After the Guest-welcoming Daoist withdrew from the rear hall, he closed the wooden door with both hands.
The hall grew dimmer, with only the light slipping through the cracks in the windows striking the floor tiles, exposing every speck of dust in the room without mercy.
On the long table sat an old tea set, two coarse-glazed teacups with chipped rims.
The water in the teapot had nearly stopped steaming, having sat there for some time.
The White-haired Daoist still had his back to the door, rubbing a coarse cloth back and forth along the edge of the compass, as if trying to scrub away every trace of verdigris.
Chen Changfeng did not rush forward. Instead, he first stood by the door and surveyed the room.
Dust had settled on the statues of the Three Pure Ones in the shrine. The bronze censer on the offering table sat empty, meditation cushions lay askew in a heap against the wall, and cobwebs had formed in several layers across the window frames.
“Storybooks always claim that true masters cultivate in deep mountain forests, sleeping outdoors and shunning worldly affairs,” Chen Changfeng said, stepping forward with a smile in his voice.
“But they fail to realize that every truly spiritual object demands money and offerings to sustain. Good incense costs money, fine ink costs money, and how much effort goes into polishing the copper on this compass one time?”
The White-haired Daoist did not pause in his wiping.
Chen Changfeng continued forward, his gaze sweeping past the purple copper incense spoon lying on the long table.
“That’s why the grandest temples produce the most formidable people. Clear Void Temple commands the foremost mountain on the capital’s outskirts, subsists on official tributes, and accepts offerings from the powerful and wealthy. Every person who walks through this door across the Great Qian Empire carries with them their own hopes and desires.”
He stopped before the long table, set down the jar of Fen wine, and placed the osmanthus cakes beside it.
“Naturally, I am the same kind of person.”
The White-haired Daoist finally set down the cloth and turned around.
The hall’s light fell across his face, revealing deep, crisscrossing wrinkles.
His eyes were clouded, the whites tinged yellow, but when they occasionally shifted, remnants of the sharpness from his earlier years could still be seen.
“Before you left the pass, you still called me Master,” the White-haired Daoist said, his voice dry. He patted the remaining dust off the compass with his palm.
“Now you’ve even dispensed with the formality of address.”
“A man who has crossed the pass has no master on the grasslands.”
Chen Changfeng raised his hand and slapped the clay seal off the wine jar. The hardened mud shattered, and the aroma of wine immediately filled the space.
He grabbed a coarse bowl from the table, filled it to the brim with wine, pushed it in front of the White-haired Daoist, and poured himself a bowl.
The wine was slightly yellow, its rich scent of grains overpowering the oppressive stillness of the hall.
The White-haired Daoist lowered his head to look at the wine in his bowl.
“After crossing the pass, how many men of the Great Qian have you killed?”
Chen Changfeng held his bowl but did not drink. Instead, he swirled the wine in the windowlight.
“On the grasslands, when you fight, you don’t count heads.”
His tone was no different from when he chatted with the shopkeeper at the mutton soup stand.
“A victory is a victory. No one cares how many died. The horses trample through, the battlefield is cleared, and the cattle and sheep keep grazing, the wine keeps flowing.”
“Then do you care?” the White-haired Daoist asked.
Chen Changfeng downed the wine in one gulp. Satisfying.
“I don’t care. Do you?”
He set down the bowl, reached into his bosom, and pulled out something wrapped in oilcloth, tossing it onto the long table.
The oilcloth parted, revealing two irregularly shaped iron fragments and several shards of porcelain.
Dried blood and scorch marks still clung to the iron. The breaks in the porcelain shards were sharp enough to cut skin, and their tips bore rings of charred black.
The White-haired Daoist’s gaze fell on the pile of fragments. He said nothing.
“I picked these out from dead men’s flesh.” Chen Changfeng prodded the iron pieces with his finger.
“Iron casings stuffed with scrap iron and porcelain shards, along with gunpowder and flint fuses, buried in the sand. When horses trampled over them, they detonated on the spot. One hundred elite cavalry, not even a single intact corpse left.”
The White-haired Daoist reached out, picked up a shard of porcelain, and held it up to the light streaming through the window crack. He rubbed his thumb across the fractured edge, then brought it to his nose and sniffed.
