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The man hadn’t been easy to locate, but Xie Yuchen was nothing if not rigorously and thoroughly trained.
And smart.
He was. It was just an objective fact of life.
Like the fact that the man sprawled over a table at the back of the restaurant couldn’t be the one he was looking for. This was a fact too. The sunglasses he wore inside like a pretentious douche were askew and he was - ew- drooling on his own sleeve. No way.
Xie Yuchen turned back toward the bar and arched an eyebrow at the owner. Barely sparing him a glance, the man jerked his chin toward Leather Douche again and kept on polishing his counter.
Xie Yuchen let out a long sigh.
He had tried the easy way. Now was time for the hard way.
Reaching behind him, he slowly extracted his favorite dagger from its sleeve. His fingers placed themselves along the center of the blade with practiced ease, mindful of the razor edge he had sharpened only yesterday, while he switched his balance to put more weight on his opposing foot, ready to throw.
“Listen,” he started, willing to make one last effort at negotiations - or threats. He never got any further.
He had kept the dark shape at the back of the room in the corner of his vision (because he hadn’t been born yesterday, had he?), but when he looked again he could only see that leather jacket, somehow still holding the shape of the sleeping man who had occupied it only a moment ago.
The man himself, of whom Xie Yuchen could only get a flash of tanned biceps and a whiff of cigarette stench, had apparently materialized from thin air behind him and was holding his wrist down.
“What do you think you’re doing, kid?”
Lips pinched together tight, Xie Yuchen didn’t bother responding. He slipped his wrist free and turned, his foot making contact with the space where the man’s shin had been only a second ago. Turning the stumble into a twist, he raised his head to glare at the man and found him holding his dagger. He lunged for it, but shifted at the last moment so that his elbow hit the bastard straight in the solar plexus.
It made a very satisfying noise.
“Nice!” the man exclaimed, and Xie Yuchen could feel anger rise up his spine. How dare he encourage him!
At least that sucker was still half-breathless from the impact.
“Shut up and fight,” he replied through gritted teeth.
His next few blows were calculated with deadly precision, and no matter how good that rando was, he couldn’t beat the years of training carved into Xie Yuchen’s body. It was almost exhilarating, in a way. For once no one was watching him, and he didn’t have to restrain himself. He could really give his all to the noble task of kicking that idiot’s ass.
And to be entirely fair, the man was a decent adversary, which made it all the better. Too easy a victory would have spoiled the experience.
At last he stopped with his hand a hairbreadth away from the man’s throat and stared at him until his victory was properly acknowledged. The man stepped back with a little bow that Xie Yuchen couldn’t help but feel was sarcastic, raised his hands, and allowed Xie Yuchen to pluck the dagger back from between his dirty fingers. He wiped it pointedly on a tablecloth before slipping it back into its holster.
“Are you really Hei Xiazi?”
“Not quite what you expected, eh?” the man replied with a grin.
Xie Yuchen looked away. He refused to blush in front of a man like that.
“Let’s get a drink,” continued the man. He gestured toward the bar before walking back to his table. “Then you can tell me what you want from me, and I can tell you how much it’ll cost you.”
Xie Yuchen looked at the dusty chairs then at the glasses of cloudy liquor the owner placed in front of them. The smell was making his eyes water from a meter away. He sat gingerly, not touching the glass.
“I’m a minor,” he said when the man - when Xiazi nodded toward it.
“And I’m assuming you’re not here to discuss legal matters. Drink up.”
The owner had poured from a single transparent bottle, and Xiazi had already swallowed the entire glass in one swift mouthful but there was no such thing as being too prudent. Xiazi shrugged when he pushed the second glass toward him and sent it to follow the first.
“So, whaddya want?”
“You led a team up the Tai Ping last October.”
“I may or may not have. What’s it to you?”
“I want you to take me there.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a stupid idea.”
“Why? You went before.”
“Even assuming that I did, which I shall not confirm. That was then, this is now. That was them, this is you. Don’t make that face, I’m not being condescending. They were - allegedly - a team of trained men, you’re a kid, alone. And don’t try and tell me that you have a team of mercenaries waiting for us in the parking lot, because if you did, you’d already be halfway up the mountain by now. You’re not the type who waits.”
“What do you mean by ‘that was then, this is now’?”
Hei Xiazi’s determined frown morphed into a half-smile.
“Quick on the uptake, I like it. It’s nearly spring. October was already too late to climb, which is how we- well, never mind that. The winter snow is starting to melt. The ground will be incredibly unstable, and that’s on the better parts of it.”
“I don’t want to go over the ground.”
Xiazi cocked an eyebrow at that, interested despite himself.
“And what exactly do you propose? Flying?”
“The river.”
“What about it?”
Xie Yuchen bent forward and lowered his voice.
“The river is how they did it.”
“Hm?”
Reaching into his jacket, Xie Yuchen extracted the printed copy of a scroll. The quality was bad, but he pointed out the important bits.
“They,” he said with a pause, “brought the materials up through the river, which is why no traces could be found.”
The change in Xiazi’s body language was obvious. He was… well, still. Xie Yuchen hadn’t been particularly aware of how much the man fidgeted before that, but now that his interest was piqued, he was statue still and strangely expressive underneath the glasses.
“Where did you find that scroll, kiddo?”
Xie Yuchen pulled the copy away and pocketed it again, raising his chin slightly.
“Somewhere no one else thought to look.”
“Good job, you can be proud of yourself.”
Ignoring the praise, Xie Yuchen pressed on.
“So you’ll come with me?”
“No.”
“But you’ve been there!” he hissed - it was not a cry, no, it was a hiss. “You know the layout, the traps, the tricks, everything!”
“Exactly. It’s not worth it.”
“I need to go,” said Xie Yuchen with emphasis. “With or without you.”
“What’s so important?”
“I need to retrieve something.”
“Yeah, I figured. So I’ll repeat, what’s worth your life in that tomb?”
A short silence followed.
“Yeah, that’s the question you gotta ask yourself, kid. If we go, and I’m not saying I will, it’ll be dangerous as hell, and we might very well both die. Most of your pals did, back in October.”
“I know. That’s why I need to go.”
“Don’t. Spare the sentiment and send the widows some flowers or something. You killing yourself won’t bring anyone back. I’m sure you can find a better way to honor their memory.”
Xie Yuchen couldn’t quite stifle the laugh.
“You think that’s what I’m trying to do?”
“Isn’t it?”
“Hell no. I want to be the one to succeed where they failed.”
“Hm.”
“Oh don’t pretend like you’re a saint. You didn’t even know them.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Yeah, that was the problem.
“How much do you want?” Xie Yuchen continued.
This brought a smile back to the man’s lips.
“My prices are … shall we say, negotiable. But I’ve seen what’s up there, and no matter the satisfaction it brings you to one-up these guys, in the end the loot’s not worth much.”
“You reached the treasure room?” Xie Yuchen asked incredulously. Reports he had read had only mentioned the group entering the tomb. “Are you sure that it’s still there then?”
“Oh it’s there alright. We couldn’t take anything out.”
“The jade manacles are there?”
“Yeah, yeah, they are. Still on their little pillow and everything. I could bring you to them in two hours top once we’ve reached the entrance.”
