Chapter 29 - Night Cracks Deep Within the Manor

Warm Shadows in Daylight

By the following afternoon, the sunlight was just right.

There was barely any wind in the rear garden. When it passed through the flower trellises and the bamboo shadows, it stirred only the faintest whisper of leaves. The white rabbits had been let out again on the grassy slope. Their ears twitched as they bounded back and forth between tender grass and drifting patches of blossom-shadow. Now and then one would pause, its nose quivering rapidly, as though testing the sweetness in the air.

On the small table sat a plate of freshly steamed cakes and a cup of honeyed water.

Fang Yingjie had recovered steadily over the past few days. His right foot no longer depended on the wooden cane the way it had before. On level ground, over short distances, he could manage a slow, careful walk on his own. But the old injury had not fully healed. He still could not move too quickly, nor rush himself.

Wang Yan sat beside him in a wicker chair with a white rabbit in her arms, stroking the soft fur along its back again and again. Her complexion had improved considerably since the day she arrived. Though she still drifted into silence now and then, staring north toward the line of water, the emptiness that always seemed to hang in her eyes had at least grown less hollow than before. At the moment, the rabbit lay still in her lap, brushing lightly against her wrist, and she could not help letting out a quiet laugh.

"It actually lets people hold it."

Sitting nearby, Fang Yingjie carefully offered a small piece of leaf toward the grassy slope. Another rabbit hopped over, touched it first with its nose, then bit down in one quick snap. Its ears flicked. It retreated half a step, then lowered its head and began chewing.

"More gently," Wang Yan said. "Every time you reach out like that, it looks as though you mean to grab it."

"I'm not grabbing it," Fang Yingjie muttered in protest.

But the tips of his ears had already gone warm, and he drew his hand back a little.

Not far away, under the corridor, Mama Yao sat sorting several bundles of medicinal herbs that had just been sent from the front. At the same time, she kept an eye on the two of them. She was not a talkative woman. Only now and then did she glance up. Seeing one child holding a rabbit and the other feeding one, both quiet and settled, she lowered her gaze again to the shallow bamboo tray in her hands.

For a while, the rear garden was steeped in stillness.

The flowers were still. The grass was still. Even the wind seemed to have slowed its steps for the sake of that afternoon. If not for the white rabbits still darting to and fro, one might almost have believed that life at Biyue Manor truly would pass in such steady peace, one day after another.

Wang Yan picked up half a steamed cake and took a bite. Through the mouthful, she said, "You really are doing better lately."

Fang Yingjie looked up.

"What?"

"You," she said, swallowing and studying him with honest attention. "A few days ago, whenever you sat there, you looked like laundry that hadn't finished drying. I was afraid one hard gust would send you flying away. But now, even when you stand a little longer, your face doesn't go white like paper anymore."

His first instinct was to deny it. But after a moment's thought, he had to admit that his nighttime coughing had indeed eased these last few days. And when he settled his breathing at dawn, that breath in his chest had felt steadier than before. In the end he only said quietly, "Maybe... the medicine here is good."

"It's not just the medicine," Wang Yan said. "You're trying harder too."

She was not speaking merely to comfort him. She sounded as though she were only stating what she had seen with her own eyes. Something in Fang Yingjie's chest stirred at that, light as a feather, but he did not answer. He only lowered his gaze again to the rabbits on the slope.

Just then a young maid from the front came softly to call Mama Yao away.

Mama Yao answered, then rose, pausing long enough to give them a careful instruction. "Miss, Young Master, stay here and don't wander deeper in. Behind that rockery, the stone path twists around. The first time through, it's easy to take a wrong turn. I'm going to fetch something from the front. I'll be back in a moment."

Wang Yan nodded. "Understood."

Only then did Mama Yao take up her tray and head toward the front courtyard by way of the covered corridor.

Once she left, the rear garden seemed to grow stiller still.

At first neither of them noticed anything strange. Wang Yan kept teasing the rabbit in her arms with lowered head, while Fang Yingjie sat beside the small table, reaching toward another dish for more leaves to feed the rabbit on the slope. But his right leg had been bent too long, and that familiar, dull ache deep in the joints suddenly rolled back through the bone. His hand swerved, and he accidentally knocked the little cup of honeyed water beside him askew.

"Ah—"

The porcelain cup struck the corner of the table with a sharp tang, and honeyed water spilled across half the tabletop.

The rabbit in Wang Yan's arms had been alert to begin with. At the sound, its ears shot straight up, and in the next instant it tore free of her hold and bolted away in a white blur toward the far side of the slope.

"Come back!" Wang Yan cried, springing up at once to chase after it.

The rabbit was astonishingly fast. It ducked beneath the flower trellis, then bounded along the narrow stone path by the rockery. Wang Yan still remembered Mama Yao's warning from moments ago—Behind the rockery, the stone path twists around. The first time through, it's easy to lose your way. But how could she spare a thought for that now? Afraid the little beast would vanish entirely into the deeper turns, she gathered up her skirts and hurried after it, muttering under her breath, "You little thing—stand still!"

By the time she reached the rockery, the rabbit seemed to have grown frightened as well. Instead of fleeing farther, it had crouched motionless in a nook of stone behind a curtain of trailing vines. Wang Yan bent quickly and scooped it up in both hands. She gave one of its ears a light tap.

"That's what you get for running around."

Only after stopping did she realize it was cooler there than where they had been sitting.

The rockery blocked the sun, and wind came slipping through the cracks between the stones. Even the flower-shadows were deeper here. Instinctively, she turned to look back and saw Fang Yingjie making his way over slowly from behind, one hand braced against the stone railing by the corridor, the other pressing against his right leg. He was not moving quickly at all. She could not help blurting out,

"It's all your fault. So clumsy you can't even manage a cup—"

But before she finished, Fang Yingjie stopped short.

There was something in the wind.

Something thin. Something far away. Like a breath that broke off, then started again; started again, then broke off once more—seeping out little by little from somewhere deep behind the rocks. Had one not listened closely, it might have seemed no more than the sound of wind threading through the holes in the rockery. But it was too faint, too fragile, and too much like a living thing. The moment he heard it, a chill ran lightly through him.

Slowly, he lifted his head and listened.

Wang Yan noticed the change in his face and fell silent as well. "What is it?"

Fang Yingjie did not answer at once. He listened a little longer before saying quietly, "Did you... hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"It sounded like someone." He frowned, keeping his voice very low. "A woman's voice."

Wang Yan froze, then immediately held her breath and listened too.

But all she could hear was the rustle of wind through the vine leaves, the faint wash of water somewhere beyond the embankment in the distance, and the small, rapid flutter inside the rabbit's chest where it trembled in her arms. Other than that, there was nothing.

"I didn't hear anything." She looked at him. "Maybe you heard wrong?"

Fang Yingjie said nothing.

The sound had vanished again. Everything was so still that what he had heard a moment ago felt almost like a trick of his own senses. These past few days, after so much quiet breathing practice, his hearing had grown sharper than before. But perhaps that was exactly the problem. When wind, leaves, and water layered together, was it possible he had mistaken one sound for another? For the moment, even he could not tell.

Holding the rabbit, Wang Yan glanced toward the piled stones behind them.

In broad daylight, the rockery was only an ordinary garden feature—blue-gray stone, drooping vines, a narrow path winding around its base. There was nothing remarkable about it at all, nothing that looked capable of concealing anyone.

She was just about to say, Let's go back, when Mama Yao's voice rang out from the corridor ahead.

"Miss! Young Master!"

Both of them jumped.

Wang Yan clutched the rabbit against her and turned, calling back, "We're here!"

Mama Yao came toward them quickly. Her eyes swept over the two children first. Seeing that they had only strayed a little and had not truly ventured into the deeper turns of the rockery, her expression eased.

"Didn't I just tell you not to go farther back?" There was no real scolding in her tone, only the helpless exasperation of an elder dealing with children. "The footing is slippery there, and the vine-shadows are too deep. If one of you fell or lost the path, it would be no small matter."

"We didn't go in," Wang Yan said at once. "The rabbit ran over here, so I only followed it a few steps."

Mama Yao glanced at the rabbit in her arms and smiled despite herself. "This little thing knows even better than you where to hide for peace and quiet."

As she spoke, she took the rabbit from Wang Yan and slipped a freshly steamed cake into the girl's hand.

"Come. Madam is receiving guests in the front today. You two should go back to your rooms and rest. And tonight, unless there is something urgent, don't come wandering out again."

The two of them had no choice but to follow her out.

To leave the rear garden, they had to pass through a stretch of covered corridor lined with flower-patterned lattice windows. They had only just reached the turn when three figures came slowly into view from the other side.

The first thing anyone would notice was the color of their clothes.

They were not dressed like the manor servants in plain short jackets, nor like the merchants who came and went in ordinary traveling clothes. All three wore long robes of uniform bamboo-green, dark in tone, like old mountain bamboo pressed beneath layers of shadow. None of them had their hair bound up. Their long hair hung loose behind their shoulders.

The one in front was around fifty, perhaps a little older—lean and long-bodied, with a narrow face to match, slightly pronounced cheekbones, and eyes that were thin and long. There was almost no expression on his face. Yet when his eyelids lifted just a fraction and his gaze brushed across another person, one felt an inexplicable tightness seize the heart.

