Chapter 147: Three Hundred-Plus Stone Steps

The stone steps inside the gate were narrower than they'd looked from outside. A single step couldn't fit a whole foot, and two people walking side by side couldn't pass at all.

At the end of the Snake hour, the daylight outside the gate died two paces in. Qi Qi was at the front, holding his torch out toward Du Xiaochuan. Du Xiaochuan fished out his fire starter from inside his robe and blew twice before it sparked. The flame wavered, then straightened. Two torches caught one after the other, smoke curling upward, flattening against the rock ceiling, then slipping back down along the walls. Qian Duoduo coughed twice, covering his mouth with one hand.

"One torch in front, one behind," Xu Yan said. "The middle stays dark. Watch your footing and keep one hand free for the wall."

"I've only got the one hand," Cheng Banshan said, putting that hand on the wall first. His herb pouch hung at his waist, his wine gourd behind his hip. He took the first step slowly, his foot fully planted before the second came down. He looked back. "No one push from behind. Pushing won't make it faster."

"Nobody's pushing," Jiang Wan said ahead of him.

The order settled: Qi Qi with the torch at the front, then Xu Yan, Jiang Wan, Bai Xiaoman, Qian Duoduo, Cheng Banshan, Shao Ming, Huo Qing, and Du Xiaochuan. Shi Po brought up the rear, carrying two packs. His torch was raised high, lighting the backs of nine heads as they inched down one after another.

The walls on both sides had been chiseled. The marks ran in clean, even lines. Near the top, the first few dozen steps had rough, heavy chisel strokes, but the deeper they went, the more regular the work became. Xu Yan's fingers slid down the wall and found a hollow, its rim worn smooth—by hands, over how many years he couldn't know. He kept count in his head, not missing a single step.

Shao Ming said from behind, "These steps were carved. One by one."

"Carved evenly," Cheng Banshan said. "Work like this means people were meant to come and go often."

"Carving this would've taken how many years?"

"Whoever carved it never counted," Xu Yan said.

Twenty-some steps down, the patch of sky overhead shrank to a single square, and then even that vanished. Nothing remained but the two pools of torchlight: one yellow pool ahead of Qi Qi, one behind Shi Po, and the dark between them, where only the bundles on people's backs were visible.

"This is way darker than the back mountain path," Qian Duoduo said, voice low. "At least back there you could see the trees."

"Follow the light," Shao Ming said from the rear.

Cold air climbed up level by level, carrying the smell of earth. It brushed the backs of their necks and tightened their scalps. Qian Duoduo hugged the cake bundle with one arm and ran his other hand along the wall. Huo Qing kept his left hand on the stone, his right hanging at his side. His shadow rose and fell in the firelight, his shoulders still, his footsteps never once breaking rhythm.

"One step, two steps, three steps..." Qian Duoduo counted under his breath. Around twenty-some he stopped, took two breaths, then kept going. "Twenty-one, twenty-two—"

"What number are you at?" Bai Xiaoman asked from ahead.

"A hundred and something. A hundred and seven." Qian Duoduo hesitated. "Or was it a hundred and six?"

"Duoduo," Cheng Banshan said behind him, "just count the step under your feet."

Qian Duoduo fell silent and slowed down, planting each foot more firmly than before. One step caught him with only half his foot on it; his heel scraped the edge of the next step and slipped. He pitched forward, the cake bundle slamming against the wall. Cheng Banshan's hand hooked the strap of his pack from behind and hauled him upright.

"Stop and stand," Cheng Banshan said.

Qian Duoduo stood still, caught his breath, and shifted the bundle to his other arm. "I'm done counting."

"Count the step under your feet," Cheng Banshan said again. "Counting clear is fine, counting wrong is fine. Just don't think about what's below when you put your foot down."

Qian Duoduo squared his feet and started walking again. After a long while he said quietly, "A hundred and forty-one."

The number in Xu Yan's head was a different book. When he reached the hundred and fifties, the ground in the torchlight changed: ahead, the edge of the steps held thicker dust than above, and a narrow track had been worn through it by feet, the dust on either side piled up untouched. He placed his feet in that track and followed it down, step by step.

Near the end of the Horse hour, Cheng Banshan suddenly said, "There's light below."

Qi Qi stopped. The yellow pool ahead spilled out and lit steps that looked different now—washed with a faint gray-white. He lowered the torch, stopped halfway, and pressed the flame against the stone beside him. It went out with a puff of smoke and the smell of charring.

"Save it," he said.

Behind, Shi Po put his torch out too. Du Xiaochuan felt the two dead torches and reported, "Two full ones left."

"Save them," Xu Yan said. "Light them when we can't see."

With both torches out, the steps showed their true color: light rising from below, climbing step by step all the way to their feet. In the gray-white glow, they could see the edges of the steps, the cracks between them, the chisel marks on the walls—even the bits of dirt packed into the seams.

Shao Ming looked around and up. "It doesn't reach up there."

"Light travels from below," Xu Yan said. "The deeper we go, the brighter it gets."

The steps widened at this stretch. Along the east side, a strip of edge stone ran flatter than the steps—one solid piece. Bai Xiaoman stopped beside it and crouched down.

"Don't step on it," she said.

Everyone halted. Half a pace away, Jiang Wan angled her body to block the light behind her.

There were carvings on the edge stone. A groove ran sideways for a stretch, empty—nothing in it. Along the groove's edge ran several carved lines, one after another, until one snapped off mid-way. The broken end was jagged; the remaining piece hung askew, its cut facing the groove but not connecting.

