- Chen Hour (7-9 AM) · The Cage of Compliance
Chunying was already waiting in theHall of Deliberation.
Pale-green ruqun, hair coiled in an impeccable knot, and at the corners of her mouth that smile—so warm and yielding it seemed to drip with solicitude. On the tea tray, three cups; vapour still curling from the spouts.
Qian Yiyan’s gaze swept over the third cup. A very faint lipstick stain on its rim.
The same shade her mother had used in life.
Her fingers curled inward, but she made no remark. She walked directly to the host’s seat and sat.
Zhou Huaili’s footsteps approached, weighted with the self-regard of a man who always acts by the book. “Astronomer Qian, I hear you are to depart for a Yellow River survey in three days? The Bureau has seen no such precedent in recent years.”
The barb lay bare: a female official leaving the capital without authorisation—it violated custom.
Qian Yiyan drew out a document and slid it across the table without a word. “Investigation warrant from the Academy of Venerated Texts. Personally endorsed by Editing Deliberate Fan. Shall we verify the seal?”
Zhou Huaili’s face stiffened for half a second. His fingers traced the characters “Academy of Venerated Texts.” It was genuine.
“Equipment, personnel, funding…”
“The list is here.” She pushed another sheet toward him. “Seventeen items. All should be in the storeroom.”
The list was drafted with cunning cruelty. Thirteen items were present but cumbersome to move; four were broken—especially the Armillary Sphere of the Jade Pivot, a relic from the previous dynasty, repaired three times without success.
“Astronomer, the armillary sphere has been out of commission for three years, and the fixed-star dial is rusted solid. It’s simply…”
“Then borrow temporarily from the Directorate for Imperial Manufactories,” Qian Yiyan cut him off. “Or does Assistant Director Zhou believe that a warrant from the Academy carries less weight than the Bureau’s household rules?”
The hall fell silent.
Zhou Huaili’s desiccated-ginger face flushed, then turned sallow. He darted a glance at Chunying, whose expression hovered between a smile and something else—the Empress Dowager’s woman. He dared not press.
“…Your subordinate will see to it at once.” He ground out the words, snatched up the list, and swept out with a furious flourish of his sleeves.
Chunying stepped forward to present the tea. “The Astronomer is most formidable. Assistant Director Zhou has served here for years, and I’ve never seen him so thoroughly silenced.”
Qian Yiyan lifted her cup. The moment her fingers touched the porcelain, the elixir-contamination’s stress response flooded her mind—the temperature at which arsenic chars, the lethal proportions of gelsemium, the staggered onset times of seven blended toxins.
Her expression unchanged, she took a sip.
“Still less than one ten-thousandth of the Empress Dowager’s.”
Chunying’s smile deepened.
At that moment, two figures entered.
The first was an elderly man with a scarred face. Sixty or so, his skin weathered to a deep brown, as if he had spent half a lifetime in the Yellow River’s winds and waves. He wore the short jacket of a river labourer, yet the calluses on his tiger’s mouth were thick and glossy—the hand of a man long accustomed to gripping crossbows.
Behind him came Qiuyan, bearing a cloth-wrapped bundle, her eyes demurely downcast.
“This humble one is Zhang Nu,” the old man said, clasping his hands. His voice was hoarse. “By General Cao’s command, I am to guide Astronomer Qian. Forty years plying the Yellow River—currents, shoals, all are familiar to me.”
Qian Yiyan studied him.
Zhang Nu. The name itself was a naked blade. A scar ran from his right brow ridge diagonally down to his left jaw, the healed flesh ridged and fierce. His eyes were sharp; when he looked at a person, it was with the unwavering focus of an eagle eyeing prey.
“You have my thanks, Elder Zhang. How many days will the journey require?”
“Depends on the weather. Three with the wind, five against. The Old Gentleman’s Furnace is the worst stretch—dense shoals, treacherous currents. No night sailing.”
“What is the precise distribution of the submerged reefs there?”
Zhang Nu’s eyes flickered.
Briefly, barely an instant. But Qian Yiyan caught it.
“Thickest in the northeast,” he said, “like a spilled basket of nails. The southwest is somewhat more open, but there are hidden whirlpools. To pass safely, you must time the slack tide exactly.”
“How deep are the whirlpools?”
“Never sounded the bottom.” Zhang Nu paused. “Those who went down… never came back up.”
He let the words hang, deliberately.
Qian Yiyan asked no more. She turned to Qiuyan. “What is it?”
Qiuyan set down the bundle. “This maid was整理 the Astronomer’s travelling effects and noticed several old garments had frayed. I took the liberty of replacing them with new ones. I also added a few small personal items.”
As she spoke, her fingertips brushed the cloth of the bundle—and a barely perceptible, almost invisible ripple passed across its surface.
Energy signature. The Empress Dowager was marking her belongings.
Qiuyan did not withdraw immediately. Her gaze swept the desk; then, with extreme naturalness—as if by ingrained habit—she reached out and used her fingertip to smooth a slightly crumpled corner of a sheet of paper.
It was a scrap of Qian Yiyan’s rough astronomical calculations from the previous night, tucked under the inkstone, only a corner protruding.
The motion was swift, light, as if tidying her own writing table.
Then she withdrew her hand, lowered her eyes, and stepped back to Chunying’s side.
Qian Yiyan stared at the now-smooth paper corner. A chill climbed up her spine.