“Then-”
“Only we can’t reach it. The landslide destroyed this half of the valley.”
“Then how did you get out?”
Xiazi made finger guns at him and clicked his tongue.
“Good thinking! But we destroyed that half when getting out.”
“For heaven’s sake. Is that really how you work?”
Xiazi had the good sense to look affronted, and raised both hands defensively.
“Hey, don’t blame it on me kid, I’m not the one who brought the TNT. Though I will admit that I couldn’t really see any other way to make it out either.”
“But the tomb itself is intact?”
“I mean, it should be, yeah. It’s dug into the mountain itself and… well, you know the general set-up, I assume.”
Xie Yuchen nodded.
“There has to be another way in,” he mused out loud, digging into his jacket for the photocopy. “How did the builders evacuate the granite?”
“How old are you, exactly?” asked Xiazi while Xie Yuchen was following the shape of the river on the map with his finger.
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t, not really. But if you’re that intent on getting yourself some manacles, I know a few shops where they’re not too touchy about age. You could get the fluffy ones, you know, with the fur-”
“Shut up.”
Xie Yuchen didn’t need to raise his head to feel the shit-eating grin spreading on Xiazi’s face. Part of him still couldn’t believe that this guy was really as good as he was rumored to be. He was tapping his foot underneath the table like a child in school, and - oh, gross - cleaning his grimy fingernails with his teeth. Xie Yuchen focused on the map instead.
“Was the tomb really dug into the mountain or was it a natural cave?” he asked.
“Bit of both, I’d say,” answered Xiazi after a moment’s reflection. “Some parts were definitely dug up, but others were just as definitely natural occurrences.”
“Which parts, the inner chambers or the outer ones?”
The man stroked his chin as he tried to remember.
“I’d say the inner rooms were natural. Like they dug halfway and then got lucky.”
“Out of this entire mountain range, they’d dig in the one place where a cave already existed? No. There has to be another entrance.”
“Where?”
“Through the river.”
“Damn, you really like that river, eh kid?”
“Water is best at carving rock, it’s not rocket science. Either it’s an affluent of that river or it’s the river itself before it springs out of the ground. In both cases, the water is or was connected to that cave. That’s how they built the tomb without leaving a trace.”
“They did it from the inside out.”
“Exactly.”
Hei Xiazi became still again.
“Let’s say I agree to accompany you to this death trap,” he said after a moment of contemplative silence. “What’s your plan, exactly?”
“Wait for me, young master!”
The whine echoed through the circle of mountains, multiplying its annoyance. Xie Yuchen rolled his eyes and kept walking.
“I shall only need you as we approach the river,” he said once the man had caught up to him. “I know how to climb a mountain on my own.”
“You shall, eh?”
Xie Yuchen repressed a second eye roll, and instead looked up at the path that opened in front of them.
Well, opened wasn’t exactly the right word. What faced them was a succession of labyrinthine blocks of varying sizes, wedged into a field of deep snow. The slippery mud path they had just climbed through was a walk in the park in comparison.
The good news was that the time had come to start unpacking. So far, the equipment had pressed down on their shoulders for nothing, since the only thing required for mud was a good pair of poles and some traction-heavy shoes. The diving equipment was the heaviest part, but now they would at least need the ropes, and could jettison a lot on their way to the river.
He dug through his pack then held out a peg and a hammer to Xiazi.
“Make yourself useful.”
Xiazi accepted the proffered items with a sly grin.
“Yes, young master.”
“And shut up.”
“Yes, y-”
Under Xie Yuchen’s glare he turned, and struck the first blow. It was textbook perfect and in less than a minute the peg was installed, which only added to Xie Yuchen’s annoyance.
This section of the climb was difficult enough that neither of them spoke for a long while, unless to issue a warning. Xiazi led the way a good fifteen meters ahead so Xie Yuchen was spared from his mutterings, and his technique was flawless so no complaints came from his side of the rope either.
Once they were through, they stopped to readjust their equipment and rest. The cliff ahead of them was facing the sun and the air was surprisingly warm at its bottom, so Xie Yuchen lost some layers while he studied the map.
“Where do we go after this?” he asked, nodding upward.
Xiazi slid down beside him to rest against the warm rock.
“There’s a path to the left once we reach the top, that comes down toward the river after that point,” he said, pointing to an elevation on the map.
“Wouldn’t it be faster to cross through the other side?”
“We did last time, but it’s a false good idea. That’s where we lost your guy, He Qiu. When I came back down I went through that path on the left, which is longer but much safer.”
“What happened? Is the area still workable?”
“Workable,” Xiazi scoffed under his breath. “He slipped and fell. We weren’t roped together for that part, it would have been impractical.”
“Is he still there?”
“Yes.”
“Accessible?”
“I suppose. We left him because he was long gone by the time we reached him. We had planned to bring his body back, but by the time of the return journey I was on my lonesome, so…”
Xie Yuchen was silent for a moment.
“We’ll go through the right,” he declared.
“I just told you-”
“I heard.”
“Listen, I know you’re reckless, kiddo, but that zone isn’t for the inexperienced.”
“We go right.”
Xiazi let out a long-suffering sigh but then nodded, and slapped his knees as he got up.
“Yessir. But if you really wanna go, we better haul ass up that cliff, because the ridge will be in the shade if we wait any longer, and it already sucks in broad daylight.”
Xie Yuchen packed his bag and redid his layers with efficiency, only taking a few seconds to remove his sunglasses so that he could reapply sunscreen properly. Xiazi was tanned enough that he could get away with only a thin layer but he wasn’t, and knew all too well the dangers of complacency. The cord securing the glasses around his neck came annoyingly apart when he put them back on and he lost yet more time putting them back together, but finally he was ready.
This time he led the way, finding some of Xiazi’s pegs from the previous climb already in place. After testing them, he followed the line up the cliff face, his mind empty but for the exertion of his body.
At the top they went right, and it was indeed a challenge, if Xie Yuchen was entirely honest with himself, which he tried to be. It actually sucked ass, if he wanted to be specific about it. He wouldn't admit it vocally even at knife point but he was glad that Xiazi had decided to take the lead once more. He knew the terrain and was a willing guinea pig, testing out the path for him in advance before gesturing at him to come. Xie Yuchen gripped the rock face so hard his knuckles were turning white, keeping his footing light in comparison, not setting his foot down until he had tried the ground for himself. He hadn't realized how much he relied on the mental assurance that the rope provided until he was deprived of it.
This is ridiculous, he told himself. You're not a child - or a damn dog, to need a leash.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, the edge that had held up so far wobbled under him and a terrible shiver ran up his spine. He contracted every muscle he had and held on while gravel fell down underneath his feet, down, down, all the way down in a cascade of echoes. A few seconds elapsed until he returned to himself and realized that he was breathing too fast. He forced himself to exhale and move on.
His next step brought him in the shade, which had started to follow them down the ridge. The glasses were annoying him more than they were helping so he tried to shrug them off, not wanting to take his hands off the rock for longer than was absolutely necessary. They got caught in the lining of his hat again. Rage was pooling up under his skin like a rash. When they refused to budge he held up one hand and tore them off his face. Moving on, that was the thing. He had to keep moving on.
