The relief Li Ming felt from quieting the voices was short-lived. The new pressure from Lady Silken Death's words was different, a slow, sinking pull, like a hook in his soul.
"Do you feel it, Keeper?" Iron Saint Bai's voice was solemn. "That tugging in your spirit? Like a river current dragging you toward a waterfall."
Li Ming focused inward. Beyond the low hum of the ten thousand silent scrolls, he felt it. A faint, rhythmic dragging sensation. It pulled down and to the east. It felt like melancholy, like the last sigh of a fire.
"Yes," Li Ming whispered. "It's… sad."
"It is the 'Death Throes' of a style," Bai explained. "The 'Drunken God's Steps.' Its last true master is on the brink. When he falls, the style's essence will tear loose. If we are not prepared, it will rip through the Archive like a wild ghost, damaging other scrolls. Or worse, it might not come here at all. It might shatter, lost forever. Or attach itself to some unworthy fool in the world below."
"What do we do?" Li Ming asked. He still knelt on the cold floor of the inner chamber, the reality of his duty settling on him like a heavy cloak.
*You must go to him. To the dying master," the Silent Abbot's voice flowed in, calm and deep. "You must witness the end. You must be the vessel that catches the falling scroll, so it may enter the Archive with grace, not violence. This is the Keeper's first true duty."
"Go to him? Leave the Archives?" Panic, fresh and sharp, rose in Li Ming. The outside world was a chaotic, frightening place of noise and shoving and unknown edges. Here, he knew every stone, every shelf.
"The Archives are not just these stones, boy," Bai said, not unkindly. "They are where you are. You are the heart of it now. You carry the key. The door will follow."
Li Ming took a shuddering breath. Master An was gone. The pull of the dying style was undeniable. There was no one else.
"How do I find him?"
"Follow the pull. It will grow stronger as you get closer. But you cannot go as a blind librarian." Bai's tone shifted, becoming instructive. "You have no cultivation of your own. You are an empty cup. But here, you are surrounded by oceans. You must borrow."
"Borrow?"
"A drop of my power. A single pathway. I will lend you the 'Mountain's Foundation Stance.' It will steady your legs and let you see through the earth's vibrations. You will feel the ground like I did. But it is a loan. My echo will rest within your meridians for a time. Do not try to use the fist technique itself, you are not ready. Just use the stance to walk."
Before Li Ming could agree or refuse, he felt a warmth bloom in his chest. It was a solid, grounding heat, like holding a sun-warmed stone. It spread down his legs, settling into his feet. Suddenly, the world beneath him came alive.
He could feel the immense, layered stone of the mountain. He could feel the deep, cold roots of the Archives. He could feel, like a faint itch, the living vibrations of the world above, the scurry of small animals, the sigh of trees in the wind, the distant, muddy rumble of a village to the east. And cutting through it all, that sad, pulling current, leading east and slightly downslope.
It wasn't sight. It was knowing. A perfect, three-dimensional map painted in pressure and vibration.
"It's… incredible," Li Ming breathed.
"It is the barest beginning," Bai said, but there was a hint of pride in his voice. "Now, go. The pull weakens. The master fades."
Exiting the True Archive was as simple as wanting to. One moment he was in the humming chamber, the next he was stumbling back into the familiar, scent-filled darkness of the outer scroll library. The warm solidity of Bai's borrowed power remained in his feet.
He passed Master An's body. The sorrow hit him fresh, a physical ache. He paused, touching the old man's cold hand. "I will do my best, Master," he whispered. Then he turned and ran.
He moved through the Archives faster than he ever had. His feet, attuned to the stone, told him of every slight dip, every seam, every step. He was a ghost in his own home. He found the massive, iron-banded main door, a door he had only ever opened to receive supplies, always with Master An beside him.
He placed his palms against the cold, rough wood. He pushed.
With a groan that shook dust from the lintel, the door swung outward.
The world crashed in.
Sound. Smell. Life. It was a roaring wave after the sacred silence. Birds shrieking, wind roaring through pine needles, the chaotic buzz of insects, the distant rush of a river. The smell of wet earth, pine resin, wildflowers, and decay. It was too much. Li Ming swayed, clapping his hands over his ears.
"Focus on your feet, Keeper!" Bai's voice was a firm anchor in the sensory storm. "The earth is constant. Let the noise be just another wind."
Li Ming forced himself to breathe. He lowered his hands. He leaned into the Mountain's Foundation Stance. The solid, vibrating certainty of the ground rose to meet him. The chaotic sounds became a tapestry he could start to separate. The terrifying void of the open air became a space he could navigate through the echo-map in his mind.
The pulling current was stronger now, a clear cord of melancholy tugging him downhill, through the trees.
He walked. The forest floor was a commotion of roots, rocks, and soft moss, but his borrowed stance made him sure-footed. He moved with a confidence that was foreign to him. Hours passed. The sun's warmth on his face told him it was past noon.
The pull led him out of the deep forest and onto a rough, muddy path. The vibrations changed. Now he felt the distant, regular thumps of a village, feet, wheels, labor. He was getting close.
And then, he heard it. Not with his new earth-sense, but with his ears.
A ragged, wheezing song.
"Oh, the wine is red, the road is long… my legs are gone, but my spirit's strong! A ha!"
A cough, violent and wet, shattered the verse.
The pull was a direct line now, leading off the path to a grove of old willow trees near a trickling stream. Li Ming followed it.
Under the weeping branches, a man lay propped against a tree root. The vibrations he gave off were weak, fluttering, like a candle guttering in its own wax. The air smelled of sour wine, unwashed body, and the iron-tang of sickness.
The man took a swig from a battered gourd. "Who's there? Come to scold old One-Armed Zhao? Too late! The lesson's already learned!" His voice was a parody of cheer, scraped raw.