Not anger. Something far more unnerving—the knowledge that, in her absence, her private space had been so meticulously examined, touched, rearranged.
“My thanks,” she said, her voice even. “Leave it there.”
Zhang Nu also clasped his hands. “This humble one will go to the docks to inspect the vessel. Three days hence, at the Chen hour, I will await the Astronomer.”
He left.
TheHall of Deliberation held only Qian Yiyan and the two gatekeeper maids.
She picked up the cooled tea and drank again.
The toxicological knowledge still churned within her skull, clashing with fragments of Yellow River hydrology like two hands warring inside her brain.
“I am going to the archives to verify some star charts,” she said, rising. “No need to send lunch.”
“As you command.”
As she walked out of theHall of Deliberation, she could feel two gazes adhering to her back.
They did not release her until she turned the corner of the corridor.
- Wu Hour (11 AM-1 PM) · A Gift of Torn Leaves
The archive door swung open with a creak, releasing the accumulated scent of aged paper, ink, and must.
Qian Yiyan walked to the farthest shelf and withdrew the volume for Tianxi 4—the year before her father’s disappearance, the most detailed records.
She turned to July, August, September…
Her fingers stopped.
Pages had been torn out. All original observation entries between the fifteenth of July and the twentieth of August were simply gone. Only jagged frayed edges remained along the binding, and a few scraps of paper still clinging to the thread.
The binding cord was hemp, brittle with age. But at the site of the missing leaves, the cord bore an extremely fresh abrasion—someone had wrenched at it recently.
She slipped her fingertip inside the binding.
A sharp sting.
Not a cut—a puncture. An impossibly fine, razor-sharp needle had pierced her fingerprint. Blood beaded, its colour ominously dark.
Poisoned.
Qian Yiyan’s heart lurched. Instantly she pinched the acupoint at her wrist, channelling astral force up the meridian to drive the toxin toward her fingertip. A drop of blood fell, spreading into a dark brown stain in the dust on the floor.
She looked closely at the inner fold of the binding. Wedged in the crevice between cord and paper, at the position of the August entries, lay a hair-thin metallic filament.
Iron-grey, its surface gleaming with a faint, venomous greenish sheen.
A snapped fibre from a Cao-family protective vest.
Not accidental residue. A deliberately laid trap. The one who had torn out the pages wanted not only to conceal, but also to leave a gift for any later investigator.
Qian Yiyan clenched her jaw. Using the tip of the Starlight Thorn, she teased the filament onto a handkerchief. The instant it left the book, the metal rapidly oxidised and within a few breaths crumbled to powder.
But as the filament was lifted, an even smaller, deeper-embedded metallic flake was exposed.
Iron-grey, bearing the minute marks of hammer-forging—identical in material to Cao Yan’s heart-protector mirror. Counter-grain forging.
Qian Yiyan stared at the flake, her breath shallow.
Her father’s manuscripts had been torn out.
The one who tore them had used Cao-family tools—and had laced them with poison.
She carefully wrapped the flake and tucked it into her sleeve pouch. Then she continued through the volume.
The entries after September remained, but they had grown notably sparser. Her father’s handwriting was increasingly hasty; some characters were blurred, as if his hand had trembled while writing.
She reached the final page. The twenty-third of the twelfth month, Tianxi 4.
Only one line:
“Observed the stars tonight. The Lock-Key Star reappeared. Azimuth due north, slight eastward deviation; elevation thirty degrees. Duration this time… merely ten breaths.”
Ten breaths. Shorter than any previous sighting.
Beside it, her father had drawn a tiny symbol—a door ajar, a sliver of light leaking through the crack.
Below, another line, the ink so faint it was nearly invisible:
“The Other Side… draws near.”
Qian Yiyan’s fingertip traced those three characters.
The Other Side.
The place her father’s secret memorial had spoken of, the place the fragment warned of, the place he had seen in his nightmares.
The fissure marked in Shao Yong’s star chart.
The place from which, last night, a heartbeat and the Rust-Sound had travelled through the mirror to reach her.
She closed the volume and returned it to the shelf.
As she turned, a figure standing in the shadowed corner of the archive caught the corner of her eye.
Her hand went to the Starlight Thorn at her waist.
The figure stepped forward—Qiuyan.
When had she entered? There had been no footfall at all.
“Astronomer.” Qiuyan kept her eyes lowered. “The Empress Dowager bade this maid to convey a message: the archive is thick with dust; lingering too long harms the health. It is time for your noon meal.”
The words were concern. The tone was a command.
Qian Yiyan released her blade hilt. “Understood.”
She walked out of the archive, Qiuyan half a pace behind.
The sunlight was blinding.
Qian Yiyan squinted toward the bell tower on the east side of the Bureau. The bronze bell swayed faintly in the wind but made no sound. Strangely, the patina on its surface, under the sun, displayed an eerie, fluid quality—as if something were writhing beneath the verdigris.
Hallucination?
She looked again. The bell was normal.
But the false-scraping locus on her left shoulder—the muscle beneath the corrosion patch—suddenly stabbed with an acute pain.
As if a needle had been driven into the seam of her bone.
- Wei Hour (1-3 PM) · Protocol-Level Concealment
Lu Baoyi stared at the hexadecimal string on the screen, his temples throbbing.
That particular throb was the signature of impending cortical overload—forty consecutive hours without proper sleep.
