North Peak
Early the next morning, Long Tian read Shen Mo's letter once more, memorized its wording, and burned the sheet to ash in the hearth.
Yu Jin waited for him at the door, carrying only a small bag of dry rations and water on his back. The two brought nothing extra and set off light toward North Peak. Going north from the stone house meant crossing a larch forest. Most of the snow among the trees had melted, exposing dark brown humus and tangled roots that felt soft yet firm underfoot. The farther north they went, the higher the ground rose. The dampness in the air gradually gave way to dry cold, and the branches and trunks of the pines grew denser.
After walking for roughly two hours, they glimpsed a steep stone cliff through a gap in the trees ahead. A half-collapsed stone house was set into its base, its roof smashed open by a great hole where rocks had fallen through. Knee-high dead grass covered the clearing in front. At first glance, it looked like an old outpost abandoned for years, but Long Tian noticed that an iron nail had been pulled from a mortise on the inner side of the doorframe and driven back in. A short length of relatively new gray thread was wound around its head.
Following his gaze, Yu Jin spotted the gray thread too and softened his footsteps. When they reached the stone house, they did not rush to push the door open. Long Tian first reached out and untied the thread from the nail head, then took the Seventh Squad token from his chest, pressed it against the center of the door, and knocked three times.
Silence reigned behind the door for several breaths. Then a set of extremely light footsteps approached from deep inside the house and stopped on the other side. The door opened a narrow crack, and a gaze shot through it, pausing for an instant on Long Tian's token before quickly sweeping over him and Yu Jin from head to toe.
The door opened fully. Behind it stood a woman of medium height, dressed in gray cloth with her sleeves rolled to her elbows. An old vertical scar ran along her exposed forearm from wrist bone to elbow. She appeared to be in her thirties, with prominent cheekbones and narrow eyes, and had the lean look and alertness of someone who had lived alone for years. After seeing Long Tian's token, she looked at his face again. When she spoke, her voice was slightly husky, her tone brief and direct. "Tie Shan's son?"
"Yes."
The woman stepped aside to clear the doorway, and Long Tian and Yu Jin entered. The interior was in better shape than it looked from outside-the leaking roof had been tightly patched with boards and hay, bundles of firewood and several rolls of animal hide were stacked in the corner, and a dim fire still smoldered among the embers in the hearth. The woman sat down beside it, added two pieces of wood, and gestured for them to sit as well.
"My name is Mu Shuang," she said. "I used to be in the Iron Guard Sixth Squad. I was still with the squad when your father left, and after the matter of the Seventh Squad was suppressed, I left too. Shen Mo kept this line open for me and had me guard it here on North Peak."
Long Tian sat down by the hearth, with Yu Jin leaning beside him. Mu Shuang's gaze lingered on Yu Jin for two extra seconds, probably because she sensed the unusual lingering traces of Soul Power on him, but she asked no further questions and turned her attention back to Long Tian.
"Shen Mo's letter told you, didn't it-the new facility on the third underground level of the barracks." Mu Shuang poked the coals with the fire tongs, sending sparks flying before they fell back into the ashes. "The Sixth Squad once took part in some repairs there. I remember where the ventilation ducts and backup electrical switches are inside. If you're going in to rescue people or destroy equipment, I can lead you through a vent to the core area, without going through the restriction at the main entrance."
She took a curled-edged blueprint from her sleeve, unrolled it, and spread it on the floor. It showed a cross section of the underground structure beneath the Iron Guard barracks' main building, marked with the layout of all three levels and the locations of their various functional areas. She tapped a corner of the blueprint with the tip of the tongs. "Here, the ground-level maintenance hatch at the northeast corner of the main building. Two zhang down, there's an abandoned ventilation duct that leads straight to the back of the equipment room on the third underground level. It's wide enough for one person to pass through sideways, but there are old-style Soul Power sensing wires inside. You'll need to cut the power to get through safely. The main power switch is in the distribution cabinet in the duty room on the main building's ground floor."
Long Tian crouched in front of the blueprint and studied the duct's route. It bypassed the main building itself and avoided most of the personnel passages. After entering the ground at the northeast corner of the outer wall, it ran along the back of the core equipment, then turned near the equipment room marked on the blueprint and entered a blank space labeled "reserve area."
"Where are Meng Changyuan's test subjects usually held?" Long Tian asked.
Mu Shuang drew a line across the blueprint with her fingernail and stopped at the edge of the reserve area. "This is the 'holding area.' As I understand it, after the test subjects are brought in from the surface, they're first placed here in sealed isolation to acclimate. Only when everything is ready are they transferred to the core area for fusion. If you want to get them out before they're sent to the core area, the holding area is your only chance. Once they enter the core area, that door has a level-six restriction. It can't be opened."
