Chapter 59 — The Enforcer’s Last Entry

CHAPTER 59

The Enforcer’s Last Entry

The name on the badge was Xu Changhe.

Sect enforcer. Elder of Artificer Hall.

Shi Feng brushed the dust away with his sleeve. The characters were cut deep, and the collapse hadn’t erased them. On the back were several old sword nicks and a repair along one corner. So this elder used his badge more often than he polished it, Shi Feng thought, and he found himself liking the dead man a little.

A leather case lay under the body’s free arm. Shi Feng checked the seams before touching the clasp. No hidden needle, no trap left over. The case opened on folded papers wrapped in waxed cloth.

The first sheet was a shopping list: rope, oil, steel wedges, and food for a dig that was expected to last several days. Xu Changhe didn’t come here to die, Shi Feng thought. He came to work.

He looked back at the fused grooves. An ancient trap had failed while the elder worked beneath it. The cracked sword and the violent scars on the inner wall showed a man who fought to the end, not one who planned a gift for some lucky successor. Shi Feng eased the loose stones away from the shoulder and drew out the case without disturbing what the slab still held.

The final journal entry filled less than half a page.

Old passage opened. Southern support unsound. Examine central chamber before withdrawing. Do not strike the remaining anchor until the lower groove is clear.

The next page was blank.

There was no dying message written in blood, and no handy map to a treasure. Death had simply cut off a man who expected to keep working.

“Leader, I hear scraping below!” Pang Xun’s voice floated down through the stone, faint and nervous. “It’s a ghost! This ruin is cursed!”

“It’s the carcass settling, you idiot!” Duan Kang said sharply, his expression dark. “Keep looking for the bypass.”

“What if the cripple is still alive down there?” Gu Tie asked.

“Th-then he’s not our problem!” Ma Zheng said. “Hold the lamp higher, old man!”

“A cripple surviving a spirit beast? Ha! Impossible!” Pang Xun scoffed.

“Quiet, all of you!” Duan Kang snapped.

The porters were stunned by his sudden fury, and the chatter died. Shi Feng didn’t even look up. Let them search, he thought, and turned back to the journal.

The earlier pages were about roads, fugitives and troublesome cultivators. Xu Changhe escorted accused disciples, chased a murderer through three towns, and spent one wet afternoon looking for evidence that a merchant swore the river had swallowed.

The evidence was in the merchant’s pillow.

Shi Feng’s mouth twitched. The elder wrote down the merchant’s broken nose with much less anger than the wasted afternoon.

Between the travel entries were sword diagrams. Under a stain, Shi Feng found the title: Iron River Sword Art.

There were three main moves, followed by corrections taken from real fights. The pages showed no mountains splitting under a stroke. They showed feet, hands, and the places an enemy would strike if either moved wrong.

Piercing Current was a straight thrust with a short step, keeping the sword between the swordsman and the enemy. The elder drew three careless ways to do it, each marked with the spot where the swordsman got stabbed in return.

Turning Wave changed a missed thrust into a cut. The feet kept moving while the wrist turned, so an enemy who dodged the point met the edge. Returning Tide drew the blade back a short distance, inviting the enemy forward, then drove the point through the opening his attack left behind.

There were other cuts and steps, but these three were the heart of the art. They could be practiced with an ordinary sword. Using them later with a flying blade needed a realm Shi Feng didn’t have yet.

A real sword art, he thought, and his heart quickened. He was shocked by his own luck. Not a dead man’s stroke to copy, but a method I can learn.

He read the corrections twice and stood. The lamp threw his shadow across the opposite wall. He drew his sword and began with Piercing Current, and his first step carried him too far. The diagram made the exposed shoulder obvious.

He shortened the step and tried again.

Better.

Turning Wave gave him more trouble. He followed the imaginary enemy with the point before turning the edge, and that was too late. His wrist had to turn while his foot was still moving.

On the fifth try the change came smoothly. The straight thrust flowed into a short cut with no pause between them.

“Good!” Shi Feng said softly, and for once he allowed himself a real smile. His expression, usually flat, softened.

He won his fights through strength, quick judgment and painful experience. Now he had a swordsman’s method on top of that. It would make his overwhelming force much harder to avoid.

Returning Tide was the simplest to understand and the easiest to ruin by pulling back too far. He practiced until the sword withdrew only a palm’s width before striking forward again.

These were beginnings, not mastery. He’d have to repeat them until they belonged to his own hands. Shi Feng sheathed the sword and marked the three pages.

Above, footsteps crossed the upper chamber again. Nobody called his name now.

“Blocked again!” Ma Zheng’s voice complained. “Leader, this map is a joke!”

“Shut your mouth, Ma Zheng!” Duan Kang snapped. “This leader is thinking!”

Shi Feng ignored the noise and went back to the case.

The crafting papers were decent. A cracked weapon socket repaired. A damaged furnace fitting replaced. Notes on spotting cheap binding metal. Xu Changhe knew his equipment and made good repairs, but nothing suggested an elder who made wondrous artifacts. So he was no master artificer, Shi Feng decided. Just a practical man.

The sword pages were different. They were worth far more. He separated them with care.

At the bottom of the case were medicine notes, messy and stained. A wound wash shared a sheet with a reminder to replace three roof tiles. A recipe for strained tendons ended beside an angry sum: the difference between raw ingredients and finished medicine.

One root was underlined twice.

Do not buy from anyone who calls rot a sign of maturity.

“Wise man!” Shi Feng murmured. He agreed with that lesson right away.

The elder knew enough alchemy to write down useful recipes and complain about what others charged for them. These were a warrior’s practical notes, not the legacy of a supreme alchemist. Still, they beat paying a swindler to explain why a bottle smelled rotten.

Shi Feng wrapped them with the sword record.

The rest of the elder’s belongings were ruined. A crushed storage fitting lay split along its inner engraving, and cloth, metal scraps and spoiled packets lay tangled in the dust beneath it. Shi Feng picked out a good whetstone and a length of ordinary cord. The old medicines were long dead.

Nothing here looked like the untouched treasure Duan Kang had promised his paying participants.

The papers weren’t worthless, though.

Shi Feng cut a length from the elder’s outer robe and covered the exposed face. He couldn’t drag the whole slab away, but he could spare these remains the next scavenger’s rough search. From loose stone he built a low barrier across the opening.

It wasn’t a grand tomb. Xu Changhe probably liked a road out better when he was alive, so a practical barrier would have to do.

He copied the location into his own notes, held the scarred iron badge in his palm before the low stone cairn, and bowed once over the dead enforcer’s resting place.

“Elder Xu Changhe, I’ve taken your Iron River Sword Art and your notes,” Shi Feng said aloud into the quiet chamber. “I vow that I will carry this badge to Artificer Hall myself and return your name and record to your sect.”

He wrapped the badge carefully beside the journal and tucked both inside his robe.

The dead man didn’t answer.

No ghost rose from the badge, and no kindly old voice announced that Shi Feng had passed a test. The lamp flickered on the cloth, and the ruin stayed a ruin. Shi Feng preferred it that way.

He checked the narrow passage beyond the fallen support. Cool air moved through it, carrying the dry mineral smell of a room closed for a very long time.

At the far end, a thin line of darkness separated two unbroken doors.

Shi Feng lowered his lamp and followed the air.