A horrible smell started to make his nose twitch halfway down the ridge. The stench of rotten flesh announced the body of He Qiu long before they reached it, but not even that primal, repulsive odor could have prepared Xie Yuchen for its sight. First he saw the shoes and they were torn and dusty, coherent with a long fall, and at the thought his own fingers gripped the rock that much tighter. He climbed down a couple more meters and the stench became thicker as the legs appeared in his line of sight. The fabric was dark with bodily fluids but thankfully still somewhat waterproof. Then he climbed down the remaining way and passed the rock hiding the rest of the body, and his stomach emptied of its own accord.
He leaned back, blinking through his tears and trying not to choke at the persistent images scarred into his retinas. He Qiu's jacket was opened, and what was left of his wool sweater was drenched with putrefaction. The middle of it was a mess of tissues and torn fabric, and he could still see the white flash of ribs poking out, picked clean. Where the head should have been, above the ribbed neck of the sweater, was nothing but a chaos of paw prints and bird droppings in a puddle of congealed blood.
He threw up again and again, until nothing but clear bile was coming up his throat. Finally he forced himself to stand, scrunching his eyes, and wiped his mouth.
"You good?"
Xie Yuchen nodded.
He had a job to do.
He took a brief inhale, realized that the air was just as foul where he was than it was around the body, then let it out again. He could do this. He had been around cadavers before. This was nothing. Just flesh. Animal flesh. Nature, like on those documentaries he saw people watching sometimes.
He walked slowly but purposefully toward the body and squatted down, doing his best to avoid staining himself with the fluids. The pockets of the jacket had been miraculously spared from most of the gore, spread out from the body as they were, but they held nothing of interest, just a few odds and ends that Xie Yuchen left on the ground.
"Tsk."
Xie Yuchen startled out of his hyper-focused state at the click of Xiazi's tongue.
"What?!" he barked.
"Are you really going to litter?"
There were several seconds of blankness in Xie Yuchen's mind, if only because too many responses came at once to it.
"You're a fucking grave robber!"
Hei Xiazi smiled broadly, the happy beaming smile of a proud toddler, and for a moment there was no dead man lying mangled at their feet, just that stupid sunny smile and the clear sky of the mountains.
When no contradiction came to that statement, Xie Yuchen pressed the point, still frizzled with bafflement.
"I saw you throw your cigarette butt in the parking lot this morning."
"Aaah but there's the rub. For that parking lot has an owner," Xiazi declared in a grand tone, "but the mountain is voiceless and innocent."
"Innocent?" Xie Yuchen scoffed. "Look at this fucking guy," he added, gesturing toward the body, "you think that something that can kill like this is innocent?"
And then just as a lone cloud can blot out the sun in a second, the smile disappeared from Xiazi's face.
"Are you done?" he asked, his voice neutral and awful.
Frowning, Xie Yuchen looked again at the pile of trash, pushing down the urge to pick it up out of sheer guilt.
This is dumb, he told himself. I'm not gonna do it just because he's pouting.
"Yeah, I'm done," he said.
"Then let's go. We still have a long way to go before we can make camp."
Xie Yuchen nodded and followed him toward the ridge. They would have to climb back up that terrible path before it rejoined the valley carved by the river, where they would hopefully find their way into the tomb. The ridge path divided into two shortly after they got over the worst of the climb, and Xiazi bent backwards toward him.
"Where to?" he asked.
He was holding his entire weight on the one hand, Xie Yuchen quietly noted.
"Left."
"A'right."
He had stopped pouting, and his tone of voice was back to its normal if slightly grating lightness. Xie Yuchen made a point not to find relief in it.
A low growl erupted suddenly. With the stone walls around them, it was impossible to determine its origin, and the climb wasn't that easy that Xie Yuchen could let go of the rock face entirely to check his blind spot.
"Damn, kid, you're that hungry?" joked Xiazi.
"Shut up."
"Don't stress, it's probably just the mountain shifting, rocks falling down somew-"
Before he could complete the sentence, the growl came again, louder and deeper as they reached the top of the ridge, and then its source became very, very obvious.
Some twenty meters ahead on the path, a large feline, fur thick and matted with blood, was baring its many, many sharp teeth at them. It was … a lynx maybe? Or a snow leopard. Xie Yuchen had never cared all that much about animals that weren't painted onto something, which he regretted a lot right then.
Okay, stop, he told himself. Panic is the enemy. What is its weak point?
Same as any mammal, he reasoned from another part of his brain. Belly, jugulars, joints, eyes.
But how am I supposed to reach them with those teeth in the way? he countered to himself, inner voice rising to a shrill.
It's just like a knife. Or like many knives. He could win a knife fight, of that he was certain. And a beast had instinct, but he had training and experience. He could do this.
He took a deep breath to lower his heart rate, and slid his free hand behind himself to grab for his dagger.
"What the fuck are you doing?" hissed Xiazi, dropping back near him. "We need to run!"
His hand grabbed the back of Xie Yuchen's coat and pulled him back toward the fork in the path. The beast didn't follow but kept issuing its menacing growl at regular intervals, until it had made sure they were out of its immediate territory.
Once they were on safe ground Xie Yuchen shrugged out of the hold and turned to Xiazi.
"Why did you stop me?" he barked. "There's two of us, against a stupid animal."
"You wanna go back to your friend and see for yourself what a stupid animal can do?" Xiazi retorted sharply.
"So what? Do you have a rifle in your pack or something?"
"No. We need to find another way."
"There is no other way!"
"We can go right."
"It's the wrong way."
"Actually-"
Xie Yuchen glared at him until Xiazi had physically swallowed back the pun he intended to make.
"Not the time."
"My apologies."
Xie Yuchen nodded, before looking over the path they had come through.
"Could we lure it somewhere else?"
"How? If you have a juicy steak in your pack, I'd rather we grill it before meeting out deaths, if I'm being entirely honest."
"I was thinking that one of us could be that juicy steak."
Hei Xiazi let out a giggle.
"And what would the other person be? Mashed potatoes? A bowl of rice?"
"The knife."
Xiazi paused his gesticulations, tilting his head.
"Hm. Not so bad at metaphors, are you."
Xie Yuchen waited.
"Okay, let's try it. I assume that I'll be the juicy steak in question?"
"If you don't mind."
"If you don't mind," parroted Xiazi under his breath. "I'll do it," he continued in his usual voice. "They do say that aged meat is tastier, after all."
Pulling his lips into his mouth to keep from responding to that obvious taunt, Xie Yuchen bent to trace a rough map in the snow. Once they were both on the same page regarding their strategy, they started to climb once more, slowly and carefully, until the growl made itself heard again.
Xie Yuchen was still not sure what the beast would classify as, but he knew what it was: it was pissed. No, scratch that, it was absolutely furious. If stepping once into its territory had angered the creature, any repeat offense was apparently unforgivable in its eyes. It bared its teeth at them and advanced with random bursts that made the hair on Xie Yuchen's body stand on end.
They split quickly and he went into hiding, following their plan. His own part was not without its dangers. He climbed silently over the highest part of the ridge, dominating the small circle of rocks where Xiazi danced from one pile to the other while thick fur slithered between.
