Old Iron Chain

In the third two-hour period after the level-three Ironmane Bear died, the first creatures drawn by the scent of blood arrived in the forest.

Two level-one Rotfang Badgers emerged from downwind and circled the bear's carcass, afraid to approach the fire Helian Yuan had lit. Farther away came the beating of wings, probably from carrion eagles.

Helian Yuan had to finish dealing with the bear's hide and Magic Crystal Core before dark, or the level-three magical beast would draw half the mountain's troubles to him.

He first skinned the most valuable hide from its armored back, then removed its gallbladder. The wound on his right arm reopened every time he pulled at the hide, and blood quickly soaked through the linen bandage. Helian Yuan planted his short spear in a tree root and looped a rope around the shaft as a pulley, using his waist and back to pull instead.

It was slower than tugging by force, but it wouldn't ruin his right hand before he was done.

The two Rotfang Badgers finally edged closer. Helian Yuan cut off a piece of bloody offal and threw it to the other side of the stream valley. They immediately chased after it and began tearing at each other over the meat.

He didn't take the chance to kill them.

A level-one Magic Crystal Core wouldn't fetch more than a few copper coins, while the fight would cost him time and medicine. A battle he could avoid wasn't worth adding a useless line to his hunting scars.

By dusk, the bear hide, gallbladder, and Magic Crystal Core were all wrapped up. He couldn't carry away the large pieces of meat left over, so he raised them off the ground on branches and sprinkled bitter-grass juice around them. Every extra night they could be kept was a gain.

Only after that did he take the length of iron chain from his pack.

The mud had been washed off the chain, revealing a dull, oily sheen on the black iron. Scrap iron left in the wild would rust through from the outside in within a few years, yet this piece was badly rusted only at the break. The remaining links were still sturdy.

Someone had oiled it regularly over a long period.

Helian Yuan dipped some bear fur in water and wiped the inside of the links. The bright spots were uneven. The three links closest to the character "seven" were the most worn, as though they had endured years of pulling. The force had always come from one side, which meant whatever had been chained up hadn't hung motionless, but had struggled repeatedly.

He fitted one end of the chain into the rotten wooden wedge in the bear's den.

It fit perfectly.

The bear hadn't dragged the wedge there. Someone had carved it into a four-sided shape and coated its tip with moisture-proofing oil. It should originally have been driven into a crack in the rock or a wooden frame. Only after the iron chain broke had the bear's den swallowed up this abandoned installation.

In other words, this place hadn't always been a bear's den.

At least, not just a bear's den.

Helian Yuan held up his torch and looked deeper into the den. No intact iron bars remained on the stone wall, only a few square holes that had been chiseled flat, spaced almost evenly apart. He measured them with his hand. Each hole was a little wider than his fist, as though it had once held a thick wooden or iron bar.

The blue-black markings on his right arm grew slightly warm.

The memory of the metal cage didn't appear in full. Only an iron bar beneath a black tiger's forepaw flashed before his eyes. The image was too brief to prove anything.

Helian Yuan didn't treat his guess as an answer.

He simply cut a narrow strip from the edge of the bear hide, bound the chain tightly, and sewed it into the lining of his pack. The chain was too heavy and would clink as he walked, so he stuffed in a handful of dry moss to keep the links apart.

That night, he didn't sleep in the bear's den.

The smell of blood had already spread, and bigger things would come after the Rotfang Badgers. He withdrew to a narrow rock crevice upstream, built only a small smokeless fire, and lay on the bear hide to keep out the damp.

In the latter half of the night, several low growls came from farther down the mountain.

Helian Yuan woke with his spear in hand and saw a level-two Bonetail Wolf tearing meat from the bear's carcass. It didn't find him, and after eating its fill, it dragged away one of the bear's paws.

Only after the wolf had gone far away did Helian Yuan close his eyes again.

No black tiger pounced on him in his dream.

He stood on a narrow path, with someone dragging an iron chain ahead of him. Each time the chain rattled, a wooden sign swayed past beside the path. Numbers were written on all the signs, but he couldn't make out a single one.

