The Iron Door Opens
That wisp of wind, in the end, did not come in at once.
Fang Yingjie slowly tightened his fist, but he did not move.
Ever since the trap with the false Fang Zhongyi, he no longer dared trust lightly in anyone who came claiming they were there to take him away. This was the dungeon of the Crimson Flame Palace. A door opening once did not necessarily mean life. It could just as easily be the entrance to another snare.
He only tightened his hold on Fang Tieshan and listened in silence to the sounds beyond the cell.
From deep within the passageway, those two faint sounds drew nearer.
When they came close to the iron door, the airy lightness in their steps, something like bamboo and wind, gradually disappeared. Their footfalls grew heavier instead, steadier, like men of the Crimson Flame Palace making their rounds, advancing step by step according to the rules of this place.
Something stirred in Fang Yingjie's heart.
Those first two sounds of wind had been their true footwork, used where no one was watching. But once they came within earshot of the guards, they had to put on the skin of the Crimson Flame Palace.
Outside the iron door, the two jailers stepped forward to meet them.
One of them lowered his voice and said, "Envoy, this cell... weren't there orders from above that it was not to be disturbed for the time being?"
Before he could finish, a low voice cut across him.
"By Protector Li's command. We are here to inspect the chains again."
The voice was hoarse and cold. It did not sound like Feng Feiyun.
The guard seemed to hesitate. "But I was never told—"
In the next instant, the lamplight beyond the door dimmed slightly.
A dark-red command token engraved with flame patterns flashed briefly from within a sleeve.
The guard's voice dropped at once. "Yes. I would not dare ask further."
The other jailer hurriedly took out a key and stepped forward to unlock the door.
Leaning beside Fang Yingjie, Fang Tieshan turned his clouded eyes slightly toward the entrance.
He could not see, and he said nothing more.
But Fang Yingjie knew his father was listening.
Outside, the key turned. The iron tongue of the lock withdrew inch by inch, and the door opened a crack.
A damp draft seeped through the gap, carrying a fainter mildew than the cell itself, and beyond that, the distant chill of waterways somewhere deeper in the dark.
A man in the Crimson Flame Palace's dark-red robes entered first.
Another followed behind him.
The two jailers at the door leaned in as well, one with the lamp, the other still holding the key.
And in that instant, the first man moved.
The motion was small. It scarcely even looked like an attack.
His sleeve only brushed once through the dim yellow light, and the jailer with the lamp gave a muffled sound in his throat. His gaze went vacant at once. The lamp was already slipping from his hand when the newcomer caught it smoothly.
The second jailer had just begun to open his mouth when the man behind stepped in close. Fingertips landed at the side of his neck, and the edge of a palm cradled the back of his head, forcing the cry back down into his throat before it could escape.
The lamp never struck the ground.
Neither did the keys make a sound.
The first man hung the lamp back on the iron hook by the door.
Together they dragged both guards into the corner.
The man behind them muttered under his breath, "In a cursed place like this, even knocking someone down has to be done quietly."
Then he lifted a hand and pulled back his hood.
In the dim yellow light, his face came into view.
It was Feng Feiyun.
Only then did the breath locked in Fang Yingjie's chest finally loosen.
Feng Feiyun had come.
Thirty days. He had not broken his word.
The man who had entered first paid no attention to the muttered complaint. Feng Feiyun moved swiftly, stripping the outer robe from one of the unconscious guards as he said in a low voice, "Change."
He shot Fang Yingjie a glance and added, "Don't just stand there, you sickly fool."
Fang Yingjie's throat tightened.
"You really came."
Feng Feiyun never paused in his work. "What, did you expect me to leave you in this hellhole and carve you a tombstone here instead?"
He shoved the guard's robe into Fang Yingjie's hands.
"Put it on. We do not have much time."
Fang Yingjie took the robe and threw it around his shoulders.
It smelled of sweat, stale wine, and the prison's long-soaked mildew. He paid it no heed. He only pulled it closed and lowered his head to look at Fang Tieshan.
Feng Feiyun was already tugging at the second guard's outer robe.
"Great Hero Fang needs covering too," he said in a low voice. "If he goes out looking like this, anyone will know something is wrong."
Only then did the man in front slowly lower his hood.
The lamplight fell across his face.
Fang Yingjie had never truly met this man before.
But Feng Feiyun was here.
So this had to be Feng Wuying.
Feng Feiyun's master.
And an old friend of his father's.
Many years of wind and hardship had settled at the corners of Feng Wuying's eyes and brows. His face was far graver than Feng Feiyun's, and colder too. He was like an old bamboo stalk battered by storm after storm, still upright, but no longer green.
He looked toward Fang Tieshan.
With that single glance, his face darkened.
Fang Tieshan leaned against the stone wall beneath the weight of chains. His eyes were ashen-white. Old wounds and fresh ones layered his shoulders and back. All that remained of him seemed to be a skeleton caught beneath a dying lamp.
Something moved in Feng Wuying's throat.
After a long moment, he said softly, "Brother Fang."
Fang Tieshan could not see.
But when he heard those words, a faint movement still touched the corner of his mouth.
"More than twenty years," he said quietly.
"And you still use the methods of a thief."
A shock passed through Feng Wuying's eyes.
It was not a jest.
And yet, coming from Fang Tieshan, the words seemed to drag all those years from two decades ago, not yet entirely rotted away, back out of the dark.
Feng Wuying said in a low voice, "I came too late."
Fang Tieshan replied, "If you came at all, then it is not too late."
Feng Wuying said no more of old times.
Every extra word spent on remembrance was one breath less for escape.
He crouched and examined the chains on Fang Tieshan's body.
One look, and his brow sank.
These were no ordinary prison chains.
Several iron rings passed over the shoulders and back, pressed deep into old wounds. Finer chains wound beneath the ribs and around the waist, as though they had been fitted there bit by bit many years ago and left to settle into the flesh. What could be seen outside was iron. What the iron pinned down beneath it was bone, blood, sinew, and pain that had not eased in more than twenty years.
Feng Feiyun saw it too.
He cursed under his breath.
This time there was not a trace of humor in it.
"These animals."
Fang Tieshan said flatly, "If you are done cursing, then work."
Feng Feiyun checked himself and fell silent at once.
From his sleeve, Feng Wuying drew out a black leather roll. When he opened it, several tools lay within: razor-thin picks, two short files, a small black pair of pincers, and several narrow tubes like slivers of bamboo.
He tested the main lock first.
One thin blade slipped into the keyhole and turned lightly.
A dry, stubborn sound came from within the lock.
Still wrapped in the oversized jailer's robe, Fang Yingjie tightened his support beneath Fang Tieshan and scarcely dared breathe.
For thirty days he had counted those six sets of tally marks in his mind, day after day. Yet only now did he truly understand that survival did not mean Feng Wuying arrived, the iron door opened, and they simply walked away.
Each lock still seemed to ask them the same question:
Were they truly going to get out?
Feng Wuying's fingers were steady.
When the first bolt loosened, the sound was so slight it was nearly swallowed by the drip of water.
But Fang Tieshan's body still sagged faintly.
Fang Yingjie caught him at once.
"We get him off the wall first," Feng Wuying said.
Fang Yingjie nodded without speaking.
The thin blade probed again.
The second lock was deeper than the first. Rust and old blood had nearly sealed the keyhole shut. The tool had only just entered when a harsh little scrape sounded from within. It was a tiny noise, yet it tightened Fang Yingjie's back at once, as though he feared that one faint sound might run along the stone itself and carry out into the corridor.
Feng Feiyun had already stripped the second guard's robe and spread it over Fang Tieshan.
The garment was too short and too narrow.
