Night Talk

The secret room remained quiet for a long while.

A little knob of char formed on the oil lamp's wick, and it crackled. Long Tieshan reached for an iron pick and prodded it. The flame leaped higher, lighting both their faces more brightly. Long Tian clutched the rolled-up diagram, pressing his fingertips against the yellowed paper and feeling its coarse texture. One thought kept circling in his mind-the experiment was still going on.

He opened his mouth to ask more, but Long Tieshan spoke first. "Your mother doesn't know about any of this."

Long Tian froze.

"She only knows I once served in Spirit City, then came back to our hometown to work as a blacksmith. She asked why I left, and I told her I couldn't get used to living in the city." Long Tieshan's gaze fell to the floor. Firelight filtering through a gap in the curtain flickered across his face. "I didn't want to drag her into it. When she married me, I'd lost everything, and most of my Martial Soul was ruined. She stayed with me all the same. Your mother is the person I've wronged most in this life. I can't make her live in fear too."

Long Tian remembered how his mother made him padded shoes every year, and how her gray-white hair had fluttered at her temples in the morning breeze when she stood beneath the old locust tree at the edge of town and waved him off. An ache, sour and heavy, welled up in his chest. He tucked the diagram inside his robes, squeezing it in beside the token and jade pendant, and looked up. "What are you going to do now? Are you going back?"

"I can't stay in the city long," Long Tieshan said. "My Soul Power dropped sharply after I crippled my Martial Soul, but the Iron Guard knows my face. The captain of the Seventh Squad from back then is still in command. If he finds out I've entered the city, there'll be a lot of trouble. I came to see you tonight, and I have to leave before dawn."

"Who... is the captain?"

Long Tieshan fell silent for a moment. "You don't need to know that name yet. You can't shoulder it if you know too much right now."

Long Tian didn't press him. He could hear the line nailed firmly in place in his father's voice; asking again wouldn't make him budge. He looked down at the back of his hand. Golden scales surfaced silently, then receded, their appearance and disappearance accompanied by a warm pulse. He held his hand out to his father. "Dad, take a look at my Martial Soul."

Long Tieshan held out his rough palm, and Long Tian laid his hand over it. Father and son's palms rested together, one large and one small, one old and one young. Long Tieshan's fingers trembled slightly when they touched the scales on the back of his son's hand. The scales radiated a faint warmth against his palm, along with a rich, harmonious fluctuation of Soul Power, far stronger than anything an eight-year-old should have possessed. He closed his eyes and felt it for a moment. When he opened them, something surfaced in his gaze, like both relief and heartache.

"Stronger than I was back then," he said softly. "Your mother was so happy when she heard you'd gained three Soul Rings that she cried all night."

Long Tian withdrew his hand and smiled. His smile held a young boy's pride, but also a composure that didn't quite fit his age. He glanced outside the curtain. The orange glow of the forge fire was still flickering, though the hammering had stopped some time ago.

"Dad," he said, "that method in the diagram-'the dantian as the furnace, the Soul Rings as the charcoal'-how am I supposed to practice it?"

Long Tieshan shook his head. "I only copied that one page. The steps afterward for tempering and Return to Origin were washed away by water. But I've thought it over again and again through the years, and I think the key should be 'not using the Soul Rings as boundaries.' Right now, you rely on your Soul Rings to build bridges, and each Soul Ring is a gate separating light and darkness. What you need to do is open all those gates and let the light and darkness find their own balance in your dantian, rather than relying on an outside force to keep them apart."

Long Tian frowned. "But I tried letting them touch directly before, and it nearly hurt me to death."

"That's because you weren't ready then." Long Tieshan pointed at the spot on his chest where the diagram lay. "Now you have three rings, and Soul Power has washed through your meridians for three years. They're much sturdier than before. You can try gradually opening those gates, loosening one crack at a time. Let the light and darkness mix a little, then a little more, and slowly find the point where they balance in fusion. You can't rush it."

Long Tian silently committed his words to memory. Father and son sat for about the time it took to drink a cup of tea, neither saying anything more. When it was time to leave, Long Tieshan stood, brushed the dust from the hem of his clothes, and held out his hand to Long Tian. Long Tian stood as well, and father and son clasped hands one last time-the rough, large palm wrapped around the slender little one, the warmth in their palms passing between them, conveying something that needed no words.

"When you get back to Starfall Town, let your mother know you're safe." Long Tieshan released his hand, turned sideways, and lifted the curtain to walk out. His retreating figure flashed in the forge light before vanishing into the night outside the smithy, his footsteps swallowed by the wind at the mouth of the alley.

Long Tian stood where he was, listening until the footsteps grew distant and vanished. Only then did he slowly let out a breath of turbid air. He lifted the curtain and walked out. Old Chen was squatting by the forge, quenching an iron bar. White steam rose with a sizzle, and hot air filled the shop, carrying the mingled smells of coke and rust. The old man didn't look up. He only said, "Your father's gone a long way by now."

