The three men began working around a desk. Yin Wujou placed the mirror on a special copper stand, concave side up. Snow Empress sat opposite him, breaking up handfuls of spring tea leaves and crushing them. Daoist Yun stood beside him, using his fingertips to scoop up the broken tea leaves and sprinkle them evenly onto the mirror surface. The mirror's temperature was neither too high nor too low. After the tea leaves were spread on it, they first emitted a slight hissing sound. Moisture seeped from the leaves and was immediately evaporated by the heat. The entire study was filled with a rich, almost tangible, tea aroma, so refreshing that it made one's throat tighten.
Snow Empress kneaded the tea leaves for a while, then suddenly stopped, looked down, and smelled her fingers. "The aroma has seeped into the control panel."
"Tomorrow when you go out, everyone in the city will think you're a tea seller." Daoist Yun laughed, scattering a handful of broken tea leaves on you. "Wujiu, your master is quite an extraordinary person. He can refine everything—array flags, copper balls, and fire-lighting devices. He even wrote down how to lure the Demonic Flood Dragon for you. Why didn't he do it himself back then?"
Yin Wujou, who was staring at the tea leaves gradually changing color on the mirror, paused upon hearing this. "He might have tried," he said slowly, "But when he was alone, he couldn't collect this much Qingzhen spring tea. My master's wife passed away early, and he spent the rest of his life wandering alone in the mountains, sometimes going away for half a year at a time, returning emaciated, but the files he brought back were filled with new notes."
He fell silent after saying that, his copper spatula gently turning over the dried tea powder on the mirror surface, the powder making a soft rustling sound. Snow Empress glanced at him, said nothing, and continued kneading the tea.
Night passed slowly. By the time the first basket of tea was finished roasting, the sky outside the window had turned from inky black to deep blue. A bowl of porridge was brought in from the kitchen, and the three of them drank two bowls with the tea and herbs. When the second basket of tea was halfway roasted, Yin Wujou stopped and sifted the roasted tea powder through a fine sieve. The powder was even and fine, and its color had changed from bright green to deep turquoise, emitting a dry and mellow aroma.
"That's enough." He divided the sifted tea powder into twelve cloth bags, each containing roughly the same amount. "Fill the copper ball before dawn, and we'll reach Soul-Severing Gorge before noon."
Snow Empress helped him open each of the copper balls, removing the inner linings, filling them with tea powder, and then putting them back in. After filling them, she closed the copper balls, shook them in her hand, and could hear the tea powder rustling inside. "These twelve are strung together, spaced twenty zhang apart—that's two hundred and twenty zhang in length. Is the side passage that long?"
Yin Wujou unrolled the animal skin scroll and glanced at the dotted line again. "The length marked on the map is about two hundred zhang. The hollow circle at the end is more than three zhang lower than the main vein, which should be an underground cave. The old formation was set up in that cave." He rolled up the animal skin scroll and put it away, then looked out the window. The sky was already turning white. The morning light shone through the window paper, illuminating the scrolls and bamboo slips in the room with a thin layer of pale gold.
Before dawn, the waiter from the teahouse in the southern part of the main city had already set up his donkey cart outside the Wujou Hall. Yin Wujou loaded the twelve bronze balls and the Yangsui (a type of fire-preserving device) onto the cart, along with two bundles of spare array flags and a newly drawn array diagram. Snow Empress changed into a neat short-sleeved outfit, with the short sword hanging at her waist. When she mounted her horse, her movements were as swift as a seasoned wandering knight. Daoist Yun slowly rode up a short mule. Snow Empress glanced back at him, and he shrugged, saying, "If my old bones get jostled while riding, who will watch the array for you?"
The three of them went out through the south gate of the main city and headed northeast. The fork in the road in Soul-Severing Gorge was clearly marked on the map, but when they actually arrived, they found that the fork was hardly a "road" at all—it was hidden in an extremely narrow crevice between two mountain walls, no more than three feet wide, with thorny bushes growing on both sides, making it impossible for a horse to pass through. Yin Wujou tied his horse to an old locust tree by the roadside, carried a basket of copper balls on his back, and squeezed sideways into the crevice.
As they walked deeper into the crevice, the sunlight overhead gradually narrowed into a pale line, and the ground beneath their feet transformed from gravel into slippery moss. The temperature and humidity in the air were slowly rising. After walking for about the time it takes to brew a cup of tea, the crevice suddenly opened up, revealing a naturally formed passageway. The rock walls on both sides of the passageway were densely covered with a layer of dark blue moss, and beneath the moss, one could vaguely see the stone's own veins. Those veins twisted and turned, like some kind of ancient script, or like the blood vessels of the earth.
Yin Wujou squatted down and touched the ground beneath his feet. The ground was dry, unlike the damp and humid main cave of Soul-Severing Gorge, but he could feel a very slight vibration when he touched it with his fingertips—as if something was slowly pulsating somewhere far underground, one beat after another, with long intervals, so long that it was almost imperceptible unless he was deliberately sensing it.
"It's down there." Yin Wujou stood up, his voice echoing hollowly in the passageway, "Separated by layers of rock of unknown thickness, but this pulsation is the earth's ley lines vibrating as it breathes."
Daoist Yun followed him in, squinting as he looked into the depths of the passageway. "Two hundred feet, twelve copper balls. How do you plan to arrange them? Starting from this end, place one every twenty feet, all the way to that hollow circle position?"
Yin Wujou nodded, took the first bronze ball from the basket, and tied an extremely thin silver thread to the bottom of the ball, with the other end wrapped around his wrist. He placed the bronze ball on the ground at the entrance of the passage. When the bronze ball hit the ground, it emitted a low hum, and a very faint wisp of emerald mist seeped out of the hole, slowly spreading along the ground like a thin veil.
"Water elemental energy is heavier than air, so it will sink to lower places and follow the terrain." Yin Wujou wrapped the silver thread around his wrist twice and began to walk forward. "Place one every twenty feet, and put the last one at the location of the old formation. String all the copper balls together with silver thread. Silver is the best material for guiding spirits. Twelve balls connected in a line will form a continuous guide for the water elemental energy."
As he walked and talked, he would squat down every so often to place a copper ball, using a small hammer he carried to hammer the iron nails at the bottom of the ball into the cracks in the rock to secure it. Snow Empress followed behind him, passing him the balls, while Daoist Yun walked at the very back, marking the actual terrain against the scroll of calculations. The passageway went deeper and deeper, and the light grew dimmer. Yin Wujou took a luminous pearl from his storage ring and held it in his hand. Its pale white light illuminated the moss on the rock wall, giving it a cold, glowing green hue.
When he reached the seventh bronze ball, the passage suddenly narrowed, and the rock above him dropped, forcing Yin Wujou to stoop to continue. As he bent over, the luminous pearl in his hand illuminated something on the rock wall—a rough engraving, made with a sharp tool, the strokes thick but mostly covered by moss. He reached out and brushed away the moss, revealing two characters: Danger. Stop.
The two characters were written with vigorous strokes, and the endings had a crisp, abrupt pause.