Chương 38

The walls, floors and ceiling of Artisan Suwen's workshop were bone white. Spirit stone lanterns burned at precise intervals along the walls, and their glow erased every shadow from the room. Chains with meathooks arced down from the vaulted ceiling in neat rows, and from each hook a corpse dangled, arms at their sides, heads bowed, like garments on a rack.

Each cadaver had been opened, emptied of organs and cleaned, the skin peeled back from their empty abdominal cavities in neat flaps and pinned back like the wings of a mounted insect, and none of them dripped or smelled of rot. At all four corners of the workshop there were staircases descending down to vaults where hundreds, perhaps thousands of her creations sat inert. To Lorn, the place felt like a demented cross between a surgeon's operating room and a tailor shop.

Hollow Prince Yun drifted at Lorn's left shoulder, the mummified child suspended three feet above the ground, funeral silks trailing beneath him. The souls of his mother and father orbited close, their anguished faces turned toward the room, and Lorn felt the wider storm of Yun's collected dead press at the corridor behind them, too numerous to follow inside. Suwen stood beside a pedestal of stone that rose from the floor at a slight incline, broad enough and long enough for a man to lie flat upon.

She turned as he entered, and her gown of sleeping faces rustled against the floor.

"Do come in," she said.

"I've been looking forward to this." The faces on her gown hummed in agreement. The answer had taken time. After the failed merger at Tianlong Castle and Xiaohai's defection, Suwen's question had hung over them all like a dark cloud. By what mechanism? They had spent days on it, the three of them, Yun pulling formation theory from the memories of dead scholars, Suwen testing the limits of what living tissue could hold, Lorn between them, pressing, discarding, demanding they try again.

This was a far cry from channeling qi through yantra tattoos. The thing they had arrived at was elegant and grotesque, a Technique woven into his very flesh. Lorn crossed the room and lay down on the pedestal. The stone was cool against his back. He tilted his chin up, opened his mouth, and stared at the vaulted ceiling and the rows of hollow dead above him. Suwen placed her hands on either side of Lorn's face. He felt her pull gently, and his jaw split open like two halves of an orange.

Bone separated from bone without a sound, and the flesh of his cheeks and throat spread apart, wide enough for the lantern light to reach the back of his throat. There was no blood. But the pain was extraordinary. It flooded his skull and poured down his spine. Huihun roared somewhere deep in his chest, a vibration that shook his ribs from the inside. Lorn held still. Yun drifted forward until the mummified child hovered above Lorn's opened face.

"Three formation rings in the throat," Yun said.

"The first at the soft palate, the second at the base of the tongue, the third where the esophagus begins. Each ring must be linked to the next, and the channels must run deep enough to anchor in the muscle wall." Suwen's hands sank deeper. Her fingers disappeared past the wrists into the spread flesh of Lorn's jaw, and she hummed as she worked, a low note of pleasure.

"Oh," she said.

"What lovely tissue. So responsive." The faces on her gown sighed. Lorn felt her fingers press against the roof of his mouth, and the flesh there yielded. The meat of his soft palate rippled outward from her fingertips like clay on a wheel, and in the wake of that pressure something new took shape, concentric rings of formation runes cut into living muscle, precise and circular and deep. The pain sharpened. Lorn's hands pressed flat against the stone and his vision went white at the edges.

"Wider on the first ring," Yun said.

"The aperture cannot have an upper limit on spiritual density."

"Of course, dear prince." Her fingers shifted. The groove widened, and Lorn felt every fraction of that quarter inch. The God Eater, Yun called it. Formation rings in the throat, esophagus and stomach, a chain of interlocked patterns that would give his digestive tract the ability to break down and digest spiritual matter the same way a stomach broke down and digested meat. Lorn already possessed the capacity to channel limitless quantities of qi.

Yun had simply conceived of the formation architecture, and Suwen's skills solved the problem of substrate. This procedure would install a new function directly into his body. Suwen's hands moved to his throat. She pressed, and the skin parted from collarbone to jaw, flesh folding back in clean layers, muscle and cartilage spreading apart to expose the pale column of his esophagus. She peeled it open the same way she had opened his jaw, and the wet inner walls glistened under the lantern light. Enjoying the story?

Show your support by reading it on the official site. Her fingers sank into the lining and began to work. Lorn felt each formation rune burn into place, one after the next, precise as stitches in a seam.

"Narrower channels between the connecting sigils," Yun said.

"The flow has to accelerate."

"As you say." Her fingers traced lines between the runes, and the tissue drew taut beneath her touch, reformed, locked into new shapes. Huihun burned at the edges of Lorn's awareness, diminished and furious. The dragon's rage was a constant pressure behind his ribs, a heat that had once filled him to the brim and now guttered like a fire fed on scraps. The failed merger had cost them both.

Huihun had reached for its other half beneath Tianlong Castle, and its other half had recoiled, and the rejection had left the dragon weaker than Lorn had ever felt it. Weaker, and angrier for the weakness. There was a time when Huihun spoke. Lorn remembered its relief, its gratitude. He remembered the telling and retelling of the story of its defeat. He remembered the desperate plea for help. He remembered how moved he'd felt. And then how different everything became when he actually got here.