Behind him came two more: one nearly grown, the other still little more than half a boy. The elder looked eighteen or nineteen. There was a loose, shallow quality to his features, and both the set of his mouth and the air about him carried a kind of ill-disciplined impropriety he could not quite hide. The younger one was only thirteen or fourteen, not yet fully grown. Yet his expression was dark and shuttered. He kept his eyes lowered and barely looked at anyone at all. Oddly enough, he seemed more tightly wound than the older youth before him.

Fang Yingjie's steps faltered.

That style of dress, that atmosphere—it made him think at once of Feng Feiyun.

And yet nothing of Feng Feiyun's wildness, vitality, or brightness was present here. These three wore the color of bamboo as well, but they felt more like the cold shade hidden inside a bamboo grove, sliding soundlessly across the ground. Even the hems of their robes seemed untouched by wind.

When the older youth's gaze passed over Wang Yan, it lingered a fraction too long.

It was only half a moment, but Wang Yan felt as though that glance had lightly scraped across her skin. A chill ran over her back at once, and without thinking she drew the steamed cake in her hand closer against her side.

The trace of ease that had remained on Mama Yao's face also tightened, just slightly, in that instant. Without drawing attention to it, she stepped half a pace forward, shielding the two children behind her, and inclined her head in a restrained bow toward the three newcomers.

The courtesy was neither overly humble nor perfunctory—exactly the measured civility expected of an old servant receiving guests in the manor. She did not say much. She simply shifted slightly to one side, meaning to lead Wang Yan and Fang Yingjie past them.

The elderly man in front cast her a cool glance. He neither nodded nor asked any questions, but continued past at an unhurried pace. As he drew near, Fang Yingjie caught the faintest trace of something sharp and fishy on him. It was impossible to tell whether it was wine, sweat, or something else.

The improperly smiling young man let the corner of his mouth tilt upward. A residue of that same coarse frivolity still lingered in his eyes, but in the end he said nothing and followed the older man onward.

The youngest kept his head lowered from beginning to end. His footsteps were so light that caught between the other two, he seemed hardly to dare breathe too loudly.

Only after all three had disappeared down the far end of the corridor did Mama Yao say quietly, "Come."

Her voice was steady, but its rhythm had quickened by half a beat.

Wang Yan lowered her voice. "Who were they?"

"Guests," Mama Yao answered simply. "The people Madam is receiving today. Don't go to the front, and don't stare."

That was all she said.

But the sight of those bamboo-green robes, together with that half-heard moan of a woman from behind the rockery earlier in the day, touched something in Fang Yingjie's mind. It was as though the two had struck the same place inside him and opened, with the lightest scrape, a thin crack he could neither explain nor ignore.

Lost in the Night Garden

By the time they returned to their rooms, the sunlight had begun to slant.

Outside, the wind off the lake still blew with the same steady calm. Servants still moved through the corridors below, bringing tea and medicine. From top to bottom, Biyue Manor remained perfectly ordered. Yet the more everything appeared unchanged, the more that faint sense of wrongness felt like a needle-fine thorn lodged in the heart: easy to ignore when untouched, impossible to forget once brushed.

After nightfall, Mama Yao came as usual with hot broth. She checked the lamp, asked after the medicine, and even bent to see whether the bandage on Fang Yingjie's leg had loosened. After reminding him not to expose himself to the night wind again, she finally withdrew with soft, careful steps. On the other side of the courtyard, attendants likewise came and went in Wang Yan's room, refilling water, lowering the lamp, and asking whether she wanted an extra thin quilt for the night.

Everything was exactly as it had been these past few days.

And precisely because of that, the strangeness hidden beneath that calm began to rise to the surface, inch by inch.

After about the time it took to eat a meal, the voices outside gradually faded. The corridor fell still.

Wang Yan sat alone in her room for a long while, but in the end the oppressive feeling only grew worse. In daylight, with people coming and going, speaking and moving about, she had not noticed it so clearly. But once the night deepened and silence settled on all sides, that hollow, unnameable feeling began to creep back again. She had meant to endure it and force herself to sleep, but no matter how she turned, sleep would not come. At last she threw on a robe, eased her door open a crack, and, seeing no one outside, slipped into the corridor on the lightest feet she could manage. A moment later she had reached Fang Yingjie's door and tapped twice, very softly.

Inside, there was a brief stillness. Then came the faint sound of footsteps drawing near.

The door opened by half a line. Fang Yingjie stood there, clearly not yet asleep.

"Why are you here?" he whispered.

Wang Yan slipped inside and pushed the door shut behind her. Lowering her voice, she said, "I was suffocating in my room. I couldn't sleep, so I came to see whether you were still awake too."

The words had barely left her mouth when, by the dim little lamp, she caught sight of his face.

Only a single wick remained lit in the room, leaving his complexion even paler than it had looked by day. But the hesitation in his eyes had not gone anywhere. Wang Yan studied him, paused, then asked quietly, "You're still thinking about what happened by the rockery this afternoon, aren't you?"

Fang Yingjie did not answer at once, but his expression was answer enough.

After a moment, he said in a low voice, "I still don't think I heard wrong."

"And even if you didn't?" Wang Yan frowned. "That would still be something inside the Manor. You saw those three strange men in the daytime. The moment I laid eyes on them, I felt ill all over. If you really blunder into something you shouldn't—"

Before she could finish, Fang Yingjie said quietly, "Then we go and take one look."

"You make it sound easy." Wang Yan glared at him. "What if there really is something there?"

He opened his mouth, but for a moment no answer came.

He was not by nature someone who liked courting trouble, much less someone who mistook recklessness for courage. And yet that faint, thread-thin woman's voice had lodged in his heart since the afternoon like a fishbone caught in the throat. Added to that were the three figures in bamboo-green robes. The more he thought about them, the harder it became to believe that the depths of the rockery in the rear garden were no more than ornamental stone.

After a long silence, he said, "If there's nothing there, we come straight back. If... if there really is something, then we at least see clearly what it is first."

Wang Yan had meant to snap at him again, but one look at his face—so obviously uneasy, yet equally unable to let the matter go—and half her anger leaked away. She gave a low snort.

"I'm not going along because I feel like joining your nonsense. I'm going because if you go by yourself, you'll get stuck in some crack in that rockery and no one will ever know where you vanished to."

Warmth stirred in Fang Yingjie's chest. "I know," he said quickly.

Wang Yan rolled her eyes at him, though her voice dropped even lower. "Then listen to me. Mama Yao will never let us out at night. Forget the door. We can only go by the back window."

Even as she spoke, the plan had already taken full shape in her mind.

"I'll go back first. At this hour Mama Yao and the others always make one more round to check the rooms. Only after they see we're both asleep will they really stop worrying. Once she's checked, I'll climb out of my back window first, circle around to yours, and tap three times—lightly. When you hear it, open the window and come out."

Fang Yingjie blinked. "You're going out alone first?"

"I'm quicker than you are," Wang Yan said. "Your right leg still isn't fully healed. If you make a noise climbing down, we'll both be finished."

She glanced at him and added, "And don't try to be brave. Wait until I tap before you move. Also, don't put your lamp out completely. Leave a little light. If Mama Yao sticks her head in and finds the room pitch-dark and too neat, that might make her suspicious too."

By the time she finished, she had already arranged every detail—how they would pretend to sleep, how they would slip out, how they would meet. Fang Yingjie wanted to say, Maybe you shouldn't come after all, but even he knew it was too late for that now. In the end he only answered softly, "All right."

Wang Yan turned to go, but at the door she stopped, looked back, and lowered her voice once more.

"Don't you dare fall asleep first."

Heat touched the tips of Fang Yingjie's ears. "I won't."

Only then did Wang Yan slip soundlessly away.

After that came the waiting.

This kind of waiting was worse than waiting for an answer on the boat in broad daylight. Every so often the faintest footsteps passed in the corridor; now and then a distant light brushed the window paper, then vanished. Fang Yingjie sat on the edge of the bed, feeling his heartbeat strike with unusual clarity, each beat light yet impossibly distinct. Afraid that one moment of inward turmoil might betray him before anything had even begun, he followed the method Old Daoist Xuan had taught him and slowly pressed his breathing downward. But tonight his thoughts were too tangled. His breath sank and floated, floated and sank, and would not settle.

He did not know how much time had passed before the familiar sound of footsteps came again outside.

Mama Yao.

She entered as lightly as always. First she checked the shape of the figure on the bed. Then she pressed the window shut a little more tightly so the night wind could not slip through. After that she shifted the lamp in the corridor half a foot farther away, so the light would not fall directly across the bedside. She must have thought the child had worn himself out walking in the garden that day and would therefore sleep soundly tonight. She let out a soft sigh, then withdrew.

After another interval, there came a faint sound of a door opening somewhere on the other side. Presumably Wang Yan's room had been checked as well.

At last, the entire little western courtyard sank into real silence.

Fang Yingjie waited a while longer. Only when no second set of footsteps came through the corridor did he hear it at the window—

tok, tok, tok.

Three taps. Neither hurried nor slow. Exactly as they had agreed.

He rose at once and pushed open the rear window.

A rush of cool night air touched his face before anything else. Below the window stood Wang Yan, just as expected. She had already come around from her own room. In her hand was a small gauze lantern, its flame turned very low and half-screened with a handkerchief so that it lit only a narrow ring at their feet.