It could not conceal all the chains. It only barely covered the most obvious iron rings at the shoulders and chest. The smell of blood and cold still seeped from the openings in the cloth, layer upon layer, as though no amount of fabric could hide the dead prison of these twenty-odd years.
Feng Feiyun frowned, tugged the lapels lower, then pulled the waist cord from the guard's clothing and wound it around Fang Tieshan's chest, binding several loosened lengths of chain tight for the moment.
"Do not let them strike together later," he said quietly.
Fang Yingjie immediately took the cord in hand and fixed the knot in his memory.
Without looking up, Feng Wuying asked, "Patrol on the left?"
Feng Feiyun tilted his head, listening for the space of a breath.
"Still some distance off."
Then he added, "But faster than before."
Feng Wuying's fingers paused only for an instant before moving again.
"Then we have even less reason to linger."
A delicate click sounded from inside the lock.
The second one gave way.
Fang Tieshan's chest jolted sharply.
The chains that had tethered him to the wall for years were finally free of their anchoring points. But once they came off the wall, all their weight fell back onto him. The iron rings dragged at old wounds across his shoulders and back, and a muffled cough burst from his throat before he could suppress it.
Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth and stained the borrowed jailer's robe.
A dark patch spread quickly across the cloth.
Fang Yingjie's face changed at once.
"Father—"
Fang Tieshan caught his wrist in a single grip.
His hand was cold as stone, but the strength in it was still iron-hard.
"Do not lose your head."
Jaw clenched, Fang Yingjie said, "I am not."
Fang Tieshan drew one shallow breath.
"Hold me steady."
At once, Fang Yingjie did.
From inside his robe, Feng Wuying took out a small pill and held it toward him.
"Put this in his mouth."
Fang Yingjie accepted it and brought it to Fang Tieshan's lips.
Fang Tieshan did not open his mouth.
Quietly, Feng Wuying said, "It is not from the Crimson Flame Palace."
"A Breath-Sustaining Pill of the Hidden Bamboo Sect."
"It will not restore life. It only keeps a scattered breath from breaking apart."
In a hoarse voice, Fang Tieshan said, "I know."
Only then did he take it.
Before long, his breathing steadied slightly.
Only slightly.
It was like a dying lamp shielded for a moment by a hand against the wind. The wick was still there, but the oil had nearly run dry.
Feng Wuying put away the thin blades and examined the chains still bound around Fang Tieshan's body.
The main chains that fixed him to the wall had been opened. But the punishment shackles that crossed his body and pressed into the bone could not be forced apart. These were not locks to be split at a smithy. They were instruments of torture that had spent years sinking into flesh. If they were wrenched loose now, he would die before he ever left the cell.
"We deal with the rest in the outflow cave," Feng Wuying said.
He did not mean ripping every iron ring from the flesh. He meant using the sound of the water to cover them while they filed down the lengths of exposed chain, cutting away what might clang, what might drag, what might slow them. As for the iron that had already sunk into bone and blood, no one could touch that now.
Fang Yingjie stared at the chains still wrapped around his father, and his fingers slowly tightened.
Feng Wuying's voice dropped lower still.
"It is too quiet here. Even the slightest movement will carry. Once we reach the water, we can work with the pincers and files. No force."
From beside them, Feng Feiyun said, "The outflow cave is on the left. Hold on till there."
Fang Yingjie looked at Fang Tieshan.
Leaning in his arms, blood still at his mouth, Fang Tieshan was ashen to the point of terror. Yet when he heard the words outflow cave, he said only, "Then we go."
Feng Feiyun dragged the two guards farther into the shadowed corner and tossed one of their hats to Fang Yingjie.
"Put it on."
Fang Yingjie caught it and pulled it down.
The brim hid half his face.
Feng Feiyun looked him over, then pressed the other hat onto Fang Tieshan's head and spoke much more softly than before.
"Great Hero Fang, forgive the indignity. Keep your head lowered."
Fang Tieshan said nothing.
He only inclined his chin slightly.
Feng Feiyun's fingers halted for a brief instant. Then he pulled the brim lower to hide him further.
Feng Wuying was already on his feet.
"Do not walk like men escaping," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
"If there are eyes on you, go slower."
Feng Feiyun picked it up at once. "Master goes first to press the way. I stay behind. You, sickly fool, in the guard's clothes, keep your head down and support Great Hero Fang as you walk. If no one is watching, move fast. If someone is, move slow."
He glanced at the robe on Fang Tieshan's shoulders.
"This is not for close inspection. As long as it hides his face, the blood, and the chains, and keeps them from daring to look too closely, it is enough."
He paused.
"The people in a place like this are always the same. The more they think those above them are conducting business, the less they dare see."
Fang Yingjie nodded.
"I understand."
"If anyone speaks to us, do not look up and do not say too much," Feng Feiyun said.
Then, lowering his voice still further, he added, "I will answer."
Feng Wuying looked at Fang Yingjie.
"And if we must move quickly?"
"I carry him," Fang Yingjie said.
Feng Feiyun frowned. "That will make us stand out."
Fang Yingjie did not yield. "He cannot walk."
The cell fell silent for a moment.
Leaning against him, Fang Tieshan was breathing so lightly he seemed half absent already. Yet he said in a low voice, "There is no need to argue."
"If someone is watching, support me."
"If no one is, carry me."
"If I can walk, support me."
"If I cannot, carry me."
Feng Wuying nodded. "So be it."
He had just turned to go when Fang Tieshan suddenly spoke again.
"Take him out."
Feng Wuying stopped.
Fang Yingjie's face paled.
"Father."
Fang Tieshan did not look at him. He only angled his face in Feng Wuying's direction.
"Whether this life of mine leaves here or not does not matter."
"Brother Fang," Feng Wuying said heavily.
Fang Tieshan's voice was so faint it was almost lost beneath the drip of water, yet there was still iron in it.
"Take him out."
Feng Wuying looked at Fang Yingjie.
Fang Yingjie looked back at him.
Too much lay in that one glance.
Ten years in a dungeon. Thirty days beneath a dying lamp. A father only just reclaimed. Chains not yet removed. A dark road not yet crossed. And after growing from child to young man in the hardest of ways, a son who still refused to leave his father behind.
After a moment's silence, Feng Wuying said, "You will both leave this place."
Fang Tieshan said flatly, "The martial world is full of fine words spoken just so."
Feng Wuying did not argue.
He only said quietly, "This time, I will do all I can."
Something seemed to move at the corner of Fang Tieshan's mouth.
"When you say all I can," he murmured, "I trust it more than when others swear they will stake their lives."
A shadow crossed Feng Wuying's eyes.
In the end, he said nothing.
Suddenly Feng Feiyun pressed himself close to the iron door and listened. His face changed.
"Someone's coming."
At once Fang Yingjie tightened his grip on Fang Tieshan.
"How many?" Feng Wuying asked.
"Two."
Feng Feiyun listened another instant.
"Guards, not red-robed men. Still some distance away."
Feng Wuying pulled his hood back down.
"Move."
Fang Yingjie helped Fang Tieshan to his feet.
The moment he rose, Fang Tieshan sagged.
Beneath the robe, the lengths of uncut chain knocked softly together. Though tied down with cord, they still gave off one low, muffled sound.
Fang Yingjie's heart tightened. He pressed a hand to the chains at once.
At his ear, Fang Tieshan said in a low voice, "Your feet."
Fang Yingjie froze.
Fang Tieshan's breath brushed his ear.
"Steady your feet first."
Those three words seemed to pull him back again beneath the dying lamp of those thirty days.
He drew a deep breath, pressed his heel firmly down, and let that remnant ember that had burned in him for ten years settle into his energy center.
He supported Fang Tieshan.
This time, Fang Tieshan did not sink again.
Feng Wuying glanced at him, said nothing, and stepped through the iron door first.
