My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 27: The Stone Platform Under the Vines

"This circle on the map—from the Mountain Gate heading east." Bai Xiaoman spread half of the formation map out beside the abacus, pressing the thin line with her fingertip. "Only this section is still here."

The third day of the seventh month, the sun just cresting the roof ridge of the east house. She rolled the map back up and tucked it into her cloth bundle, then set off ahead of Xu Yan with the small iron awl in one hand and the bundle braced against her side.

The grass on the front mountain was taller than anyone remembered. Thirty-some paces east of the Mountain Gate, the blades still held last night's dew; wading through it soaked their trouser legs to the knee. She stopped every few steps, bent down and set the bundle on her knee, checked twice, then moved on.

"This circle on the map—on the ground it comes in sections," she said. "Drawn on silk it's one line, but once it's planted in the earth, it's stone after stone joined together."

"Further east is downhill," Xu Yan said.

"East wraps around." She studied her feet. "On the map, it wraps around."

At the thirty-seventh step, she stopped and parted a patch of grass. A blue-gray edge the width of a fingernail showed through the soil. She worked the iron awl along the edge a dozen times, and out of the earth came a stone about a foot long—squared off, broken at both ends, the fracture faces worn smooth.

"Blue stone." She pushed half the dirt back, then scooped it away again. "Everything on this slope is yellow. Only this one's blue."

"Keep going."

Stone after stone. The first section held eleven; six paces on, the second had nine; the third only three; the fourth took another dozen paces downslope to find. She called out each section as she went, and Xu Yan followed behind recording them in the ledger. By the fourth section, the sun stood directly overhead.

"Those six paces in between are empty," Xu Yan said.

"Not empty." She pressed her palm to the earth. "When the stones sit too far apart, the qi breaks in the soil. Broken in the soil is still broken."

Beyond the slope, heading further east, the line on the map stopped connecting. She held the silk up against the sun: the line wound east and then simply ended. The rest of it had rotted away in the storeroom.

At noon she sat down on the second section of stone line, opened the formation manual across her knees, and practiced the breathing method from the first chapter.

The five strands of spiritual energy, one at a time.

"The first one is cold." Her eyes closed, hands laid flat on her knees. "It rises from under my feet, reaches the knees, and then nothing."

"The second."

"Comes from the grass. Astringent, with a green tang." A pause, then she opened her eyes. "Also comes once and then it's gone."

"And the third?"

"The one from the earth is thickest, but it scatters by the time it reaches my waist." She leaned to the side, flattening the grass beneath her. "One at a time. One leaves before the next arrives. The manual says 'the five elements each return to their place, the five qi arrive together'—together. For me, they come in turns."

"Keep one in place."

"I can't." Her hand came to rest at her dantian. "When it presses down, my dantian doesn't receive it. Pressing or not pressing, it's the same. Like back at Huichun Hall when I was filling prescriptions—I could recite the formula from memory, but I couldn't measure the right amounts, so what I produced was useless."

She fell silent, then after a while set her hands back on her knees and straightened up. The grass beneath her was pressed into a hollow.

The sun slid west. They found two more sections on the front mountain line, broken in two places: one where the slope had collapsed, the other at the bottom of the eastern gully, where mud and water had washed down and piled a full foot deep. The stones lay buried; they couldn't even find the edges.

She crouched at the gully's edge for a long time.

"Broken here." She straightened. "On the map it's broken here too."

Xu Yan closed the ledger and wiped the sweat from his face.

At the Snake hour on the fourth, all three of them went to the back mountain. Shi Po carried a cloth sack with four flatbreads and a gourd of water inside; Xu Yan brought yesterday's ledger; Bai Xiaoman walked ahead with her bundle, iron awl, and silk scroll.

A narrow path behind the Ancestral Hall led two li to the back mountain.

"Why are you walking with your eyes closed?" Shi Po asked.

"If my eyes watch the road, my feet stop listening." She'd actually closed them, and her pace slowed compared to when they were open. "Formation veins have to be found with the feet. You can't dig them out."

The grass on the back mountain reached their chests. Xu Yan followed half a step behind her, afraid she'd walk into a tree. She stopped every three steps, ground her foot into the soil twice, sometimes stepped left a pace, retreated, then angled right.

"There's one underneath here," she said. "Cold. Thin. Less than an inch wide."

"Which way does it run?"

"Up the mountain."

Then she suddenly veered east and her steps quickened. Xu Yan caught up and grabbed her arm.

"That way's the East Slope."

She opened her eyes. A line of earthen mounds ran up the slope; in front of the first stood a stone stele, its inscription washed illegible by rain.

"The cold is different over there," she said. "Scattered. Spread over a wide area."

"Come back."

She retreated to her original line, stood still, ground her foot twice, then continued up the mountain.

Past the old herb garden, the grass shortened and stones showed through. She stopped abruptly and wiped her forehead.

"It splits in two."

"Which one is the circle on the map?"

"The one going up." She pointed toward the summit. "The other branches east, and as it goes it thins—so thin my feet can't feel it anymore."

"How do you know it's this one?" Xu Yan asked.

"The cold." She said. "And the grass roots won't take hold there. All the way this grass comes to my chest, but over that line the grass is shallower. You can see it." She swept her instep across the grass tips. "Higher up, the grass gets shallower still."

The ascending branch did indeed have shallower grass. Eventually they came to a stand of vines, each as thick as a little finger, layer pressing on layer, the dangling tendrils rooted into the soil. She walked forward with her eyes closed, her nose nearly touching the vines before she opened them.

