Chapter 183: Last In, Last Out

Cheng Banshan first wrapped the medicine pouch's cord twice around his waist and tied it tight, then crouched down to pick up the oilcloth bundle by his feet. He hefted it once and tucked it under his arm.

"Heavier," he said. "It wasn't this heavy the day I put it away in the Accounts Room."

"Anything carried through down here picks up two ounces," Qi Qi said. "Even flatbread."

The stone chamber by the pool had been tidied until it was empty. Bai Xiaoman rolled the four formation banners into a small bundle and tucked them into her robes, then circled the chamber once more—the corners, behind the door, a water stain on the stone wall—she didn't miss a thing. Qian Duoduo rewrapped the remaining flatbread, pressed it flat under the bottom of his pack with his fist. Shi Po took the water flasks down from the wall one by one and handed them out; he shook his own and listened to the water.

Ten people stood at the door for a moment. The floor still held the shapes of ten sleeping bodies—some deep, some shallow. Shi Po's was the widest.

"Let's go," Xu Yan said.

The stairway out of the stone plaza climbed step by step. Light in the Hidden Realm came from above—green at first, then after a stretch the light picked up white. Shadows dragged behind their feet at first, then shrank beneath them.

Shi Po led, stopping every ten-odd steps to wait for the people behind. Jiang Wan followed, sword in her right hand, the scabbard tip knocking against the stone steps every so often. Huo Qing walked behind Jiang Wan, left hand hanging loose, his right sleeve swaying with each step. Cheng Banshan walked in the middle, the oilcloth bundle under his arm, one hand braced against the rock wall. Xu Yan came last.

The dust on the steps was dry; each footfall kicked it up from the edges of their shoes, drifting up to settle on the backs of the people ahead. Qi Qi gagged halfway up, backed down two steps, covered his nose and spat the grit from his mouth, then looked up.

"How many more?" he asked.

"Halfway," Shi Po said.

Qian Duoduo followed behind, counting as he climbed. He reached the thirties just as the stairs bent around a turn. His mouth opened—he'd lost where he was—made a small "ah," and gave up counting entirely.

Bai Xiaoman glanced back every two steps. After a while, she reached toward Cheng Banshan. "Elder Cheng, give me the medicine pouch."

Cheng Banshan untied the cord from his waist and handed it over, but the oilcloth bundle he pulled a little closer.

"I'll give you the pouch. The oilcloth, no."

"I'm not robbing you."

"No one gets it from me," he said. "We'll talk at the gate."

Du Xiaochuan heard this from behind and reached out. "Elder Cheng, I'll carry it for a stretch."

"Carry your own."

Du Xiaochuan pulled his hand back, touched the pack on his shoulder, and said nothing more.

Halfway up, Qi Qi turned and looked down. The stone plaza was long gone; below was a gray haze, impossible to tell depth from distance.

"A month here," he said. "Leaving feels like we were never here."

"Everything on our backs—that's what makes it feel like we were never here," Shao Ming said.

"Uncle Shao, that sounds like something the Accounts Room would say."

"The Accounts Room is behind you," Shao Ming said.

Xu Yan answered from the back: "I heard that. It's well said."

Higher up, the light widened. The edges of the steps grew distinct; old water marks ran across the rock face above head height. Jiang Wan paused under one of them, looked up, said nothing, and kept climbing. That step's edge was worn smooth, its middle dipped lower than its sides.

"How many feet have crossed this to wear it so," she said.

"People three hundred years ago crossed it too," Cheng Banshan said.

They reached the first level at Snake hour. Past the last several broken steps lay an open stretch of stone, daylight falling down and turning the rubble white. Cheng Banshan stopped and shifted the oilcloth bundle higher on his arm.

"Here," Shi Po said.

Heading north a stretch, they came first to the courtyard wall with its several collapsed sections. Qi Qi ran ahead, crouched by the flat stone at the breach, and traced a finger over the scratches on its surface one by one. At the last, his hand stopped in midair. He looked back at Xu Yan, stood, and walked on without a word.

