Chapter 101: The Mine
He answered without speaking. His hand stayed on the hilt of Marrow Dragon until the breath in his chest steadied, and then he stepped off the lip of the spur and started down toward the basin.
Pathfinder laid a blue thread of shadow-marked footing along the eastern face of the gully: the line of least exposure, the rocks that would not skitter under his weight, the patches where the grey mist pooled thick enough to swallow a man. Cloud Step took the worst of his footfall and rolled the rest into nothing. The pressure rings he had earned at the Cinder Hawk’s nest stayed flat green, breath after breath. His Qi packed itself as small as he could make it, drawn in tight against the inside of his spine.
It took him close to an hour to cover two kilometres he could have run in fifteen minutes. He used every one of them.
By the time the timber palisade rose in front of him out of the morning fog, the sun was a pale rumour somewhere above the eastern crags and the mist had begun to thin. He had a window. Not a long one.
He worked his way along the foot of the palisade to a gap between two stacks of unbarked logs, timber waiting on the daylight to be cut to length. The pile occupied the dead corner of the western watchtower’s sight line, where the angle of the wall and the shadow of the tower’s underside laid down a triangle of darkness the morning had not yet reached. He slid into the triangle and stopped moving.
Above him, slow boards under boots — the watchman in the tower at the end of his night, pacing because his feet hurt rather than because he was looking for anything. Closer, two metres to his left and around the base of the timber stack, two voices.
He held his breath in, let it out smaller, and listened.
"I’ll tell you something," said the first voice. Older. The rasp of a man who had been smoking the wrong herb for a decade. "The money we have been pulling out of these mines since we took them is something else. Whoever told us we could move in without a fight, I owe him a drink. Two years on this work, and I have never seen silver come up the road this fast."
The second voice came in lower. Younger man, by the bend in it. "Yeah."
A pause where someone took a pull on something and let it out through his nose.
"Hey. Did you hear what came in from home?"
"From home?"
"Our girl on the inside. The First Wife." The younger one dropped a register. "Madam Mei. Nobody has heard a word out of her in weeks. And Cao Yan went quiet around the same time. You think they got pulled?"
The older voice made a small sound that was almost a laugh. "Are you serious? You really have not heard?"
"Heard what?"
"There was a push on Skyedge from our side. They had to walk people up from the main territory to manage the mess. That is probably why it slipped past you. Cao Yan and the woman are both dead."
The younger voice did not answer for a beat. The mouthpiece of whatever they were smoking creaked between teeth.
"We lost an elder."
"Cao Yan, yes. But we had more than one of him. And the morning they put him in the ground, they walked Elder Han Ying up here to plug the hole. He is a step above what Cao Yan was on his best day. Cultivation, reach, the temper that comes with it. While he is sitting in this valley, this place does not move. Nothing to lose sleep over."
The younger one chewed on that. Boots scraped on dirt. "If they sent him, I suppose we are covered."
"You are covered. All you have to do today is count barrels and try not to freeze your fingers off. And on the second part, my friend, we are doing poorly so far."
A low, tired laugh between them. The conversation drifted into complaints about the cold, and Lin Xuan stopped paying attention to the words.
In the triangle of shadow against the palisade, he did not move. His hand had stayed open on the hilt of Marrow Dragon the entire time. He let the fingers relax now, finger by finger, and turned the new information over inside his head where it could be looked at properly.
’Mira. Did you get all of that?’
[ Every word. Even with the smoke and the wind across the wall, every syllable came through. They are doing us a favour by lighting up against the timber. Keeps them put. ]
The voice that returned to him was a different voice from the one that had been complimenting his swordsmanship in the woods two days ago. No kaomoji. No edge of dry humour. A working voice — someone with a problem in front of her and a plan that needed to bend around it.
[ The hole is plugged. Elder Han Ying is here, and he is rated above Cao Yan. That is consistent with what we expected from a sect that has lost an elder to a strike from a competitor. They will not allow a second loss. Assume he is the real defence of this mine. Everyone else is theatre. ]
’So the centipede was meant for someone like him.’
[ It has been the plan from the moment we walked it out of the shop. We get the Marrow Centipede into Elder Han Ying’s body, we do not fight him. We use him. His authority over the guards, his access to the lower galleries, his Qi for a breakout if we need one. All of it ours for the window the operation will require. ]
’And how am I supposed to slip a parasite into a Foundation Establishment elder?’
[ We do not slip it into him today. We release it. ]
’Release it where?’
[ Near the mine. Far enough that it is not traced back to you, close enough that it can start learning the terrain. When we are away from the perimeter, summon it from your inventory. Once it is out, you will be able to guide it with your mind. Not perfectly at first, but enough. Direction, target, retreat, hide. Simple commands. ]
’So I get a remote-controlled nightmare insect.’
[ A remote-guided tactical parasite, thank you. Nightmare insect is rude. We will release it after we withdraw. The plan for Elder Han Ying starts once the insect has a path into his world. ]