"Hurry," she whispered, tilting her head up toward him. "I borrowed this from the corner of the corridor. If we delay much longer, someone may notice it's missing."

Fang Yingjie nodded and first passed his wooden cane out to her. But then another thought struck him. Tonight they would be squeezing through rocks and feeling their way in the dark. The cane would only get in the way, and at the slightest bump it might make a sound. So he drew it back again and, bracing both hands on the window frame, eased himself out little by little.

His right leg still was not steady enough. On the way down he almost missed his footing. Wang Yan had clearly expected as much; she caught his arm at once. For a moment they stood so close that each could feel the thin sheen of nervous sweat on the other's palm. The instant he had both feet under him, Wang Yan breathed, barely above a whisper, "I knew you were going to botch that."

Embarrassed, Fang Yingjie muttered, "I was already going as slowly as I could."

"And that's the only reason you didn't fall loudly enough to wake the whole courtyard." She shot him a look, but still did not let go until she was certain he had his balance. Then she lifted the little lantern between them. "Come on. Since we're here already."

They exchanged a glance. Neither said anything more.

Night lay heavy over Biyue Manor. Deep in the corridors, the lamplight remained placid and still. Front courtyard and rear courtyard alike seemed as quiet as though nothing at all had happened. And it was precisely under that stillness that two children—obedient children, cautious children, children who had never once given anyone reason to guard against them—climbed out a back window for the first time in their lives.

Beneath the window hung an old wind lantern, one Mama Yao had casually left there during the day for use when walking the rear garden at night. At the moment they could not afford to be choosy. They snatched it up and went.

Biyue Manor was deeper at night than it had seemed by day. Corridors, walls, shrubs, the rockery itself—in the dark they all appeared to have grown an extra layer of unfamiliar shape. Keeping close to the walls and slipping through the bamboo shadows, the two made their way toward the rear garden, their hearts beating so hard it seemed the sound might swallow even the wind.

By the time they reached the rockery, the lantern opened only a small circle of gray-white stone before them. Farther off, vines drooped in shadow, and the openings between the rocks were black. The place had looked perfectly ordinary by daylight. At night, it seemed to wear another face entirely.

Wang Yan shivered first. "Maybe... maybe we should forget it after all."

But Fang Yingjie had already gone still, turning his head to listen.

The night was far quieter than the afternoon had been. Even the wind had drawn in. And so the sound finally came clearer than before—faint, frail, like the last breath trapped in a human throat, appearing and disappearing as it seeped from behind the stones.

"There," he whispered.

Holding up the lantern, the two of them felt their way forward.

At the foot of the rockery were several patches of shadow no one would have noticed in the day. Wang Yan had still half believed they would find nothing. Yet as she searched, her fingers brushed against an indentation hidden behind a jutting slab of stone. It was tiny. Had she not been fumbling in panic and struck it by accident, she might not have found it even after ten tries. Her heart jumped. Instinctively, she pressed.

There came a very soft click.

The stone wall before them gave inward by a narrow crack.

At once a rush of air poured out—stiflingly damp, mold-ridden, and carrying a foul smell too rank to name.

Both children froze.

Even the lantern flame wavered as though pressed down by that clammy breath.

"There really is a passage..." Wang Yan's throat had gone dry.

And now, with the opening unsealed, that moaning sound became unmistakably clearer. It was below them somewhere, broken and intermittent, as if someone had endured to the furthest edge of endurance and still, by pure instinct, refused to let the last breath leave the body.

At this point, turning back already seemed too late.

Gritting their teeth, they lifted the lantern and went down.

At first the way inside was only a narrow stone passage, so cramped that a single person could barely edge through sideways. The steps were steep and slick. The walls sweated with damp that had not seen sunlight in years. The farther down they went, the heavier the stench became. Beneath the mold was something else now—something faintly rotten, faint enough to be worse for its subtlety. Wang Yan's stomach turned so violently she nearly gagged. She wanted to tell him to stop, but just then the woman's voice faltered again ahead of them, so faint that she somehow swallowed the nausea back down and kept moving.

The end of the passage did not open into some small hidden alcove.

It opened into an underground chamber.

The ceiling was low, but the space itself was much wider than they had imagined. The lantern could illuminate only a little. What it showed were broken walls, wet stone, standing water, and several rotting wooden racks that looked as though they had been abandoned for years. The moaning came from deeper within. Following the sound, the two moved forward, each step feeling as though it fell where no human foot should tread. Even the sound of their own breathing seemed dangerous.

At last, the lantern light reached a still deeper, darker stone cell.

The first thing it caught was a shoulder—gaunt, terribly white.

Only then did they see that it was not a scrap of cloth but a human body. The figure lay curled beside a stone platform, the scalp bare of so much as a finger's breadth of hair. The skin clung to the bones as though years of dank darkness had soaked all the living color from it. Her face lifted halfway. The light struck it, and both children sucked in a breath at the same instant—

The eye sockets were empty.

They were hollow pits, black and sunken, while old wounds layered her face one upon another. Her lips were split and dry. Only the slightest tremor remained in her throat. Her hands and feet hung twisted, as though they had long since been ruined. She wore not a thread. She was so emaciated that little remained but the structure of bone, and yet along her flank, across her shoulders and arms, high on her thighs, there spread a chaos of wounds old and new—bruises, scar tissue, burns, all crossing and overwriting one another until the sight itself scarcely resembled a human body at all.

The woman seemed to flinch at the lantern light. Her mouth moved a fraction. From her throat came a sound so faint it was nearly not a word.

"Save..."

That single syllable was enough to blast the soul from the body.

The lantern jerked in Wang Yan's hand so violently she almost dropped it where she stood. She had seen smashed wine jars at the mouth of Tai Lake. She had seen doors battered in. She had seen the deathly white look on her mother's face beneath a blow from a stick. But those had all still belonged to the world of the living—to human disaster, human suffering. What crouched before her now looked less like a person than like someone a living hand had broken into a ghost.

Fang Yingjie, too, had gone rigid.

Another scrap of breath shuddered in the captive woman's throat, as though she wished to beg for more, but her body gave only one small convulsion before collapsing back into the clotted damp darkness around her.

Wang Yan's hand was shaking so badly already that the lantern beam swung wildly to the side—and there, in the corner, it caught another shape: a patch of dead white.

Half sunk in wet mud and rank grass lay a human skeleton curled in upon itself. A few scraps of rotted black cloth still clung to the bones. The cloth had decayed past recognition, yet one could just make out that it had once belonged to a man's robe. Slantwise between the ribs was wedged half a rust-eaten scabbard. One withered hand still stretched forward, fingers half open, as though in the moment before death he had tried to crawl farther on, only to make it this far and no farther before he rotted away underground.

Wang Yan nearly turned to stone where she stood. Even her scream died in her throat. All that remained was one breath of icy air rushing straight to the crown of her head.

What did those two children care now who the living woman was, or whose skeleton lay there, or how either had been reduced to such a state? That one look was enough to shatter what courage they had.

Almost without knowing she had done it, Wang Yan seized Fang Yingjie's sleeve.

"Go!"

The word came out thin and broken.

With the lantern in hand, they turned and fled.

They ought to have run back the way they had come, but panic wiped all sense of direction from the mind. What was the road in, what was the road out—who could tell anymore? The stone passages split left and right. In the dark every shadow looked like an exit, and no shadow did. Wang Yan ran trembling, dragging Fang Yingjie with her. His wounded leg burned with every step, but by now he no longer felt it. They knew only that they had to get farther from that stone cell. Farther. Farther still. As if something unclean were truly pursuing them from behind.

They did not know how many times they struck the walls or turned past black corners before another half-closed stone door appeared ahead.

This time they were not searching for it. Wang Yan crashed into it headfirst, her elbow hit some hidden mechanism at the side, and the door slid inward without a sound.

The two of them stumbled through.

The sight before them could not have been more different from the damp, moldy rot below ground—

A thick carpet covered the floor, soft underfoot and worked with vivid patterns. Layer after layer of gauze drapery hung from the four corners, with warm lamplight glowing beyond it. Against the wall stood a dressing table, a mirror stand, and a long table set out in a row with incense boxes and jade bottles. Even the lamp covers were not the plain paper used elsewhere in the Manor, but thin silk woven with dim gold patterns. Farther inside stood a great screen. Behind it, one could vaguely make out a bathing tub, an incense burner, and neatly stacked garments of delicate, supple cloth. A sweet, warm fragrance floated through the entire room—almost cloying in its richness—and it was nothing at all like the cool, refined scent that had clung to Madam Wen by day.

Both of them stared.

The lush sensual luxury of this chamber did not match Madam Wen's daytime dignity and quiet simplicity in the slightest.

They had not yet recovered from the shock when the sound of a door opening came from outside.

It was far off—proof that the room was astonishingly large. Footsteps entered, one after the other. Beyond the layers of curtains and hanging veils, they drew nearer little by little.

The souls of both children were all but gone. How could they spare a thought for anything else? Fang Yingjie whirled and shoved the stone door back into place, then grabbed Wang Yan and pulled her toward the bed. The bed was enormous, draped in hanging curtains, and there was just enough space beneath it to hide two people. On hands and knees, almost rolling, the two of them scrambled underneath.

Neither dared let out so much as one full breath.

