By late afternoon, the fog still lay thick around the sanctuary. Ruoxi had woken at dawn. Ben's qi was still all but drained, and his legs felt heavy as they approached the outer gate. His grandfather looked no more rested.
Tiexin carried the case they had brought up the mountain. The Sanctuary Array remained in the chamber; inside the case now lay its complete design on paper. If the clan ever chose to build another, they would have the work to follow.
Ruoxi stayed inside. She needed time to grow accustomed to her new power. The man who had guided them up waited at the gate to take them down to Redstone.
He handed Ben a folded strip of marked paper before turning onto the path. The fine work on it belonged to a costly message talisman, made for a single use. Ben fed a thread of qi into it as he followed. It took very little, and Ruoxi's voice sounded in his mind.
Little formation master. I did not say much this morning. My brother was watching, and I had only just come back. There are things I would rather tell you without him listening.
Thank you for the months you spent on that array. You hardly knew me when you began. I knew what I was asking of you, even when I made light of it.
And thank you for speaking to me. I came close to giving up several times. You helped me hold on when I could hardly remember why I should. I will not forget that.
Ben kept his eyes on the path. He remembered the brief weariness she had let him see that morning, before she turned to her brother.
I do not know how you reached me. You need not explain it to me. My brother will be less accommodating. He will want to know about everything that happened in that chamber. Be ready for him, Wang Ben.
Her voice had lost its teasing ease.
I dislike owing anyone quite this much, so let me give you something in return. The chamber will not be his largest question. Those old texts you have been reading and transcribing interest him far more. He has pursued their like for centuries. That is what brought him to Redstone.
He believes the formation master who raised the great work deep in the Blackwood had some connection to your clan. Take care what you let him see you understand.
There was a pause in the message.
Yucheng will see you to the city gates. He does not talk. Do not take it personally.
Ben glanced up at their guide. Yucheng, then. The man continued down the path without looking back.
The paper went cold and crumbled in Ben's hand. He brushed the dust from his palm and walked beside his grandfather. Neither of them spoke.
He had been frightened enough in the chamber without having to think about what Wuyan might ask afterward. He remembered waiting over the empty places where the jade had been, unable to tell whether the feeding had ended. Knowing what a defense was meant to do had offered little comfort while he waited to see whether it would work.
During their work on the design, he had asked why they were preparing against only three of the eight kinds named in the records.
[STATUS: Limited capabilities.]
Only after Ruoxi returned to her body that morning had the continuing emergency search supplied the fuller account. Along with it, the System had given him enough to understand what the retrieval had cost.
It was still repairing itself. Reaching deeper into the Archive took power and attention from that repair. The emergency search had spent reserves it had been holding back, delaying its recovery to bring him what it could find. It could not search every depth while restoring itself.
The earlier records had described a nascent soul breakthrough as a faint lure. The shadow hunter and the hungry one were the likeliest dangers. They had prepared the crystal to conceal Ruoxi and the jade to feed a false soul to whatever came seeking hers.
The obsidian served a different purpose. It could hold a pocket of steady void and preserve the line back to her body when the surrounding rules failed. It had done so through the passage of something they had no means to turn aside.
The voice had seemed far less likely. The thin accounts Ben had known concerned male victims. He had dismissed the danger to Ruoxi on that basis.
The material recovered afterward described a much rarer encounter. Once in a long age, a Tianma came for a woman to make her into another of its own kind. That account had been buried beyond the records available when they prepared the array. During the night, Ben had received only the warning about what could happen to her identity and the principle he had tried to put into words for her.
There were still four kinds the System had never shown him in full. Retrieving those records would cost more than it could yet afford.
Tiexin shifted the case to his other hand. Ben followed him around a bend, and the sanctuary disappeared into the fog behind them.
...
The Wangs had returned to Redstone by the time the account of their mountain journey reached Crimson Bastion.
Cai Hongwen read it among the morning's scrolls in his white room. Light from the high windows fell across the desk. The spy stood waiting beside it while Cai went through the account again.
"You followed them out by the eastern road. How far?"
"To the second ridge, my lord. No further."
Cai lowered the scroll. "Tell me."
