Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Yan Shuo looked at the four of them and did the maths.

Zhao Kun, seventh layer. The three behind him sat somewhere between the fourth and fifth, judging by the presence of their qi. Yan Shuo had reached the second layer twelve hours ago. The tunnel was six paces wide, with solid rock on both sides and a long empty stretch of track at his back.

And the situation said that he would lose.

The second calculation was worse. Elder Gu wanted to see how he held up under pressure. So somewhere in the beating that was coming, Gu wanted something to slip and Zhao Kun would carry every single detail back up the mountain.

Which meant the only way to win was to lose completely.

’Brat.’ Qin Wuyue’s voice was low and tight in his mind. ’Keep the river still. Whatever they do.’

’I know.’

’I mean it. Whatever they do.’

Yan Shuo set his lantern down carefully on the track, making sure it wouldn’t break, and straightened up.

"Senior Brother Zhao," he said evenly. "I’ve finished my quota. If the Elder wants a report, I can walk up and give it myself."

Zhao Kun laughed. The lackeys laughed a beat later, mimicking Zhao Kun.

"Listen to him. So polite." Zhao Kun strolled forward, rolling his heavy shoulders. "Six years you’ve crept around the Outer Valley with your head down, and nobody ever asked why a demon-woman’s son got to stay. I always wondered. Now the Elder’s wondering, too."

He stopped an arm’s length away.

"So," Zhao Kun said, a cruel smile touching his lips. "Let’s find out what’s in you."

He hit Yan Shuo in the stomach hard.

The blow folded Yan Shuo in half. The air left his lungs in a single, violent burst and simply refused to come back. A seventh-layer fist carried raw qi behind it, and that qi spread through his gut like a dropped coal—hot, spreading, and utterly sickening.

He hit the ground on his knees.

’Still,’ Qin commanded.

The coal in his hidden dantian flared at the pain. It wasn’t cultivation; it was instinct, an animal waking up in the dark. Yan Shuo shoved it violently back under the water. He made himself think of mine dust. Of grey stone. Of the dull, endless clink of the iron pick.

A boot caught him in the ribs and rolled him hard onto his side.

"Get up," Zhao Kun said. "Come on. Fight back. I want to see it."

Yan Shuo got his hands under him. Another boot knocked them out. His chin cracked against the iron track, and his mouth instantly filled with the taste of crimson blood.

The lackeys joined in.

After that, the blows ran together into weather. A storm of feet and fists from every side, accompanied by the clank of his own body against the rails and the rough scrape of stone tearing the skin on his cheek. He curled up the way he’d learned in his very first year in the Outer Valley—arms wrapped tight over his head, knees pulled to his chest—and let it rain.

And underneath it, the whole time, he held the inner river still.

It was the hardest thing he had ever done. Every blow made the hidden coal leap. Every blinding flare of pain was a hand slapping the surface of the water, and every single time, he smoothed the surface flat again. Grey. Dust. Nothing. A body that had been absolutely nothing for six years, and had no reason to be anything else tonight.

"Hold him up."

Two of the lackeys dragged him off the ground by the arms and slammed his back against the tunnel wall. His head rang off the solid rock. Through the blood blurring his eyes, he saw Zhao Kun step close, breathing hard, frowning in frustration.

"Nothing," Zhao Kun muttered. "Dead as a stone. The old man’s chasing ghosts."

He sounded almost disappointed. Then, his eyes dropped to Yan Shuo’s chest, where the beating had torn his rough robe open at the collar.

The jade pendant hung there on its cord, a dull, unassuming green.

"Well, what’s this?" Zhao Kun hooked a finger under the cord and lifted it. "A keepsake? From your demon mother?" He weighed the disc in his palm, grinning now. "I bet the Elder would like to look at it. I bet he’d like to look at it very much."

He pulled.

The rough cord bit sharply into the back of Yan Shuo’s neck.

And something inside Yan Shuo went cold and simple.

Afterward, he could never quite describe what happened next.

It was the same slow, rhythmic heartbeat he’d felt that morning in gallery seven, traveling up through the wall behind him, vibrating through his spine, and sinking directly into his chest. The starving vein, woken by the spilled blood and the sudden fury, reaching for him as if a drowning man reaches for a rope.

Yan Shuo never touched his hidden dantian. He kept the river perfectly still. The vein’s qi bypassed the depths entirely, flooding straight into his one open meridian—the very meridian he’d spent all night teaching to run in a single, unbroken stream.

His right hand came free of the lackey’s grip. It moved in a short, flat, brutal arc, exactly the way he swung a heavy iron pick a thousand times a day, and struck Zhao Kun on the inside of the wrist.

There was a sharp crack. Like a thick branch snapping under a heavy boot.

Zhao Kun screamed.

