Chasing in Reverse

The transport trench was not on the map.

It ran behind the stone wall on the eastern side of Sunken Bone Slope, high on both sides and narrow through the middle, with wheel tracks that lay in shadow year-round. If the live cage had not changed camps, Helian Yuan would have had a hard time knowing where the gray-robed man's carts could bypass the front of the hunting ground.

He did not follow behind the carts.

As the convoy headed east along the trench, he circled around the southern slope to get ahead of it and found a section of the side wall that had been washed away by rain. Old planks and broken stones lay scattered there, as though someone had built a plank road there years ago. Helian Yuan pushed a loose stone down. It rolled to the bottom of the trench and lodged right in the deepest rut.

When the first cart arrived, the driver spotted the stone in advance and climbed down to move it.

The second cart did not stop.

But the third cart, the one carrying the live cage, jolted slightly at the same spot. The rut was not the problem. Something beneath the cart hung lower than on the first two and struck some broken stones that had not been completely cleared away.

Helian Yuan took note of this from the top of the slope.

There was a movable board beneath the live-cage cart, and there might also be a hidden compartment below it.

After the convoy passed, he did not give chase immediately. He waited until the last two guards had disappeared before descending into the trench. A fresh trace of black oil marked the broken stones, with a smell similar to the numbing grass left in the empty cage. The oil was not for lubricating the axle. It was too thick and mixed with a medicinal paste that suppressed beasts' agitation.

Following the oil traces, he found that the transport trench forked half a li ahead. One branch continued east, its ruts deep; the other turned north, marked only by a very faint single wheel track.

The convoy had deliberately sent most of its vehicles east, but the live cage might have turned north on its own at the fork.

Helian Yuan crouched and felt the ground. Fresh drops of water dotted the dust on the northern route. They did not look like rain, but more like water shaken out of a medicine barrel beneath a cart. The live cage had turned north.

He followed the northern trench for less than a li before he heard voices ahead.

Helian Yuan did not approach. Instead, he climbed the side wall first. The northern trench did not end at an exit, but at an old quarry. Two half-collapsed stone sheds stood inside. The live-cage cart was parked at the far end, and the gray-robed man was having people unload things from the compartment beneath it.

They were not beasts.

They were bundles of grass fodder, bloody meat, and sealed medicine barrels.

The empty cage was still empty, yet it had been supplied with enough to feed a large demonic beast for several days.

A guard held a thin booklet and checked the barrels against it. "Three bundles of numbing grass, six pieces of bloody meat, beast feed-"

"Don't record the beast feed," the gray-robed man interrupted.

"But the column for number seven-"

"I said don't record it."

The guard immediately changed what he was saying and moved his brush to the next line.

Helian Yuan lay behind the ruined wall of a stone shed, his eyes fixed on the booklet. He was too far away to make out any complete characters. All he could see was the guard writing a vertical stroke before the gray-robed man pressed his hand down on it.

Number seven needed bloody meat and numbing grass, but its beast feed was not recorded.

That might mean it did not eat ordinary demonic beast feed, or it might mean the organization did not want to leave information in its accounts that could reveal the beast's species.

Stranger still, the empty cage no longer had a target, yet its supplies were still replenished on schedule. The gray-robed man was not sure when number seven could return, but he had to keep it "ready to load at any time."

A worker pulled an old grass mat from the live cage's compartment, preparing to replace it. A small scrap of cloth fell from the edge of the mat. It was stained with blackened blood, already old and dark.

The gray-robed man saw it and walked over himself.

He did not touch it with his hands. First, he had someone fetch a pair of tongs and put the scrap into a leather pouch. Then he ordered the entire old grass mat burned.

A fire was lit in the middle of the quarry.

Helian Yuan waited until the smoke thickened, then quietly circled behind the stone shed. A drainage channel ran along the base of the old shed wall and led to the live-cage cart. He crawled into it and inched forward, his body nearly pressed against the cold mud. His injured shoulder scraped repeatedly against the stone edge, and the pain made his right hand tremble.