The beast followed closely, far too closely, and more than once its claws made contact with the leather of Xiazi's jacket.
What a stupid choice, to wear this on a mountain, he thought, focusing on the annoyance to keep sickly sour worry from rising up his throat.
Xiazi finally managed to draw the beast fully into the open, in a spot where Xie Yuchen would have a good chance of crushing its skull with a well placed rock fall, or at least so the plan went.
Xie Yuchen aimed his flare gun at one of the larger rocks piles which crumbled in a thunderous crash, but at the last moment one of those thrice-damned claws caught the leather sleeve and Xiazi disappeared from sight.
"NO!" Xie Yuchen screamed, powerless to stop the rocks.
There was a dreadfully wet sound as they reached their target. He closed his eyes on reflex and wished that he could close his ears too.
Stupid jacket and such a stupid, stupid man!
A cold wind was picking up but Xie Yuchen could feel his cheeks burn with rage and with tears.
Damn that idiot, why should he care so much what happened to him? He needed him to enter the tomb, that was it. It was for the mission. Nothing more.
Nothing personal.
A low rumble came out again and he immediately looked down toward the rocks. Had the beast survived?
Then the vibration traveled up his legs and made him look up toward the mountain, where a gigantic slab of ice and snow was detaching itself from the top and coming down as if in slow motion.
Xie Yuchen’s stomach felt like it had dropped down somewhere in the vicinity of his socks. Thankfully, well-honed instincts had his body in motion before his mind had caught up with the events. There was a rock formation ahead that was oriented in the right way to protect him from the brunt of the avalanche, if he could reach it in time. But first he needed to climb down from his perch and that was easier said than done even for him.
His well-trained lungs still burned as he swung from rock to rock and the gloves he wore were not enough to keep his hands from getting cut by the sharper edges. He jumped down the last few meters, rolled, and ran uphill, not sparing a glance toward the rocks he was leaving behind. Tunnel vision set on the cave, he wouldn’t think, couldn’t think as he ran and dove for cover at the very last second, feeling the rush of air that followed the avalanche pull at his back. His ears popped and he laid down with all of his weight on the cold, hard, dusty floor of the cave while most of the ice tide passed over.
In the silence that followed, he remained still, lying on the ground, letting the emotion pass over him too.
He couldn’t have afforded to bring back the body anyway.
Too many questions would have been asked if the authorities got involved, and he had no answers to give them. It was better this way, to let him rest forever under the white snow. There was no need to cry about it, really. It was just adrenaline running out.
Wiping his face with the back of his sleeve, Xie Yuchen grabbed a torch from his pocket and sat up, looking around the cavern.
"You've got a good aim, kiddo."
Xie Yuchen screamed again and jumped to his feet.
"What are you yelling at me for now? You almost took my head off with that shot and now-"
An odd instinct that had somehow survived the years of harsh beating Xie Yuchen imposed on his consciousness told him to grab the man and hug him. Xie Yuchen repressed that too. He could still feel tears rolling down his cheeks even though his mouth screamed profanities at the unlikely survivor, but at least he wouldn't give in to his bodily urges.
"What are you, immortal or something?" he yelled.
"Eh, something like that."
“How did you even manage to reach this place before I did?”
“Headstart.”
Xie Yuchen’s mouth opened and closed.
“You didn’t even try to help me!” he finally said, for lack of anything else to scream about. Screaming felt good, it felt cathartic.
“Well, neither did you.”
But at least I was conflicted about it! didn’t exactly sound great out loud, so Xie Yuchen kept the sentiment to himself.
“Don’t be surprised about it, kid. When things turn ugly like this it’s always every man for himself. Never expect more, especially not of grave-robbers. We’ve seen too much shit not to protect our own skins first.”
When Xie Yuchen continued to fume silently, Xiazi sighed and took the backpack off his shoulders.
“Let’s set up camp here for now and eat something. We can find a way out once we’ve had some proper rest.”
Xie Yuchen nodded and took off his own bag, setting it down against the wall. He sat with his back against it to keep off the cold rock, and removed his gloves to inspect the damage to his hands. Despite a certain amount of blood that made the fabric lining stick to his skin, there were just some minor cuts, after all. He was fine. Shaking his head at himself, he washed with clean water and gingerly put the wet gloves back on.
By the time he joined him, Xiazi had already gotten a fire started and heated water and rations. After the day they had, the meal was comforting in a way that Xie Yuchen hadn’t anticipated, and he felt emotion rise in him once more. Pressing his lips together between each bite, he inhaled deeply and forced the tears back down.
Altitude was clearly getting to his head, and he needed rest. Once he had polished off the ration he laid down a mat and went to sleep, back turned to the fire, arms crossed around himself.
Xiazi had been uncharacteristically quiet the whole meal and blessedly continued to keep his mouth shut so Xie Yuchen wasn’t about to look that particular gift horse in the mouth. Surely in a couple of hours he would talk his ear off again, but for now there would only be darkness, and silence, and sleep.
When he woke up, Xie Yuchen knew that he was alone, and had been for a while.
The only light in the cave came from the dying embers of the fire, and despite the insulation provided by the snow a bitter cold had set in. More than that, it was a feeling, something primal that told him Xiazi was long gone.
He reached for his torch and turned it on, examining the walls of the cave. He should have done this before falling asleep, this was a ridiculous oversight. Somehow he had just assumed that Xiazi would be aware of danger and - and what? Protect him from it? Psh.
Scoffing at his own idiocy, Xie Yuchen completed his reconnaissance and returned to his mat. He hadn’t even bothered to take the sleeping bag out of his pack so there was little to tidy. He stomped on the embers, perhaps more forcefully than necessary, and was collecting snow one-handed to kill the last of the fire when footsteps echoed through the cave, putting his senses on alert.
“Good, you’re up,” announced Xiazi when Xie Yuchen set the torchlight on his face, as carefree as a man who had just gone round the neighborhood for breakfast.
“Where were you?”
Instead of answering, or shielding his face from the glare, or having any other sort of satisfying reaction, the infuriating man kept on smiling and asked a question of his own.
“Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” asked Xie Yuchen in return, out of sheer pettiness.
Now that snow had resumed its quiet stillness, the unmistakable rush of water could be heard from deep within the cave. All topological surveys he had found of the region spoke of only one source, a rundown of the glacier, so it had to be-
"The river!"
"Yup."
"Have you seen it?"
"Not yet. I went out for a leak but then I thought I better make sure my fuzzy friend from earlier didn't leave a sweetheart or a gaggle of kids behind to grieve for him, if you know what I mean."
Xie Yuchen shuddered at the thought. He really ought to have inspected the cave before sleeping. What was it about this man that made his brain so confused? Was it all the legends he had heard? No, no. Legends were good for children and gullible people. It must be his dilettantism, or his laissez-faire, or some other French bullshit describing that general easy going, goofy slinkiness that tricked Xie Yuchen into feeling safe.
Absurd.
Nowhere was safe. He wasn't even safe in his own bed, in the confines of his own home, let alone on a remote mountain covered in predators and dead bodies. With that thought in mind, Xie Yuchen followed in the bouncy steps of Xiazi, a hand on his dagger, the other holding his torch.
