My Sect Is Down to Seven People

Chapter 79: The Old Stele Base

"Twelve li."

The clerk holding the register called it out, scraping his brush once against the inkstone.

The man pacing off the distance hadn't settled his footing yet. His right foot probed the grassy slope twice—grass on top, soil underneath, and the soil was loose; his toe sank half a finger's depth the moment he pressed down. He shifted half a step, found firmer ground, then lifted his back foot and planted it ahead at an angle. The iron tip bit into the earth with a dull sound.

"Three hundred sixty bow-measures." He straightened. "To here."

Wen Su came forward. The endpoint held nothing but grass, knee-high, all bending east when the wind passed. No path ahead or behind, no stones, no footprints from anyone.

Xu Yan stood beyond the measuring line, looking west. The spring source lay half a li off, the rock face dark, the weir still in place, the channel spilling over its lip and running east. By the time it reached within a few dozen paces of their feet, the water vanished—not drained away, but seeped into the soil, leaving not so much as a puddle on the surface. The grass here was greener than the surrounding patches, and taller, the blades beaded with water-light.

Farther west, beyond the spring, stood the boundary stele in question: taller than a man, set on the western slope. From here it looked small as a stake driven into the earth.

Half a li from here to the spring, half a li from the spring to the stele. One li. That number had been measured out step by step.

"There's nothing here." Ge Song shifted the blue cloth bundle higher against his chest and looked down at the grass. "Just a whole slope of it."

Qi Qi circled up from behind, crouched, parted the grass, and studied the soil beneath. "This soil's loose."

"Loose soil's common on slopes."

"And grass this tall on loose soil?" Qi Qi pulled his hand back and wiped it on his trousers. "The fields outside our town—if you don't plow them for two years, the grass goes stunted."

"Mountain grass, mountain soil." Ge Song said. "How tall grass grows isn't a matter for a land deed."

Wen Su didn't wait for them to finish. She crouched, pressed her palm flat against the grass, and held it there. When she lifted it, a layer of mud clung to her palm—wet mud. She wiped her hand against her knee, stood, and pointed at the patch with two fingers. "Dig."

"Dig?" Ge Song said.

"Dig," Wen Su said. "Branch spade."

The clerk with the measuring bow unhooked the short spade from his back, unwrapped its cloth, and climbed the slope. One foot on the grass, he drove the blade in.

The first shovelful, half a chi deep, turned up pale, loose soil tangled with broken grass roots. The second went deeper—the soil dark and wet, clods crumbling at a squeeze, a few pebbles scattered through. He dug out a round pit, tossing the dirt to one side.

The third strike hit something. The blade jarred, iron ringing off stone, short and sharp.

The clerk shifted his dig, probing outward—one chi, two chi—every thrust met stone, the sound running together. This was no lone boulder that had rolled down the mountain.

"Clear it by hand," Wen Su said.

The clerk stuck the spade into the earth beside him and crouched down to scoop the soil away with both hands. Where the dirt came away, a stone surface appeared—blue-gray, worked, the chisel marks still visible line by line. He cleared another chi to either side. The stone widened, running on: a single dressed block, buried crosswise in the slope. At its center gaped a square groove, packed full of mud.

Qi Qi couldn't stay crouched. He stood, then crouched again.

Xu Yan didn't move. The clerk scooped the mud from the groove handful by handful, until the bottom came clear: flat, corners square, walls straight, cut clean and true, not a chip anywhere along the edges.

Wen Su slid her fingers into the groove, traced the walls all the way around, felt the bottom, then looked up, west, toward the stele.

"Clerk," she said. "Take its measure."

The clerk spanned the groove from one end to the other with his hands, then set the spade handle inside to gauge the depth. He called out the dimensions; the clerk with the register crouched down to record them.

"Stone," Ge Song said, stepping to the edge of the pit. "There's not a mountain in Dongzhou you couldn't dig a stone out of."

"This stone's been worked."

"Worked stone's all over these hills. Shrines, temples, graves—every one of them's got it."

"True." Wen Su straightened and flicked the mud from her hands with two snaps. "Steward Ge says worked stone is common in the mountains. I won't argue. So let's bring that stele over and set it down. If it doesn't fit this groove, I rule in Chixiao's favor."

