The Visitor in Gray

The first light snow drifted down as soon as the eleventh lunar month began.

A fine white dusting of frost covered the roof tiles of Bluestone Town, and icicles hung from the academy's ginkgo branches, sparkling in the morning light. Long Tian huddled in his dormitory, still cold despite being wrapped in two quilts. Zhao Xiaopang, however, could stand the cold. He had been out in the courtyard playing in the snow since early morning, and refused to come inside even with the tip of his nose frozen red.

Lin Mo's two-month term as a visiting instructor was almost over.

At the final week's practical combat class, he asked Long Tian to stay behind. After the other students had left, only the two of them remained on the training ground. Sparse snowflakes drifted down, melting as soon as they touched the stone platform. Lin Mo had no grass stem in his mouth today, and stood with both hands tucked into his sleeves, wearing a rare look of seriousness.

"Long Tian, I'm leaving next week." Lin Mo got straight to the point. "There are two things I want to tell you before I go."

Long Tian had known this was coming, but his heart still sank a little. During the past two months, Lin Mo had been carefree, but his guidance in every practical combat class had struck right at the heart of the matter, far more useful than the routine training in class. Long Tian nodded. "Go ahead, Brother Lin."

"First, about your Twin Martial Souls." Lin Mo rubbed his hands and breathed out a white puff. "Your current cultivation approach is right-letting your light and dark Martial Souls share the same Soul Ring, using the Soul Ring as a 'bridge' to maintain balance. But that's only a temporary solution. As you gain more Soul Rings, every new ring will add another bridge. Once you have more Soul Rings, relying on those 'bridges' alone won't be enough to keep them balanced. You'll have to find a way to fuse the powers of light and darkness at their roots, instead of merely bridging them through Soul Rings."

Long Tian listened intently and committed those words to memory.

"Second..." Lin Mo's voice suddenly grew quieter. He glanced around, making sure no one was approaching. "I thought for a long time afterward about why your father left Spirit City, and I think there's something else I need to tell you. The Iron Guard is a unit in Spirit City that specializes in handling abnormal Soul Master incidents. Its members are all highly skilled. Your father was one of the best in the unit back then. Later, he went on a mission, and when he came back, he was a changed man. Before long, he crippled most of his own Martial Soul, resigned from the Iron Guard, and disappeared. Given his character, for something to drive him that far..."

He paused, his gaze grave as he looked at Long Tian. "Before you investigate this, build up enough strength first. Some truths aren't good to learn too early."

Long Tian was silent for a moment. He reached inside his robe and touched the jade pendant, the little dark green piece resting warm and cool against the place where his heart beat. "I understand." He raised his head. "Brother Lin, after you go back to Spirit City, will you be able to see my father again?"

Lin Mo shook his head. "Hard to say. Your father cut off all his old contacts after leaving the Iron Guard. It took me quite a lot of trouble to find him this time. But I can leave a message at Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop. If you ever go to the city, just find Old Chen the blacksmith."

Long Tian nodded. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his robes and handed it to Lin Mo. "Brother Lin, please take this to my father for me."

Lin Mo took it and unfolded it. Two dragons had been drawn on the paper in crooked lines, one gold and one black, coiling around each other with a tiny sun enclosed between them. It wasn't a particularly good drawing-the dragons' heads looked like chickens' heads-but the care put into it showed in every crooked stroke. Lin Mo looked at it for a few moments, then smiled. He folded the paper and tucked it into his robes. "All right, I'll make sure he gets it."

The snow fell harder as the two walked back from the training ground. When they passed the entrance to the lecture hall, Mr. Wang was standing under the covered walkway, watching them with a cup of hot tea in his hands. He gave Long Tian a slight nod but said nothing.

The next day, Lin Mo packed his things and left. Zhao Xiaopang said he wanted to see him off at the edge of town, but Long Tian stopped him. Long Tian stood alone on the dirt road outside the academy's side gate, watching the gray horse recede into the curtain of snow. Before leaving, Lin Mo looked back and waved at him, then rode away without another glance, a thin layer of snow settling on his blue-green robe.

Long Tian stood in the snow for a while, turning back only when the figure was completely out of sight. That afternoon, he trained with particular ferocity. Gold and black struck the bluestones of the training ground with sharp cracks, leaving the snow-covered ground in a mess. Mr. Wang watched from the second floor but did not stop him.

The days went on as usual. Snow fell on and off, and by the middle of the eleventh lunar month, it had piled up past their ankles. The academy's yearly courses were drawing to a close, and Mr. Wang began teaching the senior students more advanced knowledge about Soul Beasts. Though Long Tian was young, his Soul Power had already broken through to level eleven, so he sat in on the lessons as well.

One afternoon, Mr. Wang called him over after class.

"Long Tian, there's something I need to tell you. At the end of the year, I plan to take a few of you with better aptitude to Spirit City." Mr. Wang set down his lesson plan, his expression calm. "Every year, Spirit City holds a Youth Soul Master Exchange at the end of the year. Junior academies from several nearby cities send students to take part, to spar with one another and see what level the geniuses from elsewhere have reached. You've won several fights this year, so you qualify."