The pendant dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers and thumped back against Yan Shuo’s chest. Zhao Kun stumbled backward two full steps, clutching his arm, staring in absolute horror at his own wrist. It was already swelling, the bone beneath the skin bent at a slight wrong angle.

The tunnel went dead silent.

The pulse in the wall faded. The flood drained out of Yan Shuo’s meridian as fast as it had come, leaving him hollowed out and emptier than before. His knees gave way. Only the stunned lackeys’ grip on his arms kept him upright.

Zhao Kun looked at his ruined wrist. Then at Yan Shuo. His face had gone chalk-white under the mine dust, and for one split second, before the rage came flooding back, Yan Shuo saw genuine terror in his eyes.

"Second layer," one of the lackeys whispered, his voice trembling. "He’s at second layer. How did he..."

"Shut up."

"Senior Brother, your wrist..."

"I said shut up!"

Zhao Kun’s voice cracked like a whip off the tunnel walls. He was breathing in short, ragged gasps. He looked at the lackeys, one after another, and Yan Shuo watched him do his own mental calculations.

A seventh-layer outer disciple. Elder Gu’s chosen errand boy. His wrist shattered by a second-layer service disciple, in front of three witnesses.

Zhao Kun would sooner die than carry that humiliating report up the mountain.

"He got lucky," Zhao Kun said quietly, his voice shaking. "I slipped on the track. You saw it."

The lackeys glanced nervously at each other.

"You saw it," Zhao Kun repeated, stepping toward them.

"We saw it," they stammered in unison.

"Good." He cradled his broken wrist carefully against his chest and turned back. The arrogant swagger had completely drained out of his face, leaving something flat, cornered, and incredibly ugly behind. "Then we’re going to tell the Elder the truth. We pressed him hard, and he broke like the trash he is. Nothing in him at all."

He nodded at the lackeys.

"Make it look true."

The second beating was far worse than the first. Not because of the anger. Because of the fear in it.

Yan Shuo stopped counting the blows. At some point, he realized the solid rock had disappeared from behind him and he was on the ground again. The rail was cold under his cheek. The lantern he’d set down so carefully lay on its side a few feet away, its flame guttering and choking on the dust.

Yet, he kept the river still.

It was the last thing he could hold onto, so he held it with everything he had. Grey water. Dust. Nothing. He held it even when a kick came down hard on his left hand, and he heard his own voice make a ragged sound he didn’t recognize. He held it even when the light began to narrow into a thin line at the edges of his vision.

’Still,’ Qin whispered, her voice sounding somewhere very far away. ’Still, brat. Stay with me.’

The last thing he heard was Zhao Kun’s voice, thin and frantic, already moving rapidly away up the tunnel.

"Nobody says he touched me. Nobody."

And then, from much farther off, a deafening roar like a cave-in coming down the track, and Ruan Tie’s voice bellowing his name.

He woke to the smell of herbs. Sharp, bitter herbs, layered thick in the clean air: dragonbone root, cloud moss, and something aggressively green that made the inside of his nose sting. He was lying on his back on a hard cot. Sunlight came through a paper screen somewhere to his left, painting soft, bright squares on a wooden ceiling.

He was above ground.

He tried to sit up. His entire body announced, that this was a terrible idea.

"Don’t," a voice said beside him. "Three cracked ribs. A broken finger. And you’ve lost enough blood that I had to feed you two marrow pills just to keep your pulse steady. Lie still, or you’ll undo my work."

He turned his head, very slowly.

A young woman sat on a stool beside the cot, her sleeves tied back with a cord, a tray of long silver needles balanced carefully across her knees. She had a round, soft face and dark hair pulled back into a beautiful knot. She was perhaps twenty. Her hands, resting near the needles, were perfectly steady.

She wore no sect colors at all. Only a plain, unadorned physician’s robe in pale green.

"Your friend carried you up nine levels on his back," she said calmly. "He refused to leave until I threatened to stick a needle in his neck. He’s sleeping in the courtyard."

"Ruan Tie," Yan Shuo croaked. His throat felt like sandpaper.

"Is that his name? He kept calling you ’brother’ and crying." She picked up a needle, inspected its tip in the sunlight, and set it down again. Her eyes came back to his face. They were calm, curious, and much sharper than her soft features suggested.

"I’m Bai Rou. I’m a visiting physician here in Medicine Valley for the season." She paused, letting the silence stretch for a moment. "While you were unconscious, I examined your meridians. I needed to know exactly where the internal bleeding was coming from."

Yan Shuo’s heart began to hammer against his ribs.

Bai Rou leaned closer. She lowered her voice, pitching it so that it would carry no further than the edge of the cot.

"Eleven of your twelve meridians are sealed," she said softly. "Sealed by hand. With a technique I have seen exactly once before in my life—and I was a small child at the time."

Her steady hands folded neatly in her lap.

"So I am going to ask you a question, and I expect the absolute truth. Who sealed your meridians?"