What surprised me about the cave was that it didn’t feel claustrophobic. It wasn’t large; Zhuzhu had to keep one hand up and ahead of him to make sure he didn’t run into any hanging stone, and we could only walk two abreast. It should have felt small, cloying. But the wind was a constant presence, playful and vicious by turns, and somehow it made the space feel larger. Maybe it was the fresh rain scent it carried, even down here in the corpselight-lit depths. “Did you two explore this place when you found it?” I asked Older Koh and Zhuzhu, who had taken the lead.
“We didn’t have time. Our breaks aren’t that long. But look, it’s fine. There aren’t even any branching paths.” Zhuzhu gestured grandly. He was right about that. The crevice sloped ever downward, but I didn’t see any side tunnels. I just didn’t find it as reassuring as he did. I paused to crouch down and touch the ground beneath our feet. It showed no obvious signs of having been worked, but my fingers found a layer of fine, pale sand. It was damp to the touch and didn’t look like any of the dirt, rocks, or mud I’d seen since I’d climbed the mountain. A passing peddler had once stopped in my village with relics she’d claimed were from the ocean. We had never seen the ocean and so had no reason to doubt her, no matter how outlandish her tales were of giant edible insects and pearls harvested not from dragons but from lowly, underwater creatures that consisted of nothing but shells and tongues. One of the things she’d brought was sand; the whitest, finest sand that any of us had seen. Several craftsmen had bought samples for sanding and other work, and Widow Shen had taken most of the rest to sprinkle on her scrolls and take up the excess ink. This sand felt like that sand, but we were nowhere near an ocean. How had it gotten here and what did it mean? Maybe it meant that peddler was a liar. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this whole place had the hairs on the back of my neck rising up. Why had no other disciple claimed this as a meditation space when it was so close to the sect walls?
And while I’d stopped to speculate on sand, the other three had almost disappeared from view. I cursed under my breath as I rushed to catch up. Younger Koh flashed me an apologetic grimace as I fell in beside him, but neither Zhuzhu or the Older looked around. They were plunging eagerly into the dark, while the wind rose and fell.
It was not so long before we stumbled into a wider place in the tunnel. The corpselight clung to the domed roof and trickled down the walls as far as my head. The out-of-place sand glowed under its blue light and formed an eerie pool in the bowl-shaped dip of stone. There were several tunnels that lead from here, the wind whistling through each, but Zhuzhu examined the space with satisfaction. “Here. This has got to have a strong wind resonance.” He had to raise his voice; the wind wailed over the tunnels as if it were playing a giant flute and us inside of it.
“I can’t argue with that,” Koh the Younger said. His brother nodded. The two of them moved to sit down. Zhuzhu followed suit. I hesitated, staring at the walls. The corpselight stopped in the same place throughout the chamber and it bothered me. Like the sand bothered me. It wasn’t that I had any specific premonition of danger. I made no claim to great spiritual resonance; had I been a seer, I would have seen the slaughter of my family in time to stop it. It just felt out of place.
But who was I to know what was out of place deep in this mountain? The entire peak was spirit-haunted and storm-ridden. This could be normal. Slowly, I took my place across from Zhuzhu, the four of us forming a rough square on the sand. We stared at one another. It was Koh the Younger who finally cleared his throat and said, “Now what?”
Zhuzhu looked at me expectantly. I suppose this had been my idea. I straightened my back, tried to imagine that line once again, running down my spine, piercing my head and the damp sand beneath me. “The wind is the breath of this mountain. So, let’s try and meditate on the wind. Let it show us.”
To my surprise, everyone acted like this was something sensible to say, and closed their eyes. It was hard to focus on the wind. There was simply so much of it. It danced across each of the tunnels, spectral but beautiful. I tried to match my own breathing to the rhythm I could feel beneath it, the mountain’s breath that had been so clear when we’d entered the crevice.
Here, it was elusive. At the same time, I could feel the power of the wind, the pulse of it against my skin. I tried to focus on that, pushing away the music. But under the music, something remained. A rumble. Low, but growing as we sat there. “Does anyone hear that?” I whispered.
