The Iron Whistle

Helian Yuan did not keep testing the whistle on live beasts.

The mountain fox had frozen outside the cave for a moment before fleeing. That was enough to prove that the iron whistle itself could not control demonic beasts; it could only awaken some memory of pain reinforced by the drug and the iron collar. Blowing it a few more times would yield no more answers, only torment unrelated beasts.

He turned to testing the objects instead.

To eliminate interference from scents, Helian Yuan first rinsed everything separately in stream water, then left the objects to dry at different breezy spots. The white powder sank when it met the water, but the hemp-grass oil remained stuck in the gaps of the iron collar. He scraped them with the heated back of a small knife, drawing out a layer of dark brown medicinal grease. The grease had not been applied all at once, but repeatedly replenished over a long period of wear.

That meant the iron whistle was only half of it. The other half stayed against the demonic beast's flesh. Even if the whistle was taken away, a beast that had been controlled by a collar would instinctively pause at a similar shrill sound.

Helian Yuan tested the green sliver both outside and inside the old iron collar. When it was outside the collar, the vibration was weak. Once embedded in the inner groove, almost all the vibration traveled inward. The retrieval team did not need people at a distance to hear it; they only needed the collared beast to hear it more clearly than anyone else. The quieter the sound, the harder it was for others to discover why the beast had suddenly stopped.

The old iron collar, retrieval nail, blank wooden tag, gray thread, and iron whistle were laid out in a row on a rock. Helian Yuan first scraped open the inner side of the collar with his hunting knife. The thin green line was not paint, but a sliver of metal embedded in a groove in the iron. The ring-shaped mark on the tail of the retrieval nail also retained the same green fragments.

These things had originally formed a complete set.

The iron collar went around the beast's neck, the nail secured a cage door or binding strap, the gray thread sealed it, the blank tag waited for a name, and the iron whistle made the living creature pause if it struggled or escaped.

The organization had not come to Sunken Bone Slope to find beasts on the spur of the moment.

They were repeating a retrieval procedure they had already used many times.

Helian Yuan dismantled the iron whistle. Once the green sliver was removed, the whistle's sound became low and raspy, no longer able to provoke Tiger Shadow's instinctive aversion. He then put the sliver into a length of hollow bamboo. The sound it produced was even softer than before, yet the old iron collar still vibrated faintly.

The sliver was what actually worked, not the whistle's shape.

He wrapped the sliver in oilcloth rather than destroy it. Knowing how the tool worked was more useful than simply breaking it.

The next question was why Tiger Shadow also reacted to the whistle.

Helian Yuan had never worn an iron collar or come into contact with the green metal. His reaction came either from the demonic beast senses Old Mo had left behind, or from the tiger-stripe bloodline's instinctive rejection of a sound meant to target tigers.

He could not find the answer by guessing.

He found a narrow mountain crevice outside the stone cave. First, he hung the iron whistle without the sliver at the entrance, then placed the green sliver deep inside the crevice. He closed his eyes and slowly summoned Tiger Shadow.

A black shadow rose from beneath his feet and remained behind him.

In the first breath, the wind in the crevice came from the left.

In the second, Tiger Shadow sensed the hollow of the whistle tube at the entrance.

In the third, the skin of his right arm tightened, as though an invisible layer were spreading upward along his bones.

Helian Yuan did not expand Tiger Shadow any further, focusing his attention on his right hand alone. He raised his short spear and thrust between two rocks. Nothing happened as the spear tip passed the whistle tube at the entrance, but the moment it neared the green sliver, Tiger Shadow tightened forward ahead of it.

The hazy outline of a tiger's claw emerged along the outside of his right arm.

It did not follow the spear's momentum forward like Shadow Follows the Spear, nor did it stand behind him in the complete shape of a tiger. The black shadow clung to his forearm and shoulder, as though wrapping his bones in an extra layer of thicker, heavier muscle and sinew.

The spear tip struck the stone wall.

A blow that should only have left a white mark actually knocked a fist-sized piece of stone loose from the edge.

Helian Yuan immediately withdrew his strength.