"I am Li Ming," Li Ming said, stopping a few paces away. "I… felt you."
"Felt me?" Zhao let out a hacking laugh that turned into another cough. "Not much to feel, boy. Just a leaky wineskin waiting to be empty." He peered at Li Ming, his vision likely blurred. "You're not from Mudweed Village. You're too clean. And you move… funny. Solid. Like you're part of the mountain."
"I came from the Azure Archives."
A sudden silence. The drunken bravado vanished. When Zhao spoke again, his voice was different, clearer, older, sharp with a pain that wasn't physical. "The Archives. So. The Keeper feels a style dying. He sends his… apprentice? To collect the scraps?"
"The Keeper is dead," Li Ming said softly. "I am the Keeper now."
Zhao stared. Then he let out a long, shuddering sigh. It seemed to deflate him completely. "Dead. Of course. Why should anything last?" He took another drink, but it was a weary gesture now. "So, new Keeper. You've come to watch the last of the Drunken God's Steps hiccup and die. To bottle my ghost."
"I've come to help it find peace," Li Ming said, repeating what he felt from the Silent Abbot's wisdom.
Zhao was quiet for a long time. The only sounds were the whisper of the willows and his labored breath. "Peace," he finally muttered. "The Drunken God didn't believe in peace. He believed in forgetting. In laughing through the pain until you forgot which was which." He shifted, and Li Ming's earth-sense felt the strange, off-balance weight of the man, one arm missing at the shoulder. "You know how I lost it?"
Li Ming shook his head.
"Bet," Zhao said, a ghost of his earlier humor returning. "Bet a Stone-Serpent Sect elder I could dodge his 'Unavoidable Coiling Strike' after a gallon of Thunderbrew. I was right. I dodged. He was so mad, he took the arm anyway." He laughed, a dry, broken sound. "The style is all about imbalance, you see? Using it, becoming it. Turning weakness into an unpredictable strength. Now… I'm just imbalanced."
The pulling sensation was getting sharper, more painful. The end was very near.
"He is ready," Bai's voice murmured inside. "But his spirit is tangled with regret. The scroll may be flawed if it is not resolved. Ask him."
"What is your regret?" Li Ming asked, taking a step closer. "The style cannot rest if you do not."
Zhao looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time. "You're blind," he stated.
"Yes."
"Hah. The blind leading the lame off the stage." Zhao sighed. "My regret… is that it was just a stupid bet. There was no great enemy. No noble sacrifice. No last stand to protect a village. I lost the arm for a joke. And with it… I broke the lineage. I was too bitter, too drunk, to teach. No disciple. Just… a punchline that no one's left to hear."
The sadness in his voice was a tangible thing. Li Ming felt it resonate with the pulling in his spirit.
He didn't know what to do. He was just a boy. But he remembered the feeling of Lady Silken Death's memory, the clarity of it. The Archive was about preservation, not judgment.
"The Archives don't care if it was noble or not," Li Ming said slowly, finding the words as he spoke. "They only care that it was. Your style. Your story. The bet, the arm, the laughter, the bitterness. All of it. That is what needs to be remembered. Not just the perfect techniques."
Zhao was silent. He lifted the gourd, not to drink, but as if weighing it. "Remembered," he whispered. Then he nodded, a decision made. "Alright, Blind Keeper. Catch my ghost. Make sure the joke gets told."
He closed his eyes. His breathing shallowed. The pulling sensation reached its peak, a silent scream in the spiritual fabric of the world.
"Now, Keeper!" Bai commanded. "Open yourself to it! Be the empty page!"
Li Ming stopped fighting the pull. He let down every guard in his mind he didn't know he had. He became a vessel.
A wave of energy burst from One-Armed Zhao. It wasn't violent, but it was vast, a confusing, swirling storm of sensations: the dizzying spin of drunkenness, the shocking agility that turned a stumble into an evasive leap, the profound sadness masked by uproarious laughter, the unique, unbalanced footwork that made no logical sense but worked perfectly.
It flooded into Li Ming.
He saw or felt memories: a young Zhao mastering impossible steps; winning drinking games without spilling a drop; losing the arm in a flash of pain and absurdity; decades of wandering, the style slowly rotting inside him like forgotten fruit.
The storm united, compressed, and settled not in his mind, but in the psychic space he now shared with the Archive. A new presence, bright with sorrow and laughter, snapped into being among the ten thousand.
In the grove, One-Armed Zhao let out his final breath, a soft sigh that sounded almost like relief.
The body was still.
The pull was gone. In its place, in the corner of Li Ming's consciousness, was a new, complex voice, already muttering.
"…a gallon, I said, a gallon and you still won't touch me… oh, that's sad, he's gone… is that me? Am I the ghost now? How do you get a drink around here…"
It was the Drunken God's Steps. It was One-Armed Zhao's echo.
Li Ming slumped against a willow tree, exhausted, his spirit feeling stretched and raw. He had done it.
A new, sharp voice cut through his fatigue and Zhao's drunken murmuring. It was Lady Silken Death, back in his mind.
"A touching performance, Keeper. You caught the falling leaf. But turn your 'earth-sense' to the path. Listen closely."
Puzzled, Li Ming focused the borrowed power of the Mountain's Foundation Stance toward the village path.
He felt them. Four sets of footsteps. Heavy, synchronized, martial. They were not the soft, irregular steps of villagers. They were coming this way, with purpose. And they were close.
"The Stone-Serpent Sect," Iron Saint Bai's voice growled with sudden tension. "They must have felt the spiritual discharge of a style's death. They've come to scavenge the corpse for techniques. And they will find you standing over it."
Li Ming's blood went cold. He was a blind boy, alone in the woods, with a dead man and four trained martial artists heading right for him.