Level six. That was another level above the five-ring restriction on the iron door before. Long Tian silently committed the route on the blueprint to memory, then looked up and met Mu Shuang's gaze for an instant. Her eyes were still, like a lake frozen in the depths of winter, with something solid sunk at the bottom.
"At the end of the month," Mu Shuang said, "the first batch of live subjects will be escorted here from the transfer station in the north of the city. I can work out their route roughly. If you want to intercept them on the way, I can give you the location of an interception point."
Long Tian thought for a moment. "An interception point would be too conspicuous. If we caused too much of a commotion, Meng Changyuan would seal off every entrance. I'd rather infiltrate through the vent and pick them up directly in the holding area. That main power switch you mentioned-how many people are usually in the duty room?"
"One night sentry and two patrol shifts, with two people per shift. There's no extra lock on the distribution cabinet, but there's an alarm wire on the door. Cut it wrong and it'll set off a bell. If you want to deal with that wire, you'll need to see clearly which pole it's connected to first." Mu Shuang took a short piece of iron wire from the tool pouch at her waist and demonstrated an extremely simple locking technique. "Twist it off in this direction, and it won't trigger."
Long Tian took the wire and tried it himself. Mu Shuang watched from the side and corrected his movements once, withdrawing her hand only after making sure he had remembered. The group went over the ventilation duct's route on the blueprint once more, confirming the entrances and exits, corners, forks, and two safe points where they could stop temporarily.
Finally, Mu Shuang rolled up the blueprint and put it away. She stood and went to an old wooden chest in the corner, opened the lid, and took something out to hand to Long Tian-a gray metal ring the size of a finger ring. Runes were carved into its surface, made with the same craftsmanship as the stone pendant around Yu Jin's neck. She explained, "Worn on your finger, this ring can interfere with Soul Power tracking for about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, but it can only be activated once. If you take a wrong turn in the ventilation duct and need time to get your bearings, use it."
Long Tian slipped the metal ring onto his left ring finger to test the fit. The runes on its inner surface felt faintly cool against his skin. He thanked Mu Shuang, silently reviewed the route on the blueprint one last time, and stood to take his leave.
Mu Shuang did not ask them to stay. She stood in the doorway and watched the two head south through the larch forest, her gray clothes pressed close to her figure by the mountain wind. Behind her, the firelight shining through the doorway spread a small patch of warm brightness. After walking some distance, Long Tian looked back. She was still standing there, like an old post nailed to the rock face, silently guarding a line so the wind could not snap it.
On the way back, Yu Jin walked beside him, stepping over pine needles and moss through the dappled light and shadows of the forest. After they had walked for a while, Yu Jin spoke. "That Mu Shuang-it seems she's been waiting all this time for someone to come looking for her."
Long Tian turned the gray metal ring on his left ring finger. Its surface was cool against the base of his finger. "She put all the time since she left the squad into that blueprint. The location of the ventilation duct, the routes of the power lines, the duty room guards' routine-for one person to figure all that out bit by bit would take years."
Yu Jin said nothing more. The wind blew through the forest from behind them, rustling the pine needles overhead. Fallen leaves crumbled softly beneath their feet, stretching all the way to the distant ridgeline, whose outline had been gilded pale gold by the afternoon sun. South of that outline, cooking smoke curled up from distant Soul Hunting Town, a few thin white threads dissolving into the open sky.
On the last stretch back to the stone house, Long Tian slowed his pace a little and raised his left hand before his eyes, examining the ring's sheen in the afternoon light. Its dark surface shimmered with the faintest gray glow in the sunlight, its outer circumference covered in fine, closely spaced runes, like a circle of miniature stellar orbits frozen into a space the size of a fingernail.
He lowered his hand, his fingertip brushing an extremely fine notch on the ring's surface. It might have been a mark left during manufacture, or a hidden mark Mu Shuang had deliberately carved into it while making it. He did not probe its origins, merely turning the ring into its proper position on his finger and keeping it as another token close to him.
Yu Jin came to a stop beside him, followed his gaze to the ring, then held out the empty waterskin in his hand. "We can fill up at the stream ahead. Let's rest before we go on."
The two sat for a while on rocks beside the stream, each taking a few sips from his waterskin. The mountain water was icy and sweet, and the afternoon light colored it with a layer of shimmering silver fragments as it flowed over the rocks. As Long Tian filled his waterskin and tied it back to his waist, he glanced north. Far in the distance, North Peak's stone cliff showed the outline of a pointed summit, softened by the afternoon backlight into a gray-blue silhouette. A lone dead pine stood on the ridgeline at its tip, its branches stretching at an angle like a person raising an arm to point in some direction.
Long Tian looked away, shook the water from his hands, and stood. Yu Jin rose too and followed him. The two walked back toward the stone house along the stream, the pebbles rolling slightly underfoot as the sound of flowing water gradually faded behind them.