The cold of the corridor came down on them at once.
The light outside was dim and yellow.
The wet stone gave back a faint, muddy sheen.
Far away, the sound of water was no more than a murmur, as though it came from another world through many layers of stone.
Feng Feiyun slipped out first to look. A moment later he said quietly, "The left side is clear for now."
"I lead," said Feng Wuying.
Then he looked at Fang Yingjie.
"Head down. Stay close."
"And I bring up the rear," Feng Feiyun said under his breath.
Supporting Fang Tieshan, Fang Yingjie stepped out of that death-cell.
Ten years.
At last he had truly walked out through that iron door.
But in that moment, he did not look back.
Because he knew that if he turned, even once, he would see those six sets of tally marks, that dying lamp, every bowl of cold water, every coarse bun, every rattle of iron chains from the last ten years.
And now, he could not look back.
He could only go forward.
When his first step fell on the wet stone of the corridor, the chains beneath Fang Tieshan's robe sank with a soft, hidden weight.
Fang Yingjie pressed them down at once.
Fang Tieshan leaned against him, almost all his weight given over to his son.
He was light.
Light as if he might crumble into ash at any moment.
And yet Fang Yingjie felt that he had never supported anyone so heavy in all his life.
Feng Wuying walked before them.
Feng Feiyun guarded the rear.
And with Fang Tieshan in his arms, Fang Yingjie went forward step by step into the darkness.
Chains Severed in the Roar of Water
The wind in the passageway was colder than it had been in the cell, but more alive.
It came pressing in layer by layer from up ahead, carrying the smells of wet stone, drainage channels, stale lamp oil, and distant hidden water. Fang Yingjie supported Fang Tieshan as they moved along the same stone corridor down which he had once been dragged under guard. Yet there was not the slightest ease in his heart.
Feng Wuying led the way.
His pace was neither fast nor light. The trace of that Hidden Bamboo movement technique—that earlier impression of bamboo and wind—had now been pressed down until it was almost invisible. He looked every inch a true envoy of the Crimson Flame Palace on prison rounds, the dark red hem of his robe hanging low, his boots striking the damp stone with a measured, chilling steadiness.
Feng Feiyun brought up the rear.
His head was lowered, the hood shadowing half his face. One hand hung loose beside his sleeve, casual at first glance, but he was listening all the while to every sound that came from the branching corridors on either side.
Fang Yingjie walked between them, supporting Fang Tieshan. Both wore outer garments stripped from the guards, their hat brims pulled low. From a distance, they looked like nothing more than two jailers moving together through the passage.
But only Fang Yingjie knew that his father had yielded nearly all his weight to his arm.
It was not much weight.
If anything, it was terrifyingly light.
Yet as he held him up, it felt as though he were bracing a mountain on the verge of collapse.
As they rounded the first bend, Feng Feiyun gave a very soft cough.
Fang Yingjie's step faltered.
Feng Wuying did not stop.
From the far end of the corridor, two guards were approaching with lanterns in hand. One carried a food bucket; the other had a ring of keys hanging at his waist. They were muttering complaints to each other under their breath, but the moment they saw the dark red robe ahead, both men dropped their voices and hurried to move aside.
Feng Wuying kept walking without so much as a glance their way.
Fang Yingjie followed, helping Fang Tieshan forward, forcing his own steps to remain slow. Fang Tieshan's head was bowed, the brim of his hat hiding those gray-white eyes; his shoulders were slightly hunched, as though he were merely an injured old guard who needed the support of a companion.
The two guards had already stepped aside.
But one of them let his gaze linger on Fang Tieshan, as though something about him felt wrong. Unable to help himself, he asked, "Envoy, this one is...?"
Feng Feiyun stopped.
He did not answer at once. He only looked at the man.
It was a very cold look.
Dropping his voice, he said, "Something urgent has come up outside. These two men from the inner cells have been temporarily reassigned."
The guard froze for a beat.
Feng Feiyun's voice turned colder. "You two will hold the dungeon yourselves until further orders. If a single living prisoner goes missing, if a single length of chain disappears, if even the smallest sound is out of place, the matter will be laid at your feet when the higher-ups ask."
The guard's face changed at once. He lowered his head hurriedly. "Yes, sir. I wouldn't dare ask further."
The other still hesitated, his eyes flicking once more toward Fang Tieshan.
And in that instant, beneath Fang Tieshan's robe, the unbroken lengths of punishment chain shifted with the faintest drop.
The sound was very low.
But it struck the ear like ice.
Fang Yingjie's heart clenched. He immediately pressed a hand against the chain hidden beneath his father's robe at the waist. But the movement itself was slightly wrong. It did not look like a guard steadying a fellow jailer. It looked like someone afraid another person might touch him—might hurt him.
The guard's gaze fixed there.
Cold sweat burst across Fang Yingjie's back.
Feng Wuying, however, did not even let his stride change.
He merely turned his face a fraction, and his eyes went abruptly cold.
"What?"
The guard stiffened all over.
Feng Wuying said flatly, "What are you looking at?"
The man's face went pale. He lowered his head at once. "I... I would not dare."
Feng Wuying's voice dropped still further. "Any more questions?"
Both guards took half a step back.
With perfect calm, Feng Wuying said, "We are acting under Protector Li's orders. Anyone who gets in the way will be dealt with on the spot."
He paused.
"A pair of missing guards would not matter much in a place like this."
The two men did not dare ask another word. They flattened themselves against the wall and retreated.
Feng Feiyun seized the moment and snapped, "Why are you still standing there? Get back on patrol. Or do you want Protector Li to come question you herself?"
The two guards hurriedly bowed their heads. "Yes. Yes, sir."
Feng Wuying did not spare them another glance. He walked straight past.
Fang Yingjie helped Fang Tieshan forward and passed slowly in front of the two guards.
The lantern light slid over the brim of his hat, then brushed across Fang Tieshan's gray-white lips. Fang Yingjie had nearly stopped breathing. He could feel how shallow his father's breathing was—so shallow that if those two guards had looked a moment longer, they might have seen straight through them.
But in the end, they asked nothing more.
The moment they turned the corner and the guards' footsteps were left behind, Feng Feiyun finally let out a shallow breath and muttered under his breath, "One more look, and I'd have made sure the bastard never looked at anything again."
Feng Wuying did not turn back. "One more corpse, and the road ahead grows one degree louder."
Feng Feiyun shut his mouth.
Still supporting Fang Tieshan, Fang Yingjie kept one palm pressed over the hidden chains under his father's robe. Sweat seeped slowly through the gaps between his fingers.
Then Fang Tieshan spoke, very softly.
"Your footing."
Fang Yingjie stared.
His father's breath touched his ear, so faint it seemed it might break off at any moment.
"Your steps have gone ragged."
Fang Yingjie's throat tightened. In a low voice, he answered, "Yes."
Slowly, he forced that breath in his chest to sink. He planted his heels, lowered his waist, and stopped trying to hold his father up with his arms alone. Instead he took that fading, unsteady weight into his own legs, his own waist, his own back.
This time, the broken chains beneath Fang Tieshan's robe made no sound.
Nor did his father sink downward again.
Fang Yingjie knew he had done that much right.
Ahead, the sound of water gradually grew louder.
At first it was only a thin thread, like cold seepage leaking through a crack in stone. But the farther left they went, the clearer it became—low and heavy, like an underground river buried beneath the earth for years, never seeing daylight, never once ceasing to flow.
Feng Feiyun spoke in a low voice. "The drainage cavern is close."
"Move," said Feng Wuying.
This time he finally stopped pretending to go so slowly.
Keeping close to the left-hand wall, the four of them turned into a narrower side passage. Here the corridor suddenly dipped lower. The stone steps were slick, and cold water had seeped up through the cracks one layer at a time. The farther down they went, the heavier the sound of water became, until it nearly swallowed the sound of their footsteps.
