Half the willows on Ba Bridge had turned yellow.
Zhu Li found this deeply irresponsible — either commit to going fully yellow or stay properly green. What was this half-hearted nonsense? Just like his master. If you're going to leave, leave cleanly. But no — he had to leave behind one cryptic sentence as a keepsake.
*"Do not light that lantern."*
He silently recited the words again, as he had done countless times over the past four years, trying to wring some hidden meaning from them.
— What lantern? Where? Why can't it be lit?
His master never said. All he left behind was that sentence, a bundle of old talisman paper, half an ink stick, and the bell at Zhu Li's waist. Then he drifted away like willow catkins on Ba Bridge, without so much as a direction.
Zhu Li glanced down at the copper bell. It was small — about the size of a walnut — its bronze tarnished dark, etched with dense, intricate lines. His master had called it the Illusion-Breaking Bell, said it could shatter every illusion in the world.
He'd been sixteen then, a boy without many opinions of his own, and had thought it sounded impressive. Later he gradually discovered the bell was indeed impressive, but his master's definition of "impressive" differed rather substantially from what he'd imagined.
For instance, it couldn't shatter the illusion of not being able to find the man who'd given it to him.
"Useless thing," he muttered under his breath, flicking the bell with a finger. The bell gave a muffled wobble and did not talk back.
The highway was growing crowded. In the distance, the silhouette of Chang'an emerged through the dusk like some enormous blue-grey beast crouched upon the earth. The city walls stretched endlessly; banners on the watchtowers snapped in the evening wind. The evening drums hadn't sounded yet, but the sun had already slipped behind the walls, burning the clouds at the horizon into the color of persimmons not quite ripe.
He quickened his pace.
"Young man!" An old water seller by the roadside called out to him. "Thirsty? Have a bowl before you go!"
Zhu Li shook his head.
"Heading to Chang'an?"
"Mm."
"What business?"
"Looking for someone."
The old man waited, realized no elaboration was forthcoming, and pursed his lips. "Young people these days — too few words. You'll suffer for it."
Zhu Li thought for a moment, then turned back to add: "Thank you."
The old man was momentarily stumped, then waved him away.
He merged into the stream of people entering the city. Everyone around him was rushing to get in before the gates closed — merchants pushing carts, scholars riding bony donkeys, farmers with bundles on their backs, and a few foreign traders reeking of wine, singing incomprehensible songs as they walked. Bodies pressed against bodies. The smell of sweat mingled with donkey dung and the sesame fragrance of flatbread. The clamor was headache-inducing.
Zhu Li walked through the crowd with his shoulders drawn in. He didn't like crowded places. When there were too many people, the smells became muddled, and once muddled, he couldn't tell which scents were normal and which were not.
His master had once said that all the evil in this world hides within the word *clutter*.
As he passed through the gate tunnel, he heard a garrison soldier yawning overhead, and from a distant drum tower, a single muffled horn blast — a few minutes until the gates closed.
Then the Illusion-Breaking Bell rang.
No. It didn't *ring* — it *trembled*.
The bell shuddered once at his waist, a faint motion, as though an invisible finger had given it a flick.
Zhu Li's footsteps halted.
Without betraying any reaction, he pressed his hand over the bell, his thumb against the bronze body, feeling the temperature of the metal. Warm. Not his imagination.
He looked around. People came and went through the gate tunnel. The light was dim, oil lamps hung on both walls casting swaying shadows. Nothing out of the ordinary.
He was about to keep walking —
The bell trembled a second time.
Far more urgent than before. The bronze wall jolted beneath his thumb like a tiny beating heart.
Zhu Li whipped his head around.
Inside the gate, along the base of the right wall — in the densest pocket of shadow — there was a figure.
No. There *had been* a figure.
He only caught a glimpse of a hem — plain-colored, glowing faintly moon-white in the darkness, like the last jasmine of late autumn that hadn't yet fallen. Then the hem vanished, too quickly to have walked away — more as though the wind had scattered it.
Zhu Li didn't hesitate.
He slipped out of the crowd, pivoted, and gave chase.
Beyond the inner gate lay a district of squat dwellings. The alleys were narrow and deep, growing darker the further he went. Between the dusk and the earthen walls on both sides, the light dimmed as though night had arrived ahead of schedule.
His footsteps were very soft — his master had taught him that. "Walk like a cat," his master had once said. "I don't mean crawl like one. A cat never lets its feet touch the ground first — it lets the whole body arrive, and the feet land last."