The code was the core segment Lin Wan had just stripped from the “elixir signal.” Its waveform was bizarre: the first half was as orderly as artificial encoding; the second half had spiralled completely out of control, degenerating into a frenzied, almost animate chaos of noise.
“This thing…” Lu Baoyi massaged his brow. “The first half says ‘I have a message.’ The second half says ‘I’m about to die, so the sentence is unfinished.’”
Lin Wan’s voice came through the headset, raw from exhaustion. “I’ve tried seventeen decoding protocols. Only a variant of neural-impulse encoding can partially crack it. But it’s mixed with… affective parameters.”
“What?”
“Fear index 9.2. Resolve 8.7. Isolation 9.5. Out of ten.”
Lu Baoyi was silent for several seconds.
This was not a machine signal. It was a human being, under unimaginable pressure, screaming with raw instinct.
“Source location?”
“Still running. The North China Station sensor logs have been sanitised—the raw data shows nothing abnormal. The technique is elegant, like playing hide-and-seek. They left just enough decoy traces to let us know we’ve been hacked.”
Lu Baoyi’s gaze fixed on the turbulent noise in the second half of the waveform.
He could picture it: a thousand kilometres away, Qian Yiyan, standing on the edge of some indescribable peril, using her last strength to cram this message into a crude bottle and hurl it into the torrent of time and space.
And the direction she had hurled that bottle… was toward him.
“Keep decoding,” Lu Baoyi said. “Divert all available computing resources. I need to know exactly what she’s trying to say.”
“And Zhou Keran?”
“Keep watching. Don’t startle the snake.”
No sooner had he spoken than the laboratory door slid open.
Zhou Keran entered, carrying two cups of coffee. She wore a light grey business suit, her short hair neatly tucked behind her ears, her face bearing that perfectly calibrated, humble smile of a newcomer.
“Engineer Lu, Sister Lin.” She set down the coffee. “Noticed everyone’s been pulling an all-nighter. I ordered some Panama Geisha.”
Lu Baoyi thanked her and took a cup.
The cup was pleasantly warm, the aroma rich. But he did not drink; he placed it beside his hand.
Zhou Keran took no notice. She naturally walked to an empty workstation and sat. “Engineer Lu, I’ve finished the first draft of the analysis report on yesterday’s anomalous data stream. Would you like to take a look?”
“In a moment,” Lu Baoyi said. “First, help me cross-check the North China Station’s sensor calibration records for the past three months. I suspect some baseline drift.”
“Certainly.”
Zhou Keran’s fingers flew across her keyboard. The motions were fluid, nothing out of the ordinary.
But Lu Baoyi noticed that when her gaze swept across the waveform graph on his screen, it lingered for 0.5 seconds.
Brief. So brief it might have been accidental.
But he knew it was not.
He raised the coffee to his lips, using the rim to shield a low murmur into his headset. “She saw it.”
“Should I conceal it?”
“No,” Lu Baoyi said. “Let her see.”
He was about to speak again when the laboratory door slid open once more.
Three people entered.
At their head was Director Li—the head of the Great Wall’s East China Sector. Fiftyish, clad in a navy blue Mao suit, his face expressionless. Behind him, a young man and a young woman in matching uniforms, carrying black briefcases.
“Engineer Lu.” Director Li’s voice was flat. “Unannounced inspection. High command has ordered a review of all data related to the Primordial Signal Project, including any anomalous trigger records from the past three months.”
Lu Baoyi’s heart sank.
They had come far too fast.
“Director Li,” he rose from his seat, “a data review requires formal documentation and an authorisation code from the Technical Security Division at headquarters…”
“The documentation is here.” Director Li slapped a folder onto the table. “Authorisation code: Xuan-Yuan-Seven-Nine-Three. Now, I want all data. Raw storage, backups, cache fragments—everything.”
No room for negotiation.
Lu Baoyi was silent for two seconds, then nodded. “Understood.”
He walked to the main console and called up the data management interface. The tree directory sprawled from the original Primordial Signal capture to recent anomaly logs—seventeen folders.
The young man stepped forward and offered an external hard drive. “Engineer Lu, please copy the data to this drive.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Lu Baoyi connected the drive.
The progress bar began its crawl. Slow. Estimated time: forty minutes.
The lab fell quiet except for the whir of server fans and the rhythmic blink of the hard drive indicator light.
Zhou Keran remained at her workstation, head bowed, fingers still tapping the keyboard, utterly absorbed in her calibration task.
But Lu Baoyi noticed that her breathing rate had quickened by half a beat.
She was nervous.
When the progress bar had reached one-third, Director Li spoke again: “Engineer Lu, I’ve heard… you’ve been making unauthorised contact with non-permitted signal sources?”
The question was as direct as a blade thrust.
Lu Baoyi’s fingers paused on the keyboard for a fraction of an instant.
“What exactly is Director Li referring to?”
“North China Station. The Old Gentleman’s Furnace area. The anomalous pulse the night before last.” Director Li’s gaze was fixed on him. “Waveform characteristics showed over eighty-five percent homology with the Primordial Signal. North China Station reported it, yet your analysis report… made no mention whatsoever.”
The air congealed.
Lin Wan’s sharp intake of breath sounded in the headset.
But Lu Baoyi smiled.
Not a nervous smile. It was the ah, there it is smile—tinged with weary resignation.
