Two days passed. Shu Yan worked at the well from morning until the light went.
On the third morning she asked Shen Qing to come to the well. She had her diagrams spread on a flat stone beside the rim. She looked like she hadn't slept.
"Two structures," she said. She pointed at her drawing. "A primary formation. Massive. Purpose unknown. I can resolve twelve layers but there are more below that. The age is outside anything I can compare it to."
She turned the page.
"A secondary formation is wrapped around the primary. This one is newer. Three to four thousand years. Simpler construction. I can read it."
"Read it how?"
"It has an energy source." She set her pen on the diagram where the secondary formation's intake points were marked. "The secondary draws on emotional states in the area around the well. Warmth. Contentment. Affection. The stronger the positive emotional activity near the well, the more energy the secondary formation pulls."
Shen Qing looked at the diagram. Six intake points. They matched the positions of the six oldest buildings in the village.
"The village is built on top of the formation's intake structure," he said.
"Or the formation was built to match the village." She shook her head. "I don't know which came first. But they fit."
"What does the secondary formation do with the energy?"
"It feeds it into the primary. The primary uses it for something. I don't know what." She closed her notebook. "Whatever the primary is doing, it's been doing it for a very long time, and the secondary has been fueling it for three thousand years using the emotional bonds of whoever lives above it."
Shen Qing looked at the village. Morning. Grandmother Liu's cook fire was going. Two children were carrying water from the well. Uncle Bao was sitting outside the blacksmith's, talking to someone.
The village's warmth was the formation's fuel.
---
He went to talk to Grandmother Liu.
She was in her garden, pulling radishes. The garden was small and well-kept. She didn't look up when he approached.
"The well," he said.
"What about it."
"Has anyone ever noticed anything unusual about it?"
"It's warm." She pulled a radish and shook the dirt off it. "It's always been warm. My grandmother said the same."
"Does that not seem strange to you?"
She looked at him. "It keeps the frost off the radishes," she said. She went back to pulling.
"Grandmother. The well is thirty-eight degrees. Year round. There is no geological explanation."
"I don't know what geological means." She set the radish in her basket. "The well is warm. The radishes grow. We drink the water and we are fine. What else do you want me to say?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
She stood up and brushed her knees. "You want to know if I think something is wrong with the well. I don't. I think something is right with it. I've thought that for seventy years and nothing has changed my mind."
She picked up her basket and walked past him toward the kitchen.
---
Shen Qing spent the afternoon mapping.
He walked every path in the village. He drew the position of every building, every fence post, every well-trodden route between houses. He stood on the roof of the eastern house and looked down at the layout.
The buildings were arranged in a pattern. From above, the pathways formed concentric rings around the well, with six radial lines extending outward. They matched the intake points in Shu Yan's diagram.
The villagers had been walking the formation's conduction paths every day. To the well for water. To the square for meals. To each other's houses for company. Every habitual route reinforced the formation's geometry.
He counted the population. He went house by house. He wrote every name he was given.
Two hundred and three.
He sat with the number. Two hundred and three people whose warmth was fueling a formation they didn't know existed, built around a structure nobody could identify, older than any record in the sect archive.
---
The excavation order was in his report from two days ago. Request a senior containment team. Assess and excavate.
Excavation meant disrupting the formation. Disrupting the formation meant disrupting the fuel source. The fuel source was the emotional bonds of 203 people.
He didn't know what "disrupting emotional bonds" meant in practice. The formation was three thousand years old. Its roots went into the ground and into the people above it. He didn't know what happened when you pulled something like that out.
He wrote a new report. He sat with it for a long time before he called Jiang He.
"Send this."
Jiang He read it. He looked up. "Recommend delay?"
"Recommend delay. Pending deeper structural assessment of the secondary formation. Note that the fuel source is civilian population and that disruption consequences are unknown."
Jiang He folded the report. "They won't like this."
"Send it."
Jiang He left.
Shen Qing went to the window. The square was filling for dinner. Grandmother Liu was ladling stew. Uncle Bao was starting the fish story. The fish was going to be very large tonight.
He watched them eat.