“This wasn’t fired in an ordinary kiln,” the White-haired Daoist said, frowning.
“High iron content. Fired at a very high temperature. The broken edges are extremely sharp, specifically designed for lethality.”
“There’s more.” Chen Changfeng untied a cloth pouch from his waist and pulled out a deformed caltrop. “This came from another battlefield. After a horse’s leg was blown off, this projectile shot out from the fragmenting casing and lodged itself in a man’s chest.”
He set the caltrop upright next to the porcelain shard, both placed side by side.
“Then there’s a throwable thunderous fire jar, loaded with gunpowder and scrap iron, with a fuse. Once lit and thrown, it could kill people from fifteen to twenty paces away.”
“Finally, there’s an oil that water cannot extinguish, stored in glass bottles. When smashed, whatever it touches burns. Even iron armor can be melted.”
“I only learned of this news while I was in the Great Qian. I estimate it’s been seven days now.”
Chen Changfeng enumerated each item one by one.
The long table grew increasingly cluttered. The teapot and pastries were pushed to one corner.
The White-haired Daoist’s expression changed the moment the caltrop was set down. By the time he heard the words “cannot be extinguished,” his hand that had been wiping the compass froze in midair, his fingers trembling slightly.
“I’ve searched all the blacksmiths of the royal court, the old records of the Great Qian, and the military annals of the former dynasty. Not one book contains any mention of these things.”
Chen Changfeng pressed his finger down on the caltrop.
“These aren’t methods of weaponry that should exist in this era… are they, Master?”
The hall was silent for a long time.
The chirping of cicadas drifted through the walls from afar, dense and unceasing.
The White-haired Daoist turned, walked to the wooden cabinet behind the incense table, pulled open a drawer, and took out an old box wrapped in black silk.
When the box was opened, it contained three ancient copper coins and a tortoiseshell piece the size of a palm.
The edges of the tortoiseshell were polished smooth, and the front was engraved with fine, dense cracks—marks left by countless scorchings.
The White-haired Daoist placed the three copper coins into the concave surface of the tortoiseshell, cupped his hands together, and shook them gently.
The coins clinked against the tortoiseshell.
After the third shake, the White-haired Daoist turned the tortoiseshell over. The three copper coins rolled out onto the long table, spinning as they scattered.
He pushed the compass next to the coins.
The copper needle on the compass began to turn. First, it moved slowly across the scale, then suddenly quickened, swinging back and forth between three major tick marks.
Chen Changfeng stared at the copper needle without saying a word.
The needle spun faster and faster, causing the base plate beneath to emit a faint hum.
Then—
Click.
The copper needle locked into place abruptly.
It stood precisely in the middle of two tick marks, neither leaning left nor right. The direction the needle’s tip indicated pointed north.
Meanwhile, the coin furthest to the right on the long table suddenly emitted a faint crack.
The White-haired Daoist looked down, his pupils contracting sharply.
That copper coin had split right down the middle, cracked neatly in two.
The fracture was so clean it looked unnatural, as though someone had cut it in half with an razor-thin blade.
The White-haired Daoist’s palm flew down to cover it.
He clenched his five fingers, sweeping both halves of the broken coin into his sleeve.
The movement was swift and urgent.
He raised his other hand and scattered the two remaining coins on the table.
The coins rolled to the edge, and one dropped to the floor, bouncing twice on the blue bricks before coming to a stop.
The hall fell silent again.
The White-haired Daoist leaned on the edge of the table, his body retreating half a step, as if the compass had become too hot to touch.
He was silent for a very long time, so long that the chirping of the cicadas outside changed its rhythm.
“The fate of the north of Daqian has changed.”
The White-haired Daoist’s voice was hoarse.
“Since the beginning of spring this year, the constellations over the northern border have been off. A guest star has invaded the Purple Forbidden Enclosure, the seventh star of the Big Dipper has dimmed by three parts, and the path of Venus has shifted half a degree. I originally thought it was the killing aura stirred up by frontier warfare, but this hex just now—”
He stared at the stuck copper needle.
“It’s not killing aura. It’s a ball of fire.”
“And within that fire is a shadow from elsewhere.”
Chen Changfeng immediately leaned forward half a body length.