It was an abandoned drainage cavern.
The entrance was low, and inside it was black as pitch. Water stains ran in long streaks across the stone walls. Half-submerged in the foul water stood several old iron grates, and beneath them the current rushed through in a hard, urgent stream, striking broken stone with a dull, continuous roar. To the left, part of an old drainage channel had collapsed to waist height, black water plunging down through its mouth into depths that could not be seen. The channel itself was half-choked with rubble, black mud, and rusted iron, leaving only the sound of running water to rise from below; it was no path a person could take, not yet. To the right lay a broken old stone causeway, likewise crushed beneath fallen rock, with only a few dark cracks left through which the wind could breathe.
The moment Feng Wuying entered, he said, "Here."
Feng Feiyun turned back to guard the entrance, head tilted as he listened to the corridor beyond. "No one for the moment."
Fang Yingjie eased Fang Tieshan down.
To call it sitting was generous. He only managed to let him lean against a slightly higher slab of wet stone. The instant Fang Tieshan settled against it, his chest heaved sharply once, and another thread of blood seeped out at the corner of his mouth.
Fang Yingjie's face changed. "Father."
But Fang Tieshan caught his wrist in a single hard grip.
"Do not lose your head."
The same three words again.
Fang Yingjie bit down hard and forced back the tremor that had nearly broken from his voice.
Feng Wuying was already crouching to strip away Fang Tieshan's outer robe.
The moment the robe was opened, the bound lengths of broken chain underneath came into view. Some dragged down from beneath the shoulders and back; some looped around the waist and ribs; some lay tight along the outer leg. Every section looked appallingly heavy. Forced tight under rope for the whole journey, the old wounds had been rubbed open again in several places. Blood mixed with cold sweat and seeped slowly through the torn cloth.
Feng Feiyun took one look, and his face darkened with a cold, murderous fury.
Feng Wuying did not let himself look too long.
He could not afford to.
If he gave it one breath too much, his hands would be one breath too slow.
From a leather pouch he drew a pair of blackened pincers, then a short file. In a low voice he said, "Brother Fang—endure it."
Something cold flickered at the edge of Fang Tieshan's mouth.
"I've endured it for more than twenty years."
Feng Wuying's fingers paused.
Then he lowered his head and clamped onto the first exposed length of dragging chain.
When the jaws of the pincers bit down on the iron link, they made a thin, rasping sound. Inside the prison that sound would have been enough to chill the heart. But here in the drainage cavern, the weight of the water muffled it at once.
Feng Wuying lowered his wrist.
The first link did not break immediately.
What he was filing was not the whole of the torture shackle, but only several exposed links in the dragging lengths—places where years of rust and blood had eaten the metal thin. Without the roar of water to cover him, and without the fine hidden tools he had brought for just such a dungeon, he might not have managed it in any reasonable stretch of time.
This was no fresh-forged iron. Years of blood and rust, along with the base metals the Crimson Flame Palace had deliberately mixed into it, had made it black, stubborn, and unnaturally tough. The short file scraped back and forth across the metal, its sound swallowed by the current, leaving behind only a faint, grating vibration that ran through the rest of the chain into Fang Tieshan's body.
Fang Tieshan's shoulders gave the slightest shiver.
He made no sound.
But Fang Yingjie felt his father's hand tighten on his wrist, colder than before.
"Father..."
"Don't move," Fang Tieshan said hoarsely.
Feng Wuying never looked up.
The file rasped on.
The water thundered on.
Kneeling beside them, Fang Yingjie held his father steady with both hands and watched helplessly as the iron was filed, little by little, to a pale mark—then slowly split open at that white scar.
At last there came a small click.
The first length of dragging chain broke free.
The half-severed iron fell into Feng Wuying's palm instead of striking the ground. He set it gently into a nearby puddle, then moved to the second length.
From the entrance, Feng Feiyun said under his breath, "Faster."
"If I hurry," said Feng Wuying, "he dies."
Feng Feiyun gritted his teeth and said no more.
The second length proved harder than the first.
This one lay close beneath Fang Tieshan's ribs, and every pass of the file tugged at an old wound. Fang Tieshan's face had gone a ghastly ash-gray, cold sweat rolling down from his brow one bead at a time, yet his lips remained shut.
And in that moment Fang Yingjie understood with perfect clarity that his father was not beyond pain.
He had merely grown used to never giving it a voice.
The thought lodged in Fang Yingjie's chest like a stone.
All he could do was force his own breathing lower and lower, hold his father steady, and keep that half-ruined body from shifting with each vibration of the file.
By the time Feng Wuying reached the third length, faint footsteps drifted in from outside.
Feng Feiyun raised a hand at once.
Everyone in the cavern froze.
Only the water kept roaring.
The footsteps passed along the far edge of the corridor. It seemed to be nothing more than a routine patrol; no one turned in.
Only after a long while did Feng Feiyun slowly lower his hand.
"They've passed."
Feng Wuying resumed.
When the third length came away, more than half the exposed dragging chains on Fang Tieshan's body had finally been removed. Several more shackles still remained buried in him, wound into flesh and bone, and none of them dared touch those. But at least they would no longer strike against the stone and ring out at every step. At least they would no longer drag at his movement.
Feng Wuying put away the short file and said quietly, "This is as far as I can go."
Fang Yingjie nodded. "It's enough."
When he said those words, his voice was rough and hoarse.
Feng Wuying drew Fang Tieshan's outer robe back around him and used a waist cord to bind the remaining chains tight. Feng Feiyun came back from the entrance and handed Fang Yingjie another strip of cloth.
"Tie it around your waist."
Fang Yingjie stared.
Feng Feiyun lowered his voice. "When the time comes, if you really have to carry him, your hands alone won't hold. Lash him to your back, and at least one hand will be free."
Fang Yingjie took the cloth, his fingertips trembling.
Carry.
Until this moment, that word had only been something unspoken in his own mind.
Now it was truly coming.
He looked at Fang Tieshan.
It was as if Fang Tieshan had heard that same word. Those gray-white eyes shifted slightly toward him.
After a moment he asked quietly, "Afraid?"
Fang Yingjie shook his head. "Not afraid."
Fang Tieshan asked, "Then what?"
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and slowly wound the cloth around his own waist.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to carry you steady."
Fang Tieshan was silent for a breath.
Then he said in a low voice, "When you bear someone on your back, your footing must be steadier still."
Heat stung Fang Yingjie's eyes.
"I'll remember."
Feng Wuying rose and crossed to the inner wall opposite the way they had come. He felt along the stone for a moment with his hand.
There was an extremely narrow seam there, so disguised by water stains and moss-darkened stone that it was nearly impossible to see. Feng Wuying slipped his fingertips into it and gave a gentle push. From deep within the crack came a low, muffled thud.
A hidden door, small enough that a man could only pass through it sideways, slowly loosened open.
Behind it there was first a slit of stone barely wide enough for one person. The gap was not long—three or four steps at most—before it widened sharply, joining what seemed to be another low stone chamber once used for drainage. The sound of water struck back from that direction, heavier than before, hollower too, as though hidden channels ran on both sides of the chamber.
For the first time, a light came into Feng Feiyun's eyes.
"This way."
Fang Yingjie had just started to help Fang Tieshan to his feet.
Then, all at once, a thread of fragrance drifted out from beyond the hidden door.
Very faint.
Very soft.
It smelled like a sleeve warmed beneath lamplight in an inner chamber; like a bowl of porridge on a spring night by the water, not yet gone cold.
Every drop of blood in Fang Yingjie's body turned cold.
Fang Tieshan's hand tightened once on his wrist.