There was no light this far down into the cave, and Xiazi had never bothered taking out his own torch. When he came back to their encampment, he had materialized out of the darkness, his steps as sure as they had been in broad daylight.
So at least one rumor was true.
If the rest of them were, at least in some measure, then maybe Xie Yuchen ought to be more on his guard around him. Hei Xiazi was a dangerous man.
He was also unfairly easy to like, something no one ever bothered to mention.
They reached a small cliff where Xiazi had previously stopped, and equipped harnesses. They kept silent except for a few necessary words, partly because there was no need for more, but mostly because of the deafening rush of water. As they neared the river, the sound bounced off the walls and filled the cavern with white noise. It even made it hard to think, as if the words drowned inside of their brains.
Underneath the edge they found two large anchors that revealed no hidden traps, so they tied their harnesses to them and let themselves down the cliff. The bottom was a criss-cross of tracks dug into the soft rock.
"I was right," Xie Yuchen whispered.
He was sure that Xiazi couldn't have heard him, but there was a distinct smile on his face, so the man either had super hearing to go with his strange vision, or he could somehow read his mind.
Or they were simply well synced, corrected his logical mind. When their eyes met again by the riverside, Xiazi nodded, already removing his pack from his shoulders, which gave weight to either solution.
They stripped off their outer layers and wiggled into the tight diving suits, Xie Yuchen carefully folding his pants and jacket, Xiazi pushing his own down into the bag with his fist until he could close to top. Xie Yuchen stared horrifiedly at him but refrained from making any comment, simply closed his own bag hermetically and slipped it over his back.
The water was icy and made Xie Yuchen’s skin prickle even through the thick neoprene. They had about two hours of oxygen in the tanks they helped each other strap over their bags, but cold would get them out before then if there was no entrance in sight. As he lowered his body into the river, the thought came to Xie Yuchen's mind that he might actually prefer trudging for days in the snow rather than spend those two hours diving in the fucking North Pole like this.
There was a large pool nearby where the current carried them. They probably ought to have discussed this before diving, but it seemed most logical to follow the current, at least for now, in their search for clues. The cave held no signs of a dam having been built higher up, so the builders would have had to either fight against the strength of the whole river, even in the lower season, for every single passage of materials underwater, or they could have built the entrance where the current naturally led and used the river itself to help carry the materials until their destination. The latter obviously made the most sense, as Xiazi led the way to the pool himself and immediately dived underwater to look around the riverbed.
Xie Yuchen inspected the walls around the pool. It was oddly shaped, not circular or rounded in a way that suggested erosion, but truncated at the end, where water rose to form a small wave before torrenting on its way out of the mountain. As his torch passed over the stones accumulated there, it became clear that this part of the pool had nothing natural about it. The stones were sharp, angular, differently colored on the sides. Those had been cut or, as he suspected, exploded into place. Further exploration revealed grooves carved into them, possibly to hold up explosives.
He was about to call Xiazi over when he felt him swim up beside him. Out of precaution he lifted his torch to light the man’s face and make sure that he had the right companion - one never knew, in a tomb. The sight almost made him cough out his regulator. It was Xiazi alright, and he had managed to find Heaven knew where a pair of black, opaque diving goggles, that he apparently carried around his person at all times and had produced in replacement of the regular (expensive) ones Xie Yuchen had placed in his pack.
Once he had schooled his features back into place as well as he could with the diving equipment eating out half of his face, he pointed out to him the grooves and the stones, and then the surface.
He spit out his regulator as soon as he broke out.
“They blew up the entrance,” he said. That’s why they didn’t bother to hide the anchors. We can’t get in through there unless we blow our own way through.”
“You don’t sound so disappointed,” observed Xiazi.
Xie Yuchen lifted an eyebrow at him.
“I had obviously planned for this. We each have a bar of C4 and a detonator at the bottom of the pack.”
“Oh, so that’s what it was. I thought you’d had a sudden hankering for black sesame as a survival ration.”
“Stop joking around and get out of the water so we can do this.”
“Wait.”
Xiazi had said the word in that odd serious way he had sometimes that commanded attention more authoritatively than shouting ever could. Xie Yuchen turned back to him, because there was nothing else he could do.
“What?”
“Unless you’re that eager to explode stuff inside of a mountain cave, we might not have to.”
“Explain.”
Xiazi gestured at him to put his diving gear back on and sank into the dark pool. Once more Xie Yuchen noted that he needed no torch of his own to find the way. They swam down to the bottom, underneath the place where the current first washed into the pool, creating underwater eddies that made it hard to remain in one place for long, but Xiazi pressed on until he had disappeared almost entirely under the waterfall.
Xie Yuchen hesitated for a second but Xiazi’s hand sprang out and grabbed his wrist, cutting through his hesitation. He let the man drag him through the rush of water, blind in turn as his torch was shaking too much to help. Xiazi kept a hold of his hand and pressed it against the rock face, but for a moment Xie Yuchen didn’t know what he was supposed to feel there. The hand on his wrist became more insistent, shaking it around the rock’s edge. He wanted to take off his regulator to shout, but instead shrugged off the hand and continued to explore on his own. He turned off the torch and let it dangle from the lanyard, using both hands to feel his way, his sensations multiplied by the darkness.
Was this how Xiazi felt? he wondered. The sound of his regulator was incredibly loud in his ears, and even through the gloves he could feel the smoothness of the rock’s edge, polished by centuries of melted ice.
But he still didn't know what Xiazi wanted him to see. Maybe there was another anchor that they could use to hold themselves safe while they blew up the other end. Tentatively he followed the curve inward, until he was hit with the primal repulsion that came with putting your entire arm into a dark place you don’t trust. It wasn’t just a small erosion either, it was…
Another cave.
Xie Yuchen fumbled for his torch and flashed it at the opening, to little avail but great success: the light was eaten up by a thick darkness that went on as far as the eye could see. At the bottom of the entrance, he found the same traces that had been carved into the dry ground of the cavern. Just a little further ahead, on what passed for a ceiling, the firsts of a series of thick bronze rings could be seen, utilitarian in their design.
Here was where they had gone through! The other end of the pool was an old escape tunnel at best, a decoy at worst. He excitedly turned and grabbed at Xiazi, pulling him upward with him.
But Xiazi resisted.
Pointing the torch at him, Xie Yuchen saw him point at his wristwatch, then gesture toward the tunnel. He wanted to say that the builders didn’t have oxygen tanks, so there had to be at least some crevices on the way where they could breathe if they ran out. And they had only dived for what, twenty minutes, shouldn’t they plan this better?
But none of this was easy to mime underwater in the semi-darkness, and Xiazi was right, he was just being a scaredy cat, so Xie Yuchen spared himself the trouble of trying to argue and just nodded before following him in.
Once they were past the entrance the water became still. It was tempting to swing from ring to ring like the builders probably did, but which rings to hold? Right there was the easiest place to build a trap trigger, and they didn’t have time to check for marks on them. They swam in the center of the tunnel, barely disturbing the water, but Xie Yuchen couldn’t afford to lower his awareness even a little so the short swim felt like it took ages, especially without anything but the seemingly endless rings to mark their way.
