Chương 32: Lìchūn: Tempering 11

The shadow lifts its head. There is no face where a face should be, only dark, gathered thick enough to make an inversion of a face, with old light caught around the edges of it. Liu Yinhua stands still as the door closes behind her, her fingers tightening around the bow. The chamber is quiet except for the soft grind of stone settling into place and the faint hum of qi through the bronze mirrors. The figure does not move again. She looks over the room before she looks properly at it, keeping it in her vision.

Three sun-marked seals on the far wall, and rings of dark stone and pale ash underfoot, more of those bronze mirrors set at strange angles along the sides. No obvious exit, and the shadow waits in the centre ring. Liu Yinhua draws an arrow. The motion makes the figure shift. Its arm raises a little, slow as sap. She keeps the bow half-drawn, watching the movement, and the dark inside it thickens, lines appearing in the black. Pale curve, then knuckles. A wrist, then a suggestion of ribs under ink. Bones.

Her breath catches before she can stop it, and the shadow's head turns toward the sound. Liu Yinhua looses. The arrow flies straight through the space where its chest should be and strikes the far wall beside the middle seal, and the sound snaps through the chamber. At once, every mirror catches the movement and throws it back in broken pieces. Arrow, shadow, Liu Yinhua's sleeve, the pale flash of her eyes, a dozen fragments of the same room.

The shadow crosses the distance too fast, and she moves on instinct, left leg warming as Dance of Falling Blossoms pulls her sideways. A dark not-hand passes close enough for cold to drag across her sleeve, and the cloth darkens where it brushes, as if soaked in ink. Liu Yinhua hits the next ring badly, heel skidding through pale ash. A bronze mirror beside her gives a dull pulse. A line of force snaps from it, and she drops.

The strike cuts over her head and hits the opposite wall with a sound like a palm slapping water. Ash lifts from the floor in a pale burst, as Liu Yinhua rolls, comes up with one knee down, and her heart is beating much too fast. The shadow has returned to the centre. It stands there again, loose-armed and faceless, as if it has never moved. Liu Yinhua swallows, eyes scanning the shadowy room. There is an iron sconce on the left wall with a dead torch still set into it. She had missed it before.

The wood is blackened at one end, wrapped in something dry and waxy, and she keeps her eyes low as she crosses toward it, stepping around the ash rings this time. The shadow does not move while she does. It only waits in the edge of her sight, thin and unfinished, the curves of half formed bones vanished once more. She takes the torch down and lights it with a spark. The flame catches at once, and for half a breath, relief loosens something in her chest.

Then the shadow grows, as the torch throws it against every mirror. Dark limbs stretch over bronze and stone. The bones inside it come clearer now, spine and fingers and a jaw too long to belong to anything human. The shadow's head turns from one reflection to another, finding itself in each one. The mirrors answer with faint gold, and the ash rings at Liu Yinhua's feet begin to glow. She throws the torch away. It lands in the ash and keeps burning.

The shadow jerks toward it, then toward her, then toward the mirrors, too many edges dragging at once. The chamber fills with broken dark. Liu Yinhua curses under her breath and flicks her wrist. Golden motes scatter from her fingers. Weak light, dull light, little pieces of failed fire, but they do not push the shadow back. They catch in the mirrors all the same, and where they touch bronze, the shadow sharpens. A hand forms too close to her face.

She feels cold against her cheek and stumbles backwards, nearly stepping into another ring. Liu Yinhua lets the motes die. The room falls dim again. The torch still burns where she threw it, but the flame is low now, half-smothered in ash. Without the extra light, the shadow loses some of its edges. The bones blur, the long fingers thinning until they are only darker lines inside dark. She looks at the floor, where the ash rings are easier to see when she does not look toward the centre.

The first ring is broken in three places, each break pointing toward one of the sun seals. The second has little cuts along its inner edge. The third ring has no breaks at all. A trial would not make a room impossible. Elder Yun might, but Elder Yun is not the sect itself. Liu Yinhua breathes in carefully and listens. The chamber has sounds once she can stop her rapid, fearful breaths.

Water somewhere behind stone, the faint tick of cooling metal where the torch burns low, the soft scrape of the shadow shifting when her attention pulls too close to it. The hum of the mirrors rises when she looks at them and falls when she looks away, qi in them. She lowers her gaze further, until the shadow is only a stain at the top of her sight. It moves, but slower this time. She takes one step to the left, placing her foot on dark stone, outside the ash. The shadow answers with a slight turn.

A hand lifts as Liu Yinhua takes another step, following the break in the first ring toward the leftmost seal. Her body wants to look up. It wants to know where the threat is, how close, how fast. The habit is old, to always keep eyes on the threat in a room. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. She keeps her eyes on the floor, nonetheless. The shadow slides near her, and cold brushes the air beside her arm, but does not close.

She can see the black shape moving in the corner of her sight, incomplete and wrong. It feels like being watched through a screen, like eyes through the painted ornate carvings of a pleasure room. It sends sparks of discomfort down her spine. The leftmost seal is set into bronze at shoulder height, and she reaches it with her breath held and looks only at the lower edge of the plate. She touches the plate, and nothing happens. Liu Yinhua presses her lips together and feels along the rim.

