The flame in the miner's lamp hopped like a startled insect in the damp tunnel. A wind blew from deep within, carrying the stink of rust and mildew, making the metal shade rattle with a soft clack.
Gong Chang hitched the ore basket higher on his back. His shoulder blades went numb, as if a blunt knife were pressed against them. He walked steadily, his steps making almost no sound in the mud and water—not because he was naturally light on his feet, but because he'd learned it here: don't draw attention, don't let anyone think you still had strength to spare.
From around the bend came a flurry of frantic blows.
Thud, thud, thud—
As if someone had gone mad with a stone hammer and was smashing the wall. Chips flew. The echoes stacked in the narrow passage, layer after layer.
Gong Chang paused for half a breath and looked up.
A man was squatting there, back hunched, clothes so filthy their color was hard to tell. Yet his hands gripped the hammer as if it were a lifeline. He swung and muttered to himself, his voice hoarse like sandpaper on rock:
"Don't mark me… don't mark me… I didn't borrow… I didn't borrow…"
Gong Chang knew him—Old Fan. He'd endured this tunnel for more than ten years. On ordinary days he hardly spoke, only liked to stare at his palm during breaks, as if counting something no one else could see.
Today he looked mad.
Gong Chang didn't go closer. He lowered the lamp so its light only touched the damp mud by his toes. As if he'd seen nothing at all, he turned to skirt around.
In this mine, the more you saw, the shorter you lived.
Yet in the instant he turned, the lamplight brushed a crack in the stone. In that hair-thin fissure, a smear of red—so faint it was nearly invisible—flickered once.
Like writing. Like blood.
It vanished as soon as it appeared, as if it had never existed.
The hair on Gong Chang's back rose. His chest tightened. When he looked again, the crack held only wet rock, beads of water sliding down the seam and dripping into the mud without a sound.
The hammering stopped.
Only the lamp's small crackle remained in the tunnel.
Gong Chang didn't look back. He walked on, his steps lighter, steadier than before. In his ears, Old Fan's words seemed to linger, repeating over and over.
—Mark what?
—And who was doing the marking?
He didn't dare think it through.
Life as an outer-sect mine hand in the Qinglan Sect was like this tunnel: black, narrow, wet. Walk it long enough and even your breath reeked of mold.
When Gong Chang dumped his ore basket onto the weigh station, the overseer, Hu San, was yawning. A leather whip hung behind him, its tip stained a dark red—ore mud, or blood.
"You again." Hu San glanced at the basket and idly raked a hand through the stones. "Thirty jin quota. You're two short."
Gong Chang's heart sank, but his face didn't show it. He spread his palm upward; the lines were crowded with small cuts. "Overseer Hu, part of the tunnel collapsed today. It's hard to dig down there. Could we—"
"No." Hu San cut him off at once, as if he'd been waiting for those words. "Two short is two short. Rules are rules."
Rules.
In the Qinglan Sect, rules were never written on paper. They were written on a whip.
Several mine hands nearby watched Gong Chang—some with glee, some with dull indifference. Farther off, a few outer disciples in clean gray robes passed by without sparing the scene a glance.
Gong Chang lowered his eyes and unhooked the wooden tag from his waist. A fresh notch had been carved into it—another deduction of merit. Every new notch meant he was one step closer to being thrown out of the sect.
He knew exactly what expulsion meant.
The land below the mountain was barren. Mortal lives were worth less than grass. And a mine hand like him—someone who'd once been inside a sect—would be seized the moment he stepped out, dragged off as cheap labor, or used as bait for beasts.
He couldn't go down there.
"Overseer Hu," Gong Chang said evenly, lifting his head, "I'll go back down tonight. I'll make it up."
Hu San squinted at him, like he was looking at a bug that still had oil to squeeze out. "Make it up? And what if you don't?"
Gong Chang didn't answer.
Hu San grinned, yellow teeth bared. "Then I'll wipe out what little merit you have left and send you to dig in the 'Abandoned Branch.' You're capable, aren't you? Go dig to your heart's content."
At the words "Abandoned Branch," the faces of the nearby mine hands changed.
That place had been sealed for ages. The passages were cramped, cave-ins common. Worst of all—people went in, and when they came back out, they went mad. Men like Old Fan, they said, had crawled out of the Abandoned Branch with their lives, and from then on started "keeping accounts."
Cold crept into Gong Chang's fingertips, but he still nodded. "I'll go."
Hu San waved him off like shooing a fly. "Get lost. Remember—have it all in before midnight, or the whip comes down on you at dawn."