“Hear what?” Zhuzhu asked. I heard the sand grind as he shifted. “I hear nothing but the wind.”
The ground shivered beneath me, that elusive subsonic warning growing louder. I rose to my feet. “No, there’s something else.”
Koh the Older rose as quickly as I did. “I hear it,” he said, and grabbed the Younger, yanking him to his feet. “It’s getting louder. We should go.”
Zhuzhu was the only one still seated. “Go? Over a sound? Foolishness! I’m not leaving until I have learned how to breathe. I refuse to be humiliated further.”
“Zhuzhu–” Anyone could hear it, now. The rumble echoed beneath our feet, sand shaking. “We have to go,” I said, and reached for his shoulder. It wasn’t as if I had any chance of following Koh the Older’s lead. Zhuzhu outweighed me by half again. I touched his shoulder and he shook me off with a glare. The Kohs were already hurrying back towards our tunnel.
“Leave him,” the Older told me.
“I won’t.”
He stared at me, then shrugged and dragged the Younger away. I reached again for Zhuzhu, whose face was set into a juvenile stubbornness.
Before I could decide how I might move him, the water came. It roared in a frothy mass from one of the tunnels and struck the both of us with the force of dragon’s breath. I tumbled head over feet, flailing, the breath knocked out of me. Zhuzhu and I struck the wall, him with a deep grunt and I with a scream as my arm snapped between stone and water. I caught a glimpse of his face–pallid with horror–before the water swirled and scraped us along the wall as it spun with primal abandon.
We slammed into the wall again, dragging another cry from me. Zhuzhu’s hand flailed, grabbed my unbroken arm. I tried to hold on to him as we were swept towards the peak of another tunnel. Zhuzhu found a grip on an outcropping of stone, jerking us to a halt even as half my body went into the dark. The water tugged and clawed, its power irresistible. I took what gasps of air I could as it battered my face, staring at Zhuzhu, his straining muscles illuminated by corpselight. Which, I saw now, did not trespass into the water’s domain. Zhuzhu rolled his eyes like a panicked horse. “Can’t,” he gasped, barely audible over the clash of water and air.
“Just hold on…”
He jerked his head. “Can’t. Gonna be both of us. Or one.” He shook me off with a single rough movement of his arm. There wasn’t even time to scream as the water greedily snatched me away. The last thing I saw was him clinging to the lip of the tunnel with both hands as I tumbled, alone, into the dark.
I tucked myself into a ball as best I could, bouncing off walls like a plaything of the current. The water was silty and coarse, scouring my skin. I gasped for breath when my head broke the surface of the water, brief moments that didn’t give me near enough, especially with every piece of stone trying to pummel that stolen breath from my lungs as it battered my body. I was going to die. This water would drag me down into the mountain and no one would ever find my body. It was inevitable. No one could survive such raw, natural power.
It was my body that refused to believe it. My mouth sucked in air when breath was available. My unbroken arm did its best to protect my head. And when, at last, the current lessened and I scraped along the side of something that was solid and climbable, my hand moved as if it were possessed, scrabbling until it grabbed onto something that would bear my weight.
I dragged myself up onto the shelf I’d found on pure animal instinct. There was no light. The most profound lack of light I’d ever experienced. Perhaps I’d damaged my eyes. How would I know? Panic shivered through me. I pushed it back and sat up. My arm was throbbing, white hot pulse points of pain. Everything else ached, but that seemed to be the only actual broken bone.
And still, the mountain breathed. I only realized it as my own desperate breaths calmed and the churn of angry water faded to a gentle, even playful lapping against whatever shore I’d landed on. Had I died? My skull dashed on some random rock, perhaps? Or drowned despite my efforts? Maybe this was some segment of the underworld designed just for those who practiced deception and deceit.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
No. I couldn’t believe that. For one, it sounded as if I was alone and I was sure that place would be a lot more crowded.
