciple was safely married off and branded like cattle. No wonder the Sect Master had smiled so broadly at the banquet. No wonder Elder Shen was down here desperately counting threads in a dying wall.

"Then everything is waiting on you, Senior Sister," he said.

Lanying’s eyes snapped to him, sharp enough to draw blood.

"Is that pity, junior brother?"

For a split second, she looked genuinely startled. Then, the rigid, perfect posture in her shoulders eased, just a fraction. She let out a short, sharp breath that was almost a real laugh.

"You are a very strange servant." She sighed deeply.

"I’ve been told that a lot lately."

They walked the rest of the way back to the lift in silence. But it was a vastly different silence from the heavy, suffocating quiet they had walked down in.

At the lift, Lanying handed her jade token back to Steward Hao and stepped into the iron basket. The Law Hall watcher had already scrambled up the service ladder ahead of her, rice bowl and all. No doubt racing back up the mountain to inform Elder Gu that the Frost Lotus Fairy had just spent a full hour alone in the dark with the Yan woman’s son.

She watched the watcher scurry away with an expression of profound, aristocratic distaste.

"Your shadow is remarkably devoted," she noted.

"He’s strictly under orders."

"Mm." She glanced down at her left wrist. The gold brand was glowing faintly beneath the pale blue silk. "So am I, apparently. My fiance will feel this. He will know exactly where I spent my entire afternoon." Her mouth tightened into a fierce, rebellious line. "Let him wonder."

Yan Shuo said nothing. Anything he said right now would be entirely too much.

Lanying looked at him across the dusty cavern floor for a long, heavy moment. Behind her, Ruan Tie was pretending incredibly hard to inspect a broken ore cart wheel, and half the deep-shaft crew were pretending not to stare.

"Steward Hao," she called out, never once taking her pale eyes off Yan Shuo. "A single measurement isn’t enough to know how fast the vein is failing. Elder Shen will want to establish a precise rate of decline." She laid her delicate hand on the rusted iron chain. "I will be back in three days to measure it again. And every three days after that. Until I am completely satisfied."

Hao opened his mouth to object. Then, looking at her eyes, he very wisely closed it.

"I’ll need the exact same guide," Lanying added. "He’s remarkably observant."

The lift began to grind upward. She rose with it, pale and perfectly straight and utterly expressionless, swallowed up by the darkness of the shaft.

But just before the iron basket passed out of the reach of the lantern light, Yan Shuo could have sworn he saw something, a genuine, dangerous smile.