Broken Chain

The retrieval team first poisoned the water.

Two black-armored men emptied medicine pouches into the stream upstream, and pale gray powder spread with the current. The cub smelled it and immediately shrank deeper beneath the roots. It already knew what the medicine meant.

A third man spread out a narrow net, while a fourth stood behind them holding a thin ledger. There were blank spaces on its pages, and his brush had already been dipped in ink.

"Name to be added upon live return," Kelin read the words on the side of the blank tag under his breath.

The man with the ledger was waiting to fill in that entry.

Helian Yuan could have seized the ledger first. With the complete records, he might have learned what had previously occupied the empty slot numbered seven, where the cub came from, and how the retrieval organization classified it. The ledger was easier to carry than an injured cub and more likely to advance the numbering lead directly.

But the narrow net was already tightening around the roots.

The cub's hind leg was chained, and it could not escape from under the fallen tree.

Helian Yuan pointed his spear at the net anchor. "Break the chain first."

Kelin glanced at him but did not ask which chain. He tucked the waterproof bag inside his clothes and turned to find the lock on the cub's leg chain.

Leien advanced behind his shield, blocking the first volley of crossbow bolts. Ailina did not stay in the rear. She kept close to the shield's right side and cut toward the stream. Her target was the medicine pouches upstream. As long as the water contained numbing powder, the cub would not get far even if freed.

The black-armored leader recognized Helian Yuan. "The one from the perimeter."

"He has both the tube and the tag," said the man with the ledger. "The cub first, the man second."

The order clearly ranked their value.

Instead, it gave Helian Yuan an opening. Two retrievers went around him to pin down the fallen tree, leaving only the leader to block him head-on. The man was at least a fourth-level warrior, armed with a short blade and chain, a combination designed to counter long weapons.

The first lash of the chain wrapped around the front of the new spear.

The iron sleeve Ailina had made immediately creaked under the strain. Rather than pull against his opponent, Helian Yuan unscrewed the two sections of the shaft at the sleeve. The chain dragged away the front half, while the back half became a short spear, well suited to close combat among the fallen timber.

The black-armored leader clearly had not expected the spear to come apart. He was a fraction too slow to block with his short blade. Helian Yuan struck the side of his wrist with the spear butt, but instead of pressing the attack, he turned and stabbed at the narrow net's ground anchor.

"Don't let him touch the anchor!"

Another black-armored man turned back.

Leien swung his shield across, blocking a blade strike for Helian Yuan. The impact drove him back two steps, his heels sinking into the wet mud, but he held his position. "I can only block three strikes!"

"Enough."

Helian Yuan did not say what would happen on the fourth. He thrust the short spear into the ground anchor's ring and used his full weight to lever it sideways. Without Shadow Cover, the anchor barely shifted.

Under the fallen tree, Kelin had already found the cub's leg chain. Its lock was no ordinary clasp, but two nested rings, one of green iron and one of thin copper. The cub kept struggling in pain, and every time Kelin reached out, he risked being bitten.

"I need it to hold still!" he shouted.

Ailina had just cut open the medicine pouches upstream. Hearing him, she did not go back to hold the cub down. She threw a piece of thick hide from her tool case, and it landed at Helian Yuan's feet. "Cover its eyes, don't press on its neck!"

Kelin picked up the hide and covered the cub's eyes. The darkness slowed it for a moment, and he immediately inserted a fine needle into the copper ring's keyhole.

The retrievers had already climbed onto the fallen tree.

Helian Yuan gave up on prying out the net anchor and turned his short spear toward the man's feet. The point pierced his boot but only wounded the top of his foot. The black-armored man roared and stepped on the shaft, while another swung a chain hook from the side.

Helian Yuan's right arm had not yet recovered, and he could not take the blow head-on. He let go of the spear and retreated. The hook swept across his chest, tearing open his outer garment. The Tiger Shadow stirred restlessly beneath his feet, nearly clinging to his right arm of its own accord.

He forced it down.

Using Shadow Cover again after Chapter 45 could cripple his right arm on the spot. What truly needed strength now was not his fight to the death with the men, but the lock on the cub's leg.

"Ailina!"

She already understood. After dealing with the medicine pouches, she rushed back along the stream to the fallen tree, opening her tool case as she slid. Hammer, pliers, and short chisel scattered into the mud, but she grabbed only the smallest pair of wedge pliers.