The last sign stopped in front of him.

Seven.

When Helian Yuan woke, his hand was pressed against the lining of his pack.

It was still dark. The chain was cold, with nothing unusual about it. The markings on his right arm had also settled down.

He undid the bandage and examined the wound, confirming that he had only strained it and that it wasn't infected. Then he wrapped the Magic Crystal Core and bear gallbladder separately. The hide was too large to carry along the narrow paths of Blackwater Ravine, so he could only return to Greystone Town first, exchange it for resources, and then come back to follow this lead.

Before leaving, he unwrapped the bear hide for another inspection. His short spear had made a shallow cut in the middle of the armored back, and the edges were already smeared with mud. If he brought it into Greystone Town like this, a buyer would see from the position of the wound that he hadn't killed the bear with a bow and would also ask how a spear had pierced a level-three magical beast.

Helian Yuan rubbed bear fat over the cut, then folded the toughest layer inward. It would look a little less appealing for sale, but it would conceal the unusually clean cut left by Tiger Shadow Covers the Spear. He didn't put the Magic Crystal Core in the same bag as the gallbladder, either. He stuffed the core among his dried meat and hung the gallbladder on the outside. If he ran into bandits or someone questioning him on the road, the gallbladder would be the only thing he handed over first.

When the things found in the mountains were valuable, people were often more trouble than magical beasts.

On the way down the mountain, he stopped twice at a shallow stretch of water. The first time, he washed the black mud off his boot soles. The second, he led the footprints from the direction of the bear's den into the water. The old iron chain weighed down the lining of his pack, tugging slightly to the right with each step. Helian Yuan adjusted the straps to shift the weight onto his left shoulder. His right arm couldn't withstand a chain rubbing back and forth against it anymore.

On the first day of the return journey, he avoided the route hunters usually took along the mountainside and instead made a wide detour around a rocky slope. The bear hide would leave a scent, and his injured right arm kept him from running for long. If someone pursued him from behind, they only had to force him onto level ground to see what he was capable of.

That afternoon, beside a fallen tree, he found a mushroom cap that had just been trampled and broken. The break was still wet, yet there was no animal fur nearby. Helian Yuan hung the bear gallbladder somewhere more conspicuous and deliberately left a string of heavy footprints at the edge of the forest, then doubled back up the rocky slope to higher ground. He waited a quarter of an hour, but no one followed below.

Not seeing a tracker didn't mean there wasn't one. At least, the other party wasn't in a hurry to show themselves.

Toward evening, he passed through a stand of low trees and noticed two branches that someone had cut with matching slanted notches. They were markers hunters commonly used to find their way, but they were newer than when he had gone up the mountain. Someone had entered the stream valley on the day he had been dealing with the bear's carcass.

Helian Yuan didn't follow the markers to look for them. He cut the nearest slanted notch to point in the opposite direction, then took a roundabout route away. If the newcomer was just an ordinary hunter, they would only have to walk a little farther; if they had come for the Ironmane Bear or the iron chain, they would first be led to an empty valley.

He didn't feel he had gained an advantage because of it. Anyone who could find this place within a day was faster than he had imagined.

Circling back would take another two hours and bring him past the place where the smell of blood was strongest again. But if he didn't check the square holes and the wooden wedge, he could only rely on memory to guess at any changes afterward. Helian Yuan would rather delay his descent until night than let a clue he could verify become a vague impression.

Before leaving, Helian Yuan returned to the bear's den.

The Rotfang Badgers and the Bonetail Wolf had already dragged the remaining meat all over the ground. He made a tiny knife mark beside each of several square holes in the den wall, then put the wooden wedge back in the pile of bones as it had been.

If someone returned soon, he would be able to tell whether anything had been disturbed.

If no one returned, the knife marks would remain.

Helian Yuan shouldered the bear hide and descended the mountain along the stream valley. After two li, he heard the faintest metallic clink from inside his pack.

He stopped and packed the dry moss in tightly again.

The sound had come only once, but it was identical to the iron chain dragged along the narrow path in his dream.

This time, he didn't tell himself it was only a dream.