Hearing the Demon from Beneath the Bed

The people outside were already close.

The first thing to reach them was that gentle voice they knew all too well by now, the one that had soothed them more than once.

"Have the two children gone to sleep?"

"They have," came Mama Yao's reply. "This servant checked on them herself just now. They were not disturbed."

"Good." The voice stayed soft. "For the next few days, keep a closer watch. They have come a long way, and they are still small. If they are startled in the night, do not let the wind blow straight through the window seams."

"Yes, madam."

"And one more thing… tomorrow, do not let them wander too deep into the rear garden. In daylight I saw little Yan taking a liking to those rabbits. Have them brought to the short-grass slope instead. The path behind the rockery is to remain locked."

Under the bed, every hair on Wang Yan's body sprang upright.

Fang Yingjie's palm went cold. He nearly dug his nails through his own skin.

Mama Yao answered in assent. The soft voice outside gave a few more low instructions, all of them ordinary household matters. The tone never changed. It was as calm and even as it had been in the daytime when she had asked whether their medicine was too bitter, or told the servants to bring them extra clothes and warm cakes. If the two children had not seen what they had seen beneath the rockery with their own eyes, even with their ears pressed to the floorboards they would never have imagined that behind such steady, gentle speech there lay another face entirely.

A little later, Mama Yao and the maids withdrew.

The door closed again. Only one person remained in the room.

From beyond the bed curtains and the shifting gauze shadows came the soft loosening of sashes, the light clink of hairpins falling into a tray, the faint stir of water. She seemed to be bathing, or perhaps changing clothes. Every movement was unhurried, almost languid.

Beneath the bed, the two children wished they could hide even the beating of their hearts.

Wang Yan slowly edged half an inch toward the outside. Plainly she meant to slip away while there was still time. But the moment her wrist moved, Fang Yingjie caught it by instinct and shook his head hard.

At that very instant, a laugh sounded in the room.

It was light, but unlike the warm laughter they knew. It was like a cold golden hook suddenly glinting beneath soft silk—one touch of it was enough to send a chill crawling down the spine.

"Have you seen enough?"

Under the bed, both children went stiff all at once.

Then the woman said lazily, "Boy, since you've followed me this far, why are you still peeping from outside? If you mean to come in, then come in. Don't keep me waiting."

Wang Yan nearly crawled out on the spot. Fang Yingjie yanked her back so hard that she had to stop.

Then came a tiny crack from the roof beam above.

There really was someone there.

A figure dropped lightly from the rafters.

Not them.

He landed almost without a sound, carrying the hot-blooded restlessness of a young man who had never learned to master himself. He was the very youth who had followed behind the bamboo-robed elder earlier that day. Under the lamplight, the frivolity in his face was even harder to hide. His eyes clung to the woman as though nailed there, and even his breathing had gone ragged.

Only then did the two children understand.

She had not discovered them after all.

There had been another watcher.

The young man swallowed and called softly, "Protector Li…"

Those two words struck like a cudgel.

The woman did not deny it.

She had been reclining against the bathing tub already. At the sound of his voice, she merely lifted her eyes with lazy indifference. Steam coiled around her. Lamplight trembled on the air. The faint smile at the corner of her mouth grew all the more wanton. The next moment, she braced one hand on the edge of the tub and rose, slowly, to her feet.

Water crashed back in a shining rush, and all the lush bloom of her body came into view beneath the lamp.

She seemed not to care in the least that she stood there without a thread on her. Wet hair clung to her shoulders and back. Hot water streamed down her skin in gleaming lines. She did not even bother to cover herself. Instead, she tilted her head slightly, half smiling, and let her gaze travel over the young man from head to toe.

He was staring so hard he scarcely seemed able to breathe. She stood there naked in the tub, wet hair spilling over her shoulders, waterlight clinging to her skin while steam and lamplight rose around her layer by layer, setting off her body until she seemed almost too vivid to bear. His throat worked violently. The wicked heat in his chest surged higher and higher. His eyes remained fixed on her as though he wanted nothing more than to throw himself into the tub after her.

"What is it?" Her lips curved. Her voice was soft and seductive. "Didn't you tail me here because you wanted a look?"

She lifted one hand and swept the wet hair back from her cheek, the gesture almost openly provocative.

"Well? I've stood up for you now. Why have you gone mute?"

She paused, lashes lowering, smile deepening.

"I had thought you might have a little courage. Who would have guessed you're no more than a useless thing fit only to hide on the rafters and peep?"

The taunt made the fire in the young man's chest blaze even higher. His face flushed red, yet he had been driven too far to retreat. He clenched his teeth, forced himself one step closer, and said hoarsely,

"Don't look down on me."

At that, the woman gave a low laugh.

The seduction was still there, but beneath it ran something colder—something like the brush of a serpent's tongue against the back of the ear. It chilled the skin for no reason at all. She did not retreat. She did not cover herself. She only lifted one hand slowly and drew a strand of wet hair behind her shoulder, letting beads of water slide down her neck and across her collarbone while the smile in her eyes thinned, little by little, into something cruelly amused.

"Of course I look down on you," she said softly. "You've ruined a few peasant women outside and now you think you're someone? Why not take a look in a mirror first? With those filthy thoughts of yours, what makes you think you are fit to reach for me?"

He choked on the insult. Shame and rage flared together in his eyes, yet his gaze still would not leave her naked body.

She saw it, and the smile at her lips only deepened, as though she found him ridiculous, or entertaining, or both. Tilting her head, she went on in the same lazy, mocking tone,

"What? Didn't you follow me all the way here because you wanted to see clearly? Now that you have, is standing there in a daze the only thing you can manage?"

His throat bobbed again. At last the taunt snapped the last thread of reason in him. With a sudden lunge, he reached for her.

She touched the bottom of the tub lightly with the tip of one foot and spun out of the water on a slant. Half a curve of water splashed outward. Barefoot, she landed on the carpet, her body turning just enough to let his rush pass cleanly by. He grabbed nothing but air, staggered half a step, and nearly smashed into the side of the tub. Before he could recover, he heard her light, drifting laugh at his ear.

"With so little skill, and you dared sneak into my room?"

Her voice was very close. Somehow she had already slipped behind him.

He whirled around, eyes almost burning, and in his humiliation he looked all the more pitiful.

Under the bed, Wang Yan was so frightened that her hands and feet had gone numb with cold. She barely dared breathe. Fang Yingjie clamped down on her wrist with a palm slick with sweat.

The Madam Wen they had trusted and respected all day was now standing naked beneath the lamp, every glance and line of her body steeped in something almost demonic. It was not that she had suddenly become another person. Rather, it was as if only now she had finally peeled away the gentle, proper skin she had worn before them.

Driven wild by lust, played with until he had nowhere left to hide his disgrace, the young man finally bit out in a low snarl,

"Stop pretending! If you truly didn't want this, why stand up and let me feast my eyes on you?"

The woman looked as though she had heard something genuinely amusing. A smile even touched her eyes.

"Let you feast your eyes on me?" she repeated slowly. Then she nodded. "Yes. I stood up on purpose so you could look."

As she said it, she stepped half a pace closer.

Heat from the bath still clung to her skin, along with a faint, sweet fragrance. Under the light, she was dazzlingly beautiful. But all the laughter in her eyes had gone cold—cold as a thin blade scraping very slowly across a man's face.

"I wanted to see just how stupid a little beast like you could be, with nothing but lust and gall."

That was the final spark. Desire and humiliation crashed through the young man together. Not only did he fail to retreat, he lunged at her again with even greater force.

And at that very moment, a shout rang from outside the door.

"Enough!"

It was not especially loud, but it hit the room like a muffled clap of thunder.

A heartbeat earlier, the young man had been flushed with lust. At that single word, his whole body locked up. The blood drained from his face at once. Even the hand he had stretched toward her froze in midair.

The next instant, the door slammed open.

The bamboo-robed elder from earlier in the day strode in, his expression dark enough to terrify. It looked as though a storm had been gathered and compressed behind his eyes. Under the lamplight, his gaunt face seemed even harsher than before, his cheekbones sharp as blades. The two children knew him at once. He had been the leading figure in the corridor that afternoon.

The youth who had been so bold a moment ago now looked as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over his head. His legs gave way. He dropped to his knees with a thud, voice breaking as he cried,

"Master!"

"Useless wretch!" the elder snapped in a low voice, eyes blazing. "How have I taught you all these years? You let lust cloud your mind until you don't even care whether you live or die?"

The young man knelt on the floor, not daring to lift his head. All his swagger had vanished, leaving only a miserable wreck. Yet some stubborn shame still pricked him, and he tried, through gritted teeth, to salvage a shred of face.

"Your disciple… I only—"

"Only what?" the elder cut in coldly, voice dropping another degree. "Get out."

The young man's shoulders shook.

"Master—"

"I said get out!" The elder took one step forward, and the pressure in his gaze became even more terrifying. "If you dare remain here tonight, I will break your legs with my own hands."

That, at last, was enough. The youth dared not utter another word. He bowed low, stammered a "Yes," scrambled to his feet, and backed toward the door without once raising his head.

When he reached the threshold, the elder added in a voice like black iron,

"Feng Tengyun—if you ever dare do something this stupid behind my back again, the first thing I will cripple will not be your legs. It will be your life."

