Chapter 156

Five Grooves Beneath the Ash

Shi Po dragged a half-burnt plank out from the base of the wall. He scraped one end against the ground a few times, working it into a beveled edge, then pressed one hand down on the board and pushed from the east wall outward. The ash wasn't heavy—it kicked up half a foot at the first push, white, settling on his shoulders, his brows. He pushed a stretch, stopped, waited for the ash to fall back, pushed another stretch.

"Push it out past the threshold, pile it at the base of the wall," Xu Yan said from behind the counter. "There are still pages in the ash. Don't stir it up."

Shi Po grunted. The plank scraped across the flagstones, a dry, gritty sound. Three hundred years of ash carried no burnt smell—only the dry, sunbaked scent of old stone.

Bai Xiaoman crouched by the east wall, stacking pages one by one on her knee. When the stack reached the width of her palm, she passed it to Du Xiaochuan; he handed it to Cheng Banshan, who pressed it into the oilcloth. Ash drifted past her head. She didn't look up. She pinched the corner of a page and shook it—ash shook loose. She lifted the page higher, tilted her head, and blew from the side. Once the ash scattered, the writing surfaced, column after column, just as before.

"Blow from the side, not straight on," she told Du Xiaochuan.

Du Xiaochuan copied her, tilting his head to blow, and sneezed. Half a page flew out of his hand. He lunged, pinned it down, and looked up at Xu Yan, his face dusted white.

"Don't blow directly at the paper," Xu Yan said.

"I didn't blow at it," Du Xiaochuan said. "It flew on its own."

Qian Duoduo came in from the doorway, a waterskin in each hand. He skirted the stacks of sorted pages and set the skins under the counter. "Six full skins left. Nobody drinks more than their share today—we refill tomorrow." No one answered. He straightened each mouth, one by one, then crouched by the door to watch Shi Po push ash. "When ash lands in the water, it floats on top in a layer. You have to blow it aside before you scoop."

Behind the counter, Huo Qing pulled out drawer after drawer, checked the bottoms, and pushed them back as they'd been, sweeping the ash from each into a broken clay jar. When the jar filled, he carried it to the door and dumped it on the pile at the wall. Shao Ming reached under the counter and groped around, found a fire-warped strip of iron, held it to the light at the doorway, then dropped it in the jar. The two of them each had a hand in the crack between counter and wall, neither touching the other.

Jiang Wan emerged from the storehouse, stopped at the threshold, and said to Shi Po, "Don't pile the ash at the storehouse door. The pages are stacked there."

Shi Po shifted the jar and ash pile two steps south.

Jiang Wan went back into the storehouse. Qi Qi followed her out, an empty jar in his hands.

Shi Po took two steps toward the door, looked back at Xu Yan. "Can the outer room be finished today?"

"If not today, tomorrow," Xu Yan said. "Push a stretch, check a stretch. There are torn pages under the ash."

The ash was pushed past the halfway point of the outer room when the plank struck something. The sound was short and solid—not paper, not broken tile. Shi Po lifted the board, crouched, and wiped at the spot with his finger. He cleared away a layer of white and underneath, a hint of stone color showed—a line, straight, carved into the flagstone.

"Sect Master."

Xu Yan came over from the counter and crouched, running his finger along the line in both directions. The groove was packed with compressed ash that wouldn't scrape out. He traced it south where it turned, looked up. "Which way from here?"

"South," Shi Po said.

Bai Xiaoman was already on her feet. She walked over, crouched at the edge first, and wiped her hands on her clothes before extending a finger. Her nail was thin; she worked it in bit by bit, prying out a small stretch, blowing it clean, prying again. Half a foot of line emerged—shallow carving, her nail bottoming out with each pass.

"Don't push anymore, Senior Brother Shi," she said. "There's carving here."

Shi Po stood the plank against the wall and crouched to watch. Qi Qi came over from the storehouse, crouched too, leaning in for a look.

Bai Xiaoman followed the line south on her hands and knees, scraping as she went. Half a foot in, her hand stopped. "There's a groove here." It was packed with ash too. She swept it clear with her fingers, revealing a shallow circular groove, the size of a palm, so shallow she could see the bottom. "Another." She moved on, east—a second line, a second groove.

Xu Yan straightened and surveyed the room. The line ran from the groove, out to the middle of the room, then turned elsewhere. He stepped back half a pace. "From here on, nobody steps on it. To clear it, use tile shards, use your fingers—not the plank."

Qi Qi asked, "Picking it out by hand—how long will that take?"

"Until it's clear enough to see."

Xu Yan sorted through the wall base for a few unburnt tiles and set one beside each person. Bai Xiaoman used the sharp corner of her shard at an angle, brushing ash from both sides of the line—pushing once, blowing once, then working her finger in to loosen the packed ash. Before long, her knuckles were raw and red. Shi Po didn't use a tile. He swept with his palm flat against the stone, stopping at the line's edge, and carried the ash away in cupped hands.

By Horse hour, daylight fell straight into the courtyard, casting a bright band across the threshold. Most of the ash in the outer room was cleared; the flagstones emerged block by block, somehow looking wider than before. Qian Duoduo passed the waterskins around, one sip each. Bai Xiaoman didn't drink. She said she wanted to look first.

Jiang Wan set a waterskin by her knee and left.

By the time the ash was cleared from the center, all five grooves were exposed: one west, one east, one north, one south, one in the middle. All empty—not a single formation stone. The rims were worn smooth and glossy, the bottoms flat, no deeper than half a finger. Beside each groove, a small character was carved, barely larger than a fingernail, the strokes thin.

