The Nameless Epoch

Chapter 3: Another Layer Behind the Wall

The witness chamber in the Law Hall had no windows. Three sound-deadening arrays were embedded in its walls, and the table held nothing but one lamp and two case files.

Jiang Linyuan had been inside for half an hour. No one had questioned him, and no one had told him what the Merit Hall's investigation had uncovered. It was not an attempt to make things difficult. Investigative detention required the subject to be cut off from the scene, lest a careless word alter a witness's memory.

He finished reading the public copy Ye Zhaoshuang had sent him, then restored every sheet to its original order.

The file recorded the wording on the gray-white jade slip, the number of times the soul signatures had pulsed, and the eleven frost-baleful age rings within the frozen blood. As for the golden sand, it was identified only as “mineral of unknown origin, awaiting examination.” No one had rushed to assign it a birthplace.

The last page was a tracing of the mission wall's spiritual lines. The Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror had recorded seven layers of array lines from the front. Every layer was complete, down to the patch of lime rubbed from a corner by the sole of someone's shoe. Yet after studying it twice, Jiang Linyuan felt that this completeness was too orderly. It was like a shield that had just been wiped clean: the first thing anyone noticed was how spotless it looked.

An enforcement disciple outside slid in a bowl of hot water. Pale reflected light from the water fell across the papers. When Jiang Linyuan moved the case file aside, the tracing passed over that reflection. In the water, a section of the outermost array line vanished.

His hand stopped.

He moved the bowl back. The break appeared again, directly opposite the seam from which the gray-white slip had emerged.

“Please submit an evidence-preservation request for me,” he called through the door. “This is not an appeal against detention. Ask Inspector Ye to verify the mission wall's reverse-reflected light before noon.”

Silence held outside for a moment. The enforcement disciple clearly had no idea what he meant. “What reflected light?”

“Write my words exactly. Add this: the mission wall undergoes its scheduled rearrangement at noon. If hidden lines exist, the present state may be lost after that rearrangement.”

Less than a quarter of an hour after the request was sent, Ye Zhaoshuang arrived.

She did not enter. Standing outside the door, she studied the bowl of water, already half cold, then had the enforcement disciple draw the file through the gap below. The tracing remained complete beneath the spirit lamp in the corridor. When she turned it away from the light, the break in the outermost layer appeared again.

“Where is your evidence?” she asked.

Jiang Linyuan pointed at the water bowl. “The frontal tracing came from light the mission wall chose to release. The reflection in the water received returning light. The two results differ, which means the wall can control what it shows the outside world.”

“Or the surface of the water is uneven.”

“Which is why I asked for verification, not for you to accept my conclusion.” He placed the copper detention tally at the edge of the table. “Use the same Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror. Illuminate the wall from the front, then send the light back along its original path through Chishan. The mirror's surface will not ripple like water. If the break remains, we can discuss a hidden layer.”

Ye Zhaoshuang did not agree at once. Chishan was sealed evidence. Jiang Linyuan was its last point of contact. Bringing them together again would undermine the grounds for isolation she had written earlier. Yet once noon arrived, the hundreds of jade slips in the mission wall would have to be reordered, and the current state truly might disappear.

She arranged three old copper tallies outside the threshold.

“Do you need to touch Chishan?”

“I need to adjust its angle. I won't use spiritual power. Let the Thunder Mirror monitor my meridians throughout. If even one thread of spiritual power leaves my body, stop the test immediately.”

“The reverse illumination may provoke the mission wall into striking back.”

“Chishan will bear it. Everyone else withdraws twenty paces. If the shield breaks, charge the loss to me. If the wall is damaged, first determine whether your standard lightning exceeded the intensity used in routine verification. Do not assign the entire debt to me before the facts are known.”

The enforcement disciple outside stared, his eyelids twitching. He had likely never seen a detained party negotiate the division of damages with a circuit inspector. Still less had he seen Ye Zhaoshuang actually write the terms into a supplemental record.

Only after she finished did she open the door and motion for Jiang Linyuan to rise.

“Your detention remains in force. During the verification, I will restrict your movement.” She collected the copper tallies. “Even if your method succeeds, it will not prove that you are unrelated to the evidence.”

“I was never going to be unrelated to it.” Jiang Linyuan crossed the threshold without reaching for his message talisman. “Let's go. Noon will not wait for the case file.”

Most of the Merit Hall had been cleared. Of the disciples who had been fighting over missions, only nine witnesses remained. Everyone else had been released after their spiritual signatures were registered.

The gray-white jade slip was still pinned to the counter by the Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror. The frozen blood had been sealed separately in a transparent ice casket. Chishan stood between two lightning seals, its outer face turned toward the wall. The second scratch inside the shield was no longer warm.

When Steward Zhou saw Jiang Linyuan return, his first reaction was to look at the document in Ye Zhaoshuang's hand.

“Inspector Ye, the mission wall is jointly managed by the Array Nexus Pavilion and the Merit Hall. Before an outsider tests its array, we must at least wait for the hall master—”

“We will not alter the array, enter the wall, or add spiritual power.” Ye Zhaoshuang spread the supplemental record in front of him. “Standard verification. Reverse observation. You may witness it or file an objection. Approval after noon would be meaningless.”

Steward Zhou stared at the line reading, If the wall is damaged, causation shall be investigated separately. In the end, he stamped the witness column with the hall seal. He clearly did not believe a black-iron shield covered in welds could reveal anything. Once the seal was placed, he withdrew twenty paces and even drew in his sleeves, lest an accident make him part of the chain of contact.