Feng Tengyun went rigid. His face turned corpse-pale. He gave a hurried reply, then fled without looking back.

The door closed again.

Now only the elder and the woman were left in the room.

The woman who had just been brimming with contempt merely stood beneath the lamp as lazily as before, her body still glistening with water, wet hair plastered to her shoulders and back. Droplets slid down the whiteness of her skin in shining lines. She neither covered herself nor hurried to dress. She only tilted her head, a smile in her eyes that was difficult to read, and looked at the man who had entered.

"Your fine disciple has improved indeed."

The elder's face remained dark, but the look in his eyes had already changed. The merciless cold he had shown his disciple was gone. His gaze dropped to her uncovered body. His throat shifted once. He stepped half a pace nearer, voice lowering with it.

"Sister Ying, you're standing there bare in the draught. Aren't you afraid of catching cold?"

Under the bed, something roared in Wang Yan's head.

The earlier "Protector Li" had been enough to chill the heart. But now, hearing the elder address her so familiarly as Sister Ying, the last faint hope—that perhaps they had misheard, that perhaps it meant nothing—shattered completely.

She was not Madam Wen.

Her surname was Li.

And that first "Protector Li" had not been a mistake.

At his words, the woman laughed softly. Still without a single thread upon her, she remained standing in the lamplight, letting her wet hair cling to her back, letting water trail down her body and sink into the brocade carpet at her feet. She seemed not the least embarrassed. Reaching casually for a soft cloth, she began to dry the ends of her hair at an indolent pace, then moved from her neck downward over her shoulders, every gesture slow, delicate, and unhurried—half careless, half deliberately provocative.

She tipped her head and looked at the elder from the corner of her eye, lazy mischief and something darker shimmering there. A faint smile rested on her lips.

"If you were truly afraid I'd catch cold, why didn't you come in sooner?"

Her voice was feather-light, but the last note held a teasing lilt meant to stir a man on purpose.

"You waited until I had teased your disciple half-mad before you finally chose to appear."

The elder let out a low snort. Some of the anger in his face eased, though not all of it left his eyes.

"That brat's lust has outrun his sense. He doesn't even know what he is." He looked at her again, and his voice softened into something thick with hunger and admiration. "You are Li Ying, Protector of the Crimson Flame Palace. A woman like you—your beauty, your methods, your martial skill. Not just on Poyang Lake. In all the martial world, how many women could compare with you? That little beast is not fit to touch even a strand of you."

The moment those words were spoken, the children under the bed felt as if a bucket of ice had been dumped over their heads. Cold shot through every limb.

Crimson Flame Palace.

Protector.

Li Ying.

The Madam Wen who had brought them aboard ship, settled them in the manor, and watched over them each day with warm words and careful attention did indeed have another identity—and it was no identity of some ordinary manor mistress or some ordinary widow of the martial world.

She was one of the Crimson Flame Palace.

Li Ying seemed intensely pleased by the words. One brow lifted; the smile in her eyes deepened.

"What?" she said softly. "At a time like this, you still remember I am a Protector of the Crimson Flame Palace?"

The elder gave a low laugh. All the fury with which he had rebuked his disciple had vanished now. He stepped closer still, dropped his voice, and there was naked heat in it now—the kind a man could not hide when the woman before him was exactly the one he desired.

"Others may forget. I never would."

She watched him. The smile at her lips opened slowly, soft and sweet and venomous all at once.

"Is that so?" she murmured. "Then tell me this. Compared with all those old loves of yours—how do I measure up?"

He stared at her. Desire and obsession rose inch by inch in his eyes.

"What are they?" he said hoarsely. "How could they even dream of being compared to you?"

Under the bed, Fang Yingjie's palm was slick with cold sweat. He kept Wang Yan's wrist pinned and scarcely dared breathe.

All this time he had been running.

Running from that unseen hand, from that tightening net, trying to get back to Mount Hua, back to the people who still knew his name.

And after all his running, he had somehow walked step by step into the very center of that net.

At this point there was no room left for hope.

Madam Wen was false.

The woman before them was the Li Ying the elder had named.

And the title Protector of the Crimson Flame Palace was enough, by itself, to freeze the heart.

Biyue Manor, too, was nothing like the refuge they had imagined.

Li Ying saw that from the moment he entered, the elder's eyes had not been able to leave her body. She laughed softly, tossed the damp cloth aside, and leaned against the couch with idle ease, then let her gaze drift across his face.

"Second Brother Feng," she said, her voice turning velvety, all the cold from before dissolving into seduction, "when you stare at me so fixedly, you really do look like an old lecher. You'll make me blush."

His throat worked again. The want in his eyes was almost impossible to contain. He actually gave a low, greedy chuckle.

"I am an old lecher. If you didn't like this old lecher of yours, why did you come and provoke me in the first place?"

Li Ying laughed behind her hand. The wicked light in her eyes only deepened. Seeing the way he looked at her—as if he wanted nothing more than to devour her whole—she did not avoid him, did not step back. She only leaned more languidly against the couch, letting the full springlike beauty of her body remain on display beneath the lamp.

"What is it, Second Brother Feng?" she asked, glancing at him sideways, lips curling. "One of the Hidden Bamboo Four, the famed Second Master Feng Wuji, renowned throughout the martial world—and a moment ago you were scolding your disciple. Yet now your own eyes are the first to lose their way."

The two children under the bed felt another shock pass through them.

The Hidden Bamboo Sect.

In that instant, Fang Yingjie almost thought first of Feng Feiyun—his bamboo-colored robes, his quick, wild, monkey-like energy. But the name before him now—Second Master Feng, Feng Wuji—carried something else entirely: a darker, colder, deeper chill.

That sentence only heated Feng Wuji's gaze further. He stepped another half pace toward her and laughed under his breath.

"If you know my eyes have lost their way, why are you standing there tempting me like this?"

Li Ying lounged against the couch, her skin luminous under the light, the curve of breast and waist and hip and thigh all the more breathtaking in the half-light. She tilted her head at him, then slowly lifted one finger and crooked it once, lightly, almost lazily. Her eyes were drenched in soul-stealing allure.

"Then why are you still standing there?" she asked with a low laugh, her voice sweet enough to melt. "I've kept you waiting long enough."

That was more than Feng Wuji could bear. In several quick steps he was at the couch. His gaze roved over her naked body again and again; his throat never stopped moving. His hands were just as impatient. Even as he came toward her, he was already reaching for his sash, as if he could not wait another heartbeat. Still, he muttered in a low voice,

"That little beast dared creep onto your roof tonight. Later I'll skin him alive—"

Li Ying's smile deepened. She knew exactly how to hold a man and turn him in her hand.

"If you truly had the heart for that," she said lazily, "why bring him along in the first place?" She gave him a sidelong glance, lips curving like a hook. "You men are all alike. The young are rash, and the old are not half so steady as they pretend to be. You say you came to discuss important matters, but the moment you see me, you become no different from the rest."

By then Feng Wuji's throat had gone tight with desire. He gave up the pretense altogether, seized her wrist, and grinned with obscene impatience.

"This is an important matter," he said in a lowered voice. "Once I've finished this important matter, there will be time enough for the others."

Li Ying gave a low laugh, amused by the crude hurry in him. Yet in the glance she shot him there was also something faintly sinister, something unreadable.

"And you're not afraid," she asked, "that I'll drain your inner force dry?"

Feng Wuji laughed too—laughed hard, laughed dirty.

"If you could bear to do it, then dying in your hands would still be a fine, romantic end."

Li Ying clicked her tongue softly, smiling but not smiling. Her fingers had already begun to trail upward, slowly, along the back of his hand.

"Old thing," she murmured, "your tongue is still sweet."

Very quickly, the sounds behind the curtains dissolved into disorder. The bed curtains swayed. Even the lamplight was shaken into wavering bands. Under the bed, the children felt their ears burn, but what filled their hearts was not shame. It was cold.

Because the truly terrifying thing was not how these two man and woman laughed and toyed with each other. It was the names that surfaced between them, the relationships those names implied. They were like threads in the dark, each one tightening, each one being drawn toward the same great hidden net.

After some time—no one could have said how long—Feng Wuji suddenly said, as if he were trying to prove something, his voice thick with both boastfulness and violence,

"I'm stronger than them, aren't I?"

Li Ying sounded almost amused. Her voice drifted, but her answer came quickly.

"You're stronger than they are."

Feng Wuji was not satisfied. Still panting, he pressed further.

"What about that old Shenxiao from Mount Hua?"

Under the bed, Fang Yingjie jolted as though struck.

Li Ying laughed lightly, soothing and perfunctory at once.

"You're stronger."

Feng Wuji, as if still determined not to let the matter rest, gasped out another name.

"And Jiang Datao of the Four Seas Gang?"

The moment those three words fell, Fang Yingjie's face turned white again.

Li Ying answered with lazy ease.

"He is not your equal either."

Only then did Feng Wuji seem pleased. He gave a low laugh of satisfaction.

The bed shook harder after that. The whispers and breaths within the curtains turned even more unbearable to hear. But the two children beneath the bed no longer had any strength left to notice such sounds for themselves.

In Fang Yingjie's mind, everything was tightening to the point of bursting.

The old Shenxiao of Mount Hua. Jiang Datao of the Four Seas Gang. Both of them had ties to Li Ying—and not merely the private ties of a man and woman.

