Chương 31: Lìchūn: Tempering 10

The passage beyond the stone slab is worse. Liu Yinhua pauses at the entrance, staring into the narrow dark slit of stone, and considers whether the trial has mistaken her for a snake. The opening is low enough that she has to crouch and narrow enough that the bow on her shoulder immediately becomes a problem. She takes it off, pushes it ahead of her with one hand, and follows on her knees, jaw tight as rough stone scrapes along her sleeve. The tunnel does not improve after the first few steps.

It bends sharply left, then right, forcing her to turn her shoulders and drag herself forward with one elbow braced against the ground. The air is cold in her nose and damp against her face. Her hair catches on something above, and she has to stop, reach awkwardly back, and free it strand by strand before she can move again. Her robe snags twice at the hip.

The third time, the stone catches at the curve of her chest and pulls the fabric tight enough that she has to wriggle backwards, annoyed and breathing through her teeth.

"This is undignified," she mutters as she makes another scatter of golden motes, but there is barely room for them to drift. They float ahead in dull little pieces, catching on rock close enough to her face that she can see old scrape marks along the walls. Other disciples, then. Or whatever poor creatures had been sent through before her. The thought is not comforting. Her palm still burns from the last spark, and her dantian sits low and sullen beneath her awareness. She uses no more qi than she has to.

Stone presses close enough around her that, for several breaths, the whole world is only damp rock, her own breath, and the unpleasant certainty that if something comes at her in here, she will have to stab it with Wu Cailan's little blade and hope embarrassment does not kill her first. The tunnel drops suddenly. Liu Yinhua slides farther than she intends, catches herself on one forearm, and bites back a curse as the bow clatters ahead. A few pebbles skitter down into darkness. She waits, listening.

Nothing moves below. She keeps going. By the time the tunnel begins to widen, she has dirt on one cheek, moss smeared along her sleeve, and a new scrape near her collar where the stone found skin. The last stretch forces her almost flat on her stomach. She pushes the bow out first, then drags herself after it, one shoulder at a time, until the stone finally releases her into open air. Liu Yinhua comes out badly.

She lands on her hands and knees on cold stone, hair half-loose and robe twisted, with one sleeve pulled nearly to the elbow. For a moment, she stays there and breathes. The air is different here, cooler and full of qi. It sits in the cavern like sound just below hearing, moving through the stone, the water, the roots overhead, and the skin of her hands pressed to the ground. Her dantian stirs despite how little she has left, reaching before she can stop it. Warmth answers somewhere deep in the rock.

A low, steady pulse, old enough that Liu Yinhua's first thought is not of spirit stones or class rewards, but of the mountain itself breathing in its sleep. Then someone clears her throat. Liu Yinhua looks up. Xie Lianqiu is sitting on a flat stone several paces away, bow across her lap, one knee drawn up and her pale green ribbon half-undone. She has a smear of mud on her jaw and a shallow cut across the back of one hand. Her expression is composed for perhaps half a breath before delight breaks through it.

"You look terrible," Xie Lianqiu says. Liu Yinhua pushes herself upright, trying to fix her sleeve with any dignity at all.

"You look smug."

"I arrived first."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you. I suffered greatly."

"I can see that. Your hair is almost untidy." Xie Lianqiu touches her braid at once, which makes Liu Yinhua feel a little better about the tunnel. Xie Lianqiu laughs, then reaches out to take Liu Yinhua's bow when she steps closer. Her gaze flicks once over Liu Yinhua's sleeves, the dirt on her robe, and the way she is favouring her right hand, but she does not fuss.

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing bad," she says, shaking her head.

"What was your path?"

"A big pool of water," Xie Lianqiu says, with the tired flatness of someone who has been personally wronged.

"Moving reeds, water up to my knees. Something tried to bite me from under the water, but I shot it, so I am choosing not to learn what it was." Liu Yinhua looks at the cut on her hand.

"That from the thing in the water?"

"No. That was from a reed."

"A reed cut you?"

"A spiritually reinforced reed cut me." Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Of course."

"It was very sharp."

"I believe you."

"You do not."

"I mostly believe you." Xie Lianqiu gives her a wounded look, then hands the bow back as they both turn to assess the large cavern. It is a natural chamber, not carved like the rooms before it. The ceiling rises high overhead, lost in shadow and hanging roots. Pale mineral seams run through the walls in thin veins, catching the motes of Liu Yinhua's fading light and returning them in dull green and gold. Water runs along one side of the cavern in a narrow stream, clear enough to show smooth black stones beneath.

At the far end, three openings wait in the rock. The left is marked with a shallow bow-shaped curve. The right bears a water character. The centre has no visible character at all, only a circular hollow at chest height. Liu Yinhua's token warms in her sleeve. Xie Lianqiu notices her expression and looks toward the centre opening.

"That one?"

"I think so."

"Mine led here after the reed room," Xie Lianqiu says, quieter now.