Jiang Linyuan stepped inside the lightning seal.

Ye Zhaoshuang first swept the Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror over his dantian and both arms. Only after confirming that no Foundation Establishment spiritual power was leaving his body did she release Chishan's outer ward.

When his hand closed around the shield ring, the weight left by seven reforgings settled once more across his shoulder and back. For one instant, his palm felt strangely unaccustomed to it, as though this half-hour apart had lasted longer than the previous night's vigil on the city wall.

“Begin,” Ye Zhaoshuang said.

The first thread of standard lightning struck the mission wall. Seven layers of array lines lit in sequence. The face of the Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror caught the returning image, and the result was identical to the tracing in the file.

Jiang Linyuan did not turn the shield at once. He first watched the path the light took across the wall. When the outermost layer passed the place where the gray-white slip had emerged, he slid his left foot back half a step. Chishan tilted by the width of a finger.

The lightning struck the rough shield face and scattered into a blurred white patch.

Steward Zhou made a faint sound through his nose. The cultivator from the Array Nexus Pavilion frowned as well. Black iron could block force and disperse it, but no one had ever used it as mirror material. If all Jiang Linyuan meant to do was bounce the light back, any iron plate would have served.

Jiang Linyuan waited through another cycle.

What he watched was the order in which the light landed on the shield. Its seven welded scars made spiritual power spread at different speeds. The oldest half of the shield lagged by half a breath. The newly repaired upper-right corner held the light for scarcely an instant. To return all seven layers of array lines to the wall at once, he could not treat Chishan as a mirror. He had to treat it as seven joined plates, each with its own delay.

He tightened three fingers in sequence, turning the shield by imperceptible degrees along its welds. Not a thread of spiritual power left his body. The Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror hovered above his head, its surface clear throughout.

When the third cycle of lightning fell, the chaotic white patch split along the shield's seven old wounds, then rejoined half a foot from the wall and drove backward into the seventh layer of array lines.

A muffled impact sounded deep inside the mission wall.

It was not loud, but Steward Zhou snapped upright.

The seven visible layers did not change. Behind the wall, however, a film of black light emerged, thin as an old sheet of paper spread across the other side of the stone. Ye Zhaoshuang had already moved the Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror to the flank. She captured the black light in the first breath of its appearance, giving the mission wall no chance to withdraw it.

“Hold that angle,” she said. “Records Office, enter it into the file. Array Nexus Pavilion, read only. Do not touch the wall.”

Jiang Linyuan's shoulders and back tightened. Chishan had grown several times heavier than usual. The wall was not attacking; two streams of spiritual power moving in opposite directions were pressing against the shield. He could have used the Xuangang Shield-Fortifying Art to divert part of the burden, but he did not. The moment he introduced his own spiritual power, the hidden layer would gain a source that could be challenged.

The cultivator from the Array Nexus Pavilion approached the black light. The longer he studied it, the worse his expression became.

“This is not an external ward attached to the wall. It is the mission wall's own rewrite layer. Normal verification enters from the front. Every ray of light passes through this layer first. We can see only what it chooses to show us.”

Steward Zhou objected at once. “The mission wall has no rewrite layer. Its construction plans are archived by the Array Nexus Pavilion. The Merit Hall verifies it every month—”

“The plans show its forward-facing structure.” Jiang Linyuan still held the shield aloft, his voice weighed down by its burden. “How do you conduct the monthly verification?”

Steward Zhou said no more.

Every monthly inspection used standard light, traveling in the same direction as the first cycle today. However many years they had searched, the hidden layer had spent just as many years choosing what they were allowed to find.

Writing gradually stabilized within the black light. At the top was a string of mission numbers. A records cultivator copied downward from the first line and soon noticed that the numbers did not follow the sect's usual sequence. Their final digits ran one, three, five, seven. After more than ten pages, not a single even number appeared.

The missing numbers were absent from the voided register and had not been transferred to any other mission wall. It was as though they had never been assigned at all.

“Record only what is present,” Ye Zhaoshuang warned them. “Odd numbers alone do not prove that even numbers were deleted.”

Jiang Linyuan turned his head slightly toward her. “But they are enough to justify examining the number-generation ledger.”

“Enough for an application. The conclusion waits for evidence.”

She split a secondary image from the Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror and, before the nine witnesses and stewards from all three parties, copied it into twelve separate records.

“The method is valid. Jiang Linyuan will be entered as the first reporter. But a valid discovery does not clear him of suspicion. Kinship, the targeted response, and the change to his weapon remain. Detention continues.”

No one protested on Jiang Linyuan's behalf.

Steward Zhou stared at the twelve duplicate images. The last of his earlier contempt was gone. He had meant to delay action until the hall master arrived. But now that the hidden layer had been separately sealed in multiple hands, anyone wishing to dismiss the matter as crossed spiritual lines would first have to make all twelve records disappear at once.

Jiang Linyuan slowly lowered Chishan. Sweat had soaked the robes over his shoulder. He did not ask when he would be released. He merely told the records cultivator to copy the mission numbers through the final page.

At the bottom of the hidden layer lay one rewrite record that had not been concealed. Beside it was a sect timestamp precise to a single breath.

The records cultivator retrieved the stoppage record of Zhexue Pass's death bell. Two time imprints hovered in the air, one after the other.

The copper tally in Ye Zhaoshuang's sleeve went still. The Sin-Illuminating Thunder Mirror continued to record every digit without the slightest tremor.

The hidden layer's final rewrite had occurred thirteen breaths after Zhexue Pass fell.