The City Gates Opened Again

It took the three of them three and a half days to reach Spirit City.

They had traveled more slowly than last time because Zhao Xiaopang simply couldn't keep up with Long Tian and Chen Hao on foot. He managed to push through the first day, but on the second he began complaining that his feet hurt, and on the third he had practically dragged himself along. Long Tian supported him for the last half of the journey, while Chen Hao led the way, scolding Zhao Xiaopang at least twenty times and telling him to "train his stamina from scratch when we get back." Yet every time they stopped to rest, it was Chen Hao who fetched water and shared it among the three of them.

At dusk on the third day, Spirit City's walls finally emerged in silhouette against the setting sun. Built of enormous blue-gray stones, the walls towered into the clouds, their faces gilded with the warm gold and red of twilight. Above the gate passage, the emblem of a crossed sword and star stood out sharply in the sunset. Pedestrians, horses, and carriages streamed along the imperial road outside the city, making it several times livelier than Bluestone Town on market day.

Zhao Xiaopang craned his neck to look at the walls, his mouth hanging open for a long moment. "It's even bigger than it looked in my picture book last time..."

Chen Hao glanced at him. "Didn't you come here last time?"

"I was busy looking for food last time. I didn't look up."

Long Tian paused before the gate passage. Three years ago, when he first entered this gate, he had been a six-year-old child, peering out through the curtains of a carriage with a rabbit hopping nervously in his chest. Now he stood in the same place with a bundle on his back, three Soul Rings concealed beneath his feet and the power of light and darkness calm and complete in his dantian. He took a deep breath and stepped into the passage.

Inside the arched passage, the light abruptly dimmed, then brightened again. Voices and the sounds of horses and carriages surged toward them from every direction. Lamps were just being lit along the main street, shop signs and banners swayed in the evening breeze, and the toasted fragrance of sugar-roasted chestnuts mingled with the rich aroma of braised meat, drifting down the entire street. Zhao Xiaopang's nose immediately stopped hurting, and he tugged Long Tian's sleeve, trying to squeeze his way toward a roadside stall.

Long Tian held him back. "Let's find somewhere to stay first. We can talk about food once we've settled in."

The three of them passed through several streets and found an unassuming little inn in the south of the city. The inn was small, with three rooms on the second floor. The innkeeper was a plump middle-aged woman who knocked half a qian of silver off the price for the sake of the three children. Zhao Xiaopang tossed his bundle onto a bed and sprawled out like the character 大, while Chen Hao sat by the window, gazing down at the street below and tapping his fingers on the sill. No one knew what he was thinking.

Long Tian put his bundle in order, felt for the token and jade pendant at his chest, then rose and went over to Chen Hao. "I'm going to that alley in the south of the city," he said quietly. "Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop. Wait here for me."

Chen Hao looked at him. "Want me to come with you?"

"No need. Just keep an eye on Zhao Xiaopang and don't let him eat the inn out of house and home."

The corner of Chen Hao's mouth curled up, and he leaned back against the windowsill. Long Tian pushed open the door and left the room, his footsteps sounding softly as he went downstairs.

Night had deepened. The alleys in the south of the city were much darker than the main street, with low houses on either side and only an occasional window showing a dim yellow light. Long Tian turned into the narrow alley with familiar ease. At its entrance, the wooden sign reading "Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop" swayed gently in the night wind. The shop door was half closed, and the familiar glow of the forge shone through.

He pushed the door open and went in. The coals in the forge were burning fiercely, and Old Chen was crouched beside it, prodding the coals with an iron poker. Hearing footsteps, he looked up. The old man's clear eyes rested on Long Tian for a moment, and then his face broke into a deeply wrinkled smile.

"You're here? Earlier than your father said you'd be." Old Chen stood, patted the coal ash off his apron, and gestured with his chin toward the back of the shop. "Someone's waiting for you inside."

Long Tian's heart gave a sudden leap. He went around the workbench piled with iron stock and pushed aside a thick hanging curtain. Behind the shop was a small, narrow darkroom, with a man sitting on a low stool in the corner.

The man was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing an old cloth shirt washed pale, its sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal two sturdy forearms. He was looking down at his open palm, but when he heard the curtain move, he raised his head-thick brows, a square face, and a faint old scar on his jaw. It was the very face of the man who had crouched beneath the locust tree and straightened his collar when he saw him off from Starfall Town three years ago.

Long Tieshan.

Long Tian stood at the curtain without moving for a moment. He had imagined their meeting many times and rehearsed what he should say first and what tone he should use. But now that they were truly standing face to face, all those rehearsals had unraveled into a tangled mess, lodged in his throat where he could neither spit them out nor swallow them down.