The cave they resurfaced in still had heaps of materials piled on the sides, the chaotic mess heavy work leaves behind. It was a really easy place to set up traps in too so they remained in the water for a moment, evaluating their surroundings. Xiazi picked up a rock on the shore and threw it at the pile, swiftly pivoting and pushing Xie Yuchen’s head underwater as something unknown flew over their heads, skimming the water’s surface.
In the scuffle, Xie Yuchen’s torch came loose and fell. He had turned it off when entering the cave, and there was no way to find it in the water without another torch to light the way, so he asked Xiazi for his but Xiazi pointed toward the dry bag strapped to his back.
He hadn’t even bothered to take it out of the pack? Just how do his eyes even work? Xie Yuchen wondered, more curious than annoyed.
There was some bioluminescence in the cave, not a lot but enough to see shapes. Xiazi repeated his trick with the stone but nothing more flew at them. Gingerly he patted the shore, ready to plunge back at a moment's notice. Once he was sure that nothing further would come out he lifted himself out of the water and held out a hand to Xie Yuchen. They divested of their heavy diving gear, keeping the suits on, and started to make their way down the tunnel. Xie Yuchen wanted to ask about the torch but it was best to remain on their guard for now rather than to lose time rummaging through the packs. One of them could see very well as it was, after all.
He just needed to trust Hei Xiazi.
This cave had no other trick entrance, apparently, and only another, dry tunnel led out of it. His sense of orientation couldn’t be perfect after their dive but it felt to Xie Yuchen like they were indeed going in the direction of the tomb. He had to duck, run, and jump a few times according to Xiazi’s instructions, which was more than uncomfortable at first, but as time went on it became easier to feel the minute changes in Xiazi’s breathing or steps and to anticipate.
His vision improved too. The faint glow that dripped from the walls was now enough for him to see where he was putting his feet, which was a marked improvement. He had trained himself to walk blindly, of course, also to fight and to work, even to open any sort of lock without looking at it, but it used up precious mental energy and reduced his general awareness.
Mostly, sight gave him back his full independence. Should Xiazi try to pull a trick on him, he wouldn’t have the advantage by much.
But on the way to the entrance all Xiazi seemed to do was help. He triggered traps before Xie Yuchen came near them, stopped him when he was unsure, even shielded him with his body when a rain of arrows flew near them after opening the main gate.
Xiazi pinned him against the hinges of the door, pressing himself as close as he could while the arrows passed over his back.
“Thank you,” Xie Yuchen managed to say when they untangled themselves from each other, breathless and dusty.
He coughed until his voice returned to its proper tone.
“You good?”
Xiazi was twisted in half trying to see over his shoulder if any damage had been done. There was a large gash in the middle of his backpack and a few small scratches on his shoulders, and he groaned but Xie Yuchen couldn’t smell any blood.
“Wouldn’t have happened with good ol’ leather. Help me get this shit off,” he said, already taking off the bag and peeling the suit away from his neck.
Xie Yuchen extended a reluctant hand but let him do the majority of the stripping.
“While you’re at it, can you pass me your torch? Since you won’t miss it.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Here, knock yourself out, kiddo.”
The nickname was an uncomfortable reminder for Xie Yuchen to look away from the half-naked, very attractive man in front of him. Instead he dug through the messy pack, grumbling under his breath, and extracted the second torch. He ran it over the door they had opened but still hadn’t dared to cross.
“So I take it you’ve never been in this room before, if you entered from the other side, have you?” he asked conversationally, ignoring the rustle of fabric behind him.
“Nope, or I would have ducked.”
“Fair.”
He observed the bas-reliefs adorning the sides until a fully clothed Xiazi joined his side.
“How was the door you went through? Was there even a door or…”
“There was. Much the same as this one, I’d say.”
“There can’t be two entrances to a tomb. So one must be a decoy, like in the pool.”
“Yeah, that’d make sense.”
“But you said you reached the treasure room. That would imply that your entrance was the right one, and this one the decoy.”
“Not…necessarily,” said Xiazi enigmatically.
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say that the layout of the tomb stopped mattering once dynamite was out.”
Before Xie Yuchen could vocalize his indignation, Xiazi raised a defensive hand.
“Hey, I’m not the one who brought it out. Your pals did. Must be a family thing.”
After several seconds of pointed silence, Xie Yuchen continued: “I’ve read your reports. Detailed as they were, you don’t mention any illusion, or maze, or anything that could indicate a decoy entrance.”
“Well maybe there are two real doors, this time.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, why don’t we try and disprove it then?” offered Xiazi with a bright, insincere smile.
“After you.”
Xiazi threw a handful of stones into the room, then stepped in confidently. In the hallways that followed, he deactivated more traps, always before Xie Yuchen even came close to them, like he somehow knew where they would come out.
“Are you sure that you haven’t been here before?”
“Certain,” Xiazi replied, pointing toward the ground ahead.
When Xie Yuchen flashed his torch toward the floor, he found it covered in a uniform layer of dust, with not even a single foot mark to disturb it.
“It’s just very similar to the other side. It’s like I’m having déjà vu,” commented Xiazi.
“The builders were lazy enough to reuse their plans on both sides?”
“Works for me!” concluded Xiazi cheerily, stabbing his pocket knife into a random wall and making an ominous clicking sound stop suddenly. “You wouldn’t have liked this one,” he joked.
At least Xiazi was true to his word, their way in was fast. If the underwater tunnel felt like it went on forever, these hallways followed one another in quick succession, with enough happening that their hour-long exploration went by in a blur, until finally they found themselves facing a blown out wall.
The air still smelled faintly of explosives, and some of the stones had cobwebs and patches of moss attached between one another on the ground, like a jigsaw puzzle shaken out of its box and dropped haphazardly on a table.
In some ways this was the safest place to stand, as it wasn’t planned by the builders and couldn’t be trapped up. Also, if the team had been dumb enough to blow up a load bearing wall, it would have crumbled under the weight long before now, so unless something else was afoot - and Xie Yuchen made sure to keep Xiazi in his field of vision, all of him, and not just his jacket this time - it was safe enough to climb through the hole.
It was odd that the steps they could see on the other side didn’t extend to their side of the wall. They had made themselves an exit, and then not used it? It didn’t make any sense. Xie Yuchen stepped in sideways, keeping an eye in all directions and a hand on his dagger.
The hallways extending in front of them were indeed familiar. If Xiazi’s report was accurate, Min Yuan and He Xiu’s bodies should be a couple of turns ahead. Min Yuan would be stuck in a flooded trap, and there wasn’t much that Xie Yuchen could or should do there apart from checking its presence. It would be gross and smelly, but not demanding, so Xie Yuchen led the way there first.
Upon arriving at the scene, Xie Yuchen sighed. It was such an obvious trap. There would have been no need for the builders to construct such large, nice, even flooring if not to install some sort of bear trap there.
“Trigger it,” he instructed Xiazi.
With an obedient bow Xiazi pressed on a stone, and jumped back as the ground dissolved between them. Immediately, a foul smell filled the space, almost solid in its intensity. What had once been water was now an organic…
Soup, Xie Yuchen thought.