Ge Song stared into the pit. He looked for a long while, and said nothing.

"The stele is Chixiao's stele," Wen Su said. "And the labor will be Chixiao's as well." She turned. "Cao Hu."

Cao Hu came up the slope. He looked at the pit first, then the groove, and only then at Wen Su.

"Pull out that stele to the west and carry it here," Wen Su said. "This won't count as your sect relocating it. I ordered it."

"Understood," Cao Hu said.

He passed within three paces of Xu Yan on his way down, eyes fixed west. He never broke stride.

This was the fifteenth day of the tenth month, market day in town. The Kitchen's pots had been carried down the mountain before dawn—two spirit meals and ten bottles of Qi-Gathering Powder, as arranged at the previous market. The affairs on the ridge, the town knew nothing of.

The wind picked up on the slope, flattening swaths of grass. Three men set to work digging out the stele on the western slope: one with the spade at its foot, two clearing earth by hand. The stone wasn't buried deep; once they'd cleared to shin height, the base loosened on all sides. They wedged their shoulders against it and worked it over by degrees, until it leaned against the slope.

The base came clear, revealing a squared tenon, perfectly cut, old soil still clinging to its edges.

Huo Qing stood a half-step behind Xu Yan and to his side, glancing down. "The bottom's worked, too."

"Mm," Xu Yan said.

"Lift it," Cao Hu called from below.

Two Outer Court disciples took positions front and back, shoulders to the stone, arms locked around it. Cao Hu steadied it from the middle, shifting his grip every couple of steps. The stele stood taller than a man; coming uphill, the lead disciple's face pressed nearly against the stone, loose gravel underfoot. He slipped twice; his knee cracked against a corner of the stele, but he stayed upright.

One li of travel, two rests. The first time they laid the stele on a large boulder, the three of them standing and catching their breath, hands caked in mud. The second time they set it by the roadside. The lead disciple had scraped the skin off the back of his hand; beads of blood welled up. He wiped it with his sleeve and kept going.

Ge Song watched from above, the blue cloth bundle hugged tight to his chest, not a word out of him.

When they reached the grassy slope, Wen Su stepped aside half a pace and pointed at the groove. "Set it."

They up-ended the stele, aligned its base with the square groove, and lowered it in. The tenon seated with a dull thud, and the mud packed into the groove squeezed out in a ring around the seam.

A perfect fit.

The clerk with the register stepped over, put his shoulder to the stone, and shoved. The stele didn't budge. He stepped back and squared the register in his arms.

Wen Su crouched and traced the seam around the base, pressing a finger to the joint—the crack was too tight to wedge a fingernail into. She stood and stepped aside.

Ge Song crouched as well, ran his hand over the seam all the way around, withdrew it, and stood. He retreated to the edge of the slope, the blue bundle still held to his chest.

"The stele on that map," Wen Su said. She turned to the clerks. "The chest."

The clerk undid the cords and brought out the rolled map. The two of them held it open between them, stretching it flat on the grass. The ridge from the drawing, the spring, the square east of the spring no bigger than a fingernail—three hundred years of sun and the paper had yellowed, but the lines still ran true.

This very stele now stood on this very patch of grass.

Xu Yan looked at the map from two paces off. He didn't draw closer. He set the pieces side by side in his mind: on the map, the stele stood to the east. Twelve li had brought them east. The groove was in the east. And now the stele stood back in the east.

Behind him, Qi Qi dropped his voice low. "One li."

"Mm."

"Move it one li, build one weir, and the water's all theirs," Qi Qi said. "When they moved it, they didn't even bother packing the soil back down."

"Mm."

By the Monkey hour, the sun swung past the ridge crest and the wind carried a chill. Wen Su called the two clerks over to a flat stone on the slope.

"Write the judgment."

The clerk spread the register on the stone, touched the ink pool—still wet—and loaded his brush. He wrote one page, blew on it, then made a fair copy. Two sheets, two identical lines apiece: The boundary stele is to be returned to its original base; the weir is to be dismantled within three days. At the end he began a new paragraph, entering it into the Branch's permanent record.

