The Tail in Its Mouth
The light from Long Tian's palm flickered across Long Tieshan's face through the iron bars. A row of thick iron pillars separated father and son. The man in the cage looked up at the youth outside, his gaze traveling from Long Tian's brows to his chin, then down to the gray ring on his left hand, as though counting the growth rings of a tree.
Long Tieshan spoke first, his voice low and steady. "They intercepted me outside Starfall Town last night. I was careless when I left town. I didn't expect Meng Changyuan's people to have already found their way there."
Long Tian gripped an iron bar. "Are they keeping you here to use you as an experimental subject?"
"The living subject they originally planned to use was someone else-a person with unstable light and darkness transferred from the northern frontier. But that person escaped on the way, so Meng Changyuan had his people put me in that spot." The corner of Long Tieshan's mouth twitched, revealing a faint, placid smile that hardly suited his situation. "Though most of your father's Martial Soul is crippled, its foundation is still there. They thought I'd make just the right control sample for their reverse deduction."
Control sample. Long Tian rolled the words over on his tongue and tightened his grip. Gray-white light seeped into the surface of the iron bar, and its cross section began to glow faintly red. Long Tieshan reached through the bars and pressed a hand over his. "Don't be in a hurry to melt them. The people outside patrol once every half hour. They went through the logbook on their last visit, so there's about the time it takes to drink a cup of tea before the next patrol. Let's settle on a route before we act."
Long Tian withdrew the light from his palm and crouched to meet Long Tieshan's eyes through the bars. He quickly ran through the route through the vent, Mu Shuang's rendezvous position, and their escape direction. After listening, Long Tieshan closed his eyes and went over the route in his head. When he opened them again, he nodded. "Mu Shuang has scouted this route, so it's workable. But how confident are you that you can take me through that ventilation duct? The stone pendant may be masking Yu Jin's Soul Power signature, but the Seventh Squad's old Soul Power imprints still remain in your father's body. Those imprints might be detected when we cross the Soul Power detection lines."
Before Long Tian could speak, Yu Jin stepped out of the shadows and crouched on the other side of the cage. He took the stone pendant from around his neck and held it in his palm, looked at Long Tieshan and then at Long Tian, and offered the pendant to Long Tieshan. "Put this on. I've already drawn my origin into my core, so I can do without the masking for a short time. Once you put it on, suppress the old Soul Power imprints, and you can cross the lines inside Long Tian's chaotic membrane of light with the rest of us."
Long Tieshan looked at the gray stone pendant, then at the youth holding it out to him. Yu Jin's lean face was sharply outlined in the dim light, and the gold-and-black embers in his eyes, though not bright, burned steadily. Long Tieshan took the pendant and hung it around his neck. When the stone touched his chest, his whole body trembled slightly, as though a string pulled taut for years had been loosened a notch.
"You, child..." Long Tieshan looked at Yu Jin, his voice growing softer. "Your Soul Power is too clean for someone who's undergone grafting."
Yu Jin did not answer. He simply crouched there, looking at his face. Long Tian did not linger on the subject. He began melting through the thick bars again, faster this time, the Origin Return Pearl's gray-white light covering the cut ends and shaving away the metal inch by inch. Long Tieshan helped from inside, pushing the bars from the other direction. Father and son brought their strength to bear on the same bar from opposite sides. When the seventh bar melted through, the cage door finally came loose. Long Tieshan squeezed sideways through the gap and stood outside the cage.
As he stood up, Long Tian noticed that his father was a head shorter than he remembered-or rather, his father had not grown shorter; he himself had grown taller. Long Tieshan reached out and patted his shoulder. The rough warmth of his palm came through the cloth, exactly as it had felt when he sent Long Tian off beneath the old locust tree in Starfall Town during his childhood.
Mu Shuang made an urgent gesture at the edge of the vent. Long Tian pulled himself together and thought no more about it. He led Long Tieshan and Yu Jin back into the ventilation duct one after another, while Mu Shuang brought up the rear and screwed the cover back into place from the inside. The four moved sideways through the duct, Long Tian in front, the runes on the gray ring on his left hand glowing continuously to suppress the detection lines' response. Long Tieshan followed, the stone pendant pressed against his chest. At the rear, Mu Shuang used the length of wire to secure several connection points that might trigger an alarm.