By the time Gong Chang returned to the miners' shed, the sky was black through and through. More than a dozen bodies were packed inside. The air was a stew of sweat, herbs, and damp rot. Someone sharpened a blade. Someone gnawed a rock-hard cake. Someone wrapped bandages around a companion's arm.
No sooner had Gong Chang sat than a lanky boy slid close and whispered, "Brother Gong, I heard Hu San's sending you to the Abandoned Branch?"
Gong Chang grunted.
The boy swallowed. "That place… it's not clean. Old Fan came back different last time, kept saying things like 'debt' and 'red writing'…"
Gong Chang glanced toward the corner of the shed. Old Fan was there, back against a wooden post, eyes hollow like a log dug out of the earth. His hand scratched at his knee nonstop, like he was writing, or counting.
Gong Chang looked away and tore his ration in half, pushing a piece to the boy. "Eat."
The boy froze. "But you—"
"I can hold out." Gong Chang's voice stayed flat. "Your leg isn't healed."
The boy's leg was bound with splints—crushed by a cave-in days ago. Gong Chang remembered that day. He could've ignored it. He didn't—because he hated owing someone their life. Owing a life felt worse than taking a whip.
He rolled his sleeve up a little, showing old scars crisscrossing his arm. Each one was a reminder: on this mountain, kindness wasn't an advantage. Only being useful was.
Tonight, he had to become useful.
The iron gate at the mine entrance shrieked on its hinges in the night. The outer disciple posted there was nodding off and didn't even lift his eyelids. "Hu San's slip?"
Gong Chang handed over his wooden tag and a piece of yellow paper bearing the permit. The disciple glanced at it and pulled the gate open. "Go in. Be out before midnight. After that, we'll assume you died in there."
Gong Chang lifted his lamp and stepped into the dark.
The deeper he went, the colder the air became. In the normal tunnels there were still voices, still lights. At the fork leading to the Abandoned Branch, even the wind seemed swallowed, leaving only the lamp's weak crackle.
Sealing talismans hung at the junction, long since faded and torn, like someone had ripped at them. Marks scored the stone wall—one horizontal, one vertical, dense and messy. They looked like ledger lines, or some formation pattern no one alive could read.
Gong Chang slowed.
He wasn't superstitious, but he believed in the fear left behind by those who'd lived a long time. If the sect had sealed a place, something had happened there. Anything troublesome enough for the sect to bother with wasn't for a mine hand to touch.
But he had no choice.
He followed the Abandoned Branch deeper. The lamp threw light over loose rubble and bleached bones scattered on the ground. They weren't the bones of mine hands—mine hands who died were dragged out. Those weren't left behind in a sealed passage. Near one skeleton lay a strip of torn gray cloth, the sleeve embroidered with a broken pattern. It looked like an outer disciple's robe… and yet older.
Gong Chang's throat went dry.
He pressed on until he stopped at a cave-in. In the wall beyond the collapse, a narrow fissure split open, breathing a faint draft that carried the smell of old paper and ink.
Paper and ink?
In a mine, smelling paper and ink was stranger than smelling blood.
Gong Chang crouched and used his pick to tap away at the edge of the fallen stone, bit by bit. He moved slowly, afraid of triggering another collapse. As the rubble flaked off, a black shard rolled out. Its surface was smooth as a stele, and a half-formed character seemed faintly carved into it.
That half-character looked like "fate"—or like "cause."
Gong Chang's heart lurched. He reached for it. The moment his fingertip touched the edge, a sharp corner sliced his palm.
A bead of blood welled up.
The instant it dripped onto the shard—
The lamp's flame dimmed hard, as if something had sucked the light away.
On the shard's surface, a thread of red rose—so pale it wasn't like light at all, more like ink. It curled and twisted like writing, and yet couldn't be read. Gong Chang's vision swam. A sound brushed his ear, so faint it was as if someone had breathed a single word against the bone:
"Borrow—"
In the next breath the red sank away. The shard went dead. The lamp's flame jumped back to life, as if everything had been a hallucination.
Cold ran down Gong Chang's spine, yet the cut on his palm burned as if seared. He flinched, then felt the heat creep up his meridians, climbing to his chest, to his eyes.
His vision turned strange.
In the darkness beyond the collapse, countless faint "threads" seemed to appear. They stretched from the stone wall, from the bones, from the very air, weaving into an invisible net. Their ends ran higher and farther away, as if tugged by something enormous.
Gong Chang caught his breath. He wanted to blink, but couldn't—afraid that if he blinked, he'd never see it again.
Then, in the next instant, the threads scattered like smoke in the wind and vanished.
He snapped back, chest heaving. The lamp nearly slipped from his hand.