“Ah, that.” He swivelled his chair. “That was simulated data accidentally triggered in the test environment. I had Lin Wan stress-testing a new algorithm, using the Primordial Signal as the template. I may have pushed the parameters a bit too hard; it leaked into the production environment. My fault—I neglected to file a report in time.”
He spoke lightly, as if it were a simple technical mishap.
Director Li’s eyes narrowed. “Simulated data?”
“Correct.” Lu Baoyi nodded, tapping keys to bring up the log files. “See here: test task timestamp, 8:15 PM the night before last, concluded at 9:30 PM. The time window coincides exactly with the pulse captured by North China Station.”
The logs were real. The test task was real.
The sole discrepancy: Lu Baoyi had indeed run the test, but he had also used the same time window to capture the genuine signal. The two data sets were interleaved, and the log only recorded the test task.
Director Li stared at the screen for a long moment.
The young woman spoke: “Engineer Lu, we need to inspect the test task’s raw parameter files and output results.”
“No problem.” Lu Baoyi readily opened the folder. “Here they are. However, I cleaned up the output last night—test data, no point in letting it clutter the storage.”
He opened the clean-up log.
It showed that at 11:27 PM the previous night, he had performed a forced format, completely erasing the partition containing the test task.
The young woman’s expression shifted slightly.
Director Li was silent for a while, then waved a hand. “Never mind. Since it was test data, there’s no need to pursue it further. But Engineer Lu, in the future, any sensitive tests of this nature must be pre-approved. High command is now extremely… attentive to all anomalies related to the Gate.”
“Understood. It won’t happen again.”
The progress bar had finished.
The young man removed the drive, verified its integrity, and nodded.
“We’ve disturbed you.” Director Li led his two subordinates out.
The door closed.
Lu Baoyi remained seated.
He stared at the “Formatted” tag on the screen, the faint smile slowly fading from his lips.
“Boss… when did you… prepare that?” Lin Wan’s voice was low.
“Last night,” Lu Baoyi said softly. “They were bound to come eventually. I just didn’t expect it so soon.”
“And the real data…?”
“Here.” Lu Baoyi tapped the keyboard, calling up another interface—a live monitor of calibration data streams.
The screen scrolled with an ocean of seemingly random digits, tens of thousands of lines generated every millisecond, automatically overwriting. This was the calibration noise from the elixir-signal analyser, legitimate work data, generated daily, never flagged for inspection.
He entered a complex key.
The key was based on the dynamic algorithm of the Six Ren Divination, changing every thirty seconds.
The chaotic data on the screen began to reorganise, to sort itself. From the sea of noise, encrypted packets surfaced—precisely the core segments of the elixir signal, fragmented into hundreds of pieces and interleaved within the real-time calibration flow.
“Protocol-level concealment,” Lu Baoyi said. “The data never touched any physical medium. It lives in the noise of the work stream. Unless they know the decryption protocol and the dynamic key, they will never find it.”
Lin Wan was silent for a few seconds. “…That’s badass.”
“Standard procedure,” Lu Baoyi said, closing the interface. “In this line of work, you have to learn to dance within the rules—and while you’re at it, you might as well test how deep some people’s access really goes.”
As he spoke, he picked up the coffee cup and walked toward Zhou Keran’s workstation.
He leaned against the partition, feigning casualness: “Xiao Zhou, these Geisha beans are quite good. Do you usually order from this roaster? I seem to recall… it’s right by the entrance of the Security Ministry’s residential compound.”
He watched Zhou Keran’s eyes as he spoke.
Her pupils contracted—a barely perceptible flicker.
Then she produced a flawless smile: “Engineer Lu has a remarkable memory. The apartment I rent is indeed in that area. The roaster was handing out flyers when they opened; I picked one up. I didn’t expect the beans to be this good.”
As she spoke, her left hand moved beneath the desk—thumb swiftly swiped the side of her phone three times, deleting an encrypted log that had just been transmitted.
Lu Baoyi saw it. He pretended he hadn’t.
“That’s convenient,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “Next team-building event, we could order from them—since Director Li and his people frequent that place too, right?”
Zhou Keran’s smile froze for 0.1 seconds.
“…Yes,” she said. “I know the owner. He can give us a discount.”
Lu Baoyi nodded, turned, and walked back to his own workstation.
With his back to Zhou Keran, the faint vestiges of humour in his expression chilled completely.
*Protocols are dead; people are alive. * He recited inwardly. *Though right now, it looks like some people are well on their way to becoming the protocol itself. *
- You Hour (5-7 PM) · The Censor’s Blade
Bianjing’s Western Market. Breeze & Clarity Teahouse.
When Qian Yiyan entered, Bao Zheng was already seated at the table by the window.
He wore no official robes—only an ordinary blue cotton gown, a broad-brimmed travelling hat pulled low to shadow half his face. But his posture was too upright; his spine was driven into the chair-back like a javelin.
She walked over and sat opposite.
“Censor Bao.”
Bao Zheng did not remove his hat. He merely pushed a cup of untouched tea toward her.
“The tea is clean. I steeped it myself.”
Qian Yiyan did not drink. “Editing Deliberate Fan said you had something to show me.”
From his breast, Bao Zheng produced a scroll and unrolled it on the table—a hand-copied register, the paper already yellowed, edges worn.