Xu Yan walked to the flat stone. A row of gashes crossed its face; the last one cut was still dark, the earlier ones faded gray under dust. He didn't count them. The day the first was cut, daylight was almost spent. He'd finished assigning the work and sat on this stone for a long while.

Shi Po came up, stood beside the stone a moment, glanced at it, said nothing, and walked on.

Inside the courtyard wall, the Accounts Room still stood. The roof frame had half collapsed—the beams at the west end still upright, the east side's fallen timbers heaped together. Shi Po stepped ahead and held out an arm. "Don't go in the east side."

The ledger rack lay against the wall's base, horizontal and vertical pieces crushed into a pile. The wood had burned through; a touch sent a layer of charcoal crumbling. The counter by the door had half collapsed; the remaining half still rested on its stone footing. The storeroom's doorway behind was black, the collapsed ceiling visible from the entrance.

Cheng Banshan set the oilcloth bundle on the counter, crouched, and untied one corner. Seeing the vermilion seal on the top page facing outward, he tied the corner back, twice.

"Seal facing out," he said. "Open it and the count's right there."

Huo Qing stood at the storeroom door, looking up at the caved-in ceiling. He looked for a while, left hand resting once on his scabbard. Shi Po walked over and stopped beside him. "Don't touch that piece up top."

Huo Qing nodded. The two stood in the doorway a while.

Bai Xiaoman stood in the middle of the outer room, at the five shallow grooves in the floor. She put not one foot into the grooves—just stood there, looking up at the roof frame, watching the light fall through onto the dust.

"I drew this place once, up on the mountain," she said.

No one answered. She looked down at the grooves under her feet, then at the five lines, and stepped half a pace back.

Xu Yan stood outside the threshold. He didn't go in. Through the inner door, one stone leg of the writing desk still stood; the desktop had half collapsed and lay covered in dust. Beside the desk leg, there was a sunken patch in the dust—the spot where he'd knelt that day and felt underneath with his hand. The imprint was still there.

He looked from outside the threshold a while, turned, and walked away.

"Any more to salvage?" Cheng Banshan asked.

"Done already."

"Then we go." Cheng Banshan lifted the oilcloth bundle from the counter. "Things picked up page by page, carried on the back, weigh heavier than stone."

Under the west wall, the old stone trough still dripped, one drop at a time into the basin. Qian Duoduo pressed a flask mouth to the trough's bottom, filled it, lifted it out, and swapped in another. Du Xiaochuan helped beside him. Cheng Banshan walked over, scooped a palmful from the trough, tasted it, and flicked the water onto the stone.

"This trough's is more bitter than the pool water," he said. "Drink sparingly."

Half a li south of the courtyard wall was the stair mouth.

The stair mouth was a small flat space; above, steps rose layer after layer until they vanished halfway up, where the light from above fell and scattered at that point. The flat held packed earth, and at the edges a few stones where people had rested their packs. The lowest step gleamed from sitting.

The ten stopped here. Bai Xiaoman returned the medicine pouch to Cheng Banshan; he took it and hung it back at his waist.

Shao Ming set his pack at the foot of the steps and looked up. "Sect Master, not going up first?"

"No." Xu Yan said. "The gate stands on Qingya's ground. Last in, last out."

Cheng Banshan set the oilcloth bundle by his feet and raised his head. "Is that written in the regulations?"

"The regulations say the landlord sect guards the gate until the day it opens. Who goes out last—the regulations don't say."

"Then it's your own rule."

"It's mine."

Jiang Wan leaned her sword against the rock wall and turned. "Why?"

Xu Yan didn't answer right away. He looked out past the stair mouth: the road back, half a li north to the courtyard wall and the Accounts Room, and further down, the places they'd walked this past month.

"I'm the one who handed in the roster," he said. "At the gate they count heads—one tick coming in, one tick going out. Anyone still inside at the moment the gate seals, per Rule Six, doesn't get released. We sit here. Who hasn't gone up—we'll see it."

