The solid warmth of the Mountain's Foundation Stance was the only thing that kept Li Ming from bolting. The vibration of the four approaching footsteps was a steady, threatening drumbeat against the soles of his borrowed power. They moved with a cruel efficiency, parting the underbrush, their energy coiled and focused.
"…trouble, trouble, I smell trouble… should've brought a drink to this party…" The new, slurring voice of One-Armed Zhao's echo muttered in the back of his mind.
"Quiet, fool," Iron Saint Bai snapped. "Keeper, you cannot run. Your stance is for grounding, not fleeing. They would catch you in three breaths. Stand your ground. You are the Archivist. You hold authority they cannot understand."
Authority? Li Ming felt none. He felt like a rabbit frozen before snakes. He could feel them now, fifty paces away, their auras like cold, smooth stones, predatory and patient.
"What do I say?" he whispered, his throat tight.
"Say nothing of the Archives first. You are a traveler who found a dying man. Grief is your shield. But do not bow. Do not let your spirit cower. Bai's instructions were quick, firm."
The footsteps stopped at the edge of the willow grove. The air grew still.
"Report," a voice said. It was cold, devoid of inflection.
"Spiritual signature has dissolved, Elder Kun. The source is here. One deceased male. And… one living." This second voice was younger, tinged with curiosity.
Li Ming turned his head slightly, facing the direction of the vibrations. He kept his hands at his sides, trying to mimic the unshakable solidity he felt from Bai's echo.
"You," the cold voice—Elder Kun—addressed him. "State your name and business with this vagrant."
Li Ming took a breath, willing his voice not to shake. "I am Li Ming. I was traveling the path. I heard his song. I came to see if he needed help. He was gone when I arrived." The half-truth felt heavy.
Elder Kun's footsteps were silent as he moved closer. Li Ming's earth-sense painted a terrifying picture: a man of dense, compact energy, his weight perfectly distributed, his movements leaving almost no trace on the ground. A master.
"Blind," Elder Kun observed, not a question. "Yet you found him off the path. You have some sensitivity."
"I listen closely," Li Ming said.
A third voice, nasal and sneering, chimed in. "He listens. How charming. Elder, the body is One-Armed Zhao. The drunkard who disgraced Elder Mo all those years ago. A waste of flesh."
"And yet," Elder Kun mused, his voice circling Li Ming like a physical touch, "a style has just died here. The 'Drunken God's Steps,' however pathetic, has left the world. Such moments leave… residues. Traces a skilled cultivator might harvest." He paused directly in front of Li Ming. "You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, blind traveler?"
The pressure of the man's focused attention was immense. It was like standing before a cliff.
"He is probing you with his spiritual sense," Bai warned. "He feels the echo of the style's passing on you, like scent on the wind. Do not let him into your mind. Hold your boundary. Think of the mountain. Unmoving."
Li Ming clenched his teeth, picturing the great, silent peak that housed the Archives. He felt the solid warmth in his feet root him deeper. He said nothing.
"Elder," the younger voice said, "his feet… his stance. It's unusual. Very rooted. It's not a peasant's stance."
Elder Kun hummed. "No. It is not." His voice sharpened. "Boy. What sect are you from? Who taught you to stand like that?"
Panic flickered. He couldn't mention the Archives. Master An had always said they were a secret, a myth to the outside world.
"I have no sect," Li Ming said, forcing the words out. "I was a librarian's apprentice. My master taught me to stand steady while carrying scrolls." It was the thinnest of veils.
"A librarian." The sneering disciple laughed. "Shall we check his bags for overdue books, Elder?"
Elder Kun ignored the joke. "A style dies. A boy with a mysterious stance appears at the exact moment of its passing. This is not coincidence." His voice dropped, becoming dangerously soft. "You will come with us to the Stone-Serpent Sect for further questioning. We have methods of determining what, exactly, you have absorbed."
A hand, cold and hard as iron, clamped around Li Ming's upper arm.
Instinct screamed. Danger. Capture. The end.
The solidity in his feet flared,a desperate, reflexive response. The Mountain's Foundation Stance wasn't an attack, but it was an absolute declaration of presence. Li Ming didn't pull away; he simply became, for an instant, as unmovable as the mountain's core.
Elder Kun's grip tightened, then slipped slightly, surprised by the unexpected resistance. It was a tiny thing, a fraction of a second.
But it was enough for another voice to slice through Li Ming's panic.
"Foolish serpent! Grabbing in the dark!" It was Lady Silken Death, her tone venomous and thrilling. "You have the steps of a drunkard in your head, boy! Use them! He expects a mountain—be a falling leaf!'
The echo of the Drunken God's Steps, which had been murmuring sadly, suddenly surged. A torrent of sensation, dizziness, misplaced weight, illogical momentum, flooded Li Ming's nerves. It wasn't a loan like Bai's stance; it was a wild, chaotic push.
Elder Kun pulled, expecting to yank Li Ming off balance.