Bai Xiaoman's finger hovered an inch above the groove without touching it. She read it from the start to the break, then back again. Twice.

"There's a groove, there are carved lines," she said. "It's a formation. Broken—it won't activate. Don't touch it."

"Can you tell what kind of formation?" Xu Yan crouched beside her without reaching out either.

"No." She shook her head. "The line's broken. It won't connect."

"What do the lines do?"

"From the formation manual: the anchors seat into the grooves, and qi travels along the carved lines." She traced it in the air with her finger. "If the groove's empty, the anchor never set. If the line's whole, qi can run from one end to the other. Here, there's not one formation stone in the groove, and the line is snapped in two. Qi reaches the break and scatters."

"What happens when it scatters?"

"It won't rise." Bai Xiaoman pulled her hand back. "Broken like this, no matter who steps on it, nothing comes up."

"Where are the formation stones from the groove?"

"Rolled down, or someone took them out back then." She tilted her chin. "Can't tell. I only recognize it's a formation, and that it's broken."

Qian Duoduo craned his neck from behind. "So... so it'd be safe to step on?"

"Don't step on it." Bai Xiaoman looked up. "A broken formation, I can't read it clearly. I only say 'safe' when I can see exactly what it is."

"Nobody touches it," Xu Yan said, rising. "Groove and lines both—step over in one stride and stick close to the west wall."

One by one they crossed, each lowering their head to watch their footing. Shi Po went last, moving his two packs across the edge stone first, then himself; his feet landed three full paces from the groove.

Further down, the steps narrowed again. Jiang Wan moved up beside Bai Xiaoman and walked with her a while.

"That formation protected this stretch of steps?" Jiang Wan asked.

"Don't know," Bai Xiaoman said. "When it broke, why it broke—can't tell. Could've snapped in a collapse, could've broken long before."

"What's broken doesn't bite," Cheng Banshan said from behind. "What's loose underfoot is what bites. Watching your step beats studying old formations."

Bai Xiaoman made a sound of agreement and hitched her bundle higher. The five formation stones inside clicked together.

The light grew stronger. Further down, a thin layer of dry moss appeared on the walls, and a few shards of gravel lay underfoot—debris fallen from above and rolled to rest here. Every few steps, Qi Qi glanced back and called out: "Four steps ahead, then it turns." "Past the turn, still going straight down."

At the Sheep hour, the steps ended.

Qi Qi stopped at a point and raised his hand. They gathered one by one. The steps cut off clean: beyond them, nothing. Below lay a collapse—a great heap of broken stone, large and small piled together, depth unseen. Light showed in the cracks between the rocks, and darkness too. Above the collapse, a fissure ran down the rock face from the ceiling all the way into the rubble.

"It fell," Shi Po said. He set his two packs down and crouched at the edge of the collapse, pressing a hand against the broken surface of the last step. "Loose. This whole pile is live."

He pushed at a spot lower down. A slab of rock slid, and a chain of smaller stones shifted with it, the sound rattling down through the heap until it faded out of hearing.

Qian Duoduo shuffled back half a step, clutching the cake bundle to his chest. "Below... can we even get down from here?"

"No path in sight," Shao Ming said. "Don't jump from the top. That pile's alive—you land and you'll slide right with it."

Jiang Wan studied the drop, then looked up at the crack above. "It collapsed from up there. Cracked to here, fell to here."

"The steps go all the way down; the collapse took the middle section," Xu Yan said. "The lower stretch is still there—either beside this rubble or under it."

He walked the collapse from one end to the other, stopping at the corner where the stone met the east wall. The corner wasn't a dead end: the wall had split from bottom to top, leaving a gap—narrow, but one person could edge through sideways. Squinting into it by the light from below, he saw patches of dark and patches of light.

"Here," he said.

They came over. On both sides of the gap—the outer face, the inner face—the stone was covered in marks. Knife cuts, sword scars, charcoal streaks, one over another. Some ran horizontal, some slanted, some so low you'd have to bend to make them; four or five layered on the same spot, impossible to tell which day any one was made. The charcoal marks were longest, slashing across whole slabs of stone and running deep inside.

"The Eight Sects went around this way," Qi Qi said, crouching at the gap's edge. He pointed at a charcoal mark without touching it. "Drawn with the burnt end of a torch."

"Which sect?" Qian Duoduo asked.

"Any of them." Qi Qi pulled his hand back. "Some marks are at the forks, some in dead ends. Can't tell whose is whose."

Huo Qing stood at the gap's edge a while, silent, then shifted half a step aside.

Xu Yan crouched at the opening and studied the cluster of marks. Reading across them, two things showed: the marks near the entrance were fresh, the charcoal soot still loose on the stone, smearing at a touch; deeper in, the layers piled thick, the oldest nearly worn flat—no telling what year, what hand, had made them.

"The Eight Sects' signs all stacked together. Following them is like reading a mangled ledger." He stood. "In this cave, keep your own record."

Qi Qi edged closer. "How? I track paths. Walked once, I know it."

"You keep yours," Xu Yan said. "I need my own."

He took the half-burnt torch from Qi Qi's hand and felt the blackened end. The charred crust was hard, but a little black came off. He raised his hand to the east wall by the gap's mouth and drew a line.

A black streak crossed the gray-white stone, a little dust falling free. He finished and stepped back to look: every mark on the wall was inside the gap; only this one was on the gap's mouth. Inside, the opening bent away, patches of dark and light, stray light from some unseen crack falling on one stone and no further. The path split in more than one direction.