Old Fire

Yu Jin lay in Old Chen's backyard for three full days before he could just manage to sit up.

For the first two days, he slept almost constantly. Now and then he woke to drink a few mouthfuls of porridge, only to close his eyes and sink back to sleep, as though making up for all the sleep he had missed during those years in the dark chamber. Every few hours, Old Chen changed the warm cloth on his forehead and kept the charcoal brazier in the little room burning without interruption. Long Tian slipped out of the academy to visit him every night, while attending classes and cultivating as usual during the day, maintaining the outward rhythm of his daily routine.

On the evening of the third day, Long Tian pushed open the door to the little room in the backyard and found Yu Jin sitting against the head of the bed, with half a bowl of porridge gone cold beside him. His complexion had improved considerably since the day he was rescued. His cheeks were still sunken, but no longer pale as paper, and the golden-black embers in his eyes seemed to have brightened by the faintest sliver. When he saw Long Tian come in, the corners of his mouth moved in greeting.

"You ate more today than you did yesterday." Long Tian sat down by the bed.

"Old Chen said I won't fill out again if I don't eat more." Yu Jin's voice was still soft, but his words came much more fully than they had on the first night. "There are herbs in the porridge he makes... it doesn't taste good."

Long Tian smiled. Yu Jin turned the empty bowl in his hands, traces of porridge residue still clinging to its rim. He was silent for a while before suddenly asking, "That pearl of yours... what is it?"

Long Tian was slightly taken aback. "How did you know?"

"When you carried me through the wall, I felt something turning in your dantian." Yu Jin looked down at his fingers, the skin of his fingertips still covered by a thin layer of dark calluses. "It was warm, and grayish white. A little like something I used to dream about when I was locked up."

Long Tian did not hide it from him and told him the basics of the Origin Return Pearl: it was the residue left after the fusion and refinement of light and darkness. He still did not know all its uses, but it could open a path through a Soul Power barrier. Yu Jin listened intently. The occasional glints in his eyes, which had grown somewhat less cloudy, made Long Tian feel that he had actually been clearheaded all along and had only seemed quiet and sluggish because he was so weak.

"That dream you mentioned..." Long Tian asked.

Yu Jin set down the bowl and slowly traced a circle on the worn cotton quilt with his finger. "I often dreamed when I was locked up. There was a gray river in my dreams, with golden and black light floating on its surface. They tangled together and flowed in one direction, turning gray when they reached the end. I used to think it was something that only existed in dreams... then you appeared, and you had that same gray on you."

Long Tian said nothing, but a string in his heart had been gently plucked. He looked down at his palm, where a barely perceptible grayish-white glow appeared between its lines, as though drawn out by Yu Jin's words. He turned his palm over and brought it closer; the glow shone quietly in the dim light of the brazier.

"Can you still sense anything else?" Long Tian asked. "For example... how is your Martial Soul now?"

Yu Jin was silent for a long time. He raised his right hand and laid it on his knee, opening his palm to reveal the bony joints beneath the thin calluses. He closed his eyes for a moment, and his palm trembled slightly. A thread of golden-black light, impossibly thin, seeped out between the lines of his palm. It was a little brighter than it had been in the dark chamber last time, still weak, but much steadier than a match in its final second before burning out. The thread of light wavered upward an inch and hung in the air for two breaths before going out.

Yu Jin opened his eyes and looked at his empty palm, pressing his lips together. "A little better than before. Before, nothing would come out at all. Now... a tiny bit can come out."

"You kept suppressing them before, stopping them from taking shape. After a long time, your meridians would have grown stiff. They need to be opened up again." Long Tian thought for a moment. "I'll teach you a method of breathing and guiding them. Try it a few times every day; there's no need to rush. Let them out little by little. Don't suppress them, but don't force them too hard either."

Yu Jin nodded. As his eyes rested on Long Tian, something extraordinarily faint, almost like warmth, surfaced deep within them. He pulled his hand back under the quilt, his voice so low it was nearly drowned out by the crackling of the fire. "Why did you come to save me?"

Long Tian leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, thinking for a moment before saying, "Because my father also came across that place once. He didn't have the ability to get anyone out, but he passed the thread on to me. I only followed it where I needed to go."

Yu Jin asked no more. He slowly lay back down and closed his eyes. His breathing grew even, and before long he sank back to sleep. Long Tian took the empty bowl from beside the bed and set it on the stove, then sat by the brazier a while longer before getting up to leave.

