Chapter 284: In the Masterless Mountains, All Who Enter Are Family

The stone door behind the three oil lamps stood at the end of the Birch Forest.

The door was no taller than two zhang, yet the slab itself was so thick its stone material couldn’t be discerned.

There were no chisel marks on its face, as if a whole section of the mountain had been split open and then resealed with some black paste.

The horizontal fissure that ran across it was slowly widening, opening like an eyelid with low roars from inside the mountain.

There were no eyeballs within the slit, only a wet, glossy blackness.

Countless tiny sparks floated in that blackness, like distant lantern-bearers making their way along a road.

Lu Yuan stood before the stone door without rushing forward to look.

“This isn’t a door.”

Zhou Heng asked, “What is it then?”

Lu Yuan stuck the tip of his blade into the frozen ground beneath his feet, then bent and touched the soil in front of the door.

The ground was dry.

But his fingertip came away wet.

The moisture smelled faintly of rust.

“Something in the mountain is watching us,” Lu Yuan said.

“The three lamps are three pupils. Once the door opens, our movements will be seen by the Main Cave.”

Wang Cheng'an glanced at the three lamps.

“Then don’t let it open.”

“It’s already half-open.”

“Can we push it back?”

“Yes.”

Lu Yuan took the black ash left by the Iron Abacus and also the three blank stone flakes he had peeled off the Bone Stele, Shadow Stele, and Mother Stele, and placed them on the ground.

As soon as the three flakes hit the earth, the black slit in the stone door visibly contracted.

Lin Zhaoxuan said, “Peeling the inscriptions off the steles can hold it?”

“The steles are the Malevolent Deity’s ledger, the names are the items on that ledger,” Lu Yuan explained.

“If the names are emptied, the ledger shortens. But you can’t just fill those empty slots arbitrarily, or the Malevolent Deity will use the gaps to change its breath.”

He arranged the three stone flakes into a triangle, then pulled a length of Red Cord from his chest.

The cord was the guiding rope brought from the outer cave, originally tied to one of the Returning-to-Center pieces. It had been wrapped around an evil puppet that kept guard at the Bone Stele, and the rope had already been darkened with blood.

Lu Yuan linked the three stone flakes with the Red Cord, tying them into a triangular knot.

“Bone is the place of death, Shadow is the place of passing, Mother is the place of life.”

“If death, passing, and life are connected, the Malevolent Deity’s peeping eye can be temporarily shut.”

“But one thing is still missing.”

Xu Erxiao asked, “Missing what?”

“A home.”

Lu Yuan looked up at the stone door.

“Not a human home, but the mountain’s home.”

He picked up a small piece of birch bark from the ground and carved a square frame on the inner side with his knife.

A slit remained in the center of the frame.

“Houses have four walls, doors have a slit. The four walls protect life, the door slit allows breath. We must make this mountain recognize that the Malevolent Deity is not the house’s master.”

Song Qinghe asked, “How make the mountain recognize that?”

Lu Yuan stuck the bark to the stone before the gate and formed hand seals.

His left hand made the Yin hand seal, thumb pressing the ring and little fingers, index and middle fingers together; his right hand formed the Sword seal, fingertips pointing downward, first touching the bark, then his own brow, and finally the ground.

“Mountain is house, stone is wall, within the king there is a vein, on wood there is frost.”

“Now borrow three inches of the mountain gate, neither invite the evil master, nor greet the ghost king.”

“If the house has a master, first verify its name; if the gate lacks a master, return its square.”

“Homes do not tolerate thieves, doors do not tolerate borrowing.”

“Command the mountain to return to its place, command the gate to close its eyes.”

When he finished chanting, he pressed his palms together and held them at his chest for a breath.

“Seal.”

The square on the bark gave off a faint white glow.

That speck of light spread along the bark’s four corners and finally adhered to the stone door.

The black slit in the stone door snapped shut.

All three oil lamps extinguished at once.

Every tree in the Birch Forest emitted a deep, grinding sound, like hundreds upon thousands of wooden doors closing at once.

“Done?” Wang Cheng'an asked.

“Not done.”

Lu Yuan stared at the stone door.

“It didn’t close, it moved.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than the three extinguished lamps flared back to life.

