Chapter 5
1147 Words
The job came through the labor board like any other. Elder Rong's assistant pinned a slip to the wall, and Wei Liang's name was on it along with two other labor disciples.
Transport one sealed crate to the southern drop point outside the sect wall. Do not open it. Do not ask questions. Payment on return.
The pay was triple the normal rate. That alone told him something was wrong. Nobody paid triple for honest work.
The other two disciples assigned with him backed out before noon, claiming sickness. Wei Liang knew it wasn't sickness. They knew something he didn't, and they wanted no part of it.
He took the job anyway. He needed the money, and curiosity had already taken root in him.
Elder Rong handed him the manifest himself, which was strange. Elders didn't usually bother with labor disciples directly. He was an older man, thin, with a calm face that gave nothing away. On his wrist sat a sect mark, small and circular, the kind given to those who handled "internal affairs."
Wei Liang had seen that mark before. On the official who signed his demotion papers months ago.
"You carry it. You don't open it. You don't speak to anyone at the drop point beyond confirming the password." Elder Rong's voice was flat, almost bored. "Understood?"
"Understood."
The crate was heavier than it should have been for its size, and it was sealed with three different locks, none of which matched standard sect storage. Wei Liang carried it on a cart through the southern gate, alone, just as instructed.
Halfway down the mountain road, away from any eyes, he stopped the cart.
He told himself he wouldn't open it. He told himself this twice.
Then he broke one of the seals anyway, just enough to look inside without disturbing the others.
Three children lay inside, unconscious, packed together on a thin layer of cloth. The oldest couldn't have been more than ten. Each of them had a thin black seal wrapped around their neck, the kind used to suppress a cultivator's core so it couldn't gather qi. Their faces were pale, breathing shallow but steady.
Wei Liang stood there for a long moment, not moving, not breathing right either.
He understood immediately what this was. Children sold off, sealed so they couldn't resist or scream for help, packed away like cargo. Somewhere down this road, someone was waiting to receive them in exchange for whatever the sect wanted in return. Resources, probably. Spirit stones, rare herbs, things the sect could use to make its numbers look good without doing the work to earn them honestly.
He closed the crate and resealed it as best he could.
He kept walking.
At the drop point, a man in gray robes stood waiting near a covered wagon, alone except for two guards. Wei Liang gave the password Elder Rong had told him. The man checked the crate's seals without opening it, nodded, and handed Wei Liang a sealed pouch of coins in return.
Wei Liang memorized everything he could in the few minutes he had. The man's face, narrow, with a scar above one eyebrow. The wagon's marking, a small crescent moon burned into the wood. The location itself, a fork in the road marked by a dead pine tree split down the middle by old lightning.
Then he turned the cart around and walked back up the mountain, empty-handed, the coin pouch heavy in his pocket.
He found Xu that night near the old well behind the labor quarters, the place they always met when neither of them wanted to be overheard.
"You're quiet," Xu said. "Job go bad?"
"I saw what was in the crate."
Xu's expression didn't change much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. "And?"
"Three children. Sealed. Being sold to some outside group in exchange for resources." Wei Liang kept his voice low and even, though his hands weren't quite steady. "Elder Rong handed me the job himself."
Xu was silent for a while. "And you delivered it anyway."
"Yes."
"Why?"
Wei Liang looked at the well, at the dark water sitting still inside it. "Because I would have died and they would have sent another crate next week."
He let that sit in the air between them.
"If I'd opened it fully and tried to free them right there, the guards would have killed me before I got two steps. And even if I somehow managed it, somehow got those three kids free, the sect would just grab three more next month, from some other village, and nobody would ever know what happened to any of them. Nothing would change. I'd just be dead, and they'd still be doing it."
Xu didn't answer right away. He sat down on the edge of the well, looking up at the night sky like he was deciding something.
"Good answer," he finally said. "Terrible world."
Wei Liang sat down next to him. Neither of them said anything for a long time.
"You memorized things," Xu said eventually. It wasn't a question.
"The buyer's face. The wagon mark. The drop location." Wei Liang paused. "And Elder Rong. He has the same mark as the official who pulled my cultivation rank when I first arrived here."
"You think they're connected."
"I think this sect has more rot in it than anyone admits out loud." Wei Liang's voice was steady, but there was something cold underneath it now, something that hadn't been there a few months ago. "This wasn't one bad elder doing something on the side. Rong didn't even seem nervous handing me that crate. Like it's routine. Like it happens every month and nobody above him cares as long as the resource quota gets filled."
Xu nodded slowly. "It probably is routine. Sects like this trade in plenty of things behind the public face. Spirit herbs and stones are the easy part to track. People are harder to trace, and a lot more profitable if nobody's looking."
Wei Liang stared at the water in the well again. He thought about the children's faces, slack and unaware, sealed against their will, carried off to a fate neither of them could guess at.
He couldn't save them. Not today. Not with the power he had now.
But he wasn't going to forget any of it either.
In his mind, he added Elder Rong's name to a list he'd been keeping quietly since the day his cultivation rank was first pulled for no real reason. A list of names tied to people who had wronged him, or people he'd watched wrong others while hiding behind sect authority.
Elder Rong made seven.
He didn't know yet what he'd do with that list, or when. But one day, when he had real power instead of borrowed tricks and absorbed strikes, he intended to go down it, name by name.
- Writer
