Cave-In

The air in the tomb passage was damp and cold, thick with the musty smell of a thousand years' accumulated dust. It made his throat tighten.

Ning Buhui crouched at the end of the passage, his gloved fingers gently brushing loose dirt from a pottery shard. His flashlight beam moved slowly across its surface, revealing a faint band of cloud-and-thunder patterns. He narrowed his eyes and leaned closer, his heart skipping two beats-the style of the pattern belonged to no known chronological classification.

"Professor, come take a look at this."

Hurried footsteps sounded behind him. His adviser, Chen Shouzheng, an elderly professor of archaeology, came over with one hand against the stone wall. His knees clicked as he crouched. Chen Shouzheng took the magnifying glass and looked for more than ten seconds in silence. Then his breathing suddenly grew heavy. "...Turn up the light."

Ning Buhui brightened his headlamp. The entire wall of the passage emerged inch by inch in the light: densely packed reliefs carved with twisting, entwined plant patterns, interspersed with circular designs that resembled both wheels and lotus flowers. Chen Shouzheng's hand trembled. "This is... a tomb structure that's never been seen before. Xiao Ning, there may be another space behind this wall."

No sooner had he spoken than a muffled thud sounded overhead.

A sound like bones breaking spread up from deep within the rock. Ning Buhui instinctively looked up and saw a hairline crack appear in the rock above. It widened rapidly in the light, and tiny chips of stone pattered down, striking his helmet with sharp taps.

"Run!" Chen Shouzheng roared.

Ning Buhui grabbed his adviser's arm and pulled him back. Sheets of broken stone began raining down, and dust burst through the passage, swallowing the flashlight beam. Only the headlamp cut a narrow field of vision through the gray-white haze. He saw a boulder half the height of a man break away from the ceiling and crash toward Chen Shouzheng's back with a whistle through the air.

He had no time to think. His muscles moved faster than his mind, and he twisted sharply, shoving Chen Shouzheng toward a hollow in the passage wall. The instant his adviser crashed into the crevice, Ning Buhui felt an irresistible force strike his back.

Pain. First numbness, then pain. His breastbone seemed to be crushed inward against his lungs, and the blow slammed him face-first to the ground. White spots exploded before his eyes. Broken stones fell on his back and legs like hail, and amid the roar, the world gradually grew quiet.

The last thing he saw was something sticking out from beneath the boulder on his chest-a spire.

A spire mottled black and white, with two fish-shaped patterns linked head to tail, swimming slowly across it as if they had been alive for a long time.

Ning Buhui wanted to laugh. There really was something in the tomb. Too bad... he couldn't bring it back.

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, everything was a blinding white.

He saw light leaking through the roof. The wooden beams were blackened by smoke and soot, and thatch poked through the gaps, rustling whenever the wind blew. At the edge of his vision was a sallow face, slick with sweat, its lips cracked and its eye sockets sunken. But its eyes were fixed on him, filled with something besides terror... something soft.

It took Ning Buhui several seconds to realize it was a human face. It belonged to his mother now. He was being held in the arms of this woman, who was so thin she was scarcely recognizable. He was naked, his skin sticky, and cold wind poured through the gaps in the walls, making him shiver.

He opened his mouth to speak, but an infant's cry came out of his throat.

Fuck.

He had transmigrated, and as a newborn, at that. A tomb of unknown age, a black-and-white pagoda, a boulder crushing him, and then he had become a baby. He turned it over in his head and quickly accepted the fact. In his last life, he had done archaeology until he buried himself in a tomb. In this life, he had started out in a dilapidated house with a drafty roof-the feng shui hadn't changed. Both were lousy starts.

But the woman holding him smiled. She wrapped him in a piece of old cotton cloth washed pale, her voice as raspy as sandpaper scraping wood. "Don't cry, don't cry. Mama's here."

Footsteps sounded outside. A similarly gaunt man lifted the curtain and came in, the chill still clinging to his shoulders, half a coarse flatbread clutched in his hand. He leaned over to look at Ning Buhui, touched his face with rough fingers, and said quietly, "A boy?"

"A boy," the woman said. "Give him a name."

The man thought for a moment. "Life isn't easy for our branch, and I'm afraid it'll only get harder. I don't ask for him to be rich or distinguished. I only hope that whatever path he takes, he won't look back or have regrets. Let's call him... Buhui. Ning Buhui."

