Chapter 411 — Where the Map Ends

CHAPTER 411

Where the Map Ends

“Go,” Lin Langtian said. “I'd come with you, but my hands are full of flowers.”

He sat cross-legged on the stone dais under the Heart Garden, both palms flat on the array plate. Green light crawled up his arms to the elbows. A half-eaten sweet potato balanced on his knee, and he hadn't touched it in two days, which was how Shi Feng knew he meant it.

“You can't leave the array,” Shi Feng said.

“I can,” Lin Langtian said cheerfully. “The Valley would lose its garden and I'd lose my appetite. Neither is acceptable.” He tilted his head toward the ceiling. “Something is sitting on the Fanghua Hills. A Nascent Soul, and a patient one. It hasn't moved in three days. If I take my hands off this plate, it learns what it wants to know.”

“What does it want?” Shi Feng said.

“I'd like to ask it,” Lin Langtian said. “Politely. With a pot.” His grin slipped for half a breath. “The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. Go and catch your rat, Junior Brother. Don't let it bite you. I've spent a lot of sweet potatoes on you.”

Shi Feng folded Xue Mang's map and put it in his sleeve.

Bai Chenxi was waiting at the north gate with her frost sword wrapped in grey cloth.

Bai Chenxi checked his sword and herb-stained robe, then headed up the road without a greeting. Shi Feng followed. They spent the first hour watching the path instead of speaking.

“The Master told me one thing,” Bai Chenxi said at last. “Follow your orders. Don't ask who they're for.”

“Then don't,” Shi Feng said.

“I'm not asking,” Bai Chenxi said coldly. “I'm informing you that I noticed.”

“Noted,” Shi Feng said.

Two hours from the Valley, the map led them to nine old pines on a ridge. A wayside pavilion stood at the top with half its roof missing. Travellers hadn’t stopped there for a century. It was the new moon’s first night. Starlight showed the open paths clearly enough to choose a hiding place.

They lay down in the rocks sixty paces from the pavilion. Shi Feng picked a place upwind, behind a boulder with a view of the path. Bai Chenxi settled beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and he felt the cold roll off her like a draught from a cellar.

White fur was growing on the boulder.

“Your sword is sweating frost,” Shi Feng said quietly.

“It reacts when I'm angry,” Bai Chenxi said.

“Think about something dull,” Shi Feng said.

Bai Chenxi was silent for a moment.

“Your attendant's ledger,” Bai Chenxi said.

The frost stopped spreading.

“That works,” Shi Feng said.

They waited. A night bird complained somewhere. The pines creaked. About an hour after midnight a lantern-less figure came up the path from the south, wrapped in a brown rain cloak, walking with the careful, unhurried steps of a man who had done this before.

Shi Feng knew the walk before he saw the face. He had watched it cross the elders' hall four days ago to argue, louder than anyone, that the Heart Blossom must never be touched.

Bai Chenxi stopped breathing.

Hua Rong lowered his hood and entered the pavilion. The white beard, gentle face, and pruning knife were familiar. For forty years, the Valley had known him as a careful gardener. Shi Feng watched him sit on the broken bench. This was the elder who’d argued hardest against touching the Heart Blossom.

A second figure arrived from the north.

The other man wore black up to his chin, with a red lotus pin on his collar. Before he reached thirty paces, Shi Feng sensed his thick early Golden Core qi. He came from the north, checking the path as he approached.

“You're late,” Hua Rong said.

“You're early,” the envoy said. “It's the new moon. Nobody is early on the new moon.”

“The rotations,” Hua Rong said.

He took a jade slip from his sleeve and held it out. The envoy didn't touch it yet.

“All of them?” the envoy asked.

“Eighteen rotations of the Heart Garden array,” Hua Rong said. “And the watch change. Every night, at the ninth hour, the holder's qi dips for twenty breaths. A girl held it before. Now a loud young man does, and he can't do it forever. Tell your master that.”

“He knows,” the envoy said, and took the slip.

“And the other thing?” Hua Rong said.

The envoy reached inside his cloak and drew out a flat black silk pouch, tied with a cord and sealed with a thumb of red wax. Even from sixty paces, Shi Feng saw the seal. It was a clenched fist inside a ring of pillars.

Beside him, Bai Chenxi's fingers closed on her cloth-wrapped hilt.

“Martial Palace thanks you for your patience,” the envoy said. “The second half comes after the garden falls.”

“It will fall,” Hua Rong said, weighing the pouch in his palm, “and a wise bird chooses the tree it roosts in. The Valley will be in better hands.”

Bai Chenxi moved.

Shi Feng caught her wrist before she'd shifted an inch. Her skin was ice. She turned her head, and her eyes in the starlight were two thin lines of fury.

“Not yet,” Shi Feng whispered. “A traitor with the pouch in his hand is a witness. A traitor without it is a rumour.”

Bai Chenxi stared at him. Slowly, one finger at a time, she let go of the hilt.

Hua Rong tucked away the pouch and stood. Then he noticed white rime curling around the boulder beside the path. Bai Chenxi’s anger had broken her control of the frost. Shi Feng saw the old man glance toward their hiding place.

“Chenxi,” Hua Rong said mildly, without turning his head. “Your sword has always been a poor liar. Come out. And bring the alchemist.”