"Can't get through."

The sky pressed down through the vines in a layer of gloom. Shi Po broke the last flatbread in two, handed her half, and gave the other half to Xu Yan.

"Bring a blade tomorrow," Xu Yan said.

At the Snake hour on the fifth, Shi Po cut the vines down one by one, dragging the severed lengths to either side. Beneath the vines there wasn't only earth—there was stone, worked smooth, squared off, its edges carved with fine lines, the lines packed with dirt.

"Clear it."

The three of them scraped away soil for two quarter-hours. A stone platform emerged from under the vines, larger than a square table, its surface ground flat. In the exact center sat a stone disc, and carved into the disc were one slot after another.

Bai Xiaoman bent low and reported: "East side: one intact. Blue. South side: one intact. Red." She wiped a finger across the red stone; no dust came away. "This red one's gone dark. Same color as charcoal gone cold in a stove firebox."

"The west side."

"West is shattered. Three pieces, cracked."

"The north side."

"Two pieces and a half." She picked out the fragments one by one and laid them on the platform. "The breaks match. It was one stone."

"The center."

"Four small pieces." She worked her finger around the bottom of the slot. "The slot's base is stone. Cold. There's qi coming up from below, but it cuts off at the slot."

Xu Yan circled the platform, examining all five slots. The blue stone in the east and the red in the south were still seated in their grooves, but their spiritual light was dark—the blue stone filmed over with powdery gray, the red showing no light at all. The west, north, and center slots held nothing but rubble, the fractures facing upward.

"Five stones." Bai Xiaoman looked up. "East is Wood, south Fire, west Metal, north Water, center Earth. Three missing."

"Metal, Water, Earth."

"Right." She pointed to the empty slots one at a time. "Missing one, and that slot can't be activated. Forty years and no one's been able to raise it—that's why."

"This glowing ring around the slots." She touched the platform surface. "It's been ground. Ground to the same height all around. Whoever installed the stones ground them all to match."

"Where do we buy three more?"

"There's a stone workshop down the mountain."

"Once bought, who installs them?"

"You will," Xu Yan said. "The stones get cut to the slots, and the slots are right here."

She pressed her hand against the platform but asked nothing more.

Xu Yan crouched and picked up a fragment from the western slot. The break was old, the edges worn round—not a fresh fracture. He turned it over in his palm, ran a thumb across the crack, and when he stood, he slipped it into his robe.

"Let's look higher up," he said.

Above the formation eye was a cliff face. Vines covered half of it, but the middle was bare—a single stone slab set flush into the rock. They climbed up to see clearly: the slab's four edges had grown together with the cliff; there wasn't a seam to be found. No door ring, no bolt, no slot carved anywhere on its surface.

Bai Xiaoman pushed against it. The slab didn't budge.

"This isn't part of the formation." She withdrew her hand and wiped her palm on her clothes. "Formations have slots and carved lines. This has nothing."

The three of them climbed back down.

The sun was setting when they came off the mountain. Passing the Medicine Hall, they found Cheng Banshan sitting on the threshold, his wine gourd propped on his knee.

"Found it."

"We found it."

"How many missing?"

"Three," Xu Yan said. "Metal, Water, Earth."

Cheng Banshan tilted the gourd and listened to the slosh inside. "Those are the exact three that cracked in year 290." He took a drink and said nothing more.

The kitchen lamp was already lit. Qian Duoduo heard the footsteps and looked up from the stove, wiping his greasy hands on his apron.

"Sect Master! Sold two whole pots today!" His voice boomed, and A Sui, feeding firewood at the stove mouth, jumped in fright. "Eighty stones. Ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder for thirty. A hundred and ten total."

"Rice bought?"

"Bought it—two pots' worth of rice, eight stones." A He poked his head out from behind the stove. "Qian Duoduo counted it three times."

"And all three counts came out right," Qian Duoduo said. "A hundred and two stones. They're in the cash box in the Accounts Room."

A Sui stood up, holding the fire tongs. "Senior Sister Bai, what did you find on the mountain?"

"Three missing stones," Bai Xiaoman said.

"What kind of stones?"

"Formation stones. Metal, Water, Earth."

A Sui slid the tongs back into the firebox and thought for a moment. "Then buy them."

No one answered.

Xu Yan gave a nod and looked up toward the back mountain.

That night a single lamp burned in the Accounts Room. He recorded the day's work in the ledger: formation eye located, on the back mountain's mid-slope stone platform; five stone slots—blue Wood in the east and red Fire in the south, both old formation stones still in place but their spiritual light dimmed; the west Metal, north Water, and center Earth slots containing only rubble. Also recorded for the fifth day of the seventh month at the market: two pots sold for eighty stones, ten bottles of medicine for thirty, purchase of spirit rice for eight, leaving a balance of three hundred fifty-one stones.

When he finished, he reached to the shelf of old ledgers, pulled out the bottommost volume, and turned to the entry for Fang Henian: ninth day of the ninth month, year 290, Re-evaluation. Formation activation: one corner raised. Formation stones cracked. No funds to replace.

He took the stone fragment from his robe and laid it on the page, fracture facing up, directly over the line "Formation stones cracked."

The lamp wick jumped. He shifted the stone aside so the line showed, dipped his brush, and wrote beneath it: Fifth day of the seventh month. Formation eye. Three formation stones missing.

When he'd finished, he reached out and placed the fragment back where it had been.