Feng Wuying stopped.
Feng Feiyun's face changed at once.
Somewhere in the darkness beyond, a lamp had already been lit.
It was not a bright lamp. Yet it was so clean it seemed to cut the dark. The light seeped slowly through from the far end of the narrow slit, illuminating a patch of wet, freezing stone. The platform lay no more than a few paces beyond the hidden door, the short slit of passage between them just enough to keep most of the light from reaching farther, while still casting a clear glow over the opening itself. Beyond the stone platform, on either side, ran two hidden channels where water rushed hard beneath stone sluice-gates. The lamp lit only the middle space. Left and right remained sunk in deep blackness.
A woman stood beneath the lamp.
She was not inside the slit of stone itself.
She stood on that cold wet platform at its end, the heavy sound of water behind her, the two black channels to either side like open mouths waiting in the dark.
Li Ying.
She still wore that same gentle look. Her robes were immaculate; her brows and eyes curved with a smile. She looked less like someone standing behind an abandoned drainage cavern deep underground than a gracious hostess waiting in the waterside pavilion of Biyue Manor for a guest who had come home late.
She looked first at Fang Tieshan, then at Fang Yingjie, and smiled softly.
"Great Hero Fang."
Her voice was as soft as water.
"The chains have been filed shorter, and the road has been opened."
"Why have you stopped?"
A Warm Blade to Bid Guests Stay
The sound of water in the waste-water cavern seemed, all at once, to recede by a layer.
Fang Yingjie stood where he was, still clutching the strip of cloth in his hand, not yet tied fast. When Feng Feiyun had first passed it to him, he had been thinking only of practical things—how to keep his father from slipping once he carried him, how to free one hand in that narrow passage if he had to fight.
But now the cloth had turned cold in his grasp.
That hidden door should have been their way out.
Yet now, beyond that slit of stone no more than a few steps deep, on the slick platform glistening in the damp, stood Li Ying.
Feng Wuying neither retreated nor struck at once. He merely shifted half a step sideways, placing himself between the Fang father and son and the enemy. Almost at the same instant, Feng Feiyun slid closer to Fang Yingjie, a section of bamboo already slipping soundlessly into his palm from within his sleeve.
Li Ying seemed not to notice.
She lowered her eyes only briefly, glancing first at the broken chains on the ground, then at the black leather pouch by Feng Wuying's foot, not yet fully closed. From its mouth protruded the handle of a dark little clamp, black as lacquer, shining cold in the wash of reflected water. The smile on her lips remained soft, almost tender.
"Fourth Master Feng," she said quietly, "what remarkable skill."
Her voice drifted through the damp like silk.
"So the people of the Hidden Bamboo Sect truly are the best at finding the roads no one else can walk. Borrowing shadow, borrowing wind, slipping through places others think impassable…"
She paused, and her smile gentled still further.
"In that, your Second Brother Feng once gave me quite an education as well."
Feng Wuying did not answer.
Only the line of his sleeve sank a fraction, as though some emotion within him had been forced back down by sheer will.
Li Ying seemed not to see.
"But you," she went on softly, "are cleaner than he was."
Her voice was soft as water.
"And later to arrive."
Feng Feiyun's face turned cold at once.
"Old witch," he said under his breath. "One more word and I'll smash every tooth out of your mouth."
Li Ying turned to look at him. The smile in her eyes rippled like spring water.
"Young one, don't be in such a hurry."
She tilted her head slightly.
"Did your master teach you how to hide in shadow, how to step with the wind and walk the dark roads, but not how to hide your heart?"
Feng Feiyun was about to answer when Feng Wuying said in a low voice, "Do not answer her."
At the same moment, Fang Tieshan's cold hand tightened lightly on Fang Yingjie's wrist.
"Don't listen."
His voice was hoarse and low.
"Her words are filthier than any blade."
Fang Yingjie said nothing. He stared fixedly at Li Ying.
But Li Ying seemed to find that amusing. She let out a faint sigh.
"Great Hero Fang always says that about me."
She looked at Fang Tieshan, and there was almost something aggrieved in her tone.
"And yet, had I not kept you alive all these years, you would have been a heap of bones long ago."
Fang Tieshan gave a low laugh.
It rasped like old iron dragged over stone.
"Kept me alive?"
He looked at her with dead-cold eyes.
"You kept me because you could not pry my mouth open."
The smile at Li Ying's lips faded by a single thread.
Only a single thread.
Then she smiled again.
"Great Hero Fang's mouth," she said, "I could never pry open. Of course."
Her gaze fell to his pale, wasted face, and her voice turned almost luxuriantly soft.
"But your qi"—she paused—"that, I have taken."
Fang Yingjie went rigid.
The gray-white depths of Fang Tieshan's eyes sank slightly, and the coldness in his face sharpened at once.
Li Ying, however, seemed wholly untroubled by the vileness of what she said. If anything, she grew gentler.
"In those days, everyone said Dragoncloud Divine Hand Fang Tieshan possessed inner force of the fiercest and purest yang—his palm striking like a dragon, thunder rising with the clouds. At the time, I wondered what such force would feel like, if drawn out bit by bit by yin-flame."
She lowered her eyes and pressed a hand lightly to her own chest, smiling with a softness that made the skin crawl.
"And now that I know…"
She lifted her gaze again.
"…it was nothing extraordinary after all."
"No matter how fierce the yang-fire, once it entered my meridians and steeped there long enough, it became only a thread of warmth within me."
She looked at Fang Tieshan, her voice so light it might have been a lover's murmur.
"Great Hero Fang, look. What you guarded all your life—part of it remains with me in the end."
Fang Tieshan let out another low laugh.
This one was colder than the first.
"What you stole was dregs," he said. "And you dare call that remaining?"
Li Ying's smile halted for the briefest instant.
Fang Tieshan spoke one word at a time.
"When filth enters the body, it only rots deeper."
Then Li Ying turned her eyes to Fang Yingjie.
"You see?" she said softly. "Your father is still just as hard."
Her tone remained gentle.
"He stayed hard all his life. And this is all it came to."
Fang Yingjie's weight shifted under him.
He almost lunged.
But Fang Tieshan's hand was still locked around his wrist.
That hand was cold, and weak, and yet when it rested there it was still like a stone pinning him in place.
Fang Yingjie bit down hard and, in the end, did not move.
A trace of something—satisfaction, perhaps—passed through Li Ying's eyes.
"You've grown."
She spoke as though she were remarking fondly on a child.
"That sickly little boy from back then has learned to endure."
"Back," Feng Wuying said suddenly.
His voice was not loud, but it was cold enough to cut.
Feng Feiyun understood at once. His stance shifted as he moved to close in at Fang Yingjie's side.
Li Ying sighed softly.
"Why make this so difficult?"
She lifted one sleeve. In the wavering light, the mouth of it flickered once.
A thread of faint red smoke drifted out from beneath it and rolled low across the wet stone platform, seeping into the waste-water cavern through the narrow crack in the rock.
The smoke was not thick. It even carried a sweetness to it, like powder long kept in a lady's dressing case, or the fading fragrance of blossoms beside a spring-night cup of wine.
But the instant that fragrance touched his nose, Fang Yingjie felt his chest lock tight.
It was not simple poison.
Poison was never this warm.
And never this familiar.
Biyue Manor.
The waterside pavilion.
Hot porridge.
The white rabbit.
The hidden door.
Madam Wen's face—so gentle it chilled the bones.
And beneath the bed that night: laughter, murmured words, the scent of clothes and skin. Then the face of the true Wen Rubi, tortured beneath the earth until she scarcely looked human.
All of it surged back at once.
Not from before his eyes.
From the deepest place inside him, dragged up by that single strand of scent.
