Chapter 37

Chapter 37: Chapter 37

Yan Shuo slept until noon, and woke to a voice in his head.

’Courage, ten out of ten,’ Qin Wuyue said. ’Stubbornness, ten out of ten. Romance, I’ll allow an eight. Discretion? Brat, I would give you a zero, yet zero implies you actually tried.’

He opened his eyes. The barracks cave was empty. Every deep-shaft worker on level nine was out in the main cavern, still staring up at the glowing stone walls.

’Good morning to you too, Senior.’

’You showed her your eyes.’ Qin Wuyue sounded angry.

He lay still and looked at the rough rock ceiling above his narrow bunk.

’I forgot,’ he admitted.

’You forgot.’ Qin’s phantom voice went flat. ’Six years of hiding in the dirt, and you forgot right in the middle of an ice dome with a Foundation Peak cultivator sitting thirty paces away.’ Another pause stretched out, much longer this time. When she spoke again, the edge in her tone had softened. ’She didn’t ask.’

’She promised she wouldn’t.’

’Promises are cheap, brat. I’ve heard thousands of them. Most broke the very first time they were tested.’ He felt her settle, quiet and thoughtful, deep inside the jade. ’That girl looked straight into your blood and told you she wasn’t going anywhere. I’ve known precisely three people in three thousand years who could have done that.’ A beat passed. ’Keep her.’

Yan Shuo smiled up at the dark stone.

’I intend to, Senior.’

’Good. Now get off your back. The whole mountain is talking about your night’s work, and you don’t even know it yet.’

The whole mountain was talking about the vein.

By the time Yan Shuo climbed the old iron ladder shaft into the daylight, the Outer Valley was in an absolute uproar. Disciples crowded around the mouth of the mine in their hundreds, craning their necks to see the soft emerald glow still spilling up from the shaft. The Sect Master had come down in his gilded palanquin at dawn, wept openly at the sight of the waking vein, and declared it a miracle from the heavens. Elders from every peak were arguing loudly inside the lift hut over what it meant. Medicine Valley had already sent three physicians down the ladders to measure the new qi.

And on every lip, in every corner of the valley, he heard the exact same story.

"The Frost Lotus Fairy found it. She sensed the tremor in the dead of night and went down alone to measure it."

"She broke through, too. Foundation Late, right there at the bottom of the shaft. They say the vein’s waking qi poured straight into her."

"Three years stuck at a wall, and a miracle shakes her loose. The heavens truly favor that girl."

Nobody mentioned a service disciple from level nine. Nobody mentioned the Chi heir at all.

Yan Shuo walked right through the thick of the crowd with his head down and his hands tucked into his sleeves, and not a single person looked twice at him.

’Lucky men are boring,’ Qin murmured in his skull. ’And miracles are even better. Nobody ever interrogates a miracle.’

Lanying found him in the pine clearing that afternoon.

He was sitting on the fallen log with his palm held out flat in front of him, trying to coax frost to bloom across his skin the way it had down in the root cavern. It kept coming out in uneven, ragged patches. Then, without warning, a jagged sheet of ice shot out from his fingertips and froze a young pine sapling solid from root to crown.

He stared at it.

"That," a cool voice said from behind him, "was appalling."

Lanying stood at the edge of the clearing in fresh pale-blue robes, her silver hair bound high with the carved ice pin. She looked perfectly rested, perfectly composed, and utterly untouchable.

"Senior Sister," Yan Shuo said, getting to his feet. "Congratulations on your breakthrough."

"Thank you, junior brother." She inclined her head with grand formality. "I understand there was an unexpected surge in the vein last night. Fortunately, I happened to be down there to measure it."

"So I’ve heard."

"The entire mountain has heard." The corner of her mouth twitched, just a fraction.

She walked past him to the frozen sapling and inspected the crust of ice with a severe, critical eye.

"Your qi control is a disgrace," she said. "You shoved far too much into a single breath. Ice requires discipline. Precision. You don’t fling it at a tree like a drunkard tossing out dregs." She held out her own hand, palm up. A flawless lotus of clear ice blossomed across her skin, every single petal as thin as shaved paper. "Not a bludgeon. A blade. Like this. Try again."

He tried again. The frost came out in a crooked, misshapen lump.

She let out a quiet sigh. "Again."

He tried a third time. It came out in a wider lump with a smaller, pinched lump sitting squarely on top of it.

Lanying stared down at the double lump for a long, silent moment. Her lips pressed tightly together. Then her narrow shoulders began to shake.

"It isn’t funny," Yan Shuo said.

"It looks like a steamed dumpling," said the Frost Lotus Fairy, and lost her dignity entirely.

She was still laughing behind her hand when Ruan Tie arrived.

The big man came crashing through the pine boughs with grease and soot still smeared across his nose from wrecking the lift, grinning from ear to ear. He stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted Lanying, bowed so low his forehead nearly brushed his knees, and then straightened up with an expression of enormous, horribly unsubtle delight.

