神功收敛待时来，天下苍生望霖雨。(Shéngōng shōuliǎn dài shí lái, tiānxià cāngshēng wàng línyǔ.) - When the time comes when the magical power is restrained, all the people in the world will look forward to the rain.

- Chen Rong (陳容), Nine Dragons Painting (九龙图)

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“What… is this?”

Zeyi crouched down and tried to peer into the hole. Nothing but darkness, even with her heightened senses. “Lau Yan, do you see anything? Lau Yan?”

The loong’s grey-brown eyes carried the faintest green glow in the dark back room of Old Tang’s store. They were narrowed, but the pupils were enormous.

“There’s… the remains of a ladder.”

“How far does it go?”

“Not far…”

“What’s wrong?”

Gong Lau Yan narrowed her grey-brown eyes. “I’m not…sure? Something about it feels hollow. As if there’s… a lot of tunnels, leading a long way down. But I can’t see… The air is somewhat stale, but not as bad as an enclosed space should be. I don’t understand it.” She shrugged. “I guess the only way to find out is to go down. What do you think? I can feel that it’s excessively dry down there too.”

“If we go down there, would we be able to find our way back up?” Zeyi mused. “And we can’t see either…”

They both frowned at the empty black hole.

“Get on my back, Zeyi,” Gong Lau Yan suggested. “I can see a little, so let’s try climbing down as far as I can see and then decide.”

She folded her tall frame, allowing Zeyi to climb on her back and cling like a monkey. She slowly began to descend into the blackness.

The air in here was odourless but stifling. Zeyi continued to swivel her head, peering fruitlessly into the darkness. If only it weren’t so dry, she would have been able to reach out, sense the water around her and perhaps grasp the form of the space they were in.

“There’s a platform just below.”

Gong Lau Yan reached the bottom of the ladder and tested the platform before placing their weight on it. When Zeyi tried to get down, the loong stopped her.

“Stay up there for now. The platform is small.”

Happy to stay holding onto Gong Lau Yan, Zeyi felt the loong move a few steps one way, then the other.

“There are two old wood bridges. One has broken. The other looks brittle and liable to break if we step on it, but I can’t see exactly where it ends. Hold on.”

Gong Lau Yan did not change form, but she suddenly rushed forwards. The rapid acceleration in the dark was at once both frightening and exhilarating; Zeyi held on tight as Gong Lau Yan raced through the darkness like a swift wind.

It was over in a moment. They had apparently landed on another platform.

Gong Lau Yan took a deep breath, then let out a series of clicks with her tongue. The sounds echoed oddly, bouncing off stone walls repeatedly. Zeyi listened in silence to the reverberations disappearing into the dark, her breath shallow.

The loong was silent. Zeyi was seized with a sudden fear, there in the darkness, that she was alone in the depths again, unable to escape…

She took a deep breath, focusing on circling her qi around and around her second dantian, and squeezed Gong Lau Yan’s shoulders. A warm, dry hand patted her own, and she breathed again.

“There’s… structures in here. Like… tunnels. Narrow passages.” She spoke as if to herself.

Zeyi reached out a hand and touched rock; she retracted it and reached out her other hand… and touched rock.

“A… corridor?”

“It seems so.”

“Then we could absolutely get lost in here. It’s dark, and we can’t sense much.”

“I have a few dragon pearls we could use to light the way, but we’ll have to use them sparingly.” Gong Lau Yan pulled one from the pouch on her belt, and Zeyi felt the brief flow of qi where her hand held the loong’s shoulder. The pearl glowed softly, lighting a small halo around them.

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With this light, a little more of the corridor could be seen. A spiderweb of narrow pipes ran across the ceiling and into the shadows outside of the pearl’s light. Several empty doorways stood along one wall, the fine, powdery remains of wooden doors piled within them. From the direction they had come, the splintering remains of a wood and metal bridge stretched into the darkness.

There were arrows painted on the wall, and text, in bright red paint. Most of it had flaked away with the extreme dryness, but Zeyi could make out one or two words.

“… outside… first… water tank… second floor… Is this… a directory?”

She was still on Gong Lau Yan’s back. The loong had one hand hooked under her thigh to hold her in place, the other holding the pearl. Zeyi felt the arm pressed against her growing more and more tense.

“I can get down.”

“No… Stay there.”

“Then I’ll hold the pearl.”

Silently handing over the pearl, Gong Lau Yan began to make her way down the corridor. They peered into the first empty doorway.

A pile of wood dust and paint chips lay in the centre of the room, cradling plain ceramic bowls. Shreds of paper, that might once have been paintings, clung piecemeal to the disintegrating walls. Fragments of cloth, that might once have formed rudimentary bedding, lay in one corner.

