Great Abyss
It was three days later when they returned to the stone house.
Springtime in the mountains was even more vibrant than along the coast. Wildflowers bloomed all over the slopes by the roadside, and the air was filled with the fresh scent of new buds and the clean, moist aroma of turned soil. Long Tieshan was tilling the land beside his house, tidying up the old vegetable patches left over from last autumn. When he saw Long Tian and Yu Jin coming up from the bottom of the slope, he stopped his hoe, glanced at them while leaning on the handle, and then continued tilling his land, as if confirming that the two of them had returned and there was no need to ask any more questions.
Long Tian entered the room, unfolded the silk map on the table again, and took out the fish-skin paper and the slip of paper with "Great Abyss" written on it, placing them beside him. He sat down at the table and compared the map's layout with the place names on the slip of paper. The location marked in the center of the map was at the end of the path extending southeast, interrupted by a wavy line, which corresponded exactly to the location of "Great Abyss" on the slip of paper—if that name referred to the area where the path ended, then the wavy line on the map marked that location, even though it hadn't been written down when the map was drawn. Mu Shuang walked in from the side of the room, stood at the table for a moment, looked at the distribution of lines and the marked locations around the center mark on the map, and spoke in a calm tone, "I'll go and call Shen Mo."
She turned and went out. After a while, she came back from outside, no one following her, holding a folded note in her hand. She placed the note on the table and pushed it towards Long Tian: "He's not here. The bedding in his inner room is folded, his boots aren't under the bed, and he took an overcoat and a bag of dry food. This is all that's left on the table."
Long Tian opened the note. It was written in Shen Mo's handwriting, more hurried than the note in the jar last time, with a slight dragging at the end of each stroke. "Meng Changyuan's confession was partially suppressed by someone higher up. The suppressed part included a description of Great Abyss. After I copied that sentence, people started moving around outside the stone house. I'll leave first."
Long Tian finished reading the note and placed it on the table. Mu Shuang sat down by the stove, pulled a thin piece of firewood from the pile at her feet, broke it in two, aligned the cut ends, broke it again, and then threw the piece of firewood into the stove. Long Tieshan continued to turn over the soil on the side of the house. The sound of the hoe hitting the soil came through the wall, one after another, with a steady and even rhythm, like an old house maintaining its basic condition through continuous maintenance. After breaking up the clods of soil, he bent down and smoothed the broken soil.
Long Tian sat at the table for a while. He put the map and the note into his leather pouch, stood up, and walked to the door. Yu Jin was squatting under the pomegranate tree, pouring water from his water bag into an old bowl to feed the gray bird that occasionally perched on the wall. The gray bird dipped its beak into the rim of the bowl and drank a few mouthfuls, then shook its wings and flew away. Yu Jin poured the remaining water from the bowl onto the roots of the pomegranate tree, turned the bowl upside down, and placed it upside down on the edge of the well to dry.
Long Tian stood on the threshold for a moment, mentally reviewing the new information on the map with the routes from the previous maps, then turned and said into the house, "I'm going to Spirit City."
Long Tieshan stopped hoeing beside the house, and a voice came through the wall, muffled by the sound, "How long will you be gone?"
"Three to five days. Shen Mo probably headed towards the city. I need to retrace that route to make sure I haven't missed any intersections on the map."
Mu Shuang, who was by the stove, threw the last two pieces of the thin firewood into the firebox, patted the charcoal dust off her hands, and stood up. Yu Jin walked over from the pomegranate tree, wiped the water droplets on his hands on his clothes, picked up his bundle from the corner of the wall, and began to pack water bags and dry rations into it.
Long Tian took the dark gray metal box from his leather pouch, laid it flat on the table, and left it there. He carefully kept the silk map and the note close to his body, leaving the box in the stone house. Yu Jin packed his bundle and went to the door to wait. Long Tian checked the leather pouch's straps one last time, paused as he crossed the threshold, and glanced sideways at the sound of a hoe striking the ground across the wall. The rhythm of the hoe continued, uninterrupted by the passing of someone, like an old bell being struck continuously, maintaining its steady intervals in a continuous frequency. He put away... With a glance, he stepped out of the courtyard gate, Yu Jin following behind. The two descended the hillside along the dirt path that had been repeatedly trodden down. Wildflowers bloomed profusely in the afternoon sun on both sides of the path. Several gray-feathered tits landed on the path to peck at grass seeds. Startled by the footsteps, they flew to the branches of the nearest old elm tree, fluttered their wings, and tilted their heads to watch the two figures walking away along the dirt path, which narrowed into a thin line in the distance as the slope rose, until it was obscured by the branches of a protruding shrub at the point where the path met the horizon and disappeared from sight.