"An older cultivator came to the Wang compound before first light. Late-stage core formation, from his bearing. He took the patriarch and his grandson into the Dragon Spine Mountains. He knew the path."
The spy kept his eyes lowered. "We stayed well behind them. Beyond the ridge, we lost them. There are Beast Kings deeper in, and we had no guide. We did not dare go on."
"And their return?" Cai asked.
"They were gone some days. Both looked worn out when they came back. They still had the case they took up. We thought it held an array, from the care they took with it." The spy paused. "Perhaps they found something worth protecting, but we saw no treasure or spoils. The men think the journey came to nothing."
Cai set the scroll down and dismissed him. The spy bowed and left.
A journey for nothing was a convenient explanation for men who had stopped following at the second ridge. Cai did not believe a core formation cultivator had guided the Wangs into the depths and brought them safely out again. The man had concealed his strength. Mortal shedding, at least.
Even then, strength alone would hardly account for it. Worse things than Beast Kings lived in those mountains. Cai suspected a talisman or treasure of considerable grade, capable of hiding the travelers from what they could not fight.
The reports of a powerful backer deserved more attention. Late-stage mortal shedding seemed likely. Nascent soul he dismissed. Perhaps one in a thousand who reached mortal shedding ever passed beyond it, and those few ruled sects and kingdoms. He could see little reason for one to concern himself with a frontier clan.
The Bastion could deal with a mortal shedding cultivator. What troubled Cai was the journey itself.
Since the City Lord's hearing, he had allowed for the Wangs sheltering under a stronger man's name. Such arrangements often demanded little of the patron. Now someone was guiding the clan's formation masters into the Dragon Spine and bringing them back. Whoever stood behind them had an interest substantial enough to act upon.
Cai rose and crossed to the long mirror.
He had kept his work beneath the notice of the king and the Domain Lord. The Wangs were meant to endure one demand after another until they could no longer afford to answer. That required time. It also gave their patron time to notice the pressure and ask where it came from.
He could not let the inquiry reach him.
The patron's interest was unlikely to be charity. The Wangs had promised him a reward, or he wanted something from the Dragon Spine or Blackwood. Cai expected either motive to weaken once the man understood how much the Bastion could bring against him. A frontier clan would not be worth that price.
Cai regarded his reflection. He resented having to hurry. Patience had served him well, and the thought of abandoning it on the strength of this thin account displeased him. Yet the account had exposed an assumption he could no longer afford to keep.
He returned to the desk and drew a fresh sheet toward him. The delegation under Senior Investigator Qin Hualing would have to leave for Redstone at once. His people within it could shape the demands and press the Wangs. Qin would sit at its head and carry its authority.
He needed no place beside her. His father's name and the Cai Clan's standing had long given him ways to act without holding the authority himself. The demands would arrive as the Bastion's business.
The Prince remained a difficulty none of those people could remove.
Huo Zhenyang did not concern him. A distant royal cousin left in Redstone for want of better use, the City Lord had kept his position for years by asking little and looking away. Cai expected him to continue doing so.
Huo Zhanlong was another matter. He belonged to the main branch, had reached mortal shedding and had soldiers who followed him. His standing extended beyond the domain into the kingdom. If he chose to use it for the Wangs, the investigation would not proceed as Cai intended.
There were reasons to hope he would leave before then.
Cai's father had told him of the old hostility between the Huo and Yan clans. More than a thousand years ago, the Huo ancestor had reached late-stage soul transformation. Then something had happened to the old king. Huo Chilong had taken the throne while still only in the early stages of that realm and withdrawn into seclusion for centuries at a time.
Cai did not know how much of the story was true. He knew the result. The Huo kingdom remained beneath the Yan empire.
Now Chilong had been out of seclusion for a long while, and the Yan Clan had reason to be anxious. His present stage was unknown, but he had been a genius even when he took the throne. Cai thought it likely that the Yan Clan was stirring trouble with the Frozen Moon Empire to keep him occupied.
A prince with Huo Zhanlong's strength and following might soon be needed elsewhere. Cai could only hope the kingdom would give him something more pressing to do than remain in Redstone.