Markings

Someone had completely dismantled and taken Helian Yuan's first trap.

It hadn't been wrecked by the level-three Ironback Mountain Badger or accidentally tripped by the hunter with the crossbow on his back. The hemp rope, iron nails, bait, and even the stakes holding it in place had vanished, leaving only four neat holes in the ground.

Whoever had dismantled the trap knew every point where it bore force.

They also knew Helian Yuan would come back to check it.

He didn't rebuild it immediately. Instead, he put something different in each of the four holes: a gray stone in the first, dry leaves pressed into the second, a length of hemp thread in the third, and nothing in the fourth. Then he withdrew to higher ground to watch.

Nothing changed that day.

Early the next morning, only the hemp thread in the third hole was gone.

The other party wasn't destroying things at random. They were reading where the hunter used rope. The Gray-Robed Organization might have wanted to determine who had set up this hunting ground, or they might have been looking for a binding method similar to that of the old iron chain.

He didn't hide all his markings more deeply just because his trap had been dismantled. A marking that no one could see couldn't be used to tell who had passed through, either. Instead, Helian Yuan left a few "readable" clues and switched to another system for the truly crucial escape routes and hiding places for his supplies.

The first animal trail south of the spring still used hemp rope, but the knot pointed to an empty hollow. The route to the hiding place on the northern slope now used stacks of stones arranged in a long-long-short pattern. The emergency escape route had no artificial traces at all; it relied solely on a lightning-struck white tree aligned with a gap in the distant ridge.

That way, whoever tampered with the rope would think they had understood the route, but would obtain only the part Helian Yuan was willing to give away. If the stone stacks were disturbed too, it would mean the other party had been watching him for longer. Only if footprints appeared near the white tree would it mean his real hiding place had been exposed.

He spent half a day walking the routes three times. The first time, he carried his full equipment. The second, he assumed he couldn't use his right arm. The third, he closed one eye to simulate having only faint light at night. A stretch of steep rock on the northern slope was impassable with one hand, so he lowered a hemp rope there in advance. A shallow ditch by the spring was easy to step into by mistake at night, so he lined its edge with white bones to make it feel different underfoot.

Preparations like these did nothing to improve Tiger Shadow, but they meant he would have to rely less on quick thinking when something went wrong.

The three sets of markings not only kept others from reading them, but also kept him from confusing their different purposes when he was tired. Stone stacks answered only "Where are the water and shelter?" Cuts in bark answered only "Which animal trails have seen recent activity?" Bone fragments marked only directions where someone could actually die. None of the markings was meant to convey the whole situation.

He also deliberately left a complete rope knot on an unrelated little path. If the person who had dismantled the trap was eager to decipher every route, they would follow the rope to a scree slope with no prey and waste half a day. If they didn't touch it at all, it would mean they were looking only for iron objects and numbers, not the hunter himself.

Helian Yuan changed the rules.

From now on, he would no longer rely solely on rope and nails to mark routes. Stacked stones would mark springs, cuts in bark would mark animal trails, and bone fragments buried in the soil would mark danger zones. The three sets of markings were independent of one another; knowing one wouldn't let a person understand everything.

It made setting them up slower, but it also let him see who had tampered with what.

The hunter with the crossbow on his back appeared that afternoon. Seeing the four holes in the ground, he sneered. "You can't even keep a trap safe, and you want to claim the badger's den?"

"It wasn't you?"

"I only take traps, not hemp rope."

"Then what are you here for?"

The crossbow hunter tossed a rolled-up sheet of paper onto a rock without coming closer. "A gray-robed man dropped it. I don't know many characters, but I can read the date."

Helian Yuan used his short spear to unroll the paper.

It was a recovery order, stating that they would enter the Fourth Hunting Ground on Sunken Bone Slope in three days. But it was dated the day before he had first entered Blackwater Ravine.

In other words, before he found number seven, the Gray-Robed Organization had already planned to recover Sunken Bone Slope. The disturbance of the iron plaque at Blackwater Ravine had only made them act faster; it wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"Why give it to me?" Helian Yuan asked.

"I'm not giving it to you," the crossbow hunter said. "I tell you they're coming in three days, and you tell me which path the leopard at the eastern rock face has been taking down to the spring lately."

"You want to avoid it?"

"My traps are over there."

"Are traps worth more than your life?"

"Traps can buy me another month of life."

Helian Yuan understood that calculation. He drew the three places where the level-four Blue Rock Panther had recently left claw marks and pointed out how it circled the spring at night by way of the southeastern stone gully.

After looking, the crossbow hunter took a corner of the recovery order as proof of the deal and left the rest with Helian Yuan.

"What did the gray-robed men ask you?" Helian Yuan asked again.

"You haven't paid for that answer."

"Then I won't ask."

The crossbow hunter turned and walked a few steps, then stopped of his own accord. "They asked whether there were any magical beasts that weren't on the register."

"Why tell me for free?"

"Because that question made me uncomfortable." He didn't look back. "Since when did the magical beasts in the mountains have to be written in their register first?"

That was his own reason, independent of any desire to help Helian Yuan.

Helian Yuan put away the recovery order and continued setting up the badger hunting ground. He didn't dig a deep pit at the entrance. Once startled, a level-three Ironback Mountain Badger would immediately dive into its tunnels, and an outside trap would have difficulty holding it.

He chose the narrowest side tunnel below the slope, chiseled loose the stones on both sides in advance, and embedded a rope loop in the tunnel roof. The goal wasn't to trap the badger and kill it, but to bring down a section of tunnel as it retreated inside, cutting off its safest escape route.

The real battlefield would be the dozen or so paces between the outside and the collapsed tunnel.

That evening, Helian Yuan followed his three sets of markings across the whole of Sunken Bone Slope. The spring, stone gullies, leopard's territory, badger's den, and gray-robed boundary stakes formed a route in his mind that was more useful than the map on paper.

He no longer needed to unfold the map at every fork.

There was also a spot of seal paste on the recovery order that had been repeatedly rubbed by a finger. A square seal had originally been stamped beside the date, but someone had scraped it away, leaving only the edges. Helian Yuan pressed the gray-seal iron plaque against it. They were the same size, and the holes lined up as well. Someone carrying a gray-seal plaque could not only enter an old hunting ground, but also issue a recovery as a valid order.

The crossbow hunter didn't understand that system, but he could judge when people would come from changes in the hunting ground. Helian Yuan had the paper and iron plaque, but he didn't know all the hidden paths on the ground. The two incomplete sets of information were useful only when exchanged, and precisely because both were incomplete, neither side had to put their life in the other's hands for the time being.

He marked the recovery date with three inconspicuous knife cuts: the first north of the spring, the second at the stone hollow, and the third on his real escape route. He would shave one away each day. That way, if he was injured or slept too deeply one day, he wouldn't misremember the date and let the gray-robed men catch him at his door.

When he returned to the stone hollow, there were no footprints in the fine ash before the entrance, but the top stone was missing from the stack.

The other party had already begun trying to read the second set of markings.

Helian Yuan didn't replace the stone.

He added a larger white bone beside the gap.

To keep ordinary hunters from wandering in by mistake, he left a "dead end" cut of a kind commonly used only by local hunters at the fork nearest the false route. If the gray-robed men recognized only rope, nails, and registers, they might not understand it, but the crossbow hunter would be able to avoid the route.

Luring an enemy didn't mean pushing uninvolved people toward a level-four magical beast as well. Without that distinction, using the rules of the hunting ground would merely mean carelessly passing the risk on to others.

Three days later, anyone who followed this false marking into the mountains would reach the level-four Blue Rock Panther's stone gully first, rather than his hiding place.