He looked at Xiazi, standing with his arms crossed on the other side of the trap. Min Yuan’s jacket was still caught on one of the spikes, the only potential identifying element, already half-soaked by capillarity. It was only the work of a second or so to jump over the pit and release it from above. The both of them watched it sink into the fetid puddle side by side, in solemn silence.
“You done?” asked Xiazi quietly.
“Yes.”
With another nod of an entirely different flavor, he pressed onto the stone again, and the ground reassembled. The smell lingered, and so did the silence.
Xie Yuchen didn’t want to think about Min Yuan, barely older than he was, or about the circumstances of his death.
It was so… stupid.
“Let’s go,” he murmured, turning back into the hallway.
The worst was yet to come. He could feel the tension in his body as he walked, rising with every step.
When they found He Xiu, he had been taken down from the wall but the arrows were still embedded into his flesh. He looked pasty and dried, almost like a mummy. He wasn't as disgusting as the two others had been but it was somehow worse. He still looked human. He didn't look like a cadaver or a piece of flesh, just like someone dead. Someone Xie Yuchen had known.
Oh, he’d never liked the guy, rather the opposite. He Xiu and his brother were - had been - right bastards, always looking for a way to get one up on him, and failing, obviously. They weren’t… hadn’t been clever men. Their ends made it all the more obvious.
Still, Xie Yuchen pulled the arrows, if only because it made it easier for him to go through He Xiu’s pockets. There were maps, a wallet, and identifying jewelry. There was also a razor thin gash across He Xiu’s carotid artery. He gathered the items and slipped them into a small ziploc, before stashing it into his bag. He extracted a small lighter, and burnt off the tips of He Xiu’s fingers, what little was left of them. The smell reminded him of street vendors, half-grilled meat and half-burn plastic.
Then he looked around. There was a large bronze vase nearby, with handles, which would be adequate. He put the torch out and tied it to his belt. Then, raising the vase above his head, Xie Yuchen brought it down firmly onto He Xiu’s face.
Then again.
And again.
His eyes were opened but the tomb was in complete darkness. Away from the water, there was no luminescent moss to see by anymore. Only the sounds betrayed his action and its results.
When the vase started to hit the ground with sharp metallic echoes, he stopped, left it there, and got back to his feet.
He had felt things landing on his knees that he didn’t want to think about, so he took off his belt, setting it down beside his bag, and stripped off the diving suit, still in the dark. He peeled it from the inside out, never once losing his balance, even able to dress back into the hiking gear without so much as a stumble. A wave of gratefulness for his training rose in him, lone neutral emotion passing through a mind that refused any other. This, too, he was grateful for.
When he turned the torch back on, the light was shaking. Xie Yuchen hit it a few times, until it stopped.
Carefully avoiding the body, he exited the room. If the tomb was really mirrored from both entrances, there would be a small antechamber to the left. Xie Yuchen quickly deactivated the falling hearse the same way he had seen Xiazi do earlier and stepped in, keeping his back to the wall. For a long moment he stared at the shadows the torch created, dust swirling madly in the blade of light. The tomb was silent as only tombs could be, the quiet empty stillness of death. He was aware of his own rapid pulse, of his breaths, of everything that made him alive despite the universe’s best efforts. He felt...
Nothing.
Yes.
Nothing.
Then he heard footsteps that stopped right outside the antechamber. When he joined him a moment later, Xiazi was standing with his arms crossed again, leaning against the wall, his face neutral. The sight of him made Xie Yuchen’s stomach tighten. He breathed out, feeling for the steel-hard purpose at the center of his mind. There was no point in having emotions for now, he told himself.
“Did you open He Qiu’s jacket?” he asked.
“Yes,” Xiazi answered, simply. “I didn’t expect anyone to come back here until summer, or I would have spared you this too.”
Xie Yuchen’s stomach lurched and acid bile washed up his throat, filling his mouth with drool. He swallowed, shutting his eyes for a second.
“Why?”
“Orders,” Xiazi replied.
“I see.”
He has to know, Xie Yuchen thought.
He was convinced that Xiazi had figured out the reason for his presence, but there was no other way but to play the whole scene out.
In silence, they made their way toward the treasure room. There were two stones on either side of the door, a good three meters away from one another, that needed to be pressed at the same time for the panels to swing open. Right before he pressed on his, Xie Yuchen turned to Xiazi and asked the question he had to ask.
“Why didn’t you take the treasure last time?”
Xiazi gestured toward the stones. His well-prepared response came out smoothly.
“I was alone by then.”
“You could have used He Xiu’s body.”
Xiazi’s hand stilled in mid-air, a choked laugh bursting from his lips.
“I … could have, yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Believe it or not, it genuinely didn’t occur to me. I tried one of those statues behind you, but it wasn't the right angle."
His baffled smile lends some credence to the words, but Xie Yuchen wasn’t an idiot. If Hei Xiazi wanted to get to a treasure, there was no force on earth or below it that could stop him. It just meant that the pay that had accompanied those orders of his had been worth more than the resale value of the treasure.
“I see,” he repeated, then pressed on the stone.
The doors swung open in a cloud of dust. At the center of the room laid the coffin, squat and square, its side covered in elaborate bas-reliefs telling the story of its occupant, an exiled king of some uninteresting dynasty. Many of the motifs were mirrored or repeating.
The rest of the room was relatively bare for a tomb of that era, some more statues and bronze artifacts, a delicately carved ceiling, with yet more bas-reliefs over the walls. Xiazi started to examine those with the spare light of the torch bouncing off the coffin, while Xie Yuchen squatted near it to undo the lid.
There were the usual tricks and triggers set around it that he made quick work of. He pushed the heavy stone lid aside, and a flash of milky jade met the torch’s glare. He out it on the ground, then silently pulled the manacles off the skeleton’s hands.
“Come help me lift this,” he told Xiazi, pushing on the lid one-handed.
“Hm, coming.”
Xiazi took his sweet time, dragging his sunglasses away from the bas-reliefs reluctantly, as if from a beautiful sight, before finally joining Xie Yuchen by the coffin. They each took one side of the stone and lifted it, pulling it down on the ground.
When one half of the manacles snapped around his wrist, Xiazi merely lifted an eyebrow.
Xie Yuchen tied the other half around his own wrist.
“Orders,” he said. “You know how it is.”
Xiazi had the good grace to nod, and smiled.
“Doing great so far.”
“Could you please look a little surprised, at least?”
“Would it help?”
“Yes, it would.”
“Oh no, you’ve caught me, whatever shall I do?” said Xiazi in a high sing-song voice.
Xie Yuchen sighed. The headache that had been brewing since… well, since meeting this guy, finally broke through the surface of his mind and made nerve endings pulse in his temples. He winced. Despite his best efforts he couldn’t stop seeing the bodies, as if their bloated images were printed in negative behind his eyelids, especially that thin gash across He Xiu’s neck.
“You killed them,” he said. Not a question.
“Yes.”
All the joy, as artificial as it might have been, had leaked out of Xiazi’s voice.
“Upon orders?”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“Can’t tell you that, kiddo. I’m sorry.”
And it sounded like he was, but Xie Yuchen was acutely conscious of having tied himself to a man who just admitted to committing triple homicide for money.
“Whose orders?” he repeated.
