Chapter 57 — The Men Who Divided Treasure

CHAPTER 57

The Men Who Divided Treasure

“H-here’s your share of the equipment,” Ma Zheng said, pointing at a bundle under the eaves.

Beside a shrine where the statue of the god had lost both hands, Ma Zheng counted Shi Feng’s entrance stones into a leather pouch. Two iron stakes stuck out of the wrapping. The bundle looked heavier than the man standing next to it. From the broker’s face, even the god wouldn’t agree to carry it for free.

Shi Feng left the iron stakes where they lay and lifted only his own lamp. Ma Zheng looked toward Duan Kang, hoping the expedition leader would make him carry the rest.

“I came to search the ruin,” Shi Feng said. “Carry your own stakes.”

Laughter rang out from the steps.

“Hahaha! Listen to the cripple lecture the broker!” Pang Xun said, slapping the step. “Hey, Brother Shi, did you bring a coffin deposit too?”

Pang Xun was at Bone Refinement, the same realm as Shi Feng. That was where the similarity ended. Shi Feng could break his saber and the arm holding it with a single blow, he thought.

Pang Xun wore the saber at his waist and the face of a man who took every unanswered insult as a victory. His eyes moved from Shi Feng’s plain sword to the loose cuff hiding his wrist.

“Bring your own coffin,” Shi Feng said. “Mine would be wasted on you.”

The laughter stopped halfway through its second breath.

“What did you say?” Pang Xun demanded. His hand dropped to his saber. His expression turned vicious.

Shi Feng looked at him and didn’t move. Draw it if you dare, he thought coldly.

Pang Xun didn’t dare. Someone was walking up from behind the shrine.

“Enough!” Duan Kang said.

Duan Kang wore a dark travelling robe and an iron thumb ring. A narrow blade floated above his shoulder, turning slowly in the morning light. Foundation Establishment! The laborers were stunned, and Ma Zheng smiled like a man who wanted a commission just for standing near that realm.

“The hired men carry the common equipment,” Duan Kang said. “This leader’s participants save their strength for the chambers.”

He didn’t look at Shi Feng. He looked at the signed paper.

Shi Feng needed someone to show him the entrance. He didn’t need Duan Kang’s protection. He folded his copy and put it away.

“He won,” a laborer whispered.

“The broker lost face.”

Ma Zheng brought a wine jar out from behind the shrine step and wiped its neck on his sleeve. “Before the rope goes down,” Ma Zheng said, “every digger swears. No blade below, for any share. Break it, and your share goes to the god.”

Pang Xun swore first and loudest, and the laborers took their mouthfuls after him. Duan Kang laid two fingers on the jar and gave his word in four words. Ma Zheng swore last, so nobody could say the broker had exempted himself.

Shi Feng passed the jar on without drinking. “I’ll keep the terms I signed,” Shi Feng said.

They entered the hills before noon. The first day’s road ran through abandoned terraces and then climbed between slopes red with broken stone. Whenever mud got in his way, Duan Kang rode a short stretch on his flying blade. The laborers carried the tents, lamps, rope, and stakes, plus the bundles Ma Zheng couldn’t pass off on a cripple.

At the first stream, Pang Xun ordered the men across at the place where the water ran fastest.

“Faster water means shallower!” Pang Xun shouted. “Follow me!”

Shi Feng watched a leaf slide under a solid-looking shelf and vanish. Undercut bank, he thought. The water was eating the ground from underneath.

He walked twenty paces upstream.

“Afraid of wet feet?” Pang Xun called.

“Afraid of wasting time pulling fools out,” Shi Feng said.

The nearest laborer changed direction. Ma Zheng followed, pretending to check the weather. Pang Xun crossed at his original spot, and the shelf broke under him. He plunged in up to his waist.

“Help! Somebody help me!” Pang Xun roared.

Shi Feng didn’t offer a hand. Two laborers hauled their young master out, and he sat on the far bank pouring water from his boot. His saber was safe. His dignity was not.

That evening, Duan Kang spread the ruin map beside the fire. Three passages were copied in clean lines. A fourth was just a smear under a greasy thumbprint.

“The marked entry chamber is common property,” Duan Kang said. “Anything found beyond it belongs to whoever finds it, as long as it doesn’t threaten the expedition’s safety.”

Shi Feng chewed his dried meat and waited.

“Dangerous objects will be held by me,” Duan Kang went on. “Objects that need special protection will also be held by me. Disputes will be settled when we get back.”

“By you,” Shi Feng said.

Duan Kang gave him a flat look. “By the leader,” Duan Kang said.

“And what do the participants hold?” Shi Feng asked.

Pang Xun held up the lamp he was cleaning. “These!” Pang Xun said, and burst out laughing.

Shi Feng glanced at the lamp, then at the contracts folded neatly beside Ma Zheng’s knee.

“Keep yours lit,” Shi Feng said. “You might want to see what happens to everything else.”

Nobody laughed. Ma Zheng gathered up the papers a little too fast. The leader will take everything valuable and call it safety, Shi Feng thought. And the broker knows it.

During the second watch, Shi Feng woke to the sound of cloth moving beside his pack. He opened his eyes without lifting his head. Ma Zheng’s fingers hovered over the buckle.

The point of Shi Feng’s knife touched the underside of the broker’s wrist.

“Wrong bag,” Shi Feng said.

Ma Zheng froze.

“I-I was only checking if you brought enough lamp oil!” Ma Zheng whispered.

“Ask in daylight,” Shi Feng said. “You’ll keep more fingers.”

Shi Feng pulled the knife away only after Ma Zheng crept off. There was no point starting a slaughter over a hand that reached for a buckle. Afterward he slept with the pack under his head.

By the second afternoon, the terraces were gone. Red cliffs crowded the path, and rainwater carried fine dust down the slopes and stained the scrub roots crimson. Above a gorge stood a shattered arch with three characters almost eaten away by moss.

Chiyun Ruins.

The old entrance was collapsed. A recent landslip had opened another way below it, showing steps that went down between the rock and the buried outer wall.

Shi Feng examined the fresh crack. The mountain hadn’t just crumbled. Something below was shifting and pulling the stone inward.

Duan Kang sent a laborer ahead with a long pole.

The first step held. The second tipped under the pole and dropped into darkness. The man scrambled back on his hands, losing the pole as the last edge broke under his knee.

The pole fell, and no sound came back. Then, at last, it did. Ma Zheng stepped away from the opening, his complexion white.

“J-just a little damage from the rain,” Ma Zheng said, sweating.

“Then send the rain to test the next step,” Shi Feng said.

Duan Kang’s blade sank into the gap. Light flashed along its edge and showed a solid ledge below the broken stairs and several grooves cut into the wall. Old mechanisms. Some were rusted apart. Others had only been uncovered days ago.

“Tie a rope to an iron stake,” Duan Kang ordered.

Shi Feng checked the knot himself and tied a second loop around a rooted stump beside it. Pang Xun sneered at the extra rope, until Duan Kang tested the stake and found the soil under it hollow.

The stake pulled free. The second loop held.

“Good thing about that second knot,” a laborer breathed.

“…”

Cold air moved up from the opening, and somewhere below, stone scraped against stone.

Shi Feng raised his lamp and followed the rope down. He’d paid to enter a ruin, not to trust the other visitors.