All they could feel was the slow, sinking cold of falling deeper and deeper into icy water.

Madam Wen was false.

Then who was the woman beneath the rockery, the one tortured until she no longer looked human?

Li Ying was the same woman who had seemed so gentle and virtuous, the same one who had taken them into the manor, watched over them day after day, and quietly, calmly arranged what they had believed was a road forward.

And Feng Wuji, Shenxiao, Jiang Datao—Hidden Bamboo Sect, Mount Hua, Four Seas Gang—those names, those factions, all of them were being drawn together behind a single couch, behind a single bed curtain, without even the slightest attempt at concealment.

Outside, the lamplight was still warm.

Inside the curtains, the scent on the air was still sweet.

But now that warmth and sweetness were more nauseating than the damp rot of any dungeon.

Wang Yan was trembling all over in tiny, uncontrollable shivers. Her hands were ice-cold. She wanted to curl into herself entirely. She scarcely dared even clench her teeth for fear the sound might betray them. Fang Yingjie's hand was still locked around her wrist, his own palm soaked through with sweat. He gripped so hard that the jade token in his hand nearly bit into his flesh.

For the two of them, this night was like all the bright lamps of the day, all the steaming bowls of soup, all the careful, steady words they had heard since coming here—suddenly flipped over at once.

And on the other side of that brightness there was not another layer of gentleness.

There was a deep well.

Poisonous snakes.

Hidden pits.

And a net that had been woven long before they ever stepped into it.

Back from the Hidden Passage

Only after a long while did the commotion outside finally begin to die away.

Beneath the bed, the two children still did not dare move.

Inside the curtains, there remained only the faintest sound of breathing and the whisper of silk against embroidered coverlets. A little later, Feng Wuji gave a low laugh. He sounded replete, almost languid with satisfaction, as though even his voice had gone loose and easy.

"There is nowhere as comfortable as your bed," he said lazily. "All the painted women outside—strip them naked and line them up, and not one would match a single finger of yours."

Li Ying answered with a lazy little hum, the final note still steeped in the seductive warmth not yet faded from her. Half-reclining amid the silken quilt, she showed not the least sign of weariness. If anything, that storm of passion had only lent her more life; the corners of her brows, her eyes, her lips all seemed a little brighter, a little more vivid. After a long pause, she said at last, slow and unhurried,

"Spare me the useless talk. You did not come tonight just to climb into my bed, did you?"

Feng Wuji let out a low laugh. But halfway through it, something in his chest suddenly hollowed.

It was not the ordinary lassitude that followed indulgence, nor the weakness of a man whose bones had begun to loosen with age. It was the burning stream of inner force in his energy center. In the midst of their lovemaking, a thread of something fine and cold as yin fire had quietly licked away a little of it, slipping along his meridians without a sound.

Not much had been taken. Barely a fraction. Yet for a man like him, even that was enough to be felt at once.

He lifted his eyes to Li Ying.

She was still half-propped against the pillows, lazy spring warmth lingering at brow and eye. Yet her fingertips rested, almost absentmindedly, before her lower belly, as though she had casually gathered in that trace of heat she had stolen from him. Seeing him look, she merely smiled.

"What is it, Second Brother Feng?"

"Only now you begin to feel the loss?"

Feng Wuji swallowed. How could he not know? In the midst of their entanglement, she had once again used that Yin-Flame Source-Draining Art of stealing vitality and casually taken a bit of his inner force. Yet that faint emptiness inside him, when set against the smile on her lips, turned perversely sweet, as though it too had become part of her power to seduce. He chuckled under his breath and reached for her wrist.

"If you are willing to take it, that means you think me worth taking from."

"It is only a little. What is there to fear in giving it to you?"

Li Ying let him catch her wrist. She did not struggle. She merely lowered her eyes to look at the hand around it, and a very faint smile slowly spread at the corner of her mouth.

"Second Brother Feng does know how to make things sound pleasant," she said, still lazily, though the last note of her voice wound about him like silk. "A pity that with this much inner force of yours, even if I truly wished to take more, I would still have to see whether you were willing to part with it."

Feng Wuji laughed low in his throat. "If you come to take it, when have I ever refused?"

Li Ying lifted her eyes and glanced at him. The last traces of spring softness were still there, but deep beneath them lay a faint coldness. She raised her other hand and touched a fingertip lightly to his chest, as though soothing him, or perhaps warning him.

"A sweet tongue," she said leisurely. "You are fortunate your foundation is still solid. Had it been that useless disciple of yours instead, one taste from me and he would not have been able to get out of bed tomorrow."

Feng Wuji was both flattered and inflamed by her words. He was just about to wrap himself around her again when Li Ying gently drew back her hand and settled against the quilt. At once, half the lingering intimacy seemed to fade from her.

"That is enough," she said. "You have had your pleasure, and I have taken my share of your inner force. Surely you did not come tonight for nothing but this little affair of lust?"

That final sentence came clearer than the ones before, like a thread of ice dropped into warm water.

Feng Wuji looked at her and swallowed again. In the end, he forced down the last of his unfinished desire and gave a low laugh.

"Business, of course." He paused, then lowered his voice. "How much longer can the woman below hold out?"

Under the bed, both children felt their hearts shrink violently.

Li Ying, however, spoke of it as though she were discussing some half-dead beast. Her tone was flat, without the least ripple.

"She still has one breath left," she said. "Her life is harder than I expected. Her eyes are gone, her sinews severed, and still she has dragged herself on to this day."

As she said it, there was even the ghost of a smile at the corner of her mouth, as though she were speaking of something too trivial to notice. She shot Feng Wuji a slanting glance, and a lazy little note of seduction returned to her voice.

"What is it, Second Brother Feng?"

"Have you suddenly begun thinking of her? Not finished playing with her yet?"

Feng Wuji laughed softly, and there truly was a trace of relish in it. Leaning half toward her, his gaze clouded, he said with a grubby chuckle,

"She was, after all, the lady of Biyue Manor."

"Gentle and virtuous in public, dignified and lovely, every inch the chaste and noble wife. But her skin was fair as snow. A woman that proper—once you actually get your hands on her, the taste is naturally not the same as all the painted trash outside."

Li Ying covered her lips and laughed. Her glance shifted like water as she shot him a half-mocking look.

"And you can say that out loud?"

"In front of her husband, no less. You still managed it?"

Feng Wuji gave two low chuckles, growing more obscene by the moment, with not the slightest shame in him.

"The more that dead fool watched, the better it was."

"A pity you later tormented her into that state. Her eyes are gone, her body ruined. Even if I wanted another taste now, I would not have the appetite."

He paused, then narrowed his eyes at Li Ying, deliberately light and teasing.

"What?"

"Is little Sister Ying jealous?"

Li Ying, hearing this, seemed almost as though she truly had turned a little sour with jealousy. Her body softened as she leaned half into him, though that same soul-hooking smile remained in her eyes.

"What do you think?"

"If you keep thinking about the old flavor of Wen Rubi day after day, where would you find time to come keep me company?"

Feng Wuji felt his blood heat again at once, but he still would not surrender the upper hand. Laughing low, he said,

"Save me that act. What you care about is hardly me."

"What you care about is only the little bit of inner force I carry."

Li Ying did not take offense. She only lifted her eyes to him. The corners of her brows and eyes seemed steeped in a soft and melting light, and her voice sank lower, gentler, winding up around him like silk.

"Not entirely."

It was lightly spoken, but that made it all the more intoxicating.

Feng Wuji had long since been bewitched out of his senses by her. At a moment like this, how could he tell how much of her words were true? At once he laughed under his breath, pulled her into his arms, and murmured,

"That mouth of yours was made to delight a man."

Li Ying gave a soft laugh, though her eyes were cold.

"That dead wretch could not last. Years ago he rotted down to bone. Yet she still hangs on by a single breath. Which is just as well. I was never willing to let her die too quickly. A woman like her—so dignified, so virtuous, the sort everyone looks at and calls good—if I did not watch her rot little by little with my own eyes, what a waste that would be."

The instant those words fell, Wang Yan almost bit through her own lip before she could stop the cry of horror from escaping. Fang Yingjie's palm was slick with cold sweat, but the hand gripping her wrist only tightened.

The woman below truly was Wen Rubi.

And that skeleton curled in the damp mud truly was her husband.

By then, Li Ying seemed to have risen. There came the soft rustle of cloth, as though she had casually drawn on some light garment, and then the sound of her bare feet crossing the carpet one step at a time. Feng Wuji got up as well and asked in a low voice,

"And the two little ones?"

Under the bed, all the blood in the two children seemed to turn cold in an instant.

But Li Ying answered with airy indifference,

"Two little fools who understand nothing. One sickly whelp from the Fang family, one wild little fishing girl from the lake. Both are still clenched in my hand. What is there to fear?"

Feng Wuji chuckled. "True enough. Two children. Tell them a few lies and they believe you."

"That is best," Li Ying said coolly. "The more they believe, the easier things will go later."

She paused, and her voice dropped lower.

"Enough. We will speak in the study. This is not the place to discuss those threads."

"Very well," Feng Wuji answered. "The Ning Prince's side, the Jiangnan waterways, and that old Mount Hua thread all need sorting out again."

Li Ying gave a soft hum of agreement.