For a moment, Fang Yingjie's vision whitened. He nearly lost hold of his breathing entirely.
Then Fang Tieshan's fingers closed sharply over his wrist.
Cold.
Hard.
Like a piece of broken iron.
"Don't breathe it."
Fang Yingjie snapped back to himself. At once he sealed his breath and pressed down the one thread of steady qi in his energy center, forcing it to remain still.
Feng Wuying had already moved.
He did not charge Li Ying. Instead, he shot forward to the hidden door first. The opening was so narrow that only one person could pass sideways through it, yet he did not immediately slip all the way across. He merely sank his left shoulder into the crack, half his body set within the stone, while his right foot still braced on the wet ground inside the waste-water cavern.
In the next instant, a slender length of bamboo slipped from his sleeve.
It was no more than a foot long, thin as a snapped green branch. Between his fingers it flicked once, and the tip darted past the hidden door, tapping a jut of wet stone deep within the crack.
Tak.
The sound was tiny, like a drop of water striking hollow rock.
But after that one tap, a rush of cold air suddenly came pouring back out from the darkness beyond. Behind that wet stone was a drainage slit connected to the stone chamber of foul water beyond. Usually it carried only dampness, no audible wind at all; but with that single touch of bamboo, the stone shifted slightly, and the hidden airflow of the cavern changed direction at once.
The red smoke had been about to press into their faces.
It had not yet spread.
A slanting gust caught it and swept it sideways into the rushing current.
The moment the smoke struck the water, it was torn apart, scattered into nothing. Only the faintly sweet residue of its scent clung to the stone wall, thinning by the heartbeat.
At the same instant the smoke veered aside, Feng Wuying pressed off with his right foot. His whole body slipped sideways through the hidden door like a scrap of shadow and landed at the mouth of the stone hall beyond.
That space was scarcely two or three paces wide. On the left rose a slick stone wall; on the right, the racing water. Another man might not even have been able to keep his footing there. For Feng Wuying, it was enough. In so narrow a strip of ground, shadow itself was footing enough.
Feng Feiyun reacted just as quickly. The moment the smoke shifted aside, he began shoving Fang Yingjie and Fang Tieshan through the crack. It was miserably narrow, and even with Fang Tieshan's broken chains bound under his outer robe, the iron still dragged faintly beneath the cloth, nearly striking the rock as he squeezed through sideways.
Fang Yingjie gritted his teeth. His left arm braced his father's waist and back; his right hand pressed down on the chains concealed under the robe. He might as well have been moving Fang Tieshan by inches through stone.
The passage was only three or four steps long.
At that moment, it felt as long as a mountain trail.
At last Fang Tieshan lurched half out of it and almost fell, catching himself against a slick wall on the right side of the stone chamber. Fang Yingjie grabbed him at once and steadied him. Behind them lay the hidden door they had just crossed. Ahead, less than a yard away, stood Li Ying upon her wet stone platform beneath the light. On both sides, hidden channels roared with water. Beneath their feet there was only a strip of wet ground less than three paces wide.
Feng Feiyun threw himself across the space before them.
Li Ying smiled.
"Fourth Master Feng is as cautious as ever."
"For the likes of you," said Feng Wuying, "anything less would dirty my hands."
Li Ying did not take offense. She remained standing beneath the lamp, and from beneath her sleeve a dark-red soft whip slid soundlessly into view. It was exceedingly thin; beneath the light it looked like a line of blood. Soft to the eye, yet more than ten feet long.
She lifted her wrist lightly. The tip of the whip swept past Feng Wuying's shoulder, grazed the sliver of space before Feng Feiyun, and touched the wet stone just inside the hidden doorway.
Sss.
A tiny spark burst by the water and vanished in the same instant.
"When one walks the dark roads," she said softly, "one should have a little light."
Her smile deepened.
"Let me illuminate the way for you."
The spark had been small, but it had landed at the inner lip of the doorway. In that instant of light, Fang Yingjie saw with painful clarity how exposed they were—he and Fang Tieshan had only just dragged themselves out of the crack and had not yet regained their footing.
Before her last word had fully faded, Feng Wuying's right shoulder dipped and his foot borrowed one precise purchase from the wet stone. His sleeve-shadow had not yet settled when the bamboo in his hand flashed out at a slant.
Not at Li Ying's throat.
Not at her wrist.
At the one inch of empty space through which the whip must pass on its way back.
Li Ying curled the whip at once. As expected, it met the bamboo at that exact point. There was no sharp crack—only a muffled, slippery rasp. Her wrist flicked, and the thin whip coiled like a snake toward the darkness beneath Feng Wuying's sleeve.
But Feng Wuying's figure blurred.
He was standing at the mouth of the stone gap, with the waste-water cavern beyond the crack behind him, Feng Feiyun guarding the narrow ground before it, and farther back Fang Yingjie steadying Fang Tieshan against the right-hand wall. Li Ying stood ahead upon the platform, the wavering lamp catching mist and water so that the narrow strip of ground between them seemed at once clear and unreal.
Feng Wuying pressed off with his right foot. His body slid along the roar of the water itself. In the shifting light, it seemed as if he still occupied his old position, while his shadow had already moved to Li Ying's left.
Sweeping Moon Shadow.
Fang Yingjie saw it for only an instant.
But in that instant he remembered another day years ago, by the waters of Tai Lake, when Feng Feiyun's body had flashed once and vanished. What Feng Wuying did now, however, was heavier, older, and far harder to read.
Li Ying did not retreat.
That lash she had sent toward Feng Wuying's sleeve had never been fully committed. The moment his body blurred away, her wrist sank, and the whip reversed against the wet stone in a brutal folding stroke.
It was a vicious change.
The tip did not continue after Feng Wuying. Instead, it curved around the few paces before the hidden door, turned with the sound of the rushing water, and shot straight for Feng Feiyun's throat.
Feng Feiyun cursed and twisted aside, one shoulder sliding along the wet stone. The bamboo segment in his sleeve snapped out with a crack and deflected the tip of the whip away.
But Li Ying's other hand was already rising.
The palm looked soft. Only a faint thread of crimson flared and vanished at its center.
Feng Feiyun's foot had barely touched down when a wash of heat came at his face, as though someone had pressed a cup of warmed wine to his brow. The heat was not fierce. It was worse than fierce. It clung. It slid inward with his breathing and locked his chest for a beat.
His heart tightened.
It was one of the Supreme Cult's old palm methods—a strike that did not seek to blast a man away in a single blow, but to press in close, seize his breath, and close his retreat. Once that heat clung to you, retreat became sluggish, advance unstable. Half a beat slower, and your breathing would already be caught in the pull of the palm.
This woman did not rely on words alone.
Her palm was as venomous as her tongue.
Feng Feiyun had no choice but to yield another half-step.
And with that half-step, he was forced away from the hidden doorway.
By then Fang Yingjie, still supporting Fang Tieshan, had reached the slick strip of ground along the right side of the chamber—stone wall at one shoulder, the narrow crack behind him, barely three paces of foothold beneath his boots—and in front of him there was suddenly a line of empty space.
That was what Li Ying wanted.
Fang Yingjie saw it.
So did Feng Wuying.
But just as Feng Wuying was about to move again, a soft laugh sounded out of the darkness beyond the reach of the lamp, from the left side of the chamber.
The laugh was not loud.
Yet it was like a spark falling into cold water.
Even the roar of the waste-water chamber seemed to dip for an instant.
Feng Wuying stopped dead.
Fang Tieshan's gray-white eyes snapped toward the darkness.
Fang Yingjie's heart clenched.
Someone stepped slowly out of the shadow along the side of the chamber.
He wore a dark crimson robe, a shade deeper than the usual red of the Crimson Flame Palace. The lamplight fell across a face so ordinary it might have vanished in any crowd. Had he passed by in a market street, no one would have spared him a second glance.