Ning Buhui lay in his mother's arms, listening to that familiar name land on him. His final thought was: The Ning Buhui of my last life just buried himself in a tomb. Having the same name in this life doesn't seem like a much better omen.

But he didn't cry.

He simply lay with his eyes open, gazing at the thatched roof leaking light overhead, and drew a fresh line in his heart between his past life and this one.

The past was behind him, and the days ahead were long.

His father, Ning Yuanshan, was one of the few Soul Elders in their branch of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect. Although he was only level thirty-something, he was a pillar of support for such a peripheral branch. Every day he left early and returned late, hunting low-level Soul Beasts in the nearby mountains and forests and selling their materials for money. Occasionally, he brought back a bone with meat on it to make Ning Buhui soup. His mother, Lady Lin, was an ordinary person without Soul Power, but she was deft with her hands. She took old clothes apart and made them smaller, and even with patch upon patch, she could make them look neat.

Ning Buhui learned to walk at two and learned not to cry at three. The other children in the branch family's compound sometimes got together to play in the mud. He watched from the side but never went near them. It wasn't that he didn't want to; he had no right. His mother had told him, "In outsiders' eyes, our branch is 'a side branch of a side branch.' Don't cause trouble or draw attention. Just grow up safe and sound."

Ning Buhui understood. With an adult at his core, of course he knew what it meant to survive on the fringes. So he was well-behaved, quiet, and caused no trouble. Every day, he sat on the doorstep in the sun, watching his father leave early and return late, waiting for his mother to bring him a bowl of porridge from the stove, so thin he could see his reflection in it.

He thought those days could go on for a few more years.

In the autumn of his fourth year, disaster came without warning.

His father came home unusually late that night. Ning Buhui was waiting at the window, and when his father pushed open the gate and entered the courtyard, his face was ashen and he was clutching a roll of parchment. His mother went to meet him and asked him something in a low voice. His father shook his head and said only, "The main branch wants to take my Soul Tool blueprints. They say I secretly kept the sect's secret techniques and have given me three days to turn them over."

His mother's hand trembled.

His father tucked the blueprints under Ning Buhui's pillow, then crouched and stroked his head. "Buhui, I'll be back tomorrow. I'll bring you some of the new sugar paintings from town."

Ning Buhui looked into his father's eyes-there was a darkness in them he had never seen before. He wanted to warn him, but what could a four-year-old's voice say? He could only murmur an agreement and watch his father turn and leave the house, the night wind lifting the hem of his clothes.

That was the last time he saw his father.

Late the next night, heavy footsteps sounded outside the door. His mother yanked him out of bed and shoved him underneath it, covering him with several old garments. In a hushed voice, she said, "Don't make a sound. Don't come out."

Then he heard the door kicked open. The tremendous crash of a table overturning and bowls breaking, his mother's scream, a strange man's harsh interrogation-"Where did Ning Yuanshan hide it? Your man has already confessed. Do you want to go in with him?" His mother's cries mingled with her pleas for mercy, followed by muffled blows.

Ning Buhui covered his mouth and huddled motionless in the dark, tears running between his fingers.

After a long time, the world fell silent. A hand so thin it was all knuckles reached under the bed, seized his collar, and pulled him out. His mother's face was covered in blood, her left eye swollen shut, but her right hand gripped his arm tightly and pushed him toward the window. "...Run. Don't look back. Stay alive."

He was pushed out the back window. His four-year-old body fell into the mud behind the house, scraping his knee until it bled. He paid no heed to the pain, scrambling up and running into the night. His bare feet struck the gravel road, cold wind rushed into his thin underclothes, and behind him, he faintly heard his mother's final muffled groan.

He didn't look back. He just kept running. He ran until dawn, until his feet were a bloody mess, until an auntie on an ox cart stopped him.

The auntie recognized his face. With a sigh, she pulled him into the cart. The ox cart trundled along for three days and three nights, taking him to a place he had never heard of-Bluestone Town.

Bluestone Town lay in the continent's northwest corner, as remote as a patch forgotten by the world.

The remnants of the banished branch had barely managed to settle there, more than thirty people crammed into a few abandoned earthen houses. No one had the heart to look after a four-year-old orphan. Ning Buhui was shoved into the farthest corner of a communal sleeping platform and given half a bowl of cold porridge each day. If he occasionally found a few grains of rice in it, he counted himself lucky.