Long Tieshan spoke first. His voice was a little hoarser than it had been three years ago, but its steady tone remained. "You've grown taller."

Long Tian sniffed and took two steps forward. There was only a wooden crate to sit on beside the low stool, so he plopped down on it. Father and son sat no more than three feet apart, the flickering flame of an oil lamp between them. Long Tian took the Iron Guards token from inside his robes and set it on his knee, then felt the edge of the dark green jade pendant, rubbing the character "Tian" with the pad of his finger.

"Father," he finally said, keeping his voice steady, though it trembled at the end, "what exactly did you see?"

Long Tieshan was silent for a long while. Firelight from the forge slipped through a gap in the curtain, casting a shifting glow over the darkroom walls. His hands, resting on his knees, slowly clenched and relaxed again. His knuckles were large, and his palms were covered in iron rust stains accumulated over many years.

"Tian'er," he began slowly, his voice low, "back then, your father was in the Iron Guard's Seventh Squad. We were given a mission-to escort a confidential dossier from Spirit City to the northern frontier fortress. That dossier contained a list from a series of experiments. They used Soul Masters with special Martial Souls for Soul Fusion, forcibly piecing together the Martial Souls of different people to create what they called a 'composite Martial Soul.' Those people were locked in an underground darkroom. Most of them died, and those who survived went mad. The dossier recorded more than a dozen successful cases. Behind every success, more than a hundred test subjects had died."

Long Tian pressed his lips tightly together, and the lamplight flickered in his pupils.

"I saw what was in that dossier and wanted to burn it on the spot." Long Tieshan's voice dropped even lower. "But the captain leading us stopped me. He said someone high up in Spirit Hall wanted it, and if I burned it, none of our squad would survive. I was young then, and I thought that at worst, I'd stake my life to expose the truth. But on the way back, I thought about it for a long time-I had no evidence. The dossier was locked in the captain's chest, and I'd only looked through half of it. I couldn't testify against anyone. If I went to report it rashly, I'd be the one who died, and the experiments in that darkroom would continue."

"So you crippled your own Martial Soul," Long Tian said.

"Before I left the squad, I did one last thing within my power." Long Tieshan took a roll of yellowed, thin paper from an inner layer of his robes, unrolled it, and spread it out between them. The paper was densely covered with a diagram of the human body. The meridians, acupoints, and dantian were all clearly marked. At the most crucial spot-near the dantian-someone had circled an area in vermilion ink. Fine annotations filled the space beside it, the handwriting hurried but orderly.

"This was one of the pages I copied from the dossier before I left the squad. It's about the principles behind the Composite Martial Soul Fusion Technique. Since someone could forcibly piece other people's Martial Souls onto themselves, I wondered... could there also be a way to make naturally opposing attributes like light and darkness truly become one, instead of relying on Soul Rings as bridges, as you do now?" Long Tieshan raised his eyes to Long Tian. "I've heard reports of every method you've used along the way. Using Soul Rings as bridges is the right approach, but it's a cup of water on a burning cart. Once you add a seventh and eighth Soul Ring, the repulsion between light and darkness will grow stronger and stronger. By then, no number of bridges will hold. You need a more fundamental method-to fuse light and darkness into one at their very source."

Long Tian looked down at the meridian diagram. Beside the area circled in vermilion was a passage: "When yin and yang clash, the cause lies not in Soul Power, but in their origin. If the dantian is used as a furnace and the Soul Rings as coal, the Qi of light and darkness may be repeatedly tempered and returned to their origin..." The writing after that had been blurred by an ink stain and was difficult to make out.

"The words after that were soaked in water," Long Tieshan said. "This is all I can give you. You'll have to walk the rest of the road yourself."

Long Tian carefully folded the thin paper and put it away against his chest. He looked up at his father. The marks of the past three years ran deeper on Long Tieshan than they had in Starfall Town: white strands had appeared at his temples, and there were a few more wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. But the essence in those eyes had not changed-solid and steadfast, like the surface of an old well, steadily holding the light of the sky and the shadows of clouds that fell upon it.

"Father," Long Tian said, his voice suddenly louder, "those experiments... are they still going on?"

Long Tieshan said nothing. He only looked into his son's eyes. There was something heavy in his gaze, wavering in the light of the flame. After a long time, he gave a slight nod.

Outside the curtain, Old Chen's hammer struck the anvil with a clear, lingering ring that passed through the thick cloth into the darkroom, like a distant warning bell. Long Tian clutched the roll of paper and the token at his chest, fine beads of sweat seeping into his palm.

The lamplight flickered, and the shadows in the darkroom swayed with it. Between father and son, the corners of the diagram curled slightly in the heat of the flame.