Shao Ming straightened his pack against the bottom step. "Then we sit. Sitting is sitting, wherever we do it; better at this mouth than down below."

Qi Qi looked up at the shaft of light. "Want me to go up and see how many sects haven't come out?"

"No need," Xu Yan said. "There's only one path up. If they can walk it, we can wait it out."

Jiang Wan sat two steps higher, sword laid across her knees.

From the Wei hour on, footsteps came to the stair mouth.

First a group came from the north—four or five, cloth bundles bound and slung over shoulders, one man carrying a coil of rope ends. They reached the stair mouth without slowing, shoe soles scraping stone, step after step upward, straight into the light above.

Shi Po stood and watched them go up. He sat down only when the footsteps faded.

The second group had two more. As they passed, someone flicked a glance toward the Qingya side—quick, like looking at a stone by the road.

"Not even a nod," Qi Qi said.

"A nod would feel like owing something," Cheng Banshan said.

Du Xiaochuan crouched at the bottom step and said quietly, "When I walked the roads with a steward from Chixiao on business, we didn't look at people by the roadside either."

"You're looking now," Jiang Wan said.

Du Xiaochuan rubbed the back of his neck and found no reply.

When the third group passed, the last man's rope ends came loose. He crouched on the lowest step to retie them. He was two or three paces from the Qingya side, head down, winding the rope twice, knotting it, giving it a tug. Then he stood and climbed, never once glancing over.

Bai Xiaoman's fingers twitched, then stilled.

Shao Ming watched him go up. "Going back empty-handed's hard to explain. Everyone's picked up something to carry."

"They're picking through what's left," Cheng Banshan said.

"What's left is still something."

Another group came up, backs loaded with a stack of old planks, rust marks from iron fittings along the edges. Qian Duoduo leaned close to Cheng Banshan and whispered, "What's that?"

"Old boards," Cheng Banshan said. "Even storeroom ash has someone to carry it."

"Are they worth anything?"

"Firewood," Cheng Banshan said. "Good for cooking."

Qian Duoduo shut his mouth.

The light shifted. It slanted from the top of the steps, fell across half the stair mouth; the other half shrank into shadow. Shi Po spread his pack flat and sat on it. Huo Qing stood at the base of the rock wall; whenever someone came up, he stepped aside, left hand on his scabbard, never letting go. Jiang Wan sat two steps higher, watching the northern path.

Xu Yan sat on his step, hands on his knees.

Each group that passed, he added a stroke in his mind; another group, another stroke. He said nothing. No one knew he was counting.

One group came up and a man, burdened and slow, stopped at the stair mouth, hitched the pack higher on his back, caught his breath, and climbed on. The Qingya side could hear him breathing.

"They don't have it easy either," Qian Duoduo said quietly.

"No one has it easy," Shao Ming said. "A month inside—nobody left empty-handed."

Late Shen hour, the last group went up.

Footsteps echoed on the steps for a while, fading level by level until they entered the light and were gone. The stair mouth fell quiet; now and then a crumb of dirt fell from above and landed on stone.

Qi Qi crouched on the lowest step, stared upward for a long time, then turned. "Sect Master, how many groups was that?"

Xu Yan didn't answer.

The number in his mind had kept adding up, group by group from the first; by the last, it still came short. Coming in, they'd been counted one by one. Going out, they had to tally one by one. If they didn't tally, they'd sit here and wait. Waiting was nothing. Not getting the count to match—that was an account to be settled.

Jiang Wan came down from her higher step and stood beside him. She didn't ask for the number.

"If sealing time comes and someone still hasn't gone up?" she asked.

"Then he chose not to leave."

"How do you know he couldn't walk?"

Xu Yan didn't answer.

Jiang Wan didn't press. She gathered her sword and went back to the rock wall and sat down. Sunlight slanted across the steps above, stopped midway, and the remaining stretch stayed dark.

Xu Yan sat at the stair mouth, turning Jiang Wan's words over in his mind. They wouldn't settle, so he set them aside. The ledger against his chest said nothing. This entry couldn't be written in.