Only the light was no longer outside the stone door, but behind the group.

Lin Zhaoxuan looked back, his face shifting slightly.

The stone steps they had walked on had vanished.

Behind them there was a long, narrow wooden plank path.

On either side of the plank path stood rows of low wooden houses.

Each doorway had a wooden tablet hanging above it.

The characters on the tablets differed from house to house.

Some read “Camp.”

Some read “Shop.”

Some read “Station.”

Some read “Home.”

A slow creak came from the end of the plank path, like a cart moving along.

“Don’t go back,” Lu Yuan said.

But it was already too late.

The ground under Wang Cheng'an’s feet split, and a mud-caked hand thrust up through the seam of the planks and clutched his ankle.

He swung the leftover frame of the abacus at it, smashing downward.

The hand immediately withdrew.

But the wooden doors on both sides of the plank path opened at the same time.

There was nobody inside the houses.

Each one held a single table.

On every table were bowls, chopsticks, and steaming sorghum rice.

In the innermost houses, old padded coats, felt hats, and leather boots hung up.

Everything looked like someone had just been wearing them.

“This is the method of the Home Stele,” Lu Yuan said.

“It does not show its true form. It first creates a hamlet.”

“Let people think they have already walked out of the mountain.”

Zhou Heng looked at the wooden houses.

“There are kang beds inside those houses.”

“Even the kang beds aren’t real.”

Lu Yuan pointed to the wooden tablets beneath the eaves.

“Look at the characters.”

The words on the tablets began to shift.

“Home” changed into “Borrow.”

“Camp” changed into “Burial.”

“Shop” changed into “Offering.”

“Station” changed into “Wait.”

The closed black eye behind the stone door was now reflected on every wooden tablet.

It had not given up peering; it had only hidden its gaze within the houses.

“The Home Stele is somewhere along this road,” Lu Yuan said.

“But we can’t enter the houses. Once you sit in a house, it will keep your shadow.”

Xu Erxiao asked, “Then how do we walk through?”

“Walk the middle.”

“Is the plank path part of the house too?”

“A true road has no shadow.”

Lu Yuan took the black wooden tablet from his waist and threw it forward along the plank path.

The tablet struck the planks and did not bounce back.

Immediately it was covered in a layer of black frost.

“The road’s sealed too.”

Lu Yuan drew his blade and held it horizontally across his chest.

“Then make one.”

He took the black fragment peeled from the Mother Stele’s wooden core, placed it on the spine of his blade, and pressed it with his thumb.

“Houses take walls as boundary, roads take feet as boundary.”

“There are paths in the mountain, but paths do not collect people.”

“Today we borrow the stele’s line to split open the false hamlet.”

“No house welcomes, no gate hides; where there is cooking smoke it does not foster life, where there is kang fire it does not keep souls.”

“Open the road!”

Lu Yuan slashed diagonally.

Where the blade fell, a white seam split the wooden path open down the middle.

The seam extended from the group’s feet all the way to the path’s end.

The sorghum rice in the houses on either side instantly soured into black sludge, bowls and chopsticks clattered to the floor.

Wails rose from inside the houses.

Old people cried, children wailed, and men whispered beyond the doors:

“Come in.”

“It’s cold out.”

“Come in and you’ll have a kang.”

“Come in and you’ll be one family.”

Sweat broke out on Xu Erxiao’s back, but he did not stop.

They walked along the white seam.

With each step they took, a hand reached from a plank seam to snatch at them.

Those hands could not grasp anyone who walked the seam; they scrabbled furiously outside the white line.

Halfway along, the door of a house on the right banged open.

A massive black spirit tablet shot out and landed upright in the middle of the path.

The tablet bore the inscription:

“No master in the mountain, all who enter are family.”

Behind the tablet stood a tall man in an old long robe.

His face was gray-white, a strip of Red Cloth stuck over his mouth.

He did not move forward; he only extended a hand and pointed at the tablet.

“Register your name.”

Lu Yuan stopped walking.

“Do you guard the Home Stele?”

The man nodded.

“Register your name, and you may enter the house.”

“What do we do in the house?”

“Eat, warm, sleep.”

“And after that?”

The Red Cloth over the man’s lips shifted a little.