"And the man we planted in the Four Seas Gang cannot be disturbed either. Let the front remain unchanged for now. We will wait for them to walk deeper of their own accord."

Their footsteps gradually moved toward the far side of the room.

The chamber was vast to begin with, and beyond the bed there were hanging curtains and painted screens. After that, their voices dropped away until only an occasional word drifted back on the air, too broken and scattered to make out.

Still, no one beneath the bed dared move.

Only after enduring it for what felt like an eternity, when faint sounds finally came from the study—the light knock of something against a table corner, the turning of paper, as though the two had truly sat down to discuss other matters—did Fang Yingjie slowly release his stiffened grip and make the slightest gesture to Wang Yan.

Out.

Wang Yan's lips had gone white. She did not even dare nod properly, only moved almost imperceptibly.

The two of them remained under the bed for a little longer. Only when there were no footsteps coming back did they inch their way out. Even as they crawled free, they feared the whisper of a sleeve brushing the carpet might give them away. Their movements were so careful they were nearly shaking.

Once out, Fang Yingjie turned at once and felt for the hidden mechanism. He eased the secret door open.

The stone panel yielded without a sound, revealing a narrow crack. At once they slipped inside. When both bodies had vanished into the dark, Fang Yingjie clenched his teeth and restored the mechanism bit by bit. Only when the stone door had sealed again without the least sign of disturbance did he let out the breath he had been holding.

Below ground, it was still damp and cold. The stench still struck the face.

Neither of them dared speak. Carrying the little gauze lantern, they followed the stone passage they had groped through before. When they neared that stone chamber again, the lantern-light wavered from afar and once more revealed the shape of the woman collapsed in the darkness, hanging on to no more than a final breath.

She was still sprawled there, head shaved bare, eye sockets black and empty, her body crossed with wounds, like something broken apart alive and then stubbornly kept from dying. That frail, nearly voiceless plea for help from earlier still seemed to cling to the stone walls, refusing to fade.

Wang Yan faltered, almost unable to bear another look. Something heavy seemed to choke Fang Yingjie's chest as well. He was terribly afraid, and yet some inexpressible pity and cold dread rose in him all the same.

But by now, how could they possibly dare go over there? Let alone save her—even pausing for one breath longer felt like staking their lives on it.

They could only cast one distant glance her way before lowering their heads and hurrying on.

This time, because they had already stumbled into the stone walls several times on the way in, the way out was somewhat smoother. After who knew how long, they finally found the narrow flight of steps slanting upward. When the mechanism opened again and the night wind rushed against their faces, only then did they realize with a jolt that they had truly crawled out of that underground devil's den alive.

Outside, the rockery, the trailing vines, the grassy slope were all still there. In daylight, they would have seemed no more than an ordinary garden scene. Now every shadow looked haunted.

They retraced their way along the wall, neither daring to lift the lantern higher, neither daring to say a word. Only when they had found their way back beneath the window of the western side courtyard did Wang Yan finally catch Fang Yingjie's arm. Her voice trembled violently, though she forced it low.

"Not one word of what happened tonight can be spoken."

Fang Yingjie nodded. His face was white as paper.

"Not one word."

"And we cannot let anyone see it on our faces," Wang Yan went on. "Tomorrow... tomorrow we must pretend we know nothing."

Fang Yingjie swallowed and said in a low voice, "Wen Rubi, the skeleton, Li Ying, Feng Wuji... none of it can show."

"That's right." Wang Yan stared at him. "Not one word. Otherwise, we'll end up like the things below."

When she said that, both of them fell silent.

They both knew it was no empty fright.

It was the truth.

After a moment, Fang Yingjie added in an even lower voice, "If we have to speak, it can only be somewhere no one is around. And in daylight... we cannot even look at her too much."

Wang Yan nodded.

"And we cannot wander off alone again."

After saying this, she paused, as though recalling something, then bit down and said,

"From now on, whatever you hear, whatever you see, you tell me first. You are not to act on your own."

Fang Yingjie instinctively wanted to answer yes, but the terror of the night had left his throat almost hoarse. In the end, he could only nod hard.

Only then did the two of them climb back through their separate windows.

Once the window closed, the room still held the same bed, the same lamp, the same orderly furnishings, as if nothing at all had happened. Yet that only made the chill worse.

Neither of them truly slept that night.

Curled beneath her quilt, Wang Yan shivered again and again. Before her eyes there was nothing but that woman—head shaved bare, eyes gone, naked and curled upon the ground—and the skeleton half-buried in damp mud in the corner. She bit down hard on the edge of the bedding to keep herself from crying out.

Fang Yingjie was no better.

He lay flat on the couch, one hand pressed hard the whole time against the jade token on his chest, his palm drenched in cold sweat. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the dungeon, the skeleton, Li Ying, Feng Wuji, and those words—"Shenxiaozi of Mount Hua," "Jiang Datao of the Four Seas Gang"—echoing over and over in his ears.

Outside, the lamps along the corridor still burned with their steady glow, and the night wind through the manor was as mild as before.

But from that night onward, both of them knew—

no matter how warm the lamps in Biyue Manor, their light would never reach below ground;

and no matter how gentle a person might seem, that person might still be a ghost.

The Next Morning, All as Before

Early the next morning, life in the manor stirred just as early as ever.

The sky had only begun to pale when the lightest footsteps were already passing beneath the corridors. One by one, the wind lanterns were extinguished, replaced by a thin wash of bluish-white daylight beyond the paper windows. Somewhere out over the lake, a bird cried first, then all fell quiet again. It was as though this day were nothing more than an ordinary day, meant to unfold as steadily and uneventfully as the ones before it.

The first to knock, as always, was Mama Yao.

"Young Master, are you awake? The hot water is ready."

Her voice outside the door was exactly as it had always been—neither loud nor soft, neither hurried nor slow—as though nothing at all had happened the night before.

Inside, there was a brief silence before Fang Yingjie answered, "I'm awake."

Only after the words left his mouth did he realize that his throat felt strangely dry. Not the hoarseness of illness, but something tighter, as though he had been strung taut all through the night, only for the strain to gather in his throat by dawn. He steadied himself, then rose and went to open the door.

The moment it opened, Mama Yao gave him a quick look.

"Did Young Master sleep well last night?" she asked as she waved a young maid inside with a copper basin and hot towels. As always, her gaze moved naturally, casually, around the room—across the bed, the table, the crack in the window, the medicine bowl—as though she were merely making her ordinary morning rounds, an old household servant seeing that all was in order.

Fang Yingjie's heart clenched.

His first instinct was immediate and sharp—Had she seen something? Had the opening and closing of the back window last night, the shifting lamplight, left some trace after all? But almost as soon as the thought rose, he forced it down. Only then did he answer in a low voice,

"...I slept well enough."

Mama Yao only nodded. She asked no more. In the same calm tone as ever, she said, "Madam says the morning wind is cooler today than it was yesterday. After you take your medicine, if you mean to go out, put on an extra jacket first. Don't try to make light of it."

Then, just as she always did, she set a warmed bowl of medicine gently on the table.

The smell of it was the same as ever—light, not bitter, carrying that faint sweetness of herbs and leaves it had had the past few days. Yet when Fang Yingjie looked at the bowl, it felt as though something cold had brushed lightly against his heart. Until now, he had taken it for care. Now he could no longer tell whether it held only medicine—or something more.

On the other side, Wang Yan was up as well.

She had barely slept at all. Only toward the second half of the night had she drifted into a muddled doze for a short while. When she was awakened now, her head felt heavy, and there was a dry soreness beneath her eyes. But she understood better than anyone that this was exactly when she could least afford to show anything.

So when she sat before the dressing table, she first splashed her face twice with cold water, then bit her lip and forced the redness from her eyes back down before finally telling them to come in.

The same young maid from the day before entered, carrying a clean face towel, a comb, and a fresh change of clothes.

"Did you sleep soundly last night, miss?" the maid asked with a smile.

Wang Yan's fingers curled faintly inside her sleeve. Then she smiled too.

"I did."

She said the single word smoothly—so smoothly that even she found it strange, as though overnight she had suddenly learned how to press everything that must not be seen into some deeper place beneath her eyes.

By the time they had both washed and dressed and made their way to the front courtyard for breakfast, the scenery beneath the corridor, the objects laid out beside the table, even the steam rising from the porridge and side dishes were exactly the same as yesterday.

And because nothing had changed, the chill of it was all the worse.

Madam Wen was already seated in the open pavilion of the front courtyard.

She was dressed even more lightly than the day before, in a pale blue robe, with only a slender plain hairpin at her temple. Morning light slanted in from beyond the corridor and fell upon her shoulders, yet it only made her look more gentle, more composed, as though she were still exactly what she appeared to be at first glance: the lady of Biyue Manor who left doors open, received travelers, and arranged the road ahead for those in need.

When she looked up and saw the two of them, she smiled as she always did.

"Did you sleep well last night?"

Before last night, the question would have sounded like concern. This morning, it was a fine needle slipping quietly into their ears.

Wang Yan's step faltered. For an instant she nearly failed to answer. Fang Yingjie spoke first instead, in a low voice.

"Yes."

Only then did Wang Yan nod as well. "I slept well enough."

Madam Wen seemed not to notice anything amiss. She merely gestured toward the table.