"Mm."

Long Tian stood on the threshold for a while. The night wind swept into the alley, making the front of his robes flap and snap. He reached up and felt the things against his chest-the diagram, the token, the jade pendant, and the safety charm. Not one was missing; they all rested snugly against his heartbeat. He drew a deep breath of the cool night air and stepped out of the smithy.

On his way back to the inn, he passed the main street in the southern part of the city, where the night market was still going. The master stock at a braised-meat stall bubbled and gurgled, chestnuts rustled in an iron pan as they roasted with sugar, and a peddler carrying a shoulder pole called out beneath the lamps. Long Tian slowed his pace and stopped at the chestnut stall. He took out two copper coins, bought a bag of hot chestnuts, tucked it inside his robes, and continued on.

The light was still on upstairs at the inn. He pushed the door open and went into the room, where Zhao Xiaopang was sprawled over the table, gnawing on a roast chicken leg with grease shining all around his mouth. Chen Hao sat by the windowsill, leafing through an illustrated guide to Soul Skills he had borrowed from a bookshop. Both looked up when they saw him come in.

Long Tian set the hot chestnuts on the table. Zhao Xiaopang's eyes lit up, and he dropped the chicken leg to peel one. Chen Hao closed his book and studied Long Tian's face. "Did you see him?"

"I did." Long Tian sat down on the edge of the bed, took the rolled-up diagram from inside his robes, and spread it on the table. Zhao Xiaopang leaned over to look at the densely packed meridian diagrams and red-ink annotations. With half a chestnut in his mouth, he mumbled, "What's this stuff? Looks like an acupoint chart..."

Chen Hao glanced over it, and his pupils contracted slightly. "This way of making annotations... I've seen something similar on the bookshelves at the Spirit Hall Branch. It's the standard format for Iron Guard diagrams."

Long Tian glanced at Chen Hao and held nothing back. "My father used to be in the Iron Guard. He discovered something back then." He briefly recounted the experiment his father had described, leaving out the specific names and locations and giving only the gist-someone was conducting Soul Fusion experiments, creating Composite Martial Souls at the cost of human lives, and it was still going on. His father had crippled his own Martial Soul and left the squad because he had stumbled across it.

The room fell quiet for a moment. Zhao Xiaopang forgot to chew the chestnut in his mouth and sat there in a daze, his cheek bulging. Chen Hao was silent for a while. He set his book aside and lowered his voice. "Someone in the upper ranks of Spirit Hall is doing this, and your father left the squad back then to keep clear of it. So if we stay here in Spirit City now..."

"It isn't safe." Long Tian finished for him. "My father is leaving tonight, but I'm staying. That experiment is still going on. I want to find out exactly who's pulling the strings behind it."

Zhao Xiaopang swallowed the chestnut and said dryly, "You're only eight... what are you going to investigate?"

"That's exactly why I have to investigate." Long Tian put the diagram away and tucked it back against his chest. "By the time I'm actually old enough to take those people on head-to-head, the daylilies will have gone cold. Right now they see me as a child and won't be on guard. I'll use the next few years to find my way in, then make my move once I've built up enough strength."

Chen Hao leaned against the windowsill and thought for a moment, then nodded. "I'm coming with you. Two kids can investigate better than one."

Zhao Xiaopang looked from one to the other, his round face full of indecision. Finally, he slapped the remaining half of his roast chicken leg onto the table. "Then I'm coming too! I, Cai Dun, might not be able to beat anyone, but at least I can take a hit for you!"

Long Tian looked at the two of them, the corners of his mouth curving up. He pushed the bag of hot chestnuts toward Zhao Xiaopang. "Finish eating first. We've got things to do tomorrow."

Zhao Xiaopang immediately beamed and went back to peeling chestnuts, while Chen Hao opened his book again and leaned against the windowsill. Long Tian lay down on the bed and looked at the ceiling. The rolled-up diagram rested against his chest, its coarse texture reaching him through the cloth. Three Soul Rings turned quietly in his dantian, light and darkness flowing back and forth within them.

He closed his eyes, and his breathing gradually grew even. The sounds of the night market filtered through the paper window, muffled and warm, like a nocturne hummed softly by the vast city.

The forge fire in the smithy gradually died out around midnight. Old Chen barred the shop door, nudged the last lump of charcoal into the ashes, and carried the oil lamp into the little house in the rear courtyard. As he set the lamp on the table, he suddenly noticed something new on the windowsill-a small roll of paper, weighed down beneath a piece of sheet iron. He unrolled it and glanced at it. The wrinkles on his face shifted, and then he held the paper to the lamp flame and burned it to ashes. The smoky ash dispersed through the dark room, blending into the deep night.

There was only one line on the paper: "The Iron Guard Seventh Squad's file was removed from the secret archive yesterday."