“Stay.”

“For how long?”

“Stay until you die.”

“And then?”

“Once dead, you will return home.”

As the man finished speaking, the houses around them lit their lamps at the same time.

Countless black silhouettes peered from the doors.

None of the silhouettes had faces, but each hung a wooden tablet on its chest.

The man raised a second finger.

“Register.”

Lu Yuan didn’t answer. He pulled a blank Offering Paper from his bosom.

“Whose name do you want?”

The man pointed at Lu Yuan.

“Yours.”

“If I don’t register?”

“You will have no home.”

“No home means you cannot leave?”

“You cannot.”

Lu Yuan looked at the tablet and suddenly said, “The Home Stele doesn’t collect names.”

The tall man’s body trembled slightly.

Lu Yuan continued, “What it collects is having nowhere to return to.”

The Red Cloth over the man’s mouth tightened.

“Nonsense.”

“Then answer me, why does every wooden tablet lack a surname?”

The man gave no reply.

“Why does every house serve food but have no hearth?”

Still no reply.

“Why are every pair of shoes facing outward with black soil stuffed inside?”

All the houses shuddered at once.

The wooden tablets hanging beneath the eaves cracked and shattered.

The sorghum rice behind the tall man all turned to muddy water and ran off the tables to the ground.

Lu Yuan pointed his blade at the tablet.

“Because this is not a home.”

“It is a dining table placed for a body after the people have been trapped.”

The man finally let out an angry roar.

He tore off the Red Cloth from his mouth.

Beneath the cloth was not a mouth but a slit stitched full of black thread.

Countless black threads burst from that slit and darted for the ground at the group’s feet.

“Move!”

At Lu Yuan’s command, Xu Erxiao snatched up the Red Cloth and swept it horizontally toward the eave on the left.

The cloth struck the eaves, and the snow on the roof crashed down, collapsing two houses.

Wang Cheng'an hurled the abacus frame at the tablet on the right.

The tablet broke, and the black silhouette inside screamed sharply.

Lin Zhaoxuan flung his ink-line, lassoing the tall man’s waist and dragging him away from the tablet.

Zhou Heng seized the chance to rush up and, with a short horizontal slash, severed the black threads the man had launched.

Song Qinghe lifted an oil lamp and shone its light onto the back of the tablet.

There were no inscriptions on the reverse, only a tangle of dense red threads.

The red threads extended from the base of the tablet down into the undersurface of the plank path.

She shouted, “The stele root is underground!”

“Don’t dig,” Lu Yuan said, “to cut the root is not to destroy the stele.”

He scooped up a handful of black mud from the ground, mixed in cinnabar, and smeared it onto the blade.

Then he used his left foot as an axis and took seven steps.

First step, press the Heavenly Gate.

Second step, press the Earth Gate.

Third step, press the Human Gate.

Fourth step, press the Ghost Gate.

Fifth step, press the Life Gate.

Sixth step, press the Death Gate.

Seventh step, Returning to Center.

With each step he uttered a phrase:

“If the Heavenly Gate does not open, the Earth Gate will not leak.”

“The Human Gate guards names, the Ghost Gate guards bones.”

“The Life Gate will not be borrowed, the Death Gate will not remain.”

“Center palace sets the boundary, the four directions return to their place.”

When the last step fell, he spun and stabbed the blade into the ground.

“Sever your false home, do not sever the mountain root!”

The blade sunk into the planks.

There was no great sound.

Yet the entire plank road seemed to be constricted by an invisible rope down the middle, and all the houses simultaneously contracted inward.

The “Home” character on the tablet split.

From the crack emerged a gray-white grain of rice.

The grain hopped as if a heart beat within.

Lu Yuan pinched the grain between two fingers and chanted:

“Houses are earth, food is life, names are guests, wishes are masters.”

“A house without a master keeps no living entrance.”

“Food without life does not nurture an evil fetus.”

“Return to earth.”

He pressed the rice grain into the seam of the planks.

Silence fell over the hamlet at once.

Doors shut one after another.

Bowls and chopsticks on the tables shattered by themselves.

The tall man, bound by the ink-line, quickly collapsed; beneath his robe a skeleton of door planks and tablets was revealed.