"Kelin, pull out the needle."

"The copper ring is only halfway open."

"Pull it out."

Kelin did as she said at once, without arguing over whose method was better. Ailina wedged the pliers between the green iron and the copper ring and struck three times in succession with the back of the hammer. The first blow found the gap, the second widened it, but the third never fell.

She held out the hammer to Helian Yuan.

"Your shadow, just for this one blow."

She had seen it.

From crossing the bridge at the broken cliff, to the Windclaw Lynx, and then the cub in the valley, Ailina had never pressed him with questions. Now, however, she placed the choice and its cost before him.

Helian Yuan took the hammer. "My right arm will temporarily lose its strength."

"As long as you're clear about it."

He knelt beside the cub and gripped the hammer in his right hand. The Tiger Shadow did not fully rise, clinging only to his shoulder and arm for half a breath. The hammerhead struck the end of the wedge pliers.

The green iron lock cracked sharply.

The copper ring was forced open, and the cub's leg chain fell to the ground.

At the same time, Leien's shield took a fourth impact, and its edge split. The black-armored leader kicked him off his feet, while the man with the ledger had already retreated across the stream and begun stuffing the thin ledger into a brazier.

Kelin looked toward the ledger.

Helian Yuan saw it too.

If he chased after it now, he might still snatch half of it back. If he stayed, he could take the cub and retreat behind the fallen tree.

The cub had just been freed, but the numbing powder and its wounds left it unable to stand steadily. It could not escape on its own.

Helian Yuan could not lift it with his weakened right arm, so he could only hold it around the chest and belly with his left. The cub instinctively opened its mouth, its teeth stopping beside his wrist, but in the end it did not bite.

"Go," he said.

Kelin looked away and picked up the broken chain and a small piece of the lock casing. Ailina helped Leien up, and the four retreated downstream through Mist Valley.

The man with the ledger lit the brazier.

The edges of the thin ledger quickly curled and blackened. Helian Yuan did not turn back to snatch it.

The black-armored leader pursued them for more than ten paces, only to be startled to a halt by a sudden low growl from the cub. The sound was not loud, but the Tiger Shadow raised its head beneath Helian Yuan's feet at the same moment. The presences of two tigers briefly overlapped, and all the scent beasts in Mist Valley flattened themselves to the ground.

The retrievers also stopped for a moment.

The black-armored leader quickly recovered and ordered everyone not to look at the shadow, but only at Helian Yuan's footsteps. The command proved that they had not recognized the Tiger-Stripe Bloodline either, and had taken the anomaly for some kind of tiger legacy or trick of the eye. Helian Yuan did not try to intimidate them a second time just because it had worked briefly. He immediately withdrew the Tiger Shadow, leaving the confusion to a fleeting moment that could not be verified.

It was not that they had recognized a Tiger-Striped Warrior, but that they could not tell how many tiger targets were in front of them.

That brief confusion was enough for the four to enter a rocky crevice downstream.

By the time their pursuers regrouped, Ailina had washed the remaining horseradish powder into the stream, its pungent smell masking the blood and numbing grass. Kelin tied the blank wooden tag to another piece of broken timber, letting the current carry it in the opposite direction.

The four kept retreating until nightfall before stopping.

Leien's shield was cracked, Ailina had lost most of her tools, Kelin had failed to obtain the complete ledger, and Helian Yuan's right arm had lost its strength again. All they had gained in return was the cub, a length of chain, and a piece of broken lock casing.

The cub lay beside the fire, refusing to eat meat and only licking its chafed-raw hind leg.

Kelin placed the broken chain beside the route map. "By the numbers, we came out behind."

Leien leaned against a tree, catching his breath. "We're still alive. Don't tally up the final account yet."

Ailina looked at Helian Yuan. "You had a chance to chase the ledger."

"Mm."

"Do you regret it?"

Helian Yuan looked at the empty place beneath the cub's neck.

"The ledger would tell others what it's called."

"What about the cub itself?"

"I haven't asked yet."

The cub raised its head, the fire reflected in its dark golden eyes.

The retrieval organization had lost a target waiting to have its name added.

What Helian Yuan gained should not be merely a new answer to the numbering question, either.