From the crack in the collapse, a bundle wrapped in oilcloth jolted loose and rolled to his feet. Dust and dried dark stains clung to the cloth. Gong Chang stared for three full breaths before he finally bent down and picked it up.
Inside the oilcloth was a battered remnant scripture.
The edges of the pages were brittle, like they'd crumble at a touch. The cover bore no title—only two blurred characters, as if someone had deliberately scraped them away. Gong Chang brushed it with his fingertip. Cold met his skin, like touching a stone that had soaked in water for a thousand years.
He didn't dare open it.
He didn't even dare hold it where anyone could see.
Because he understood something all at once: this wasn't a stroke of luck. It was a seed of disaster. Anything that could bring the scent of ink into a mine, make a stone stele bleed red script, make him see those threads—should never land in the hands of an outer-sect mine hand.
And he also understood something else: without that seed of disaster, he'd take the whip tonight, and tomorrow he might be thrown out of the sect.
Gong Chang gritted his teeth, rolled the scripture up, and tucked it into the inner fold of his robe, close to his chest. He also picked up the black shard and slipped it into the hidden layer under his shoe—where he kept the spirit-stone fragments he'd stolen and saved.
Only then did he realize his palm had stopped bleeding, as if something had "gathered" the blood back in.
He stood, lifted the lamp, and turned for the way out, walking faster than before, but with even more care.
The darkness in the tunnel clung to his back like something alive, as if it would swallow him whole the moment he slowed down.
When he finally reached the main passage, voices rang out in the distance. The lights were twice as bright as usual.
"Stand still! Line up! One by one—inspection!"
Outer disciples of the Law Enforcement Hall wore gray robes trimmed in black. Bronze plaques hung at their waists, cold as iron. In their hands was a mirror-like artifact of bronze, its surface flowing with pale spiritual light.
Hu San stood to the side with a pasted-on smile and a voice like frost. "You mine hands—whoever dares steal ore, whoever dares sneak into forbidden passages—tonight I'll have it all checked clean!"
Gong Chang's chest sank.
He pulled his cap brim low and slipped into the end of the line. Around him, mine hands whispered—some cursing, some trembling. Old Fan stood near the middle, eyes locked on the mirror, chanting again under his breath: "Don't mark me… don't mark me…"
When it was Old Fan's turn, a disciple raised the mirror to his chest.
Spiritual light flashed across the surface—and nothing showed.
Old Fan crumpled as if someone had yanked the bones out of him. A broken laugh tore from his throat. "Not marked… not marked…"
The disciple frowned and slapped him hard. "Behave!"
Old Fan held his face and still laughed, laughing like crying.
Gong Chang watched, his fingers slowly tightening inside his sleeve. The cut on his palm warmed faintly. He didn't know what the mirror would show on him, but he knew one thing: whatever it was, it wouldn't be good.
The line edged forward.
Hu San's gaze swept over them like a snake. When it landed on Gong Chang it paused for a beat, and then Hu San's mouth hooked into a grin.
"Well, isn't this Gong Chang?" Hu San raised his voice. "I was wondering why you were so hardworking tonight. Turns out you wanted to get up to something in the dark?"
Gong Chang's heart tightened, but his face stayed still. "Overseer Hu, I went to make up my quota."
"Make up your quota?" Hu San snorted. "In the Abandoned Branch?"
Every eye snapped toward Gong Chang—fearful, distant, as if he'd been contaminated by something they couldn't name.
The disciple lifted his head, his gaze turning colder. "You. Come here."
Gong Chang stepped forward and stood very straight. He knew he couldn't retreat now. One step back would be guilt. He even forced his breathing to steady, like a stone pressed into mud—filthy, but unmoving.
The disciple raised the mirror. Spiritual light slowly gathered on its surface and shone toward Gong Chang's chest.
In that instant, Gong Chang felt the remnant scripture under his robe stir, pressing against his heartbeat with a tiny tremor.
The mirror was clear as water.
In the next breath, ripples spread.
In the breath after that, a pinpoint of red—like blood pricked from a needle—surfaced in the mirror's depths.
So red it hurt the eyes.
The disciple's pupils shrank. His fingers clenched so hard he nearly dropped the mirror.
Hu San's smile froze.
Mine hands all around sucked in a breath, as if they'd seen something that should never be seen.
The red flashed only once before the mirror's glow crushed it down, as if forcibly wiped away. But the disciple's expression had already changed—this wasn't suspicion. It was certainty.
He stared at Gong Chang, his voice cold as a blade scraping stone.
"…Anomaly."
Gong Chang's heart dropped into an abyss. Still, he forced himself to lift his eyes and meet the disciple's stare.
The disciple lowered the mirror, raised his arm, and pointed.
"You—step out."
"Take him away."