Borrowing the Leopard

When the gray-robed man blew the iron whistle for the third time, Helian Yuan did not hide.

He stood behind a tall rock outside the Blue Rock Panther's territory, a full li from the quarry. The whistle had faded to a faint sound by the time it reached him, but it still made several small animals in the woods pause for a moment. The Tiger Shadow at Helian Yuan's feet did not pounce. It merely drew together toward his right arm, clinging to the ground like a layer of half-formed dark markings.

That was the reaction he had been waiting for.

For the past two days, the gray-robed man had blown the whistle once every shichen, changing direction each time. On the surface, he was driving away the remaining beasts. In truth, he was checking for places where there was an unnatural silence or disturbance. If Helian Yuan kept his distance the whole time, he would instead leave a blank spot where no beasts ever responded.

So he would make the most obvious response come from a place the other man dared not approach.

The Blue Rock Panther's territory.

Helian Yuan had smeared numbing grass oil near three sets of old claw marks. He had used very little-not enough to knock out a fourth-level demonic beast, only enough to make the smell pungent. When the iron whistle sounded again, the Blue Rock Panther would associate the shrill note with the irritating smell and inevitably go looking for the source of the sound.

The fourth whistle came from the direction of the quarry.

At first, there was silence behind the rock wall. Then a low panther growl rolled through the woods. The Blue Rock Panther did not charge out at once. It paced back and forth through its territory, the sound of its iron ring striking rock growing distant and then close again, as though it were trying to determine where the sound it hated had come from.

Helian Yuan tossed out another piece of meat smeared with numbing grass, placing it farther east than the previous one.

The Blue Rock Panther followed the scent.

The transport team left the quarry at that very moment. The live-cage wagon traveled in the middle, with a provisions wagon guarding it at either end. The gray-robed man accompanied the convoy himself. Because the empty pens had been damaged by rock rats, they were preparing to move the cages and supplies to the entrance farther into the mountains.

As the convoy passed the edge of the territory, a guard blew his whistle as usual.

The Blue Rock Panther pounced down from the rock wall.

The force of the fourth-level demonic beast's landing sent the lead draft horse tumbling. The driver rolled into a ditch, and the first provisions wagon tipped onto its side, blocking the live-cage wagon behind it. The guards raised their crossbows and fired, but the bolts left only shallow cuts on the Blue Rock Panther's shoulders and back.

The gray-robed man did not panic. He took another short whistle from his belt and blew three short notes and one long one instead of a sustained note.

The Blue Rock Panther's movements suddenly faltered for a moment.

It was not obeying. The old iron ring beneath its neck had jolted violently. There seemed to be a thin strip hidden inside the ring. When a particular whistle sounded, it produced an even shriller resonance beside the panther's ears. It shook its head instinctively, veering aside in its lunge and crashing into the provisions wagon instead of the gray-robed man.

Helian Yuan saw it clearly from the heights.

The old iron ring was not merely a numbering tool.

It could also work with the iron whistle to affect demonic beasts that had been captured before.

The gray-robed man seized that moment and ordered his men to scatter two-pronged medicinal powder in the panther's face. The Blue Rock Panther smelled the powder and slowed again, and the guards took the opportunity to pull the live-cage wagon clear. The whole operation was too practiced for this to be their first encounter with it.

They had long known the panther had worn a ring, and they knew how to exploit the response left by the old ring.

Helian Yuan had only intended to use the panther to disrupt the transport, but now his objective had changed.

He wanted to get his hands on the short whistle the gray-robed man was holding.

Enraged by the medicinal powder, the Blue Rock Panther began charging about indiscriminately. The live-cage wagon had just turned into a narrow gully when the panther snapped the shafts of the second provisions wagon with a swipe. The gray-robed man retreated to a tall rock, with only one personal guard left at his side.

Helian Yuan slid down the steep slope, then looped a hemp rope around a dead tree and used it to swing behind the rock for the final stretch. The personal guard heard pebbles rolling first and drew his saber as he turned.

The short spear knocked the saber blade aside from the flank.