His clansmen were uniformly cold toward him. It wasn't hatred or bullying, just pure indifference-as though he were an old piece of furniture no one wanted to deal with. Someone would occasionally glance at him, their eyes bearing the label "your father is a sinner," before turning away to attend to their own business.

Ning Buhui neither cried nor made a fuss. Every morning, he got up early to draw water from the well and help in the kitchen. When his work was done, he huddled in the sun at the foot of a wall to conserve his strength. He knew what it meant for a four-year-old to have no one looking after him-living to see tomorrow was a victory.

Two years passed like that.

In the autumn of his sixth year, the morning mist in Bluestone Town was so thick it wouldn't disperse. Ning Buhui crouched on the well platform, rubbing his frozen fingers, when he heard the auntie next door chatting with someone. "...I heard the children in the main branch all awaken their Martial Souls at six. Some have Innate Full Soul Power and get taken straight to the main branch, with quite a grand reception."

His heart suddenly stirred.

Awakening. Children on Douluo Continent awakened their Martial Souls at six. He had read Douluo Continent seven or eight times over in his previous life, so of course he knew the rule. But no one had told him when the awakening would take place. No one in Bluestone Town mentioned it or cared, much less would anyone come to awaken his Martial Soul. Here he was "the child of a sinner," an unwanted extra. As long as he didn't starve to death, no one remembered him.

He jumped down from the well platform, went to the only earthen house at the town entrance with a chimney, and knocked on the door. The man who answered was Ning Laosan, a distant cousin of his father's, a man in his forties whose trips into the city to sell furs were Bluestone Town's only connection to the outside world.

"Uncle, are you going into the city?" Ning Buhui asked, looking up at him.

Ning Laosan looked down at his thin little face, its cheekbones jutting out, and frowned. "What for?"

"Sorry to trouble you, Uncle, but could you take me along?" Ning Buhui said. "I'm going to the Spirit Hall."

Ning Laosan scoffed. "You? Awakening? Who's going to awaken your Martial Soul?"

"I'll go by myself." Ning Buhui's voice was far too steady for a six-year-old. "Uncle, take me into the city, and I'll pay you back for the trip later. Double."

Ning Laosan looked at him for a while. Whatever nerve those overly calm eyes had touched, he finally waved a hand. "At the town entrance tomorrow, during the hour of the tiger. I won't wait for you."

Ning Buhui nodded, then turned and went back to the house. That night, he drank the last mouthful of cold porridge in his bowl, folded his only coat without holes and put it by his pillow, then lay awake all night, waiting for dawn.

Nuoding City was many times larger than Bluestone Town.

Ning Buhui walked behind Ning Laosan's ox cart for three days, his legs trembling by the time he finally saw the walls of Nuoding City. Ning Laosan went to sell his wares at the market, pointing him toward the city center. "The Spirit Hall is in the middle of the city, the tallest white building. Go on your own." With that, he walked away without looking back.

Ning Buhui crossed the streets of Nuoding City alone, his six-year-old frame almost invisible in the crowd. He walked for a full two hours before finally stopping in front of a building that was white from top to bottom. A crest of an angel and a longsword was carved above the arched entrance, uniformed deacons stood on either side of the steps, and a steady stream of people came and went.

He took a deep breath and stepped onto the stairs.

"Stop." The deacon at the entrance glanced down at him. "Kid, what are you here for?"

"To awaken my Martial Soul," Ning Buhui said.

The deacon looked him up and down-his worn, ill-fitting clothes, his bare feet covered in scabbed cuts, and the dirt on his face. "Where are your parents?"

"There aren't any adults. I came by myself."

The deacon frowned and was about to wave him away when an older deacon poked his head out from inside. He looked at Ning Buhui, judged his age, then looked into his eyes and suddenly said, "Are you six?"

"Yes."

"Come in first." The older deacon stepped aside to make a path. "Stay close to me."

The moment Ning Buhui crossed the Spirit Hall's threshold, he suddenly felt something faintly burning in his chest. It was as if a cold piece of iron had been buried deep in his chest for years, and now the first flicker of flame had finally been lit.

He pressed his cracked lips together and followed the deacon deeper into the hall.

The great doors creaked shut behind him, shutting out the clamor of Nuoding City.