But the instant Fang Yingjie saw him, his blood went cold.
Perhaps he did not know the face.
The aura, though—he knew that.
The false Fang Zhongyi.
The mouth of the cedar grove.
Eaglebeak Ridge.
The trap that had torn him away from the road home.
"Li Pu," Fang Tieshan said in a low voice.
The man smiled.
"Great Hero Fang."
He cupped his hands politely.
"More than twenty years apart, and your ears are still that keen."
Fang Tieshan said coldly, "That counterfeit stench of yours—I could smell it through three walls."
Li Pu did not appear offended.
"You jest, Great Hero Fang."
He spoke evenly, as if he had come to an old gathering among friends.
"All my life, there is nothing I dislike more than hearing someone call me false."
"That must make life difficult for you," said Feng Wuying.
Li Pu turned to him.
"Fourth Master Feng," he said with a faint smile, "then tonight, the difficult one is you."
"You knew I would come?"
"No."
Li Pu paused, then let his gaze pass lightly over Feng Feiyun.
"But from the first moment Young Hero Feng bit down on the water-route my sister left behind, I knew that sooner or later the man behind him would show himself."
Feng Feiyun's face changed at once.
"You knew I was tailing her?"
Li Pu looked at him and answered in the same even tone, "Your steps are light, Young Hero Feng.
"But you followed too long."
He smiled.
"Did you really think the Crimson Flame Palace would notice nothing?"
"While you were watching us, naturally we were watching you."
Feng Wuying's gaze darkened. Li Pu turned back to him and continued slowly:
"The times my sister left the manor were never meant to shake Young Hero Feng off."
"They were meant to make him believe he had finally seized the real thread."
Feng Feiyun clenched his teeth.
"So the switched boats, the old water marks, the false docks—"
"Some were true. Some were false," Li Pu said.
"If all of it had been false, you would not have believed it."
"If all of it had been true, we would never have let it go."
"When truth is salted with lies, and lies are seeded with truth, then Young Hero Feng will return to tell Fourth Master Feng that this line is worth following in person."
The sound of water pressed down through the waste-water cavern and the side channels alike.
Feng Wuying said nothing.
Li Pu's eyes dropped to the broken chains on the ground, then to the black leather pouch still not yet closed.
"As for this place…"
His voice remained mild.
"To move the chains on Great Hero Fang's body—the cell itself is too quiet, the passage too narrow, the changing of the guard outside too frequent."
"The only place that can hide the sound of metal being sawed is the waste-water cavern."
He let out a small sigh.
"Since Fourth Master Feng had come, of course he would have to come here."
He smiled.
"I merely waited a little longer in the place where I ought to wait."
"Old fox," Feng Feiyun spat.
Li Pu did not mind.
"Not a fox," he said. "Only that the line you bit down on, Young Hero Feng, was placed in your mouth by my sister to begin with."
Under the lamp, Li Ying laughed softly.
"Young one," she said.
"If I had truly wished to shake you off, you would never have followed me as far as the third dock."
She paused, her smile turning still more gentle.
"I was afraid you wouldn't follow."
Feng Feiyun's face was iron-gray.
The line of Feng Wuying's sleeve sank almost imperceptibly.
Fang Yingjie, one hand still supporting Fang Tieshan, felt his own palm growing colder and colder.
So Feng Feiyun had not found the road at all.
The Crimson Flame Palace had fed it into his hands.
And then, from beyond the narrow crack behind them, through the deep roar of the waste-water cavern, many footsteps suddenly rose.
Not one pair.
Not two.
First came the heavy crash of iron-shod boots on stone from the corridor they had come through, urgent and layered, pressing nearer and nearer; then the rattle of armor scales, scabbards striking wall, the abrupt flare of torch oil as flames were jerked high. Farther off still came the hoarse shouts of the guards:
"Seal the door!"
"The left channel!"
"Don't let anyone into the waste cavern—and don't let the ones inside get out!"
Fang Yingjie's heart dropped.
This was not a handful of men.
The whole dungeon had been roused.
Feng Feiyun cursed under his breath. "Damn it. They had the net spread from the beginning."
Li Pu only smiled.
"If Fourth Master Feng was coming," he said, "how could I greet him with a single lamp and nothing more?"
Before the last word had faded, another figure emerged slowly from the darkness beyond the side channel on the left.
He was tall and gaunt, with sunken eyes and a yellowish face. His whole body seemed to drift rather than stand, as though he had spent years living by night and hiding from day, until even under lamplight he carried the chill of someone who belonged underground.
Sangji.
On the right side, from the mouth of the broken old stone road, another man appeared: broad-shouldered, thick-backed.
He did not walk quickly, but every step he took made the water on the wet stone tremble dully.
He lacked Sangji's ghostlike lightness. What he had instead was weight. Terrible weight. The kind of weight made to block a road.
Quzha.
Behind them came several more disciples of the Crimson Flame Palace in red robes.
They did not rush forward in a swarm. Each simply took up his place—on both sides of the stone hall, before the dark channels, at the broken road, and at the narrow hidden door behind Fang Yingjie and the others. The chamber itself was already low and cramped; the men who could truly press in close were only Li Pu, Quzha, and the three or five red-robed disciples nearest the front. The rest stood farther back at the exits with torches, crossbows, and blades, sealing every path of retreat. Beyond them, on the far side of the crack, layer after layer of torchlight had already sprung up inside the waste-water cavern. A dozen or more guards, crossbows and short sabers in hand, were blocking both the entrance to the cavern and the corridor they had come through.
The torchlight wavered, throwing the stone hall, the narrow hidden door, and the waste-water cavern behind it into an unsteady pulse of light and dark.
Like a cage just closing.
Li Ying laughed softly.
"Young one."
She looked at Feng Feiyun, and her voice flowed like water.
"This time it isn't a dark road."
"It's a cage."
Feng Feiyun's eyes turned cold.
"There isn't a clean word in your mouth."
Li Ying did not take offense. She merely let the red whip beneath her sleeve droop lightly.
"Clean words," she said, "do not save lives."
At last Li Pu's gaze settled on Fang Yingjie.
And in the next moment, the smile at his lips altered slightly.
His face did not change.
But his voice, his tone, even the pauses between words changed all at once.
"Young Master Yingjie."
At the sound of it, all the blood in Fang Yingjie's body went cold.
Li Pu then returned at once to his usual mild tone.
"After we parted at the cedar grove, I had thought you would die below Eaglebeak Ridge. Who could have imagined that after all the circling and turning, you would still come back to Great Hero Fang's side?"
Fang Yingjie stared at him as if he could burn through flesh.
"It was you."
"It was."
Li Pu answered cleanly enough.
"Fang Zhongyi's face was not easy to imitate. The birthmark, the gestures, the accent, the flow of saber and palm—it took no small amount of effort."
He smiled.
"A pity. I still fell short in the end. Given a few more years, perhaps I could have made it even closer."
Fang Tieshan gave a sudden cold laugh.
"Closer?"
Li Pu looked at him.
Fang Tieshan's voice was like stone.
"You could study me for a lifetime and still only ever be an imitation."
Li Pu did not answer at once.
The water roared.
The torchlight flickered.
And while he spoke, his feet had already begun to move him slowly forward. That ordinary face of his had barely changed beneath the light, yet he had stepped free of the side-shadow of the hall, past the edge of the wet platform, and was advancing one pace at a time toward the slick ground along the right-hand wall.
Fang Yingjie supported Fang Tieshan with the hidden door behind them and the wet stone at their side. Less than a yard before them stood Li Pu.
Two more steps, and Li Pu would be able to touch Fang Tieshan's chest.
