Map and Direction

By the time dawn broke, Lin Chen had already been awake for a while. Lying on the hard bed, he felt the lingering warmth in the bedding gradually dissipating. Outside the window came the intermittent chirps of unfamiliar birds; sometimes two calls overlapped, as if they were answering each other from a distance. He turned over and heard faint sounds from the kitchen downstairs—the lid of a pot being lifted and set back down, followed by water rinsing an iron pot. The rhythm was quick, like something repeated countless times. He sat up, put on his coat, and stood by the window for a few seconds. Sunlight had not yet reached the courtyard, but a pale sheen had already appeared over the sea, outlining a long, narrow streak of brightness along the horizon.

When he went downstairs and reached the kitchen door, Master Roshi was standing before the stove. He had spread yesterday's map beside the kitchen counter, with an empty bowl holding down one corner. In the morning light, the lines on the map looked fainter than they had the night before, as though the paper had absorbed moisture from the air and its colors had faded slightly. "The way this map was drawn looks like the style used in desert regions." Master Roshi put the lid back on the pot. "There are several old ruins over there. People used to visit them, but then the land became desertified, and many places became difficult to find. But this marked location..." He tapped the small circle slightly left of the map's center. "If the map is real, there should be water nearby."

Lin Chen stepped closer to the counter and looked down at the thin line that faded as it approached the circle. "This line is broken."

Master Roshi moved the bowl aside. "It may have broken while it was being drawn, or maybe the person who drew it deliberately left it unfinished. Desert maps are often like that. Some roads disappear halfway through. It isn't that the road is gone—it's that the mapmaker didn't want others to know what lay beyond it."

He turned and ladled the porridge from the pot into bowls, setting them at the edge of the counter. "After breakfast, go to the outpost again. Dig a little deeper beneath that spot by the wall and see if there's anything under the jar."

After breakfast, Lin Chen and Krillin headed to the outpost again. The morning forest air still carried the dampness of dew. The fallen leaves on the ground had been soaked by the night's moisture, making no sound beneath their feet. The light filtering between the tree trunks was brighter than yesterday, and dust drifted slowly through the beams. The outpost was as quiet as it had been yesterday. Footprints still marked the floor inside—yesterday's and the day before's, interwoven together, their edges gradually being covered by freshly settled dust.

Krillin crouched by the wall and dug up the soil they had filled back in. This time, he dug deeper than before. As the shovel blade cut into the earth, the resistance steadily increased. At roughly two palm depths, the shovel tip struck something hard. He brushed away the surrounding dirt, revealing a flat surface of a different material. It was dark in color, like some sort of ore, and cold to the touch. After clearing away the loose soil around the dark object, he could see that it was a smooth, dark thin slab embedded in the earth. It lay deeper than the stone slab beneath the clay jar they had found earlier, closer to the original layer of soil.

"There's another layer." Krillin set down the shovel, cleared the dirt from the slab's edges, and tried to lift it. The slab was heavier than expected, and its edges were embedded in a pale yellow deposit, as if minerals in the soil had seeped into it. Lin Chen crouched beside him and supported the other edge. The two exerted force together, slowly lifting the slab. As it came free of the earth, it gave off a dull scraping sound.

Beneath the slab was a shallower pit, with several pottery shards of varying sizes scattered across its bottom. The broken surfaces of the shards varied in color, and several appeared to fit together. Lin Chen picked up the two largest pieces and joined them. The contours of the breaks matched; they had indeed come from the same container. He placed the joined pieces on the ground beside him, then picked up another shard with a matching break and set it in place. Krillin was also gathering the scattered fragments. Together, they arranged every shard they could fit, gradually piecing together the rough outline of the lower portion of a container.

[ Ding! Ancient artifact fragments acquired ×3. Current ancient cultural knowledge: 2%. ]

Lin Chen felt a wave of warmth spread from his palm to his wrist. It traveled partway along the inside of his forearm before weakening. The warmth did not vanish completely; it merely became faint, like a signal continuously being sent from afar without being fully received. He lowered his head and looked at the pottery shard in his hand. The broken edge was lighter in color than the surface. When he touched it with his fingers, he could feel a faint graininess. Under the light, the texture along the fracture showed fine directional patterns, like traces left by the pressure between layers during firing.

Krillin gathered the remaining shards into one place and wrapped them in a piece of cloth. "We'll put them together when we get back. Let's see if we can reconstruct the full shape."

He placed the slab back over the pit, leveled it with soil, packed the surface down, then scattered a layer of dry sand and fallen leaves over it so it would not look much different from the surrounding ground. Before leaving the outpost, Lin Chen stood at the doorway and glanced back inside. Sunlight slanted down through a gap in the roof, illuminating the patch of earth by the wall that had just been covered over. The shallow pit in the corner had been filled in neatly, its surface covered by leaves nearly the same color as the surrounding dirt. He turned and walked out. The light outside was much brighter than indoors, warming his face.

After returning to Kame House, the two spread the pottery shards across the stone table in the courtyard. Master Roshi came out of the house and stood beside the table, studying the fragments for a while. "This container wasn't fired locally. The clay body is darker and finer, as if it was transported from farther away." He turned over one of the larger shards and examined the pattern on its bottom. "This object is much older than the outpost."

Lin Chen picked up one broken piece and adjusted its angle beneath the sunlight. After studying it for a while, he set it down. "If the map and this container are from the same period, then the marked location on the map may be older than the outpost itself."

Master Roshi set down the shard and turned back into the house. "Put them away for now. If we ever get a chance to go to the desert, bring these shards along. We might be able to identify them."

The afternoon sunlight fell across the stone table, and the pottery's sheen lingered in the air for a moment. Standing beside the table, Lin Chen fitted the larger shards together once more according to their broken edges, confirming the container's approximate shape. Its outline was somewhat more complete than before, but portions of the middle and upper sections were still missing. The assembled fragments covered only about one-third of the container's lower height. He wrapped the shards in cloth and stored them on a shelf in the tool room, on the same level as the stone slab. Wind passed beneath the eaves in the courtyard, stirring several dry leaves by the wall. They rolled softly along the edge of the corner, lifted and fell again, as though searching for somewhere to settle.