“I’m alive,” I whispered, trying to believe it. “I hurt too much to be dead.” That felt true, at least. I felt around where I sat. The stone beneath me was mostly smooth, although my fingers brushed against the lacy frills of moss, the rough bumps of stone. My feet were still in the water. I pulled them out and realized that I’d lost a shoe. The simple slippers offered to the outer disciples had thick soles, but only a single tie. Nothing that could handle the violence of the raging water. Now that I was out of it, I was soaked and shivering.
If I tried to stand, I was sure that I would fall. My teeth were chattering. I slowly pulled myself into a half-lotus, closed my eyes, and tried to center myself. I needed to be calm to think of how I would survive this. Because I would survive this. I breathed in, spoke the words in my mind as I held that breath: I would survive. Let the breath escape, imagining warmth flowing to my chilled and battered extremities. I would survive. Breathed in. I would survive. In, out. The affirmation on every pause, until I could feel the blood in my veins singing with the words.
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when I realized that I was breathing with the wind. I only knew that I didn’t feel as cold and the shaking had stopped. In the impenetrable darkness, that tiny light had once more kindled in the vicinity of my womb, glowing, rising and falling with my deliberate breaths. It reached a tentative strand up my spine, bringing warmth and strength with it. When it reached my head, the last of my panic receded. Another strand spooled out beneath me, surging with my breath, finding solid earth somewhere down in the dark and tying me to it. Grounding me, even as the upper connection reached for the wind and drew its power downwards. I was earth. I was wind. I was the balance between.
With every breath, I was alive.
And, finally, the panic receded and I could plan again. First: my arm. The water hadn’t succeeded in robbing me of my ring; I summoned the portal with a thought. Even in total darkness I could feel its diameter, and slid my good hand inside. My fingers grazed my supplies, the inkstone and inksticks, soap, the stitched fabrics filled with sand and medicinal herbs for my monthly bleeding, and finally, what I was looking for. I drew out the small, wooden frame and a roll of cloth I had intended to use for bandages as needed. The frame was for drying paper once it had been inked; a small part of the scribe’s trade I’d not managed to leave behind when I set off on my revenge. I whispered an apology to the ghosts of my family before, one-handed, smashing it against the stone. From the wreckage, I drew out two straight sticks of strong wood. My fingers were cold and clumsy, but I managed to put them aside without losing either of them. Beside them went the bandages.
Now, for the hard part. I’d never done this before and had only seen it once, when my brother fell out of the village persimmon tree. My fingers lightly tapped along the length of my broken arm, finding the humped place that signified the break. At least the bone wasn’t protruding. Even in the dark, I wasn’t sure I could bear that. The village apothecary had set my brother’s arm with the aid of two strong men. I was on my own.
First, I plunged my arm into the water. The throbbing pain flared at the motion. But within moments the numbing chill of the water began its work. I took a shuddering breath and left it as long as I dared. When I could no longer feel my fingers, I withdrew, braced my arm between my side and one of the larger nearby stones. Before I could think too long about it, I grabbed my arm just above the wrist with my good hand and yanked.
White lights exploded behind my eyes. I leaned harder into the stone, panting as I kept up the pressure until I could feel the bone shift and realign. Tears fell unheeded on my hands; this had to be done swiftly if I was going to do it at all. I reached for one of the two sticks. I laid it along the realigned bone, and one-handed, wrapped bandages around it. Then repeated the process with the other stick, on the other side of my arm. I covered both sticks with more wrappings, until my roll of bandages was gone, and I was sure the arm wasn’t going to shift out of place anytime soon.
By the time I was done, the pain had diminished from the hot explosion under my skin to a dull and steady throb. I put my things away and forced myself back into a meditative pose. My breathing aligned with the wind faster this time, and I could still see the dantian inside of me, pulsing with the air. I drank deep of the wind, of my own qi, and it helped me to take the pain and fear and place them away from my core. Still there, but at a distance. I found myself accepting the existence of that fear and pain and as I accepted it, I was protected from the worst of it. I was buffered, like a sheltered cove in the eye of a storm. Centered.
“Mmm, impressive,” boomed the voice above my head. “I expected more screaming.”