There were five mummified bodies gathered around the pile of dust.

Perfectly dry, three adults and two children were slumped in positions that suggested they had been gathered around a table, eating a meal together, when the curse swept through Ming Yuet. In their reconnaissance, the loong soldiers of Tin Yeung Wong had observed that the cursed zone spread some distance into the air.

It seemed that it had reached underground too.

Gong Lau Yan turned and rushed to the next doorway.

This family had four adults and five children. Crammed into the small room, some of them at the desiccated remains of the table, other curled up in the remains of the bedding.

The next room had one adult and three children.

Shadows whirled as Gong Lau Yan rushed from one room to the next, the pearl casting pale glow across the remains of people’s lives. Occasionally there were animals too, cats and rats and once, a dog, lying where the curse had caught them.

Rounding the corner, wider doorways opened onto what might once have been shops, the goods long fallen to dry powder, wooden shelves fallen and crumbled, the people who worked there reduced to skeletons shrink-wrapped by their dried skin.

The two women were barely breathing by now. The hand that held the pearl shook, although Zeyi continued to hold it aloft, unable to look away.

In places, directories were written on the walls. Words like ‘doctor’ and ‘water’ and ‘bright candy’ could be made out.

Cracked stone floors, metal pipes, stairways and gaping doorways, tiles… this was a city, a whole other city below a city, populated by corpses.

“Lau Yan… Let’s stop for a moment.” The dragon pearl was beginning to grow dim. Numbly, Gong Lau Yan set Zeyi down on a tiled step, then sat down. She stared at the pattern of black and white and grey squares.

Zeyi took the loong’s hand. It was icy cold, but then, so was her own.

“I wonder…” Gong Lau Yan said, “… if Dze-dze knew.”

Zeyi said nothing.

“I mean, I didn’t know, so… So it’s entirely possible she didn’t… She didn’t…”

Her face was buried in her free hand. Zeyi thought about Mun Gong, wondered how she had found out about this place.

“It keeps going down. I can feel it. But I don’t know how far…”

“We can look,” Zeyi said quietly. “How do you recharge the pearl? Is it like…? Ah, right, thanks…”

“We can only use one of these twice. They’re not very high-quality ones.”

“How many do you have?”

“Three.”

“… We’ll have to hurry, then.”

Zeyi had a ribbon in her hair to hold it back. She untied it, then retied it around Gong Lau Yan’s wrist. The other end was tied around her own.

“Let’s go.”

They followed an uneven set of brick steps downwards. Once more, there were doorways leading to ruined rooms, shops, offices, bodies.

Another floor.

And another floor.

And another floor.

As they paused to charge a new pearl, Zeyi looked up suddenly. “… Water?”

Gong Lau Yan sniffed the air. “It’s damp somewhere below us.”

Down, down, down…

There was no mistaking it now. The air was growing steadily more humid. Some parts of the floor sported the slightest hint of green mould, and it was easier to breathe.

The bodies here were less dry too.

Partly mummified, partly rotted corpses were strewn about in more violent positions than those on the upper floors. Where the people upstairs had been taken unawares, eating their meals, sleeping, working, the further the distance from the curse epicentre, the more time they had to react.

Many lay in the corridors, stretched out where they had tried to escape. Others lay in the half-decomposing remains of water tanks. They found a child, their bones jutting from their dry yet rotting flesh, lying curled up in one of these tanks.

And then, as they descended one more floor, recharging the pearl, they found it empty.

There were no bodies here, but neither were there the remains of any objects, no furniture, no boxes or tanks, as if someone had come along and taken everything away.

“Do you feel it too, Zeyi?” Gong Lau Yan asked, with a mirthless grin. “There’s something living below this level.”

She could sense it, the faint swirls of jing energy that all living things have, moving somewhere below them.

“We only have one pearl left after this, Gong Dze.”

Gong Lau Yan sighed, then shuddered. “We should go. We’ll prepare and come back…”

Simultaneously, they looked down the empty corridor in the direction they had been headed, senses straining.

“Someone’s coming.”

It was some time before they finally caught the sound of the approaching creature. It sounded bipedal, perhaps with a limp, and it moved slowly. A tapping sound – it seemed to be using a stick.

Zeyi held the pearl higher. Gong Lau Yan reached for a small sheath on her leg hidden under her tunic and brought forth a silvery knife. With her other hand, she dipped into another of the pouches on her belt.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The figure came into view, hovering just at the edge of the light.

A pair of enormous, milky eyes stared at them from a pale, swollen face.