To this day he had no idea what that actually meant, but he did walk very quietly.
Up ahead — no figure. Not even the sound of footsteps.
But there was a scent.
A faint sweetness hung in the air — not the osmanthus commonly found in Chang'an, nor the musk the foreign merchants often carried. He'd never smelled this fragrance before. Sweet with a thread of bitterness, like the body heat of some unknown flower.
He followed the scent twenty-odd paces deeper into the alley and stopped before a mottled earthen wall.
Then he looked down at the ground.
Blood.
A small pool of it, already beginning to dry. The edges had gone black, but the center still glistened with a dark, wet red. Less than an hour old.
Beside the blood, several flower petals lay scattered.
Zhu Li crouched down.
The petals were red. Not an ordinary red, but a red so vivid it bordered on unreal — as though someone had taken the last color of the sunset and pinched it into the shape of petals. Each one was the size of a fingernail, edges curling slightly, the veins too exquisite to have grown naturally.
He picked one up between two fingers. Cool to the touch, with a strange texture — not like a petal at all, but more like an impossibly thin piece of silk, yet with the suppleness of something alive.
He brought it to his nose and sniffed. That same scent — sweet, faintly bitter, like the last breath of fragrance a flower releases in the moment between blooming and death.
No corpse.
He looked at the ground again more carefully. The blood trail started in the middle of the alley, wound toward the wall, and then — stopped. Not soaked into the earth. Cut off cleanly at the wall's base, as though whoever had been bleeding had simply ceased to exist.
Zhu Li frowned.
Then he looked up at the wall.
Directly above where the blood trail ended, about two feet up, there was a pattern on the wall.
Someone had painted a symbol in blood.
The symbol was small, about the size of a palm. The strokes were crisp and practiced, as though the person who drew it was very skilled. The blood had half-dried, presenting a dark, subdued brownish-red in the twilight.
Zhu Li recognized the symbol.
No — he didn't *recognize* it. He'd never seen it in any book of talismans or ancient texts. But he had seen it.
His master hadn't left him many things. A bundle of talisman paper, half an ink stick, the Illusion-Breaking Bell — and a jade pendant no larger than a fingernail, of poor quality, with chipped edges. His master never wore the pendant; he simply kept it tucked inside his robe. Zhu Li had once turned it over and looked at the back — carved upon it was a symbol.
Identical to the one now on the wall before him.
His heartbeat quickened.
Four years.
For four years he had followed scattered leads from south to north, from villages to walled cities, circling like a dog chasing its own tail. Every time he thought he was drawing close to an answer, the trail went dead — snipped like a kite string cut deliberately.
And now, in an alley less than a hundred paces inside Chang'an's gate, his master's mark had appeared — just like that. Brazen and undeniable.
Too coincidental, or too deliberate?
Zhu Li clenched the petals in his fist. The petals crushed, releasing their juice. A deep red liquid seeped between his fingers like another kind of blood.
He stood, casting one last look around the alley. It was empty. Only the dusk came flooding in from the mouth of the lane like a tide rising past his knees.
The Illusion-Breaking Bell hung quietly at his waist, not so much as a sway. It had finished its work — given all the warnings it needed to give. The rest was its master's affair.
*Easy job for you*, Zhu Li thought at the bell.
The bell maintained its silence, preserving the dignity of a sacred instrument.
From the distance came Chang'an's evening drums — deep, heavy, one beat after another, like a great hand pounding the spine of the city. Behind him the gate was slowly closing, its massive hinges groaning low.
Zhu Li stood in that unfamiliar alley, a handful of unnamed red petals clutched in his hand, listening to the drums fall one by one.
He drew a deep breath. The air he pulled in carried Chang'an's dust, the coolness of dusk, and that faint, elusive fragrance — sweet and slightly bitter.
The direction of the scent was uncertain — it might have been the crushed petals at his feet, or it might have come from somewhere far away.
There was much he didn't know.
He didn't know who the vanished hem of plain cloth belonged to. He didn't know the name of those petals, nor why they were so unreasonably red. He didn't know what the blood-painted symbol meant, much less what connection his master's jade pendant could have to a stranger's wall in Chang'an.
He didn't even know that somewhere behind him — near or far — another person was also watching this sun sink below the city walls, a wisp of faintest red at the tips of their hair, slowly fading in the last sliver of daylight.
He knew only one thing.
His master might be in this city.
And he was already inside.
The evening drums fell silent. The gate thundered shut behind him.
Chang'an's night had begun.