"Sit. Today the porridge has fresh fish paste in it. It is more delicate than the last two days. And didn't you like those little sweet cakes, Yan girl? I had the kitchen make another plate."

Her voice remained as warm and gentle as ever, as though she had taken each child's tastes and habits carefully to heart. A chill ran down Wang Yan's spine, yet she still had to lower her head and say,

"Thank you, Madam."

The word Madam felt cold on her tongue as soon as she said it.

Madam Wen only smiled, as though she had sensed nothing extra in that form of address, and said, "What is there to thank me for? You are both still so young. You came here after a long road. Of course you should be looked after a little more closely."

Then her gaze turned to Fang Yingjie.

"You look a little better today than you did the last few days. It seems that breathing method, crude though it may be, has done some good after all. With a few more days of rest, you should not need to lean on that wooden staff all the time."

Fang Yingjie felt something draw tight in his chest.

In the evenings before, when they had spoken of martial arts beneath the lamplight, she had asked about the Fang family, about Mount Hua, about his clumsy method of regulating his breath. At the time he had taken it for curiosity, for broad knowledge, for thoughtful kindness. Only now did those unhurried, unremarkable questions begin to show the meaning hidden behind them, and the more he recalled them, the colder he felt.

Yet there was still not the slightest flaw in her expression.

All he could do was lower his head and answer, "Yes."

After that single word, he refused to add anything more. Fortunately, Madam Wen did not pursue it. As though nothing had changed, she merely had one of the older women move the medicine bowl closer to his hand and said, "Drink it while it is warm. If you are feeling all right later, I will have someone take you to sit by the waterside pavilion in front. The wind was strong yesterday, but it is steady today."

The more ordinary she sounded, the more last night began to resemble a nightmare.

And yet both of them knew it had not been one.

Breakfast passed in near silence.

Mama Yao stood by to attend them. The young maids came and went with practiced discretion. Even the breeze beneath the corridor was neither hurried nor slow. Everything was so steady that not a single flaw could be found in it. But when Wang Yan lowered her head to drink her porridge, her fingers remained faintly stiff around the spoon. She did not dare look too often at Madam Wen, afraid there would be something in her eyes she could not hide. Yet if she kept her head down the whole time, that too might seem unnatural. So she forced herself to glance up now and then, to answer once or twice as obediently and quietly as usual, then lower her gaze back to her bowl.

Fang Yingjie was much the same.

Though they sat at the same table, they spoke even less than they had the past few days. Yet precisely because of that silence, something new had sprung up between them—a kind of understanding they had not possessed before. Some things no longer needed saying. The other would know.

When the meal was nearly over, a young servant suddenly entered from outside at a quick pace and bent to murmur something into Mama Yao's ear.

Mama Yao looked startled for an instant, then turned to Madam Wen and said softly, "Madam, word has come again from the Taihu side."

At those words, the spoon in Wang Yan's hand trembled almost imperceptibly.

Madam Wen merely gave a small hum. Her expression remained perfectly composed, as if this were only to be expected. Nor did she avoid speaking before the two children. She slowly unfolded the folded paper the servant handed her and lowered her eyes to scan it. Only then did she look up and smile faintly.

"It is good news."

Wang Yan's breathing tightened at once, and her eyes lifted almost of their own accord.

Madam Wen's tone was perfectly even, as though she feared that if she spoke too quickly, she might alarm them instead.

"Your father still cannot get away for the moment, but your mother's injuries have stabilized, and Shun has been keeping watch the whole time. Nothing else has gone wrong at home these past two days."

She paused, then continued,

"And there is more. The message that the Four Seas Gang passed onward has already reached the people from Mount Hua who are searching for you. Now that they know you are at Biyue Manor, they will no longer be searching blindly like headless flies. If nothing goes wrong, someone should follow that line back with word within the next few days, and then it can be decided whether they will come to fetch you first, or settle the road ahead before moving."

A few days ago, those words would have filled them with wild relief. Heard now, they sent wave after wave of cold through Fang Yingjie instead.

He knew the letters had never been sent.

Feng Wuji and Li Ying had not explained every detail the night before, but one thing had already become clear enough: the so-called messages, the passing of letters, the contacts being linked up—nine times out of ten, they were nothing but words she used to steady them.

But knowing it was one thing. Sitting there and pretending he knew nothing was another.

Wang Yan was plainly having a harder time of it than he was.

There was a glimmer in her eyes, one that had plainly been stirred by the "good news." Yet that brightness was wrapped around with last night's cold, so tightly that even she could no longer tell whether she wanted to cry because there truly was news, or because she knew it might all be false and still had to act as though she believed it.

Her throat tightened. After a long moment, she managed only a quiet,

"Madam..."

Madam Wen looked at her, and in her eyes there really did seem to be something like the gentle warmth of an elder looking upon a child.

"I told you before," she said softly, "the road is not so easily cut off. For now, you need only steady yourself and recover. The people who ought to come will come in time. The lines that ought to connect will connect in time as well."

The words were spoken too smoothly, too steadily. They sounded too much like a path to survival.

Had they not heard what they heard from beneath the bed the night before, even a person twice as suspicious might not have detected the slightest false note in them.

Wang Yan lowered her head and answered softly,

"...Mm."

The sound was so faint it was hard to tell whether she was answering Madam Wen—or herself.

After breakfast, Madam Wen did not keep them there any longer than usual. She merely had someone send the medicine and honeyed water back to the west courtyard, then instructed Mama Yao, "Do not let them wander far today. The waterside pavilion in front and the shallower parts of the back garden will do. There was wind in the night. The ground is damp, and the stones will be slippery."

On the surface, it still sounded like care.

But to their ears now, it had become something else entirely.

Only after last night had they truly understood: all these things in the manor—accompanying them, watching over them, not letting them go far, fearing that something might happen—had never been mere kindness. They were also a quiet form of surveillance.

But what did understanding change?

They could still do nothing except lower their heads and agree.

When they left the front courtyard and followed the corridor back toward the west courtyard, Mama Yao's steps ahead of them remained as steady and unhurried as ever. Behind her, the two walked side by side with half a step between them, neither speaking first. It was not until they reached a bend in the corridor and the older woman had gone a little farther ahead that Wang Yan finally turned her head by the smallest degree and whispered,

"Don't believe what she just said."

The words were so soft they were almost nothing but breath.

Fang Yingjie did not look at her. In the same lowered voice, he replied,

"I know."

Wang Yan's throat tightened, and only after hearing those three words did something in her chest finally loosen—a single inch of breath she had been holding all this time.

"But we still have to pretend we believe it," she said.

"Mm." Fang Yingjie paused, then added, "Until we can get out, we have to keep pretending."

After that, neither of them said anything more.

It was not for lack of words, but for lack of courage. The corridor was not long. The wind was not strong. Who knew behind which lattice window or beside which corner someone from the manor might be standing?

And yet because they had said no more than those two sentences, the sense of sharing the same thread became suddenly real.

Before last night, they had only been two children taken into the same manor.

From this morning onward, they had become two people sharing one truth, guarding one secret, and acting out one lie together.

Some things, once known, could never be unknown again.

When they returned to the west courtyard, the few white rabbits beneath the corridor had been let out again. They were still hopping at the edge of the grassy slope. Wind moved through the flower trellis, and the sunlight broke into scattered patches across the ground. Far off, the lake shone as brightly as ever, as though Biyue Manor were truly some place outside the world, untouched by the damp cold, the blood, and the rot of the night.

Wang Yan stood beneath the corridor, watching the rabbits for a long time. Then she said quietly,

"Yesterday, I really thought this was a place where we could stay."

Fang Yingjie stood beside her, looking ahead at the patchwork of flower-shadow and grass.

After a long while, he answered softly,

"It still is."

Wang Yan stared, then turned to look at him.

Fang Yingjie's face was still pale, and his voice was still low, but this time his words carried a hard certainty.

"It's a place to stand for now. Not a place to trust."

Wang Yan looked at him for a long moment. Then, for the first time, the fear she had been crushing down all night seemed to settle just a little.

She said nothing more. She only gave a quiet, "Mm."

Ahead of them, Mama Yao turned and called for them to come over, saying that today's medicine still had to be taken before noon.

They answered and went forward together.

Their pace was not quick, and from behind, they looked little different from how they had these past few days. To an outsider watching from the side, it might even have seemed that after all the fright of the road, the two children had finally found peace at Biyue Manor. Even their steps looked steadier now than when they had first arrived.

Only they themselves knew—

this steadiness was no longer the earlier kind, the kind that came from believing this place to be a refuge.

It was the steadiness of knowing there was a well beneath their feet, with flowers and lanternlight laid across its mouth, and understanding that for now they could only step carefully and keep their balance, lest they fall in.

From that morning on, everything in the manor remained as it had been.

But the two of them would never again be the same children who took every gentle word for truth.

Poetic Coda

The flowers still cast deep shadows, the day yet held its warmth—

Who could know beneath the stones were souls of grievance bound?

White rabbits hid a muffled weeping in the garden's quiet heart;

At midnight blue lamplight split old kindness clean apart.

Beneath the bed they first heard demon, hunger, lust, and stain;

Behind the curtain they saw the net, and all that fed its chain.

Next morning still wore a tender face—

From then on, of one heart, they scarcely dared to speak.

(End of Chapter Twenty-Nine)