He did not use Tiger Shadow.

The distance was too short. Any unusual pressure might cause the gray-robed man to seal off the area immediately.

A wooden cover lay over the end of the drainage channel. Helian Yuan pushed it up a crack with the back of his blade and saw beneath the live-cage cart. The compartment was already half empty. Only a roll of hemp cloth and a few oil-soaked scraps remained inside.

He waited for the workers carrying the cargo to leave, then reached in and pulled out the outermost scrap.

The slip was only half a palm wide and bore a brief supply note: seven, six bloody meat, three numbing grass, do not record beast feed. At the end was an upward arrow, with "return from within the mountains" written beside it.

Within the mountains.

Not Greystone Town, nor Blackwater Ravine.

Number seven had originally come from deeper in the mountains and only later entered the Sunken Bone Slope recovery system. It was not something that had been sent in from outside and then escaped, but a target the organization had found within the mountains and captured or pursued.

Helian Yuan folded the scrap into his sleeve and was about to withdraw when it suddenly grew darker beneath the cart.

Someone had stepped onto the wooden cover.

The gray-robed man's voice came from above. "The person who went out from the northern post won't be coming back."

Another person asked, "Then the one who stole the token is still at Sunken Bone Slope?"

"If he only wanted to escape, he should have left last night."

"What's he staying for?"

The gray-robed man paused.

"To learn how we find things."

The weight on the wooden cover moved away. Helian Yuan did not move immediately. He heard the gray-robed man continue giving orders. "The empty cage isn't going to the eastern warehouse. Send it to the mountain interior entrance tonight. All the old grass, old cloth, and old food scraps-burn them all. Don't leave outsiders the slightest trace of number seven's scent."

The mountain interior entrance.

The live cage's next stop led deeper into the region.

By the time Helian Yuan withdrew through the drainage channel, the fire in the quarry was already blazing fiercely. The old grass mat curled in the flames, and the smoke pressed its sickly sweet, bloody smell down to spread along the ground. Several packhorses pawed the ground uneasily, while the guards beside the live-cage cart kept covering their noses with cloth.

Helian Yuan crawled to the mouth of the channel but did not leave immediately. He took out the white powder he had seized and sprinkled a thin line along the drainage ditch, then tied a corner of old cloth that smelled of numbing grass into a crack between the stones.

The white powder would leave traces of anyone who passed through, while the smell of numbing grass would make anyone who came back to investigate think that someone had carried away traces of number seven from here.

For the first time, the gray-robed man's rule had fallen completely into his hands.

Even so, he did not think he had won. The supply quantities on the scrap might be bait, and "return from within the mountains" might also have been written specifically for an infiltrator to see. The only things he could confirm were that the gray-robed man had personally stopped the beast feed from being recorded and ordered everything bearing its scent burned. People's words could deceive, but how many supplies they were willing to burn for a single lie was harder to disguise. Helian Yuan kept "credible" and "possibly false" separate in his mind.

After climbing out of the quarry, Helian Yuan walked quickly along the southern slope. Less than half a shichen later, a short whistle sounded behind him, just as expected. Someone had found the line of powder in the drainage ditch, and the search spread from around the convoy toward the southern side.

They thought the person who had stolen the token had taken away number seven's scent.

In fact, all Helian Yuan had taken was a scrap of paper.

After dark, he unfolded the slip at a distance. Oil had soaked into the words "return from within the mountains," making them glisten like a direction that had always been hidden behind the empty name.

There was still no answer to what number seven actually was.

Helian Yuan held the scrap near a fire to dry it. An old crease gradually emerged on the back of the paper, where it had been hidden by oil. The crease might originally have connected to another column, which had now been neatly torn away. He did not try to reconstruct the missing characters from the edge. He only marked "return from within the mountains" on the map as awaiting verification. Pointing the way forward was not the same as having proved the facts.

But for the first time, there was a limit to where it could have come from.

Deeper in the mountains.

And the gray-robed man's live cage would be going there tonight as well.