I did scream. And fall over, my hands flailing uselessly at the darkness. “Who’s there?”
The ground beneath me shook as the unseen voice laughed. A faint green light appeared in the stones I sat among. The crystals, rather–as they brightened I could see that they were faceted gems the size of my torso, rising in haphazard clumps from the gently curved surface. What I had thought was a shelf of stone, or perhaps an island in this midnight lake, was actually an enormous tortoise shell. The hairy clumps of moss and crystal spikes did nothing to obscure this fact now that the emerald light was painting shapes out of darkness like calligraphy. I looked up and a massive face took form: beaked, with wrinkled leather skin and eyes the size and shape of woks. They were obsidian mirrors; I could see my pale, battered face in the closest one with painful clarity. Stretching from the rear of the enormous head to connect with the shell was a sinuous neck, at least twice as long as I was tall.
“Lord Xuanwu,” I breathed, then threw myself face down on the god’s shell, babbling apologies.
He laughed again, shaking my body to its core. “Hardly, hardly. I am but a drop of blood shed by the great warrior, awakened for ten thousand years of life. Or so they say. I have only lived for seven thousand, thus far. Who knows what the next three hold?” He lowered his head until I could feel the draft of his breath on my hair. “You may call me Wai Kei. If you call me anything at all.”
I swallowed. How did one talk to a god? And if this was not the great Xuanwu, he was still surely a god. “I am Zhou Hou,” I ventured, and held my breath, as if even that might be too presumptuous.
“Are you?” Wai Kei lifted his head and chuckled. “Good for you. The she-devil did not drown you, so it must be a lucky name.”
I dared to look up. “She-devil?”
He made a lazy noise of agreement. “The devil of the ocean that Guanqing half-summoned. She drowned him. And those who came looking for him from the sect above. Until they stopped coming. Now, she only drowns foolish young men who wander into the mountain caves.” His nostrils flared. “But you are no young man, fool or not. Has Seven Striking Thunder fallen?”
Mouth dry, I shook my head. “No, my lord. I–have my reasons.”
Another laugh. “Good for you, once more. It is important to have reasons. What reason brought you to the mountain?”
I explained the struggles I and the others had been having with the foundation exercises, and our plan to use the crevice in the mountain as a place to meditate. Wai Kei listened silently as I stumbled my way through the water’s attack and being separated from Zhuzhu. The terror of being dragged down into the darkness. I finished, “Now I don’t know where I am. But I must return to the surface before everyone thinks I’m dead.”
“Must you? You mortals always feel you must do things.” Wai Kei cocked his head to one side, regarding me with one grave eye. “Why?”
It was a kinder questioning than I had faced a month ago, but it was the same question in the end. I only had one answer. “Vengeance, my lord. I have sworn myself to it.”
“An ugly oath. Those who embark on a path of vengeance should dig two graves–”
“One for their enemy and one for themselves,” I said. “I know. But I have sworn it on graves I value more highly than my own.”
“A pity.” Wai Kai’s sigh rippled the water. He coiled his neck this way and that. I couldn’t tell what he was looking at; all of the light of the crystals on his back illuminated nothing but black water as far as I could see. “I was rather hoping you had come to reclaim this place.”
“This place? Why? What was it?”
“Once, it was the workshop of Guanqing.” When I didn’t react, his head drooped. “Has it been so long? The clever, terrible Guanqing is forgotten?”
“I’ve never heard of him. But,” I tried to sound reassuring, “I’ve only been with the sect for a month. I don’t know anything.”
“You would know him, were he still spoken of,” Wai Kei said. “Another treasure lost to the rage of the she-devil. I warned him that she would be beyond his skill. Even his skill.”
“What did he do?”
It was the right question. Wai Kei brightened. “Ah, that is right. The advantage to a story being forgotten is that one may tell it again for the first time.” He tapped a place on his shell with the tip of his nose. “Here, daughter of the Zhou. Sit. I will tell you the story of Guanqing’s fall. Perhaps you will learn something of power, and of pride. Perhaps it will help keep you alive when the toll for your vengeance comes due.”