A thin layer of snow had fallen at the entrance to the lane in the night, and it crunched softly under his feet. When he reached the entrance, he suddenly stopped. In the snow at the shadowed base of the wall was a fresh set of footprints. They came from the other end of the lane, then turned back at the foot of the wall beside Old Chen's Blacksmith Shop. The prints were not large, and the strides were even. They did not look like those of a passerby who had happened to come through.

Long Tian crouched and touched the snow at the edge of a print with his fingertips. Only a thin layer of fresh snow covered it, and the earth at the bottom was still damp. It had been made no more than an hour ago. He stood and glanced around. The entrance to the lane was deserted, and the dim yellow streetlight reflected off the snow in a cold, desolate white. He memorized the direction of the footprints, then turned and hurried back to the academy.

Chen Hao was still awake in the dormitory, leafing through the last few pages of the manuscript copy by the light of an oil lamp. He closed it when he saw Long Tian come in. "How's Yu Jin?"

"A little better. He can sit up and talk. His Martial Soul is starting to show signs of recovery." Long Tian took off his coat and hung it up. "Someone may have their eye on the blacksmith shop. I found a set of footprints at the entrance to the lane. They weren't Old Chen's size."

Chen Hao frowned slightly. "We need to move Yu Jin somewhere else."

"We'll discuss it with Old Chen tomorrow. Let him recover for another two days first. We'll take turns keeping watch at Old Chen's at night for the next two days."

Chen Hao nodded and blew out the oil lamp. After they had each lain down, the darkness was quiet for a while before Chen Hao suddenly spoke. "There's a passage near the end of the copy I didn't get a chance to tell you about. Number Seventeen's original name was in the record, but it was blacked out. The person who blacked out the name... used the same pen as the one used for the main text before it. It was blacked out later."

Long Tian lay in the dark, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. "Was the person who blacked out his name the one who locked him up, or someone who wanted to protect him?"

Chen Hao did not answer. In the night, all that remained was the occasional howl of the wind outside the window. Long Tian rolled over to face the wall and turned the question over in his mind along with the names Old Chen, the gray-clothed man, and Meng Changyuan. In the end, he fell asleep without reaching a definite answer.

When Long Tian returned to the blacksmith shop the next evening, Yu Jin could already take a few steps around the room with the support of the wall. Old Chen sat on the threshold smoking his dry tobacco pipe. Seeing Long Tian come in, he blew out a smoke ring. "Someone came by last night. Stood at the foot of the wall for a quarter of an hour, then left without knocking."

"I saw the footprints."

Old Chen tapped the stem of his pipe against the sole of his shoe. "Take Yu Jin away tonight. Find him somewhere else to stay."

Long Tian was about to suggest taking him back to the academy dormitory when Old Chen added, "Not the academy. It's too conspicuous. If anyone investigates, you won't be able to cover for him. There's a place in the east of the city that used to be an old Iron Guard contact point. It's been abandoned for years, and nobody knows it's still in use. Take your father's token to the courtyard house with the gray door at the very end of Official Well Lane in the east of the city. Press the token against the door three times, and the lock will spring open on its own."

Long Tian committed the address to memory and glanced back at Yu Jin, who was slowly shuffling along with a hand against the wall. He took a bundle of dry rations and a change of clothes from Old Chen and wrapped them up, then supported Yu Jin by the arm and helped him over the low wall at the back of the yard. They wound through the backstreet alleys, circling more than half the city, and reached the gray door of the courtyard house at the end of Official Well Lane before midnight.

He pressed the token against the door and knocked three times. An extremely faint click of a spring came from inside the lock. The door opened onto a narrow courtyard with two rooms in the main house. A thin layer of dust had settled over them, but the structure was intact. Long Tian helped Yu Jin into the inner room and settled him in, then lit the oil lamp on the table and looked around by its light. Several bundles of old books were piled in a corner, and a yellowed map lay spread out on the table, showing the layout of the sewers beneath Spirit City's old district.

He rolled up the map and put it away, then returned to the bedside where Yu Jin sat and crouched down. "Stay here for a few days. Practice the breathing method I taught you every day, and don't rush. Once I find out who's watching the blacksmith shop, I'll arrange the next step."

Yu Jin nodded, his small, thin body huddled in the chair and wrapped in an old cotton quilt. When he looked up at Long Tian, the golden-black embers in his eyes stirred slightly. Long Tian always felt that something lay hidden in those eyes that others could not understand, like an unextinguished spark still buried beneath the ashes. He could not say what it was, but as he turned to leave, he looked back once more.

Yu Jin sat in the lamplight, silently watching him leave.

After the door closed, a layer of fresh snow fell in the courtyard, silently covering the blue-gray brick paving.