"Senior Sister Su!" he bellowed. "Congratulations on your inspection! I hear it was a very long inspection! Very thorough! All night long!" He gave Yan Shuo a massive, contorted wink. "That vein must have been terribly difficult to measure!"

Lanying stopped laughing at once.

The temperature in the clearing dropped by half. Every single needle on the nearest pine tree turned white with rime.

"Ruan Tie," Yan Shuo said gently. "Brother. Go away."

"I only came out here to congratulate—"

"Go away very quickly."

Ruan Tie took one look at Lanying’s face. He went chalk-pale beneath the mine soot, bowed hurriedly, and backed out of the clearing at such a frantic pace that he walked squarely into the trunk of a pine tree.

He had barely crashed away into the brush when Bai Rou strolled in from the opposite path, her woven herb basket balanced on her hip, looking as calm and pleasant as a spring morning. She paused at the edge of the clearing, looked at the two of them, glanced at the frozen sapling and the melting ice dumpling in Yan Shuo’s palm, and smiled her soft, round-faced smile.

"Senior Sister Su," she said politely. "I brought burn salve. For your right palm." She held out a small porcelain jar. "From your sword hilt, I imagine. I noticed the blister down by the mine shaft at dawn." She paused smoothly. "I brought a jar for him, too. His fingertips are frostbitten, and his bound ribs need checking." Another pause, very slight. "I imagine you both had a rather exhausting night."

Lanying accepted the porcelain jar with immense stiffness. The tips of her ears had gone the exact color of ripe plums.

"Thank you, Physician Bai."

"Of course." Bai Rou set the second jar neatly on the fallen log, turned to leave, and then glanced back over her shoulder. Her round face was entirely solemn, yet her dark eyes were dancing. "Your breakthrough is the talk of Medicine Valley, Senior Sister. Everyone is saying the old vein must be remarkably potent, to do so much for you in a single night."

She walked away. The green pine boughs swung shut behind her.

Lanying sat down heavily on the fallen log, buried her face in both hands, and let out a long, muffled groan of pure mortification.

’Oh, I like the physician,’ Qin Wuyue said in his head, thoroughly delighted. ’I like her very much.’

They sat side by side on the rough bark for a long while afterward in the quiet of the clearing, watching the frozen sapling glitter in the slanting afternoon sun.

Lanying had unbuckled the white leather bracer. She held her bare left wrist turned up toward the light. The Sun Brand was barely visible anymore—just a thin, dull, fractured coin beneath the skin, so faded that anyone who didn’t know to look for it would have mistaken it for an old bruise.

"Nothing," she murmured quietly, pressing her thumb hard against the shattered mark. "No heat. No pull. I can’t feel him at all."

"Neither can he," Yan Shuo said. "Not through that."

"He knows it’s broken. He felt it snap." She lowered her arm to her lap. "He’ll go straight to his clan’s envoy. They will demand to know how a Chi Clan binding seal shattered on a Frost Lotus disciple twenty-nine days before her wedding."

"What will you tell them?"

"That I have no earthly idea." She cut her eyes sideways at him. "Which happens to be very nearly the truth, seeing as a certain guide refuses to tell me anything."

He met her pale gaze.

"I’ll tell you one day," he said quietly. "Every word of it. I promise."

She studied his face for a long, unhurried moment. Then she nodded once, let out a slow breath, and rested her head against his shoulder.

"Twenty-nine days," she whispered.

"I’ve decided something." Her voice was very calm, and cold as winter iron. "Whatever happens next, Shuo, I am not going to Blazing Sun City. I don’t know how yet. Yet I am not going."

He reached over, took her cool hand, and laced his fingers through hers. Neither of them said anything else. Overhead, the high pines swayed in the mountain wind, and somewhere far off down the slope, Ruan Tie could still be heard loudly apologizing to Bai Rou for walking into a tree in front of her.

They were still sitting together on the log when a bronze bell began to toll high on Cloudpiercer Peak.

Not the shift bell. Not the call to evening meals.

It was the deep, slow summoning bell of the main hall, and its iron note rolled down the mountain nine separate times.

Lanying lifted her head from his shoulder. A heartbeat later, heavy boots came crunching through the dry pine needles: two Law Hall enforcers draped in coal-black, and walking just behind them, a herald wearing the gold-trimmed brocade of the Sect Master’s personal household.

The herald halted at the edge of the clearing, looked directly at the two of them sitting side by side on the log, and unrolled a silk scroll.

"Core disciple Su Lanying of Frost Lotus Peak," he read aloud. "Outer disciple Yan Shuo of the Outer Valley. You are summoned to the main hall of Cloudpiercer Peak at once, to answer before the Sect Master and the honored envoy of the Chi Clan."

He rolled the scroll shut with a sharp snap.

"Young Master Chi Yao," the herald said, "has lodged a formal accusation."