Spirit City! Long Tian's heart leaped. He had not expected to have a chance to enter that city so soon.

"When are we going?"

"We leave in the middle of the twelfth lunar month. The round trip will take about ten days. There are also two people from Class A on the list, and Chen Hao from Class B. Including you, that makes four. Zhao Xiaopang is coming too, but he won't compete. He'll accompany the group to broaden his horizons." Mr. Wang glanced at him. "Are you going?"

"Yes!" Long Tian answered quickly and loudly.

Mr. Wang smiled. "Then prepare well. The young Soul Masters in Spirit City are in a different league from those in our little town. Plenty of them have two or three Soul Rings by the time they're twelve or thirteen. Your Yin-Yang Rotation may work well, but there's no telling whether it will rank among the best there. Don't underestimate your opponents."

The fire in Long Tian's heart burned even brighter, and he nodded repeatedly. He turned and ran back to the dormitory, leaving a string of uneven footprints in the snow. Zhao Xiaopang was sprawled over the table doing his academic homework. Seeing Long Tian burst in looking excited, he hurriedly asked what was going on. Long Tian told him about the trip to Spirit City, and Zhao Xiaopang immediately threw down his brush, leaped up, and spun around the room.

"Heavens! Spirit City! The legendary Spirit City! We're going together!" Something suddenly occurred to him, and he leaned closer with a strange expression. "Hey, Chen Hao's going too? Are you two going to fight on the way?"

"We've already fought twice in the ring. What else can he do?" Long Tian sat on the edge of the bed, took the jade pendant from around his neck, and played with it. The dark green jade was warm and smooth from his body heat, and the character "Tian" stood out clearly in the light reflected off the snow outside the window. He pressed the pendant to his forehead and closed his eyes.

Father, I'm going to Spirit City.

That night, Long Tian went to sleep especially early. During his final meditation before bed, the black-and-white Soul Ring in his dantian rotated slowly, gold and black light intertwining more harmoniously than they had two months ago. He had a vague feeling that a faint fluctuation was brewing deep within the Soul Ring, like something about to break out of its shell.

He did not look into it further and fell into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night, the snow stopped. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, spilling silvery light over the courtyard and making the snow look like a blanket of scattered silver. Thick snow weighed down the branches of the old locust tree outside Long Tian's dormitory window, and every so often a clump fell with a crack.

Suddenly, Long Tian's eyes snapped open.

He had heard nothing. But the dark cyclone in his dantian had throbbed violently and uncontrollably, carrying an unmistakable warning. He sat up, quieted his breathing, and listened-outside the window, there was only the occasional whimper of wind passing over the eaves.

Yet he could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. It felt as if someone were staring at him without blinking from the shadows, making the hair on his back stand on end.

He crept to the window and peered through a crack. The courtyard was empty, the snow undisturbed under the cold moonlight. There wasn't even a stray cat's footprint. But as his gaze swept over the courtyard wall, he caught a very faint shadow out of the corner of his eye-the hem of a dark gray cloak flashed across the top of the wall, so fast it might have been an illusion.

Long Tian held his breath, activated his Shadow Dragon Power to cover his whole body, and curled up in the shadows at the foot of his bed. His heart was pounding, but there was not a trace of panic in his movements. The gray shadow had already gone over the courtyard wall and vanished, but something remained in the courtyard-a line of faint footprints in the snow, stretching from the foot of the wall to a spot three paces outside his window, then turning back.

Someone had been by his window.

Long Tian waited for the time it took to drink a cup of tea, making sure the person had gone far away before emerging from the shadows. He pushed open the window, and the cold wind poured in, making him shiver. A folded piece of parchment lay plainly on the snow piled on the windowsill, a small patch at one corner dampened by melted snow.

He picked it up and unfolded it. There were no words on the paper, only a simple sketch showing the outline of a city, with a sword and a star crossed over each other carved above the city gate. A thin line had been drawn beneath the design, ending in a cross with three small characters written beside it:

"South Third Alley."

Long Tian turned the parchment over several times and, after making sure there was nothing else on it, closed the window and returned to bed. He stared at the sketch for a long time. He recognized the design on Spirit City's gate; it was the emblem of Spirit Hall. South Third Alley-Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop was in the south of the city. Could South Third Alley be its exact location?

He put the parchment and the jade pendant together and tucked them under his pillow. He lay with his eyes closed for quite a while, but could not get back to sleep. Who was that gray shadow? Why leave him this note? Friend or foe? If a friend, why not show themselves? If an enemy, why not attack him directly?

The winter night was long. Moonlight shone on the snow piled on the windowsill, casting a cold white glow. Long Tian lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling and listening to his own heartbeat thud in the silence.

Go to Spirit City in the twelfth lunar month. South Third Alley. Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop.

He rolled those three phrases over his tongue again and again, until a fish-belly white appeared on the horizon and he finally drifted into a fitful sleep. In his dream, the crossed sword-and-star design on the city gate grew larger and larger, pressing down on him until he could hardly breathe.

But this time, he was not afraid.