There is a shallow groove at the bottom, too narrow for fingers. An arrowhead might fit. She takes one arrow from her case, keeping her movements slow, and sets the point into the groove. The shadow leans close, and her skin prickles. She does not look. The groove takes the arrowhead and guides it upward. The seal clicks once. Pale light runs through the bronze sun and then dies down into a steady ember, no brighter than a coal under ash. One. The shadow pulls back. Liu Yinhua lets herself breathe again.

The middle seal waits beyond the centre ring, directly behind the shadow. She can see enough of it in the corner of her eye to know the angle is poor, and that walking straight there would bring her close enough for the shadow to touch her if she looked up. Shooting at it would require aim, and she needs to look to aim. She looks at the mirrors instead, then stops when the nearest one hums, directing her gaze towards the rings on the floor again, faintly visible. The break in the first ash ring points left.

The second break, she realises after a moment, points not at the middle seal, but around the centre. A curved path, narrow and unpleasant, between the second ring and the third. The ash there has been disturbed by old marks, toe-length scuffs, some deeper than others. People have done this before. Liu Yinhua adjusts the bow over her shoulder and moves. The shadow follows her attention, or the place where her attention would be if she gave it what it wanted. When her gaze lifts even a little, it grows heavier.

When she looks down, it thins. The bones appear only when she tries to understand them. That is the worst part. The bones are bait. So is the face it almost has. So is the question of whether there is anything human inside it. She reaches the curve around the centre ring. The shadow stands two paces away. Liu Yinhua can feel it now, cold against the side of her face, a pressure where the air should be empty. Her hand aches where the spark burned her palm, and her dantian swims low.

Sweat has gathered under her collar despite the chill. She wants to look. She does not. Instead, she lowers herself into a careful step, lets the warmth in her left leg route steady her weight, and passes beside it with her eyes fixed on the ash at her feet. A dark hand closes on empty air beside her sleeve. It misses. Liu Yinhua keeps walking. The middle seal sits beyond the centre ring, and it is closer to the shadow than she likes.

She reaches it with her eyes fixed on the floor until the bronze plate is only a blurred circle above the line of her sight. The shadow leans toward her. She can feel it in the cold along her shoulder, the way the hairs at the back of her neck lift, the way her body insists that the sensible thing is to look. The first seal had wanted the arrowhead. This one has no groove at the bottom. Liu Yinhua feels along the edge with two fingers and finds three shallow dents, each no wider than a fingernail. She presses one.

Nothing happens, and so she presses the next, and the mirror behind her gives a warning hum. She stops at once, heart beating hard, and waits until the sound dies. The third dent is warm. She presses it, and the bronze sun catches with pale light, dimmer than the first, and the shadow pulls sharply sideways as if something has tugged it by the spine. Liu Yinhua does not watch it go. She steps back onto the marked path, finds the break in the ash ring with the edge of her foot, and follows it around the centre. Two.

The last seal is low, almost hidden at the far end of the chamber where the wall narrows into a dark vertical seam. It is not at shoulder height like the others. It sits beside the seam near the floor, bronze dark under ash. Liu Yinhua has to crouch to reach it, and that brings her face too close to the line of the shadow moving at the edge of the room. The torch has gone out behind her. The chamber is dim enough now that she can barely see the floor, which helps and does not help at all.

The shadow has lost most of its bones. It is a tall stain again, dragged thin through the mirrors, but it is still there. It keeps close to the edges of her attention, waiting for her break and look. Liu Yinhua lets the last of her dull motes fade. Darkness settles, not complete darkness. The ash still shows faintly. The final seal sits at the edge of her sight like a coin dropped in dirty water. She closes her eyes. The fear rises at once.

It is stupid and old and bodily, and she has no patience for it, which does not make it leave. She breathes through it. Beneath her, the stone hums, and behind her, the mirrors answer in faint uneven pulses. The shadow is cold where it waits on her left, too close, but thinner when she does not look. Her dantian is a small heat low in her body. She lowers one hand and feels for the seal. Her fingers find ash first, then the rim of bronze. There is no groove.

Only the sun mark itself, raised at the centre, warm enough to prickle against her skin. Liu Yinhua presses her palm over it and sends the smallest thread of qi she can manage down through her arm. The seal takes it. The warmth vanishes out of her palm, and for one awful breath she thinks she has given too much. Then the bronze clicks, light runs beneath her hand, not bright, not sharp, just enough to mark the circle complete. Three.

The seam beside the seal opens, and she knows because cold air rushes her cheek, then warmer air behind it, faint and dry. Liu Yinhua keeps her eyes shut. She does not know whether the shadow is still in the room. She does not know whether it will follow if she looks back. She has very little left in her dantian and less interest in finding out. The opening is narrow. She feels along the stone with one hand, finds the gap, and pushes her bow through first. The passage beyond angles upward almost immediately.

She has to turn sideways to fit, one arm ahead, one shoulder scraping against stone. Her robe catches at the waist, she frees it by touch and keeps moving. The rock presses close around her ribs, catches at the curve of her chest, and drags at her sleeve until the cloth strains. She breathes out as far as she can and squeezes through another handspan. Something cold trails over the stone behind her. Liu Yinhua does not open her eyes. She follows the warmth instead.

It is faint at first, more suggestion than direction, then stronger with each awkward step and scrape forward. Her qi feels thin around her, but it is there. The passage widens without warning, and L iu Yinhua stumbles out onto smooth stone, catches herself with one hand, and stops. Light presses against her closed eyelids, bright enough that she sees red through the dark of her lashes, bright enough that her face lifts toward it before she can think better. It is warm.