The journey to the archive was unplanned. Yang Xiang had barely slept after the jade throbbed through the night, and Zhou Wenqing insisted that they make a detour to the university before heading toward the fifth sealing point.
Zhou had studied there during his graduate days, and he still had access to the basement archive—an obscure, half-forgotten wing of the Anthropology Department that housed maps, excavation logs, and records of ancient tombs across China, some dating back to the Warring States period.
The university loomed in the morning haze like a half-remembered memory. Layers of dust coated the windows. The janitor nodded at Zhou without a word, apparently used to eccentric researchers walking in at odd hours.
In the archives, the air was thick with mildew and forgotten time. Yellowed papers filled the metal cabinets. Maps hung from rolled tubes or were pressed between panes of cracked plastic. Zhou moved through them with an almost religious focus.
"These," he said, carefully pulling out three folded parchments and spreading them across the central table. "These are from a tomb excavation outside Luoyang in 1979. The dig was canceled due to unexplained structural collapses. But the maps they made before abandoning it—look."
Yang leaned over. The parchment crackled under Zhou's fingers. One map in particular caught his attention. Near the top-right quadrant, etched in faded ink, was a peculiar symbol: a spiral within a square, circled in red.
"It's the same as the carving from the well," Yang murmured. "And the one on the jade."
Zhou nodded grimly. "It appears in five locations across these records. Always with the same dimensions. Always hidden near what the reports call 'unexplainable subsidence zones'."
"Sinkholes?" Yang asked.
Zhou looked at him. "That's what they say. But this—" he gestured to a satellite image from 1996, printed in grainy monochrome—"shows something different. The 'sinkholes' form a pattern."
He began drawing with a red marker on a plastic sheet overlay. As he connected the five points across different provinces—Luoyang, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Sichuan, and Hunan—a near-perfect pentagon emerged. A formation. Geometric. Deliberate.
"Each point," Zhou said quietly, "correlates with historical collapses, disappearances, or unnatural weather phenomena."
Yang stared at the map, the hairs on his arms rising.
"And the center?" he asked, his voice low.
Zhou paused. "We don't know exactly. But it's within 50 kilometers of Luoyang's ancient imperial tomb district. And here's the most disturbing part—there's one dig, one single tomb, completely sealed off by the state."
He pulled out a yellowed incident report marked confidential. On the top corner, stamped in red, were the characters for (Special Containment).
Yang's eyes scanned the report, translating instinctively:
"Site excavation halted. All personnel evacuated. Five missing. One survivor under psychiatric observation. Subject repeatedly speaks of 'the Core under the Earth', and 'the mirror of black light.' No physical evidence recovered."
He set the paper down slowly.
"The Core…" Yang said aloud. "Dust-sealed Core?"
Zhou gave him a sharp look. "That phrase didn't originate with us."
For a long moment, the room was silent except for the flickering of the old fluorescent lights.
Yang finally spoke: "So what are we dealing with? A sealed consciousness? A buried entity? A failed ritual?"
Zhou exhaled shakily. "Whatever it is… our ancestors knew of it. They feared it. And they didn't kill it. They hid it. Each of these sites wasn't just a seal—it was a distraction. Layers of false history built over a very real danger."
Yang straightened, eyes locked on the central point of the pentagon.
"Then we go to the heart," he said.
Zhou hesitated. "If we do that, we cross a threshold. This isn't just research anymore. This is intervention."
Yang picked up the jade. "No one else is going to do it."
The token was still warm in his palm.
Almost as if it had been waiting for him to say that.