Tiger Shadow had clung to him for less than a breath, yet his right arm went numb from shoulder to fingertips. His old injury felt as though it had been struck from within by a heavy hammer, and his five fingers could not close tightly for a short while. The short spear slipped from his hand and fell, striking the rock.

He sat down against the wall. He did not let excitement over the result drive him to try again.

Partial Shadow Attachment was more direct than Shadow Follows the Spear, but also more dangerous. Shadow Follows the Spear let Tiger Shadow amplify a single movement along the weapon, with the force still passing through the spear shaft. Partial Shadow Attachment made the right arm itself bear the enhancement, and the old injury would pay the price first.

But it had one advantage the former did not.

In a narrow space, with his weapon pinned down, or even when unarmed, Helian Yuan could still use it once.

He waited until the numbness faded before examining the stone wall. The break where the fragment had come loose was uneven, showing that the increase in force was limited. He could not treat it as a burst of battle Qi. What had truly changed was how completely the force was applied: shoulder, elbow, and wrist had been pulled into alignment by Tiger Shadow in the same instant, eliminating the half-beat of delay that the old injury would normally have caused.

It was not his arm that had become faster.

The force simply no longer leaked away between his joints.

Helian Yuan recorded the discovery in a blank space in the secret manual, writing only: "Shadow covers right arm, one strike."

He did not write it down as the name of a new move.

For now, it did not deserve to be called a move. It was merely a way of using it that might cripple his own arm first.

After resting for half an hour, Helian Yuan conducted another test without a weapon. He pressed his right palm against a flat stone and let Tiger Shadow cover only his shoulder and elbow, leaving his wrist uncovered. The force dispersed quickly by the time it reached the heel of his palm. The stone did not move, but his right shoulder still grew hot. Then he switched to covering only his elbow and wrist and used his finger to push a small stone. The movement was faster, but it had almost no force behind it.

This showed that shadow coverage was not a matter of arbitrarily choosing one part of the body to strengthen. Shoulder, elbow, and wrist had to form a complete path; if any one was missing, all that remained was the burden. Nor could it replace an injured part. If an old injury were completely severed, Tiger Shadow would only send the wrong movement out faster.

Helian Yuan immersed his right arm in the cold stream and waited for the dark bruising to fade. He set limits for himself: until he recovered, at most three uses a day, each completing only one clearly defined movement; if the numbness in his fingertips lasted more than ten breaths, he would stop for the day. Without that restriction, what he called control would soon become another form of recklessness.

In the afternoon, the gray-robed man's search party passed by in the distance. They no longer blew the long whistle they had used before, relying instead on ordinary bronze bells to warn one another. After the iron whistle was stolen, the other side had immediately stopped using a tool that might expose how it worked.

Helian Yuan changed his plan as well.

He had originally intended to keep following the live cage into the mountain's inner entrance, but now he set his sights on the old collar around the Blue Rock Panther's neck. As long as he could get a clear look at the iron collar's structure without killing the panther, he could learn where Partial Shadow Attachment's reaction to the collar's resonance came from.

But a level-four Blue Rock Panther would not stand still and let someone remove its collar.

The gray-robed man, however, was very likely to do that part for him.

Helian Yuan hid the dismantled, low-voiced whistle tube elsewhere and kept the green sliver close to his body. If both were taken together, the other side could immediately restore the tool; kept apart, they would at least have to be matched up again. Handling evidence was like securing a retreat: he could not leave all the risk tied to a single object just because he already understood it.

Toward evening, a continuous clatter of wooden wheels came from the east. It was not a transport cart; the sounds were lighter and more closely spaced. Helian Yuan climbed onto the back of a rock and saw that the retrieval team had brought two folding chain nets. Identical green metal slivers hung from their edges. Four guards carried drug canisters, while a stranger led a level-three Throat-Locking Wind Wolf.

The Wind Wolf also wore an iron collar around its neck.

It did not struggle, only lowering its head and walking forward when the bronze bell rang.

The gray-robed man no longer intended to rely on the Blue Rock Panther to guard the boundary.

He was going to put this level-four demonic beast that had worn a collar back into a live cage.