“What do you mean, a shadow from elsewhere?”
The White-haired Daoist shook his head.
“I cannot see it clearly, let alone explain it! In sixty years of working the compass, I’ve never encountered such a hexagram.”
“Is this person in Zhenbei City?” Chen Changfeng pressed.
The White-haired Daoist did not answer.
“Is it a woman?”
The White-haired Daoist still did not answer.
He reached out and pushed the jar of Fen liquor back in front of Chen Changfeng.
“Changfeng, take the wine and go down the mountain.”
The White-haired Daoist’s voice suddenly aged ten years.
“Return to the grasslands. Leave Daqian. You cannot meddle in this board game, and I cannot figure it out.”
“Do not ask. Do not probe. Do not touch.”
“Touch it, and the four-hundred-year foundation of my Qingxu Temple cannot afford the cost.”
The shaft of light in the hall tilted an inch, showing the sun had already passed toward the west.
Chen Changfeng was silent for a long time. Then he suddenly raised his arm and swept his hand across.
The teapot, teacups, the oil-paper wrapping of osmanthus cakes, and the cup of leftover tea at the corner of the table—all were swept to the ground.
A coarse-glazed tea bowl smashed against the blue bricks, shattering into six or seven pieces.
Tea splashed everywhere, and a few drops happened to land on the old border map hanging beneath the long table, soaking the upper-right corner—where two small characters were written in cinnabar.
Zhenbei.
The White-haired Daoist looked at the broken porcelain and the flowing tea stains on the floor. The wrinkles on his face deepened.
“You’re afraid.”
Chen Changfeng leaned his upper body forward, the distance between them less than a foot.
“You’ve polished your compass for sixty years, read hexagrams for forty, calculated the fortunes of first- and second-rank officials in the capital, and warded off disasters for countless imperial relatives! When have you ever hidden coins in your sleeve before?”
The White-haired Daoist’s lips moved, but he said nothing.
“The coin cracked, and you didn’t dare let me see it! The hexagram appeared, and you refused to interpret it further! The needle got stuck, and you just say ‘do not ask, do not probe’?”
“It’s not that you can’t figure it out—it’s that you don’t dare!”
He kicked a piece of broken porcelain aside.
“For how many years has Qingxu Temple managed the feng shui and fate of the Daqian court? Who issued the golden registry for the National Preceptor? Who held the compass when the Imperial Temple site was chosen? Who spoke those words before the throne when the imperial mausoleum was moved?”
Chen Changfeng jabbed a finger at the border map on the long table, wet with tea.
“Now that something’s gone wrong, you say you cannot see through it, that you can’t afford the cost. A four-hundred-year foundation? You can’t even fool the incense-seeking pilgrims outside the gates of Qingxu Temple anymore. What foundation are you even talking about?”
The White-haired Daoist closed his eyes.
Chen Changfeng lifted his finger from the damp map. His fingertip was stained with the smeared cinnabar ink.
He stared at the White-haired Daoist’s face, and the turbulence in his eyes churned for a long time before settling into a calm devoid of warmth.
From outside the hall came the cawing of crows.
Two calls, drawn out.
The distance between them was close enough to hear each other’s breathing.
“You were the one who sent me beyond the pass back then.”
The White-haired Daoist’s eyelids twitched involuntarily.
“You were the one who altered my household registration documents!
Chen Changfeng’s voice dropped, low enough that only the two of them in this hall could hear.
“You told me that if I went to the grasslands, I could do great things. You said Daqian’s fortune had an opening in the north—that someone needed to stab into it from the outside.”
“I went.”
“And I stabbed for you.”
“Now you tell me—do not ask, do not probe?”
The final syllable of Chen Changfeng’s words crashed onto the long table, shaking the compass again.
“When you sent me to the Helian back then—”
His finger hovered an inch from the White-haired Daoist’s nose.
“—wasn’t that you?”
The White-haired Daoist opened his eyes.
His murky pupils reflected the last sliver of light from the crack in the window, reflecting the half of Chen Changfeng’s face bearing down on him.
His lips quivered two or three times, but nothing came out.
The cicadas outside the hall suddenly fell silent. The entire Qingxu Temple sank into a dead stillness.