By the time they climbed out through the equipment level's maintenance hatch and retreated through the service passage to the corridor between the city walls, a streak of gray-white had appeared on the horizon. Mu Shuang led them around the city outskirts through an abandoned drainage ditch, then hurried along a dry channel in the wilderness for nearly two hours. Only when the sun had fully risen did they slow down. Ahead, the grassy slopes on the outskirts gradually gave way to rolling wooded hills, and the outer edge of the Heavenly Wolf Mountain Range appeared in the distance as a long, blue-gray shadow.
Long Tieshan stopped at the edge of the woods and sat against a tree trunk to rest for a while. His stamina was not what it had once been, and the night's journey followed by nearly two hours of hurried travel had depleted more than half of it. Yu Jin offered him his waterskin. Long Tieshan took a sip, screwed the opening shut, and handed it back. He looked up at the surrounding treetops and clouds. "How far is it to Soul Hunting Town from here?"
"Another half day's walk to the outskirts, but our place is deeper in." Long Tian crouched in front of his father and gave him a rough account of the stone house's location and Yu Jin's recovery. Long Tieshan listened, his gaze passing back and forth between Long Tian and Yu Jin several times before settling on the faint gray-white halo showing through at Long Tian's dantian.
"That pearl in your dantian-did you refine it yourself?"
"Mm. I used the diagram you left behind and repeatedly worked the light and dark Qi together until it slowly took shape. It can cover five Soul Rings now, and it can also connect with Yu Jin's origin."
Long Tieshan was silent for a while. Then he reached inside his collar, drew out a flat old leather pouch, and handed it to Long Tian. The pouch was only half the size of a palm, its edges worn smooth and glossy, its seams sealed with wax. Long Tian broke the seal and opened it. Inside was a small roll of white silk as thin as a cicada's wing. Drawn on it in extremely fine lines of ink was a complete meridian Return to Origin diagram, showing the paths of every meridian from head to toe, with more than a dozen closely written annotations around the junction at the dantian. It was far more detailed than the previous diagram, and the handwriting was completely different.
"This is the original design drawn by Meng Changyuan himself, the Seventh Squad's captain back then." Long Tieshan's voice was deep and slow. "I burned the original before I left the squad, but later I discovered that Shen Mo had secretly kept a copy. Last winter, he passed this copy through several people to have it delivered to Starfall Town. The Return to Origin pathways marked on it are much more complete than those on your incomplete diagram. I've kept it on me all this time, waiting for you to come and get it."
Long Tian carefully folded the silk and tucked it into the innermost layer of his robes, placing it side by side with the token and jade pendant. The silk was thin yet tough, cool to the touch, like a cicada's wing pressed against his chest. By the time he had retied his robes and looked up at his father, Long Tieshan had already braced himself against the tree trunk and stood, brushing the bits of leaves and dirt from his hem.
When the four set out again, Long Tian led the way. Yu Jin walked half a step beside Long Tieshan, occasionally reaching out to hover a hand beneath his arm. Whenever Long Tieshan waved him off and said, "I can walk," Yu Jin withdrew his hand. Mu Shuang brought up the rear, occasionally scanning the way they had come to make sure no pursuers were following.
The afternoon sunlight shone into the woods, shrinking the tree shadows into dark rings close around their roots. As the four crossed a belt of shrubs at the forest's edge and entered a hunter's trail on the outskirts of the mountain range, the wind blew down from the ridge, carrying the scents of pine resin and dry earth. Walking along the trail, Long Tieshan raised his head slightly and glanced toward the depths of the mountains. His expression was calm and reserved, exactly as it had been when he sat outside the smithy smoking his pipe and looking at the old locust tree at the town entrance.
The tip of the stone house's chimney appeared in the distance. Yu Jin quickened his pace by half a step and pointed it out to Long Tieshan. Long Tieshan looked where he pointed. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he said nothing, but he put a little more strength into his steps. The four followed the bends of the hunter's trail, drawing step by step closer to the stone house enclosed by the mountain walls. Sunlight cast their shadows at an angle across the dirt path behind them: four in a row, varying in length, moving in the same direction.