Bai Xiaoman lay flat beside the eastern groove. First she traced the character with her finger, then looked up. "Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth."

"The arrangement," Xu Yan said.

Her hand swept from west to east. "Metal west, Wood east, Water north, Fire south, Earth center." She drew her hand back. "Same arrangement as the formation eye on the mountain—just much smaller. That one's spread across a stone platform. This one only takes up a few paces in the middle of the room."

"Where are the formation stones?" Qian Duoduo asked.

"Of the five on the mountain, three were bought later," Bai Xiaoman said. "Here, there's nothing at all."

Huo Qing called from behind the counter, "Should we sort the pages at the east end first?"

"Clear the ash first," Xu Yan said. "Pages are buried under it. If it's not swept clean, we'll miss one for every one we pick."

Huo Qing acknowledged and went back under the counter.

Bai Xiaoman braced her hands on either side of a groove and stared for a long moment. "It's a formation." She sat up straighter. "The formation that protected this room."

"That's what the formation manual describes?" Xu Yan asked.

"Three sections in the manual." She counted on her fingers. "First section, breathing exercises. Second, laying small formations. Third, activating formations. The activation section explains how to place the stones and how to raise them." She pressed a finger to the rim of the eastern groove. "The formation eye on the mountain was activated according to the third section. This one was drawn the same way—same five grooves."

"Put five stones in, and it could hold the house up?" Qian Duoduo asked again.

Shi Po said from beside the beam, "A house relies on its beam. This one won't hold until the day we seal the gate." Bai Xiaoman nodded.

Xu Yan pointed to the small character beside the eastern groove. "Have you seen these characters anywhere else?"

Bai Xiaoman didn't answer right away. She lay down and traced all five small characters, one by one, then pointed to the eastern one. "This one—same writing as the small characters at the head of each section in the manual." She looked up, her face streaked gray and white with ash. "The Founding Patriarch drew it."

Cheng Banshan squatted down, one hand on his knee, and peered closely. "What's carved in the floor outlasts what stands above it."

The line at the east end ran beneath the beam and stopped. That was where the half-collapsed roof frame had come down—one end of the beam resting on the east wall, the other slammed into the flagstones, leaving a crater. A short length of line was visible past the beam, but nothing connected it.

Shi Po reached under the beam and felt around. "This one's bearing the roof frame. Move it, and the east end comes down."

"Don't move it," Xu Yan said. "Work around it."

Qi Qi counted twice. "Five grooves. Five lines—the east one's broken."

"Mark a ring around them with tile shards," Xu Yan said. "Keep your feet outside it."

Qi Qi grabbed a handful of broken tile and laid the pieces one by one around the five grooves, working around the beam's base at the east end in a half circle, circling that broken stretch of line too.

By late Monkey hour, the sun had shifted, and the shadow from the east end crept up the counter. Jiang Wan had the waterskins collected and said that since they'd seen clearly enough, they should get back to work—the pages still weren't sorted.

Xu Yan asked, "Can you do this?"

Bai Xiaoman lifted her hand from the carved line and rested it on her knee. "The formation is dead. It's been burned, and with no formation stones, it can't rise." She paused. "I won't put pebbles in the grooves, and I won't send spiritual power into the lines. I'll only look."

"Look until you're done looking," Xu Yan said. "The pages still aren't sorted."

Bai Xiaoman asked, "Sect Master, where should I write this down?"

"In your mind," Xu Yan said. "Every sheet of paper has to be carried out."

She nodded and recited: "Five grooves, five lines running to the center, eastern one broken."

She picked up her tile shard, then set it back down.

Jiang Wan brought over half a tile that hadn't burnt through and slipped it under Bai Xiaoman's knee. Bai Xiaoman said, "Senior Sister, I'm working on my stomach—my knees don't touch the floor."

Jiang Wan said nothing more. She left the tile where it was and went back to the counter.

The group dispersed, and the work resumed. Shi Po switched to a shorter plank, pushing from the west end toward the door, working around the ring of broken tile, scooping the ash up by hand at the edges. Shao Ming and Huo Qing cleared the crevice under the counter. Du Xiaochuan carried the sorted pages to the storehouse door in armloads, where Cheng Banshan received and stacked them. Qi Qi went out for a look, reached the collapsed section, and turned back, reporting that the path was unchanged. He picked up two burnable sticks of wood on the way; Xu Yan spotted him and made him put them back at the wall.

Du Xiaochuan brought another armload and crouched beside Bai Xiaoman, watching her sprawled on the floor. He asked Shao Ming, "What can she see, lying there like that?"

Shao Ming said, "She sat one whole night at the formation eye." Du Xiaochuan glanced at her twice more, then carried the pages off.

Qian Duoduo unwrapped the flatbread bundle and counted. Still enough for some days; the hard ones could be soaked. He placed one on the flat stone beside the formation, saying it was for Bai Xiaoman. She said to leave it for now.

Xu Yan made a circuit of the outer room, from the threshold to the central groove, from there to under the east beam. The light had crept half a foot inward; the counter's shadow covered one corner of the southernmost groove. He stopped, looked at the floor, then at the two stacks of pages by the storehouse door.

Cheng Banshan tied up a stack. "Everything in this courtyard—one thing at a time—has to be carried up the mountain."

"One thing at a time," Xu Yan said.

Bai Xiaoman lay down, pushed her sleeves up, and pressed a finger to one of the lines. Starting from the western groove, she followed it inward, inch by inch. Light from the doorway fell across her back. Halfway, she brought her face close to the flagstone and edged forward another half inch.

Bai Xiaoman lay on the floor, cheek to the stone, tracing the line with her finger, stopping at the center.