*“Tianxi 3 to Tiansheng 3. Missing persons along the Yellow River. Seventeen artisans, twenty-three rivermen, nine minor local officials, four women and children travelling to visit kin. Total: fifty-three persons.”*
Qian Yiyan scanned the list.
The last-known locations clustered in a few areas: near Cao-family workshops, at canal-transport docks, on the desolate shoals thirty li downstream from the Old Gentleman’s Furnace.
“None of these cases were solved?”
“They were solved.” Bao Zheng’s voice turned cold. “All were ruled accidental drowning, bandit murder, or voluntary disappearance. The case files are watertight, witnesses and evidence all in order. But—”
He paused, lifting his gaze.
Beneath the hat’s brim, his eyes were as sharp as a blade.
“—every single presiding investigator was either a Cao-family protégé, or was later promoted to a prefecture within Cao-family influence. Fifty-three cases. Fifty-three flawless dossiers. Fifty-three instances of… inconclusive closure.”
Not that they couldn’t be solved. They were not meant to be solved.
“What do you want me to find at the Old Gentleman’s Furnace?”
“Evidence,” Bao Zheng said. “The Cao family owns eleven workshops along the Yellow River. On paper, they smelt iron, build ships, store salt. But in the past three years, the accounts of goods moving in and out of these workshops… don’t balance.”
“How so?”
“Mineral ore received exceeds finished iron shipped by thirty percent. Timber received exceeds vessels shipped by fifty percent. Where did the surplus materials…” He stared at her. “…go?”
Qian Yiyan recalled her father’s fragment: “An eclipse manifests in the Chen position—not an eclipse of sun or moon, but the aperture and closure of the Gate. When this occurs, foreign entities will spill forth. They must be anchored.”
Foreign entities spilling forth.
Anchored.
“You think they’re using the surplus raw materials… to build anchors?”
“I don’t know,” Bao Zheng said bluntly. “But Editing Deliberate Fan showed me your father’s secret memorial. If the Gate truly exists, if The Other Side is truly eroding our world, then someone must be preparing—either to seal the Gate, or… to open it.”
He paused, lowering his voice further: “Astronomer Qian, your father was a man who tried to seal the Gate. Who, then, would be the one trying to open it?”
The question pierced the heart.
Qian Yiyan drew the metal flake from her sleeve pouch, still wrapped in its handkerchief, and slid it across the table.
“Found in the Astrological Bureau archives. The observation records left by my late father for Tianxi 4 were torn out. This flake was embedded in the binding thread.”
Bao Zheng picked up the flake and examined it against the window light.
“Cao-family counter-grain forging. The Directorate for Imperial Manufactories uses a similar technique, but the grain orientation differs slightly—official products are with the grain. This is counter-grain.”
He looked at Qian Yiyan. “You suspect the Cao family tore out your father’s records?”
“At the very least, they used Cao-family tools.” Qian Yiyan said. “Censor Bao, I can go to the Old Gentleman’s Furnace. I can enter the Cao workshops. But I need assurance—that whatever I find will reach the proper destination, and not vanish en route.”
Bao Zheng was silent for a long time.
Beyond the window, the clamour of the market: vendors hawking steamed buns, vegetable sellers carrying shoulder-poles, children chasing each other through the crowd. A vigorous, flourishing world, utterly alien to the tension-laden conversation inside the teahouse.
“The Censorate has an independent reporting channel,” Bao Zheng said at last. “It bypasses the Secretariat-Chancellery and goes directly to the throne. But this channel can be used only once a year. If you use it, you must be certain you can bring down your opponent. Strike the snake and miss, and its retaliation will devour you.”
“I am certain.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the truth my father bought with his life.” Qian Yiyan met his gaze. “And on the fact that… I may die there myself.”
She spoke calmly, each word freighted with weight.
Bao Zheng looked at her for a very long time.
Then he said abruptly: “There is something on you.”
Qian Yiyan started.
“Not a physical object.” Bao Zheng pointed to his own eyes. “A presence. Editing Deliberate Fan calls it astral force. But I have handled many cases over the years; I know the condition of those corrupted by dark arts, those haunted by vengeful spirits. The presence on you is disordered, impure—as if several forces are warring within you.”
He paused. “And one of them carries the scent of the palace.”
Elixir contamination.
A chill went through Qian Yiyan. Bao Zheng could sense it?
“The Empress Dowager bestowed medicine upon me. The Nine-Cycle Revitalizing Elixir.”
“It is more than medicine,” Bao Zheng shook his head. “It is a mark. She has left a signature on your person. Wherever you go, she can know.”
Qian Yiyan thought of Chunying and Qiuyan, of the ripples on the bundle cloth, of Qiuyan smoothing the corner of her manuscript.
“I know.”
“And yet you still go?”
“Because I know, I must go.” Qian Yiyan said. “If the Empress Dowager wished me dead, she could have had me killed here in Bianjing. Why wait for me to reach the Yellow River? She left her mark because she also wants to see—to see what the Cao family is doing, what lies in their workshops, what lies beyond the Gate.”
Bao Zheng was silent.
He readjusted his hat and rose.
“In three days, I will station someone at the relay station thirty li downstream from the Old Gentleman’s Furnace,” he said. “Send whatever you find there. The man’s name is Zhao Hu. I brought him with me from Luzhou; he is trustworthy.”
“My thanks.”