Helian Yuan did not meet force with force. He used the momentum of the guard's saber swing to retreat half a step, then swept the butt of his spear into the back of the man's knee. The guard dropped to one knee, and the gray-robed man had already drawn a short sword.

For the first time, the two men were close enough to see each other's faces clearly.

The gray-robed man was not old, yet two deep lines marked the corners of his eyes. He saw that Helian Yuan was a little slower to exert force with his right shoulder, and he saw the Tiger Shadow on the ground drawing closer to his arm.

"You have the blank tag," he said.

Helian Yuan did not answer. He thrust his short spear straight at the left hand holding the whistle.

The gray-robed man parried with his sword, but instead of retreating, he raised the short whistle to his lips. Helian Yuan had anticipated this and flung a handful of fine dust from his sleeve. It was not medicine, but powdered mud dried by the stream. The gray-robed man shut his eyes and turned his head away, unable to blow the whistle.

Helian Yuan's spear tip struck his wrist bone.

The short whistle fell to the ground.

The personal guard was already lunging in from the side. Helian Yuan had no time to bend down and pick it up, so he kicked the short whistle into the grass beside the gully. The guard's saber pinned down the short spear, and the strength of a third-level warrior immediately bent the shaft into an arc. The impact sent a numbing jolt through the old injury in Helian Yuan's right arm. He could only release the spear and roll away along the ground.

At that moment, the Blue Rock Panther smashed through the provisions wagon.

Planks, dried meat, and medicine barrels went flying at once. The gray-robed man had no time to pursue Helian Yuan and retreated immediately. He knew very well that once the fourth-level demonic beast was no longer suppressed by the medicinal powder, it would attack the nearest moving target first.

Helian Yuan did not go back for his spear. He plunged into the grass, found the short whistle by touch, and retreated along the rocky gully he had chosen in advance. Shouts from the guards and panther roars sounded behind him. It was as though a giant hand were turning over the eastern side of Sunken Bone Slope again and again.

Only after nightfall did he stop in a dry cave.

The short whistle was only two fingers long, made of black iron, with four holes in its body. Nothing about its exterior looked unusual, but an extremely thin strip of blue-green metal was set inside. Helian Yuan touched it lightly with the tip of his knife, and the metal strip gave off an almost inaudible tremor.

He took out the old iron ring he had found in the badger's den.

There was a thin line of the same color inside the ring.

The two objects had been made using the same technique.

What concerned Helian Yuan even more was the wear along the short whistle's edges. There were two sets of teeth marks on the mouthpiece, worn to different depths, showing that more than one person had used it for a long time. There were also old pry marks on the edge of the blue-green strip; it had been replaced at least several times. The tool would be passed on to the next group of retrievers, while the iron ring remained on the beast. People could be rotated out, but the fear stayed behind and kept working.

For the first time, he felt a more specific disgust at the word "retrieval." It was not killing prey, but making a living creature learn to abandon its own judgment through the same sounds repeated again and again.

Helian Yuan held the short whistle close to the iron ring and gently blew a short note. The ring showed no obvious vibration, but his fingers could feel a fine, prickling numbness. If the ring were around a demonic beast's neck, the sound would travel directly along the bone into its ears.

This was not taming.

It was turning fear into a switch that could be pressed over and over.

The sound of claws scraping against stone suddenly came from outside the cave.

Helian Yuan gripped his hunting knife and moved close to the cave entrance. The Blue Rock Panther had not followed him here. The sound came from a mountain fox startled by the whistle. It stood in the distance, body lowered, too afraid either to approach or to turn and flee.

Helian Yuan looked at the whistle in his hand and did not blow it again.

The gray-robed man had lost a tool.

Helian Yuan did not treat it as his own new weapon, either. An iron whistle that could make a demonic beast falter in battle might seem useful, but it depended on the beast having been tortured with an iron ring and drugs before. Each use meant pressing down on the wounds left by the Retrieval Society. He could exploit the mechanism to escape with his life, but he was unwilling to make such a thing part of his everyday hunting techniques.

He wrote that down on an insert in the secret manual as well: it can be broken, but not relied upon.

But from this moment on, he too would know that the person who stole the whistle had understood the old iron ring.