Feng Wuying's gaze sharpened, and he was just about to move when Li Ying's red whip fell between him and the Fang father and son.
That blood-red line struck no one.
It merely hung there, and by hanging there, kept him from turning back recklessly.
After a moment, Li Pu said softly, "Then permit Great Hero Fang to instruct me once again."
And before the last word had fully landed, he struck.
The palm came slowly.
So slowly it seemed almost deliberate, as if he wanted every watcher present to see it clearly.
Shoulder sunk. Elbow dropped. Heel of the palm concealed. The stance set before the strike was even released.
Fang Yingjie's pupils contracted.
Dragoncloud Palm.
Or at least its frame.
The evening road. The Fang family token. The wooden tally. The birthmark. The path of saber and palm. That night with the false Fang Zhongyi came surging up from the bottom of his mind all at once.
But Fang Tieshan needed only a single breath to listen.
"False," he said coldly.
Li Pu's palm was already there.
Fang Yingjie moved on instinct to block.
"Back," Fang Tieshan said in a low voice.
Fang Yingjie did not move.
Fang Tieshan's fingers bit sharply into the bones of his wrist.
"Back."
This time the word dropped like iron.
Fang Yingjie ground his teeth together and shifted with him half a step sideways toward the wet wall.
And then, at that very moment, Fang Tieshan raised one hand.
That hand was nothing but bone and knotted joints. The palm was gray-white, the veins on the back of it like dried vines. There was nothing in its appearance to suggest it could still strike at all.
Yet the instant it lifted, the roar of the waste-water chamber seemed to sink by a whole degree.
Not wind.
Weight.
The weight of a mountain buried under the earth for more than twenty years. The rock cracked, the summit broken, yet the root of it not severed.
Li Pu's eyes brightened faintly.
Their palms met.
There was no thunderous crash.
Only a muffled sound driven so deep it was like a crack opening in the wet stone itself.
Fang Tieshan's body shuddered violently.
But Li Pu had not truly received the strike head-on. At the instant of contact, his palm slipped. That force—part dragon, part cloud, yet neither truly one nor the other—curved away from the frontal pressure and bored inward like a thread of cold fire along Fang Tieshan's wrist meridian, elbow, shoulder, and the old wounds riddling his back.
It was not pure Fang family Dragoncloud Palm.
Nor was it merely one of the Supreme Cult's close-pressing heat-laden palm strikes.
Buried within it was also the furtive, smoldering force of the Blazing Flame Art—no open blaze, no outward flare, only a hidden coal buried beneath ash, burning straight into damaged meridians.
Fang Tieshan's shoulder jerked hard.
Blood welled from the corner of his mouth and spilled down across the guard's robe he wore, so dark it was nearly black.
Fang Yingjie went white with shock.
"Father!"
Fang Tieshan did not fall.
He stayed on his feet by sheer force.
Even the hand he had raised had not yet dropped completely.
But Fang Yingjie, supporting him, could feel it clearly: the little breath his father still possessed had been hollowed out again by that one exchange.
Li Pu withdrew his palm and sighed lightly.
"Great Hero Fang," he said, "a true palm requires true qi to drive it."
His tone remained calm.
"How many breaths do you have left now?"
Blood covered Fang Tieshan's lips, and still he laughed.
"You did not dare receive it."
Li Pu's gaze tightened slightly.
"If you had truly dared receive my palm," Fang Tieshan said, "you would not have slipped around it."
Li Pu fell silent for a moment.
Then he smiled.
"Great Hero Fang is still Great Hero Fang."
His voice was almost admiring.
"Only it is a pity. The mountain root has not broken—but the mountain itself is about to collapse."
As he spoke, he raised his hand once more.
This time he did not shape it as Dragoncloud Palm.
In the depths of that palm, a dim red fire slowly surfaced.
It did not blaze outward like an ordinary heated palm strike. Instead it was compressed into the bones of the hand itself, like a buried ember under ash.
The moment Fang Tieshan heard the aura of it, he said coldly, "Blazing Flame Art."
Li Pu smiled faintly.
"And Great Hero Fang can hear even that."
"The bright fire of the Supreme Cult," Fang Tieshan said, "has come into your hands only to become this stench."
Some of the smile left Li Pu's face.
Then his palm pressed toward Fang Tieshan's chest.
Fang Yingjie had no time to think.
All he heard were the short sentences his father had spoken over the past thirty days, each striking in his mind like a hammer.
Feet.
Do not watch the hands.
When the feet are in chaos, the palm is empty.
Dragoncloud Palm is not for shoving a man away.
It is for pressing the road beneath you.
Fang Yingjie's heel drove down hard.
The wet stone slipped underfoot for a fraction of an instant, then he forced it back under control.
His left hand did not leave Fang Tieshan.
But from beside his waist, his right palm drove out.
It was a disorderly strike.
Too hurried.
Too raw.
There was panic in the shoulder and back, and the path of the palm had not yet become a true circle.
But midway through the motion, the disorder suddenly sank.
Not outward.
Downward.
Foot, waist, back, heel of the palm—at that instant they seemed connected by a single unseen line.
Fang Yingjie did not shout.
He did not cry out.
He simply pressed that palm forward.
For the first time, Li Pu's expression changed.
His hand, which had been descending toward Fang Tieshan's chest, shifted by half an inch and met Fang Yingjie's strike instead.
In the next instant, Li Pu retreated half a step.
Only half a step.
His robe was not even disordered.
And yet the waste-water chamber seemed to go still.
Even the red-robed disciples and the guards held their breath without meaning to.
Li Pu looked at Fang Yingjie's hand.
Fang Yingjie's face was pale as paper, his chest heaving violently. That one strike had scattered nearly all the qi he had only just managed to steady. If Li Pu advanced again now, he would not be able to block a second palm.
But Li Pu did not advance.
He looked at Fang Yingjie's hand.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
"So that is how it is."
His voice was soft.
"In the end, Great Hero Fang did pass it on."
Leaning against Fang Yingjie's side, blood still leaking from the corner of his mouth, Fang Tieshan spoke in a voice cold as iron.
"A counterfeit always grows unsure when it sees the real thing."
Li Pu's smile deepened.
"A fine palm," he said slowly. "A truly fine palm."
Then his eyes lifted.
"A pity there are too many people here tonight."
The instant he finished speaking, Sangji drifted backward like a shadow gliding along the sound of water.
He was not coming to engage head-on.
He was going to seal the exits, to pass the order, to tighten the final slack in this hidden route.
Quzha, meanwhile, stepped forward once and planted himself before the broken road on the right side of the chamber. The heavy-backed saber in his hand came up across him, and with the width of his shoulders alone he nearly sealed half the passage.
Several red-robed disciples drew their sabers at the same time.
More than a dozen guards lifted torches and raised their crossbows. The front rank pressed several bow-machines through the gaps between the crack and the stone wall, aiming into the strip of wet ground on the right side of the chamber. The others sealed the waste-water cavern, the corridor they had come through, and the hidden crack behind Fang Yingjie and his father.
Feng Wuying blurred once and placed himself squarely before Li Pu.
"Feiyun," he said, "open the way."
Feng Feiyun was just about to move when Li Ying's red whip lashed out like a serpent.
"Young one," she said with a smile. "Who is it you think you can save?"
At once the rims of Feng Feiyun's eyes flushed red.
But he had been tied down.
Feng Wuying too was held in place by Li Pu.
In the waste-water chamber, torchlight, water-roar, red robes, broken chains, and the lingering taint of that sweet poison all pressed inward at once.
Supporting Fang Tieshan beneath that crushing weight, Fang Yingjie finally understood.
The road ahead was not one Feng Wuying could walk for him.
It was not one Feng Feiyun could hold back for him, either.
He would have to carry his father—
and walk through it himself.