"There was a door I could not open. It sent me around instead." Liu Yinhua draws out the wooden token. The warmth gathers at once, stronger than before, pulling toward the circular hollow in the stone. The qi in the cavern hums against her skin. For a moment, neither girl speaks. Then Xie Lianqiu exhales and stands, rolling her shoulders as if she has decided not to be nervous by force of posture alone.

"I suppose this is the part where the trial remembers you are the one with the key." Liu Yinhua closes her fingers around the token.

"That sounds likely."

"Do you want me to wait here?" The answer should be easy. Yes, because the trial has already separated them once. Yes, because Xie Lianqiu has done enough. Yes, because Liu Yinhua does not know what the next room will ask of her, and there are worse things than facing danger alone when that danger is meant for her. Instead, she looks at the centre opening and feels the old, familiar dislike of being sent where others choose. The token burns warmer in her palm.

Liu Yinhua steps toward the centre opening, clothes still damp with tunnel dirt, right hand aching, dantian low, and the mountain's qi humming through the soles of her feet. She sets the token into the hollow. For a moment, nothing else happens, and Liu Yinhua has the unpleasant thought that the trial has simply taken Elder Yun's token and will now leave her standing in a cave, poorer and more annoyed than when she entered. Then the circular hollow turns once around the wood.

A thin ring of pale light spreads from the token into the surrounding stone, following lines she had not seen until they brightened. Xie Lianqiu steps closer, bow lifted slightly.

"Is that good?"

"I have no idea." The light moves over the centre opening, then splits. One part runs along the floor beneath Liu Yinhua's feet. The other travels up the wall and across the rock toward Xie Lianqiu. She stiffens as it passes near her boots, but it does not touch her. It only circles once, measuring perhaps, before fading into the stone. A soft click sounds from somewhere behind the wall, and the centre passage opens.

At the same time, a second pane of qi rises between them, slower than the first and far more deliberate. It does not slam down. It grows out of the ground in a sheet of dull gold, thin enough that Liu Yinhua can still see Xie Lianqiu's face through it. The message is very clear anyway. Xie Lianqiu looks at the barrier, then at Liu Yinhua.

"Rude." Liu Yinhua reaches toward it with one finger, stopping before she touches the surface. Heat pricks at her skin.

"It may only allow the token holder through." Xie Lianqiu's mouth twists, the humour leaving her face for a breath.

"How much qi do you have?"

"Enough to be worried about the answer."

"That is not enough."

"No," Liu Yinhua says.

"It is not." They look at each other through the gold-lit barrier. The cavern hums around them, low and steady. Liu Yinhua can feel the token calling from the hollow in the stone, though it is no longer in her hand. It has become part of the door, part of the trial, part of whatever waits beyond. She dislikes that too. Too many things in the sect take what she is given and make her prove she deserves to keep it. Xie Lianqiu reaches into her sleeve and draws out one of the paper-wrapped buns from earlier.

It is squashed flat on one side and damp at the edge from her reed room. She holds it up between two fingers. Liu Yinhua stares at her.

"What?"

"Is this the moment?"

"You said your dantian is low. I cannot hand you qi through a wall, and I am not wasting food because the trial has poor timing." Despite herself, Liu Yinhua takes the bun when Xie Lianqiu pushes it through a small gap at the side where the barrier does not meet the wall. The qi pane shivers but does not stop it. The bun is cold, misshapen, and mostly filling. She eats half of it in three bites, because dignity is important only until it stands between her and staying upright.

Liu Yinhua finishes the bun, wipes her fingers on a relatively clean part of her sleeve, and checks the knife at her forearm. The blade is still there, her bow is still usable, though one arrowhead is ruined from the spark. Her dantian is low, but the cavern qi presses softly against her skin, and if she breathes with it rather than reaching too hard, a little warmth settles back into her lower field. Xie Lianqiu's expression has gone composed again.

"If anything tries to kill you, shout."

"You will be behind a wall."

"I did not say I had a solution. I said shout." Liu Yinhua gives her a look, and Xie Lianqiu smiles faintly.

"Also," Xie adds, "do not be too proud to run." That helps. Liu Yinhua does not want it to, but it does. She steps into the centre passage. The air changes at once. The cavern hum falls behind her, muted by the stone as she passes into a short corridor lit by no visible flame. Pale light seeps from the walls instead, catching on bronze discs set at uneven heights along both sides. Mirrors, she realises after the third step. Old glass mirrors, clouded at the edges, each angled toward the passage ahead.

Her reflection follows her in pieces. A sleeve. A pale cheek with dirt across it. Dark hair slipping from its pins. She has the sudden, sharp dislike of being watched by herself from every angle. The passage ends in a round chamber. Three sun-marked seals sit on the far wall, each carved into a shallow bronze plate. Between her and them, the floor is broken into rings of dark stone and pale ash.

At the centre stands a figure made of shadow and old light, no taller than Liu Yinhua, with no face and long arms hanging at its sides. The door closes behind her, and the shadow lifts its head.