Bao Zheng reached the threshold, stopped, and did not turn.
“I have read the copy of your father’s Tianxi 4 secret memorial,” he said, his voice very low, almost drowned by the street noise. “When he wrote ‘dripping blood,’ it was not a rhetorical flourish.”
He paused.
“Do not let his death be in vain.”
Then he pushed open the door and was gone.
Qian Yiyan sat alone at the table, staring at the cold tea before her.
Its surface was placid, reflecting the darkening sky beyond the window.
She sat for a long time before rising and leaving.
As she approached the counter, the one-eyed shopkeeper suddenly opened his eye and said hoarsely, “Miss, the gentleman who was with you… has already paid for the tea.”
Qian Yiyan nodded. She was about to leave when the shopkeeper added, “He also left a message.”
“What message?”
“He said: ‘Three alleys north of this teahouse, the fourth house on the right. Surname Lü.’”
Qian Yiyan’s step faltered.
Surname Lü.
She thought of the metal flake. Of the forging pattern on Cao Yan’s mirror, so similar to the Directorate’s. Of Zhou Huaili’s desiccated-ginger face.
Lü Yijian.
The Lü family.
She turned and walked swiftly out of the teahouse.
Outside, the sky was near dusk. Pedestrians hurried homeward.
Following the direction the shopkeeper had indicated, she turned into the third alley. It was narrow, flanked by low, humble dwellings with peeling wall plaster.
The fourth house on the right.
The door was ordinary wood, its lacquer mostly worn away, the knocker rusted. Beside the door hung a wooden plaque; the characters carved on it were almost illegible, but one could faintly make out the character “Lü.”
She did not knock. She simply stood in the shadow of the opposite alley and watched.
About a quarter of an hour later, the door opened.
A young man emerged, barely over twenty, dressed in the plain gown of a scholar, carrying a food box in his hand. He glanced left and right, then hurried toward the mouth of the alley.
Qian Yiyan recognized his face.
Lü Gongchuo.
Lü Yijian’s eldest son. He currently held the post of Assistant Director of the Directorate for Imperial Manufactories—the very office that supervised official implements, including the steel used in Cao-family armour.
She watched Lü Gongchuo’s back disappear into the alley mouth. Then she looked once more at the closed wooden door.
Through the crack beneath the door, a faint sliver of light seeped out.
And in that light, something—the shadow of something—swayed slowly.
Like a person.
Like someone waiting for her.
Qian Yiyan lingered no longer. She turned and left.
As she exited the alley, she heard behind her the faintest creak of a door-hinge turning.
But she did not look back.
- You Hour (5-7 PM) · The Three-Part Spiderweb
When she emerged from Lü’s alley, the dusk was deepening.
Bianjing’s Western Market was at its most raucous hour—stallholders hawking their last goods, minor clerks slipping into taverns after their duties, women with vegetable baskets hurrying home, carriages and sedan chairs jostling for space on the bluestone pavement.
Qian Yiyan wrapped her cloak tighter, lowered her veiled hat, and melted into the crowd.
She needed to return to the Astrological Bureau as swiftly as possible. But an intuition plucked a taut string at the nape of her neck—something was wrong.
Thirty paces on, the first gaze pinned itself to her back.
It came from an oblique rear angle, the second floor of the Joyous Guest Teahouse. An intermittent sweep, shielded by the lattice of the window frame. The gaze was heavy, patient, the gaze of a hunter assessing its prey.
Cao-family agents.
She veered toward a stall selling woven bamboo, pretending to examine winnowing baskets, while her peripheral vision swept back.
Behind the second-floor window, a silhouette in a bamboo hat. His right hand rested on the sill, index finger tapping a slow, deliberate rhythm—military scout signalling: Target moving, maintain distance.
It was indeed the Cao family.
She set down the winnowing basket and turned eastward.
Twenty paces later, a second gaze sliced in from her left.
More concealed. It emanated from the dim doorway of the Yu Feng Pawnshop across the street. A gaunt, elderly man who appeared to be the shopkeeper was listlessly clicking his abacus beads. But in the instant Qian Yiyan passed, his fingers stilled, and his eyelids flickered upward—extremely fast.
The gaze was cold, devoid of emotion, as if appraising a lifeless object for valuation.
Not the Cao family’s style. This one felt like an accountant, a judicial secretary, a palace recorder.
Lü-family agents? Or another pair of eyes dispatched separately by the Empress Dowager?
At that moment, the handkerchief containing the metal flake, tucked in her bosom, suddenly moved.
Not from the wind—there was no wind in this crowded street. The cloth itself stirred, as if a live insect writhed within it. One corner lifted, stubbornly pointing due north.
Toward the Old Gentleman’s Furnace.
The Empress Dowager’s mark was actively guiding her.
Qian Yiyan clenched her jaw. Her left hand formed a mudra, channelling astral force through her meridians to the cloth in her bosom, forcibly suppressing its agitation. The handkerchief grew hot against her chest, like a coal fresh from the forge, searing her skin.
Three directions.
The Cao family trailing behind. The Lü family (or another of the Empress Dowager’s operatives) evaluating from the flank. And the mark of the Empress Dowager herself, burning within her, pulling.
She was a fly that had stumbled into the centre of an invisible spiderweb. Every strand was quivering.
She had to break free.