Wen Su drew a small bronze seal from her sleeve, pressed it against the edge of the ink pool, and set it to both copies of the judgment—firmly, holding it down. When she lifted the seal, the wind caught the corner of the paper and made it flutter.

She handed one copy to Xu Yan. "Sect Master Xu. This one's yours."

The other went to Ge Song.

Xu Yan accepted it with both hands. The paper was still warm. Ge Song took his as well. He didn't fold it right away; he read it through once, then folded it and slipped it inside his robes.

"I'll abide by it," he said.

"And this goes into the permanent record," Wen Su said. "If anyone lays hands on this stele again, the old entry will be there to compare."

Ge Song didn't answer. He tucked the blue bundle and the judgment together against his chest, turned, and walked down the slope. Cao Hu followed, and behind him the two Outer Court disciples—the one with the scraped hand lagging a half-step. No one looked back.

Wen Su remained by the flat stone, putting away her seal and the brush and ink. Qi Qi took the chance to slip the bundle off his back, unwrap the coarse-grain cakes, and break off a piece for Huo Qing. He broke another and walked over to offer it to Wen Su.

She glanced at the piece in his hand and shook her head once.

"Been walking most of the day," Qi Qi said.

"Branch personnel don't eat the food of a sect under evaluation," Wen Su said. "Same rule applies where Steward Ge is concerned." She closed the matter there and tucked the bronze seal back into her sleeve.

Qi Qi stuffed the cake into his own mouth and went off to squat and eat. Huo Qing held his piece in his hand, eating standing, slowly.

"Rank Evaluator," Xu Yan said.

Wen Su looked back.

"Three days—counting from when?"

"From tomorrow." She tied the cords on the wooden chest. "If it's not fully dismantled before sunset on the third day, you can come back to the Branch and file a petition."

She set off down the ridge along the same route, the two clerks following, the map back in its chest, the chest carried on the arm of the one with the register. At the fourth-li mark, beside the stone where a bowl of water had once been set, the bowl still sat, half-filled with blown-in grit. She didn't stop, didn't glance at it, just followed the bow-measured path east.

As the sun dropped behind the ridge's western edge, the three of them headed back. The weir still stood; its channel still ran east. Two red-robed men watched them descend, neither speaking a word. When Qi Qi passed below the channel, he dipped his hand into the water, drew it out, and shook it dry. He said nothing.

They came down off the ridge to the foot of the mountain, where the twelve mu of fields spread below them, the gap still open. A thin crust had formed over the mud, whitening in the sun. Wang Shuan was squatting on the field embankment, pinching a clod of soil, crumbling it, pinching it again.

Xu Yan came down from the fork in the road and stopped in front of him.

"Within three days, the weir comes down," he said. "The water comes after."

Wang Shuan scattered the crumbled soil back onto the field and stood. "Then I'll wait three days."

"Wait three days."

Wang Shuan glanced at the roll of paper in Xu Yan's hand but didn't ask what it was. He shouldered the hoe leaning against the embankment and headed back toward his own yard.

They reached the Mountain Gate at the Dog hour, before dark had fully settled. Behind the Medicine Hall, the bamboo drying racks had been brought in. Shi Po sat beneath the veranda, trimming tallies, his chopping knife resting on his knee. He glanced up as the three walked in and grunted once, his hands never stopping.

A lamp was lit in the Accounts Room. Xu Yan took the land deed from his robes, spread it open to check the creases, then slid the judgment and the deed together between two pages of his ledger, corners aligned, and closed it.

Jiang Wan leaned against the doorframe, one hand resting on the wooden lintel above it. The sword wasn't on her.

"She believed the map?"

"She believed what we dug up."

Jiang Wan leaned there a little longer, then straightened and walked into the courtyard. At the steps she turned back. "Three days."

"Sunset on the third," Xu Yan said.

She didn't say anything more, just headed for the East Courtyard. Lamplight wavered in the yard, and the wooden pivot of the Accounts Room door creaked once.

Xu Yan drew the lamp closer and opened the ledger. Beneath the day's entry, he added a line: Fifteenth day, stele returned to its old base; weir to be dismantled within three days. His brush stopped on the final character. He closed the ledger and pressed it flat, the edges of the pages falling into line one by one.