The Severed Route

Before dawn, Helian Yuan dismantled his hunting shelter.

He did not remove the planks one by one. Instead, he used a short spear to pry apart the two load-bearing crossbeams, bringing half the roof down toward the north. Dry grass, old animal hides, and several soot-blackened stones were all pressed into the mud, making it look as though something had struck the shelter during the night. He left the square-headed iron nail in the doorframe, even hammering it another inch in.

The nail had been a sign that he would return.

From today onward, it had to look like a habit left behind by a dead man.

The sound of wooden mallets came intermittently from the east. The gray-robed man's people had worked through the night, pulling up the old boundary stakes and driving in new ones farther inward. Each blow came closer than the last. Helian Yuan stuffed the last bundle of dried meat into his pack and smoothed over the footprints beside the firepit. Instead of heading for the crevice on the north slope, he dragged a pine branch along the old spring path for more than twenty paces.

The pine needles swept over the mud, erasing his boot prints but leaving a shallow trail that was too clean.

He stopped beside the third flat stone and pressed a fake iron nail marked "seven" into the wet mud, head down, with only half an inch of its rusty tip showing. Someone merely passing through would not see it, but anyone specifically searching for removed hunting markers would think it had been left behind in a hurry.

Helian Yuan did not wait for anyone to pick it up. He stepped into the spring water and walked upstream for nearly a hundred paces before climbing through a cleft in the rock wall onto the western slope.

The broken arrow left by the hunter with the crossbow on his back was still at Helian Yuan's waist. The spring path he had once used regularly was now cut off by two new boundary stakes wrapped in gray thread. The thread was not meant to stop beasts. It was too high off the ground and too thin. Anyone who passed through would get the white powder on the thread on their hem and boots.

Helian Yuan crouched downwind and picked up a pine needle blown loose by the wind. Fine white powder clung to one side. It had no noticeable smell, but tasted slightly bitter on the tip of his tongue.

It was not poison.

It was more like mineral powder used to leave traces.

The gray-robed man was no longer following one particular trail. He was turning all of Sunken Bone Slope into a sieve. First, the old markers were removed; then new stakes cut off the commonly used routes. The white powder recorded who crossed the boundary, and afterward, they would check which stakes had been touched. Hunters did not have to be caught on the spot. As long as they continued coming and going out of habit, sooner or later they would leave the answer themselves.

Helian Yuan put the pine needle back where he had found it and retreated even more slowly.

A search like this was in no hurry to win once. It only waited for people to return to their routines.

He circled the western slope and lay prone atop a pile of rocks. Shortly after sunrise, three guards came in along the spring path. The man in front used a short hook to lift the thread, the second checked the mud, and the last carried a bundle of newly sharpened stakes. When they reached the clean, shallow trail Helian Yuan had left, the first man did not follow it immediately. He raised a hand to signal the others to stop.

"Dragged a branch," he said.

The second man crouched and studied it for a moment. "Heading south."

"The water route will break the scent trail."

"Then check the stakes."

The three did not follow the shallow trail. They first checked the gray threads on the two nearest stakes, then turned back toward the hunting shelter. None of the new stakes were missing, and the white powder had not been touched. That meant whoever had made the trail had not left through the exits they had set up.

The guard in front stood still and looked around for a long time.

From his position atop the rocks, Helian Yuan could see the man slowly press a hand to his saber hilt.

The man was not stupid. This was merely his first time facing someone who had deliberately dismantled his own routes.

Half an hour later, they found the fake iron nail in the wet mud. A guard lifted it with his short hook. The "seven" on its head had barely emerged when the third man cursed under his breath.

"Seven again."

"Don't touch it with your hands," the man in front said. "Bag it."

They carried small leather bags specifically for collecting such things. Helian Yuan saw two lines of gray thread sewn around the bag's opening, the same color as the thread along the edge of the master ledger's supplementary page.

After collecting the fake nail, the three did not continue searching the hunting shelter. Instead, they headed east along the spring path. Clearly, in their judgment, "seven" was worth more than a hunter's abandoned dwelling.

Helian Yuan waited until they disappeared before withdrawing from the rocks.

The move had worked, but it would work only once. The fake nail had made them change the order of their inspection, but the guards had already noticed the inconsistency between the trail and the boundary stakes. Next time, they might not limit their search to the paths. They might check the water's edge, the bark of trees, or even the powder left after animals passed through.

He returned to the collapsed hunting shelter but did not go inside. A clay jar lay beneath the roof, originally holding two days' worth of salted meat. Reaching through the boards with his spear tip, he lifted the lid. A small pinch of white powder had appeared inside.

Someone had entered the shelter after he left.

They had taken nothing and had not leafed through the secret manual. They had merely left a marker in food he might still eat.

Helian Yuan stared at the pinch of white powder, his right hand slowly tightening.

The gray-robed man was not blocking a single route.

He was forcing everyone who remained on Sunken Bone Slope either to leave or accept that every mouthful of water, every piece of meat, and every return trip might give them away.

Helian Yuan kicked the clay jar into the firepit, burying the fat and salted meat in the cold ashes. He did not light a fire or retrieve the hides that were still usable. As long as the old dwelling was worth returning to, it remained a thread tied around his foot.

That afternoon, he circled outward along the bare rock to the west. There were no trees for stringing gray thread, and no soft earth to hold footprints, but he would be fully exposed to anyone watching from above. Helian Yuan did not rush across. He waited beneath a hollow in the rock until the wind rose.

The wind swept dust in from the east, along with several distant shouts.

"Northern shelter confirmed abandoned."

"Someone's been on the old spring path."

"Second group, put in replacement stakes!"

They had divided the searchers into groups, each responsible for a different kind of trace. Helian Yuan noted the order of the shouts in his mind. The northern shelter was reported first, the spring path second, and the replacement stakes last. That meant those checking the sites and those driving stakes did not travel together. From where they began putting in replacement stakes, he could work backward to determine which old marker had just been checked.

What they were clearing away was not just routes, but a moving map.

Helian Yuan took another look at the three men's footwear. The first man had no white powder on the edges of his boots; he was responsible for making judgments. The second had powder below his knees; he searched for traces close to the ground. The man carrying the stakes had the cleanest soles and walked only in places that had already been checked. The three duties were kept separate, so if any one of them was attacked, they would not lose all the rules at once. The gray-robed man was clearly trying to prevent the same thing from happening again.

That also meant they had to speak or return to camp to pass on their judgments. At a sufficient distance, the wind carried voices more readily than footprints. Helian Yuan memorized where each man had spoken.

Helian Yuan turned south. Rather than hiding from people who had yet to appear, he followed the sound of the wooden mallets from a distance.

From that day on, he had no fixed dwelling, no fixed spring path, and no agreed meeting point.

But every stake they pulled up and every stake they put in told him how far the search had progressed.

Before dusk, the final wooden mallet blow fell on the eastern slope.

Lying prone where the wind blew through, Helian Yuan saw a man replacing stakes press a nail into the wood. Its surface gleamed with the same white sheen as the thread along the spring path.

He finally knew that what he needed to steal next was not a map.

It was what they used to turn the entire hunting ground into a map.

Before leaving, he doubled back once more and split the only reasonably intact water dipper outside the collapsed shelter in two. He left one half where it was and took the other with him. If someone later put a whole dipper back there, it would mean the old dwelling had been rearranged. If only half remained, he could at least confirm that no one had used the same kind of object to lure him back to the shelter. A broken routine could also become a new warning.