She could not return to the Astrological Bureau—that would lead all her tails directly to her lair. Nor could she seek solitude—isolation would be an invitation for them to act.
Her gaze swept the street.
Thirty paces ahead, the Chen Family Spice Shop. Outside, baskets overflowing with pepper, fennel, cinnamon, fragments of sandalwood—pungent, overwhelming. The shop was narrow, shelves rising to the ceiling on both sides, creating deep visual blind spots. At the rear, a back door opened onto a sewage alley, which led to the Bian River docks.
There.
She quickened her pace, while from her hidden pouch she extracted a pinch of Fluorescent Dust—a powder that, on contact with air, burst into a faintly starlit haze, capable of briefly disrupting a pursuer’s vision and scent.
When she was ten paces from the spice shop, the heat from the handkerchief at her bosom intensified abruptly.
The corner of the cloth snapped taut, as if yanked by an invisible hand—the force was so strong it compressed her chest. Its direction had shifted: from due north to northeast, pointing rigidly at the silhouette in the bamboo hat on the second floor of the Joyous Guest Teahouse.
It was identifying the Cao-family lookout.
And reminding her: the Empress Dowager was not merely watching; through the mark in her body, she was also sensing the disposition of threats around her.
Cold sweat beaded on Qian Yiyan’s brow.
She hesitated no longer. Her left hand flicked, scattering the Fluorescent Dust into the air behind her.
A soft puff. Pale blue haze blossomed, merging with the dense aromas from the spice shop into a confounding barrier.
At almost the same instant, she shot forward like an arrow, swept aside the shop’s door curtain, and plunged inside.
The light within was dim, the air thick enough to taste. The plump woman tending the shop, dozing, was startled awake; before she could speak, Qian Yiyan slapped a silver碎银 onto the counter. “A passage through. No noise.”
The woman’s eyes brightened. She jerked her chin toward the back door.
Qian Yiyan slipped through the shelves, pushed open the rear door.
A narrow lane. Dark green wastewater trickled along the gutter, the air a pungent fusion of spice-shop aromas and the acrid reek of the indigo dychouse next door. She planted a foot on the wall, leapt across the lane, and landed on the racks where the dychouse’s fabrics hung to dry.
The cloth was still wet; indigo water drenched her.
No time to care. She rolled as she landed, scrambling into the dychouse’s rear courtyard, cluttered with dye vats.
She crouched, held her breath.
Three breaths.
Five breaths.
No pursuing footsteps echoed from the lane.
From the direction of the spice shop’s front door came a few muffled coughs—someone had rushed into the dust haze.
Qian Yiyan slowly exhaled.
She looked down at her bosom.
The handkerchief had cooled. It lay limp. But along one corner, a small ring of scorched yellow marked the fabric, as if touched by incense.
The mark had activated once. Consumed a measure of its potency.
But who knew when it would reawaken?
She tucked the handkerchief back into her hidden pouch, rose, and, using the cover of the dye vats, crept toward the Bian River docks.
The sensation of gazes upon her back had vanished.
At least for now.
But the spiderweb remained. The strands had merely slackened; the spider still lurked in the shadows, waiting for her to stir them again.
The last thread of daylight sank below the horizon.
Night, like ink dropped into clear water, swiftly diffused.
- Zi Hour (11 PM-1 AM) · The Fissure Breathes
At the end of the Xu hour (about 9 PM), Qian Yiyan slipped back into the Astrological Bureau.
She vaulted the low western wall and landed in her own small courtyard. The lamps in Chunying and Qiuyan’s wing had been extinguished, but behind the window paper, the faint silhouette of a seated figure remained—not asleep, waiting.
Silently she pushed open her door and slid inside, sliding the bolt home behind her.
She lit no lamp.
She walked to the window and opened it. The night wind poured in, carrying the first chill of early autumn. The sky was clear, stars thickly scattered.
She looked northeast.
The Old Gentleman’s Furnace lay in that direction.
All clues converged there.
She unclasped the jade pendant and held it in her palm.
Its familiar, warm smoothness met her skin. A barely perceptible pulse rippled through her palm—not a heartbeat, but the pendant itself breathing.
She closed her eyes and sank her consciousness into it.
Astral force flowed, forming a faint aureole around her.
She sought the residue of her father.
She sought the undulation of the Gate.
She sought… whether, two thousand kilometres away, Lu Baoyi was also gazing at the same patch of sky.
Time passed.
Zi hour.
The bell tower of the Astrological Bureau tolled, the bronze bell releasing its deep drone.
Just as the last resonance of the bell was fading—
“HUUUUMMMMMM——”
The jade pendant convulsed violently.
No—not only the pendant. Every metallic object in the room—the iron latch on the window, the bronze lamp on the desk, the scabbard at her waist—all emitted a low, sympathetic hum simultaneously.
Qian Yiyan’s eyes flew open.
Her vision had transformed.
At the edges of her sight, the air began to distort, resolving into fine, glass-like crack patterns. The fissures spread from the northeast, growing denser, more distinct.
At the end of the cracks, she saw a star.
Dark red. A phantom star that should not exist, suspended in the night sky above the Old Gentleman’s Furnace, rotating slowly.
The Lock-Key Star.
The star that marked the Gate’s location.
It was before her, now.
At the same instant the star’s phantom appeared—
On the table, the unfinished cup of tea quivered. Ripples spread across the surface, and the reflection in the water was no longer the rafters of the ceiling, but a distorted, flowing, dark-red stellar corona.