It reached for Lu Yuan.

“You have no home.”

Lu Yuan took half a step back and avoided the clawed hand.

“I don’t need you to make one.”

The wooden tablet over the skeleton’s chest split in two.

The “Home” character on the Home Stele gradually faded, leaving only a blank stone flake.

The plank road crumbled with it.

The ground beneath them emptied at the same time, as if they had all fallen from a height.

Lu Yuan grabbed the edge of a stone step with one hand and pulled Xu Erxiao with the other.

Wang Cheng'an, Zhou Heng, and Lin Zhaoxuan each grabbed the wooden stakes in the cliff wall.

Song Qinghe was swept downward by a gust of black wind.

Lu Yuan flung the Red Cloth from his waist.

“Grab it!”

Song Qinghe wrapped herself around the cloth.

Five of them hung in midair.

Below there were no steps, only a pitch-black abyss.

The sounds of countless planks snapping echoed from the depths.

The Birch Forest, the wooden houses, the false hamlet—all were falling.

But the blank fragment of the Home Stele did not fall.

It hovered, slowly drifting toward the abyss’s depths.

Lu Yuan saw below the flake an inverted stone cave taking shape in the darkness.

The cave hung like a huge bowl turned upside down in the mountain’s belly, its rim studded with black wooden stakes.

From every stake hung a ghastly white lamp.

Under each lamp dangled a stone tablet.

“Father, Surname, Voice, Wish...”

The remaining stele tablets all hung within that inverted stone cave.

And at the deepest center there was a massive black shadow coiled in the middle.

It had no distinct form, like a face not yet opened.

But seven eyes of various sizes had already grown around that face.

One of those eyes fixed on Lu Yuan.

A chill sank into his chest.

The Malevolent Deity had not fully awakened, yet it could already see them.

A voice came from the black shadow.

It was neither male nor female.

It sounded like the whole mountain’s stones speaking at once:

“More people come to take names.”

“Then leave their lives behind.”

As soon as the words fell, countless black chains shot out from under the suspended group and gripped at their feet.

Lu Yuan cut two chains with one swing of his blade, but the third had already wound around his ankle.

A tiny character was carved on the chain:

“Surname.”

Lu Yuan looked down.

That single character was drawing his blood.

At the same time, a stone stele in the inverted cave began to glow.

“The Surname Stele.”

Lin Zhaoxuan shouted, “Senior Brother, cut the chains first!”

“No.”

Lu Yuan lifted his gaze to the stone cave.

“The chains aren’t coming for us.”

“They’re looking for a surname they can write.”

“As soon as the Surname Stele receives a name, the Malevolent Deity will use that name to nail all of us into the mountain.”

He sheathed his blade at his waist and grabbed the chain coiled around his foot with his hand.

“We go down.”

Wang Cheng'an was startled.

“Go down?”

“The Main Cave is below.”

Lu Yuan looked at the seven slowly turning eyes, his voice steady.

“Since it already sees us, we cannot keep walking the path it arranged.”

“It wants us to leave a surname.”

“Then we’ll carry an empty stele right to its face.”

Lu Yuan yanked hard on the chain.

A tremendous pulling force answered from the other end, and all five were dragged toward the inverted stone cave.

Wind screamed past their ears.

In the dark, seven steles lit up one by one:

Father Stele.

Surname Stele.

Voice Stele.

Wish Stele.

And the three steles that had not yet manifested.

At the cave’s center, the vast dark face slowly opened.

Its first eye went as wide as it could.

There was no pupil within, only a black road descending to a well bottom.

Lu Yuan drew his blade during the fall, its tip slanting downward.

“Guard your hearts.”

“Do not listen to it calling you.”

“Do not answer its questions.”

“After you land, first extinguish the lamps, do not touch the steles.”

From below that immense voice spoke again:

“Lu Yuan.”

As the name fell, the chain coiled around his ankle suddenly tightened and his body dropped like a stone.

But he did not turn back, nor did he answer.

He simply aimed the blade at that wide-open eye.

“You called the wrong name.”

He murmured as they fell,

“My name is not yours to command.”

The five figures plunged into the inverted stone cave together.

Darkness closed around them.

Deep within the cave, seven white lamps ignited simultaneously.