Li Ming, driven by the ghostly instinct of the drunkard's style, did the opposite. He fell into the pull. But it was a fall with a spin, his body going limp and twisting at the same time. His arm slid like wet silk from the Elder's grasp. His borrowed solidity in his feet vanished, replaced by a staggering, stumbling lurch that carried him three steps to the side, tangling him in the low-hanging willow branches.
It was clumsy. It was desperate. It was undignified.
And it was utterly, completely unpredictable.
"What—?" the sneering disciple gasped.
Elder Kun stood still for a heartbeat, his hand empty. "Interesting," he breathed, and this time his voice held a thread of genuine, cold curiosity. "That was not the stance of a moment ago. That was… something else. Something fluid and broken."
Li Ming stumbled, catching himself on a tree trunk, his heart hammering against his ribs. He'd done it. He'd gotten free. But now he was separated from them, the stream at his back.
"You have their attention now, Keeper," Bai's voice was grim. And not the good kind. "You have shown two contradictory martial signatures in as many breaths. You have become a puzzle. They will not let you go."
"Seize him," Elder Kun commanded, his voice no longer casual. "Gently. I want him intact for the Soul-Seeking Pool."
The vibrations of three disciples exploded into motion, fanning out to surround him. Their steps were quick, practiced, the rustle of their robes like scales on stone.
Terror closed Li Ming's throat. He couldn't fight three cultivators. He couldn't outrun them. The Drunken God's instinct still buzzed in his limbs, but it was a chaotic, unguided energy.
"The mountain failed. The drunkard is a fool," the Silent Abbot's voice flowed in, a calming deep water amidst the storm. "You must be neither. You must be the space between. Be the willow."
The space between? The willow?
The first disciple lunged, hands clawed in a serpent-strike aimed to grip his shoulder. Li Ming felt the air part.
Be the willow.
He didn't brace. He didn't dodge with steps. He let his knees go soft, like the flexible trunk of the willow. He swayed back, not away from the strike, but with its force, letting it push the air from his chest but not grasp his body. The disciple's fingers brushed his robe, clutching empty air as Li Ming's upper body arced backward in a graceful, yielding bend.
The disciple over-extended, stumbling forward with a grunt.
The second was already coming from the left, a low sweep meant to take his legs. Li Ming, still bent back, collapsed the rest of the way. But it wasn't a fall. It was a controlled, boneless drop. He hit the soft, damp earth and rolled, not away from the kick, but through the space just vacated by the first disciple's legs.
He came up on his knees, disoriented but unharmed, now behind both attackers.
A stunned silence filled the grove.
Elder Kun had not moved. "No style," he murmured, awe and avarice warring in his voice. "No visible style at all. It is pure, reactive adaptation. An empty mirror. This is not absorption… this is something far rarer." His voice rose. "Do not harm him! I must have him alive!"
The third disciple, the younger one, moved now. He was more cautious. He didn't strike. He tried to corner Li Ming against the stream bank, moving with a windy, encircling pattern.
Li Ming panted, his mind reeling. The Silent Abbot's calm was the eye of his hurricane. Be the space. Yield. Flow.
As the disciple closed in, Li Ming did the only thing that felt right. He stopped trying to do anything. He let his awareness expand. He felt the disciple's intent, a cage of movement, not a blow. He felt the stream's gurgle, the willow's sigh, the solid fear in his own heart.
And he simply… stepped into the one place the disciple's cage wasn't.
It was a half-step forward and to the side, into the disciple's blind spot as he turned. It wasn't fast. It wasn't clever. It was just… there. Like a stone that had always been in the grass.
The disciple turned, grabbed empty air, and collided with his recovering companion.
Chaos.
In that moment of tangled disciples and shouted confusion, Li Ming acted on raw instinct. He turned and took two staggering, desperate steps—not with any ghost's power, but with his own blind fear—and plunged into the cold, shocking embrace of the stream.
The water was deeper than he expected, pulling at his robes, numbing his legs. He heard shouts from the bank.
"After him!"
"The stream leads to the Black Rapids! He'll be dashed to pieces!"
"Then retrieve the pieces!" Elder Kun's voice cut through, furious and determined. "I want that boy's mind opened like a book! Find him!"
The current grabbed Li Ming, spinning him, pulling him under. The cold was a shock that stole his breath. The world became roaring water, tumbling darkness, and the crushing fear of the rocks he knew were coming.
The voices in his mind were full of mixed noises.
…not the drink I had in mind…
Swim, you fool! Use the current, don't fight it!
…still the heart, the water is but another wind…
The rapids! To the left! Kick LEFT!
But Li Ming was no swimmer. He was a librarian in a flooding cave. The water filled his mouth, his nose. His head struck something hard, and stars exploded in the blackness of his vision.
The world began to fade, the roaring water becoming a distant thunder.
The last thing he felt was not a rock, but a hand. A large, rough hand that closed on the back of his robe with tremendous strength, arresting his deadly rush. He was hauled, coughing and choking, onto a flat, wet stone.
A new voice, gruff and unfamiliar, speaking in the physical world, grumbled above him.
"Tch. Dumping trouble in my fishing hole. What kind of thanks is that?"
Then, everything went silent.