The small puddle of night dew on the windowsill also caught the same eerie crimson glow.
Further away, on the bell tower’s bronze bell, the verdigris that had seemed to writhe under daylight now churned violently, as if something were struggling to break free of the metal’s confines, to emerge from beneath the corrosion.
The ripples of the Lock-Key Star were beginning to warp the most fundamental laws of physics.
Qian Yiyan looked down at the little finger of her left hand.
Her nail was turning a dead grey from the edge inward, as if drained of all moisture. A fine, brittle crackling sound—fissures spread like spider silk.
Then fragments of the nail began to powder, disintegrating into fine, metallic-lustred dust that sifted down from her fingertip.
A hollow numbness—as if the very existence of that part of her finger had been erased—crept up the bone.
She clenched her teeth. She made no sound.
She raised her right hand and, with the tip of the Starlight Thorn, carved a spirit-stabilising talisman into the palm of her left hand.
The glyph glowed faintly. The chill in her shoulder eased slightly.
The powdering of her nail ceased. But the dust that had fallen could never return.
She stared at her mutilated fingertip, the raw pink nail bed exposed. And then she smiled.
A smile of desolate clarity.
So this is how it is, she thought. When you stand at the edge of the fissure, the first thing the corrosion consumes is always your own body.
She grasped the jade pendant again, pouring the last of her astral force into it.
And toward the northeast, toward the phantom of the Lock-Key Star, toward the other side of the fissure, she whispered:
“I have seen it.”
“Three days hence. The Old Gentleman’s Furnace.”
The words left her lips. The pendant’s aureole abruptly guttered and died.
The metallic resonance in the room ceased.
All was still.
- Zi Hour · The Star’s Contamination
The same moment. A thousand kilometres away.
Lu Baoyi’s laboratory.
On the monitor of the Elixir-Signal Analyser, the real-time calibration data stream was refreshing at a furious rate.
Lin Wan’s voice came through the headset, dry and strained: “Boss, North China Station just sent an encrypted brief. The sensor array on the riverbed at Old Gentleman’s Furnace recorded a weak rule-resonance three hours ago… Wait—”
Her voice caught.
“What is it?”
“My screen… the centre… just flashed…” Lin Wan’s voice trembled. “A star. Dark red, right in the middle of the spectrum analysis interface. Flashed for maybe 0. something seconds. Then it was gone. But the screen glass… cracked.”
Lu Baoyi’s heart seized. He jerked his head toward his own main screen.
The instant his gaze fell upon it—
ZZZzzt.
A minuscule crackle of current overload.
At the centre of the main screen, a phantom star—dark red, bearing strange, rotating grain patterns—materialised without warning.
Not displayed within any program window. It was floating directly on the surface of the glass, like a holographic projection.
Hovering there, slowly rotating.
0.3 seconds.
Then it vanished.
On the screen, the tempered glass cracked—a spiderweb of fine lines.
The trajectory of the cracks perfectly overlapped the lines of the star chart.
“What the… fuck.” Lu Baoyi heard himself curse under his breath.
But it wasn’t over.
Almost simultaneously with the star-phantom’s disappearance, an extraordinarily vivid, extraordinarily aberrant gustatory hallucination flooded his mouth—
The metallic tang of rust.
Bitter, with the dusty, aged-paper dryness of antique thread-bound books.
And a faint aftertaste… like the ash of temple incense, long extinguished.
The taste was so real his tongue went numb, his throat constricted.
“Lin Wan.” His voice was tight. “Are you… tasting anything weird?”
Two seconds of silence on the headset.
“…Yes,” Lin Wan’s voice shook. “Rust. And… old books. I thought it was just sleep deprivation…”
Not hallucination.
Lu Baoyi stared at the spiderweb crack on the screen.
The star-phantom had crossed space (from Old Gentleman’s Furnace to the laboratory).
It had crossed media (from subterranean oscillation to screen imaging).
It had even crossed sensory modalities (from visual to gustatory).
“Rule-contamination is accelerating,” he murmured. “The fluctuations from the Gate’s side are starting to interfere directly with our perception of reality… Quite the welcoming gift—doorstep delivery of a full sensory package.”
He had barely finished speaking when, on the monitoring screen, the scrolling real-time calibration data stream stuttered. A single frame paused.
In that frozen frame, amidst the millions of random digits, a line of clear Chinese characters flashed:
“Coordinates received. Awaiting synchronization. Countdown: 71:59:59”
Then the data stream resumed its frantic scroll. The line vanished.
As if it had never appeared.
But Lu Baoyi had seen it.
Lin Wan had seen it.
The laboratory was plunged into absolute silence, broken only by the low hum of server fans.
Lu Baoyi slowly leaned back into his chair and raised a hand to rub his brow.
His fingertips touched his skin. He froze.
He looked down.
At the edge of the nail on his left little finger, a hair-thin, ashen-white line had appeared, unnoticed.
As if something invisible had gently scraped away a tiny portion.
He stared at that mark for two seconds. Then he picked up the cup of coffee, now long cold, and took a sip.
“Lin Wan,” he said.
“…Yeah?”
“Next time you order coffee, remember to ask for extra sugar packets.” Lu Baoyi looked at the crack on his screen. “The sugar content of this script is clearly insufficient.”