He thought about Lodin's face. The moment before the vault doors ground shut, his brother on the far side, staring at him. The expression Lodin wore was not anger. Anger Lorn could have carried without weight. What Lodin's face held was something worse. A look that said he still believed there was someone left to save. Suwen's thumbs pressed against his gums, and Lorn felt something stir beneath the roots.

"Don't worry darling, this won't alter that handsome jawline," she said. That was the least of his worries. - - - - Han Yuan held his hand out toward the mirror, and water qi poured forth to fill it. The mirror was carved into the shape of a dragon coiled back on itself in flight, and as Han Yuan let water qi swirl from his hand it filled out the blank space.

The current climbed the dragon's body from the base, traced each hammered scale, and a film of water spread across the oval, thin as silk, held vertical in the air, barely substantial enough to catch the lantern light. His own reflection looked back at him for a moment. Then the surface of the water shivered and went clear. It resolved into the image of a chamber on the other side, broad and high-ceilinged, its walls paneled in dark lacquered wood.

Jade carvings lined the shelves between silk scroll paintings, and spirit stone lanterns burned in bronze fixtures shaped like cranes. Bai Zhenshuo sat at a low table, a cup of wine in one hand. He was heavyset and heavy-jawed, his white beard grown full and kept neat. Scars crossed his hands and forearms, old wounds he had never bothered to mend. His eyes sat in a permanent crease that looked like warmth, and a comfortable belly filled out his robes in a way that suggested a man who rarely skipped a meal.

He looked like the kind of grandfather who slipped the children sweets when their mothers turned away. Han Yuan had known this man for over three hundred years. At their level of cultivation, one could present themselves however they chose. This was Bai Zhenshuo's choice, the face of the kindly elder. It hid the killer within him well. Bai Zhenshuo glanced at the mirror. His brow creased, and for a moment his eyes held the flat look of a man who could not place a face.

He set his cup down on the table, picked it up again, and tilted his head.

"Ah…" he said.

"Yes. Han Yuan. I remember now." He gave a slow nod.

"Dragon's Rest. Yes, yes. It's been some time." He took a sip of wine and settled back against his cushion.

"How can I be of assistance." Han Yuan felt his stomach tighten. He'd hoped Master Zhenshuo would be pleased to see him, or at least remember his name. His bow was precise and clean.

"Master Bai. I have news. The purpose for which I was sent here is close at hand." He kept his voice measured, but the words came faster than he intended.

"The demon Huihun has found a human host, a young barbarian from Joguo, and the boy has emerged from concealment. He attacked Tianlong Castle, attempted to merge the two halves of the dragon's soul, and failed. The uncorrupted half fled, and the host of Huihun will follow it there. He has no choice; the soul fragment compels him." Han Yuan straightened.

"I will intercept him and execute the God-Slaying Threefold Cut. My watch here may soon be at an end." He had rehearsed this twice before the mirror opened. The words sat in the right order. The summary of a man in command of his assignment, delivered to the man who had given him that assignment three centuries ago. Bai Zhenshuo swirled his wine. He did not look up.

"I received word that Jun Fang is dead," he said. The warmth in his voice had not changed, but something behind it hardened. Han Yuan's jaw tightened.

"The host attacked the castle before we could mount a proper defense. Governor Jun Fang fell before anyone could reach him. The assault came without warning, Master. There was no—""You were sent to stand vigil, Yuan." Bai Zhenshuo's eyes found the mirror. The creases around them deepened, and the grandfatherly warmth remained fixed in place while the words beneath it turned to iron.

"And you were not vigilant. A world governor died on your watch. That does not reflect well upon you. That does not reflect well at all." The heat left Han Yuan's chest. A cold knot replaced it, low in his stomach. His hands, folded behind his back, pressed hard against each other.

"I understand, Master. I accept full responsibility."

"You will have to." Bai Zhenshuo picked up his cup and examined the rim of it.

"Returning you to the academy after such a failure will require persuasion. I will have to argue a case for you to the other masters, speak on your behalf before people who will ask difficult questions about your competence." He drank.

"That is no small favor, Yuan. Such a favor would have to be repaid."

"Yes, Master."

"If you say the enemy is within reach, then do not fail in this as well. You have already let one charge die under your protection. Should you let another opportunity pass, I do not think even my advocacy would be sufficient."

"I will not fail, Master."

"Good." Bai Zhenshuo reached for his clay decanter and poured himself a fresh measure.

"Then we have nothing more to discuss." The water shivered, and the mirror went dark. Han Yuan stood alone in Jun Fang's office. The golden dragon coiled around an empty space. His reflection stared back at him from the surface of Jun Fang's polished desk, and the face it showed him looked older than the one he had chosen to wear. His hands trembled at his sides. He closed them into fists, held them until the tremor stopped, and breathed out through his nose. It was going to be okay. He would slay the demon.

He would slay the barbarian brothers, those freaks with stunted cultivation, far more powerful than they had any business being. And then, just for his own satisfaction, he'd slay Jorin Shen and Mayari Lakan. Yes. Good things were ahead.