The headache tore across his mind like lightning, but a face flashed through right after, and the chill that went down his back felt like deep thunder, shaking the foundations of his being. His breath was loud, in the quiet tomb. He stepped quietly around the coffin, extending his bound arm over it so something, as flimsy a barrier as it was, physically separated them.
“No.”
Xiazi sighed.
“Yes,” he said again, and this time he really did sound sorry.
“He sent me to get you.”
“I know.”
“So what?” Xie Yuchen suddenly found himself yelling. “Are you gonna try and kill me too? Are those your orders this time?”
Xiazi laughed. The bastard laughed!
“Really regretting tying yourself to me now, aren’t you?”
Xie Yuchen glared at him over the coffin.
“Like hell. I’ll bring you back and then we can have a chat, all three of us.”
“Love the confidence,” Xiazi joked, his smile bright even in the low light.
He switched off the torch, so they would both be incapacitated - from his observations, Xiazi needed at least some light to see, and was just as blind as he was in total darkness, but he didn’t have Xie Yuchen’s training. Xie Yuchen lunged across the coffin, twisting his body over the stone lip so that his foot came first, aimed at Xiazi’s stomach. The manacles made it feel like an old gangster knife fight, the two of them orbiting one another in a tight circle, exchanging punches and kicks while balancing their own momentum. It reminded Xie Yuchen of rope work in theater.
Another face flashed through his mind, except that it wasn’t his mind the face came from.
It wasn’t the aged, graceful face he knew, either. It wasn’t the face he had seen in old pictures, painted white and red underneath gorgeous opera wigs, but a young, sad, emotional face he had never known.
Brow pulled down, teeth clenched, he reached for Xiazi’s clothes and pulled him violently toward him, throwing the both of them out of balance and sending them crashing against the coffin. Inside, the skeleton rattled.
“How do you know Er-ye?” he snarled. “What did he tell you?”
“Jesus, kid, chill,” choked Xiazi, pushing him off as best as he could while he regained his breath. “I’ve known him longer than you did.”
“What did he tell you?” Xie Yuchen yelled again. “Is he in on this?”
“What if he was?”
The thought felt like a stab to the stomach. Xie Yuchen needed an answer now, a clean exit wound, some certainty in the midst of this chaotic everything. If even his mentor had betrayed him, then there would be certainty - he would be certain that he was alone for good, and could get on with his life.
He would probably dispose of Xiazi next and leave to plan a proper revenge, neural networks cooking up this new lonely life in the handful of seconds it took for his heart to break.
Always have an escape planned, that was rule number one.
But in another handful of seconds Xiazi’s free hand grabbed his and operated some hidden magic on the manacles. Suddenly, their wrists separated, and the man disappeared into the night.
Xie Yuchen still felt the heavy ring of metal encircling his wrist, one half of the chain clicking against it when he stood. He could also feel Xiazi inside of his mind, the intrusive consciousness pressing against his psyche.
Incapable of reaching him physically until he could locate him, Xie Yuchen latched onto the psychic bond and pulled with all of his might. He concentrated on the idea of Er Yuehong, pushing it again and again through the bond, until some feedback appeared. He saw his mentor in opera clothes, then him throwing his bells, just a bunch of useless images being thrown at him like obstacles in his path.
Xie Yuchen growled with frustration. Xiazi must have experience with telepathy. Unconsciously, he grabbed the single manacle with his free hand as he ran, still mentally hacking through the images Xiazi summoned.
Where had that asshole gone to?
He wished that he could turn the torch back on, but it would betray his position too fast. Only when he reached the broken wall did he stop, briefly turning the light on into his cupped hand to see if new tracks had appeared in the dust. He lowered himself and was slowly separating the red ring of light from his skin, to send the thinnest ray of white across the floor, when a clink of metal made him spring to his feet.
“Shit,” Xiazi commented, and sped down the hallway and out of view again.
When he thought back to this moment, days and hours later, Xie Yuchen realized that if Hei Xiazi had wanted to be silent, he would have been. It was his own form of politeness, to let others be aware of his presence, and at that time, it was a kindness.
Then that horrible, ghastly smell filled the air again and Xie Yuchen stopped in his tracks, turning the torch back on and shining it resolutely down the hallway. He wasn’t about to follow Min Yuan’s fate blindly. If he had to fight to the death, he would, but he wouldn’t rot in a trap like a helpless animal.
“Come out, you bastard,” he whispered.
Slowly and very, very carefully, he stepped around the closed pit, and then resumed his run down the hallway, keeping the torch on. He was getting tired, and not just physically. He wanted this to end, for good.
The hallways were familiar enough now that he knew where to side step and jump, blowing through the traps with just a second of caution in case Xiazi had reactivated them, but he didn't, and either he was really fast or he had found a way to run silently, because Xie Yuchen couldn’t hear him anymore.
What he heard, more and more, was the howl of wind. Was it Xiazi poisoning his mind from the inside? He had to focus. He tried to empty his mind but he could still feel him, insistent, invasive, like an imp at his side. Xie Yuchen wouldn’t let him win, wouldn’t give his employer the satisfaction of dying so easily. Not like this, not in this glacial hellhole, away from everything that ever mattered to him.
Screw them all, he would save his own skin.
He pulled onto the manacle and tried to get it off his wrist, only succeeded in bruising the skin. The torch dangled off his other wrist, throwing haphazard light over the walls. Angrily, Xie Yuchen turned it off, and decided to follow the glow out of the tomb. With the blueish light came colder and colder air, far colder than the cave had been, and he understood why when he found himself faced with a crumbled gate covered in hazy snowdrifts.
The sight made a small laugh bubble up from his chest. Ah. History repeating itself. He had gotten out the wrong way. Of course. Ah ah.
What a fucking day.
With a strange smile on his face, Xie Yuchen slipped the backpack off his back, opened the top, and then methodically upended it over the icy floor. From the bottom dropped a small, rectangular packet that bounced off the ground with a light thud. Xie Yuchen picked it up.
He undid the packaging as he walked, holding the bar respectfully, almost ritually up in front of him at chest level, before placing it between two of the largest pieces of the gate. He attached the detonator, set it up, and then walked unhurriedly back into the hallway. On the way he picked up the ziploc containing the evidence he had found on He Xiu, and stuffed it into his coat pocket.
Let’s see who wins this roun, he thought as he pressed the trigger.
There was a rush of hot air and very loud sound, and then the exact opposite, a cold blow and complete silence. The mountain was there, so close he could touch it. There was nothing in the heap of his pack worth picking up so Xie Yuchen passed it without a glance, and stepped out into the fresh evening air. The wind rustled fiercely outside, and the mountain rumbled, so big and so alive under the stars.
“Xiao sheng!”
He heard the cry and turned, right as the snowdrift collapsed over him and carried him away.
When Xie Yuchen came to, there was only white, above, below, and everywhere. The air was white, and the cold snow was white, and the only difference was the thickness around his body as he tried to move. It was impossible to see anything, and painful too. His eyes burnt and were tearing up profusely.
There was also a sharp, lancing pain in his left ankle. He crawled over the snow, or swam, rather, as every movement just seemed to bury him deeper and deeper into the whiteness, and his bones screamed. A tightness was growing in his chest that he refused to let turn into panic.
He would get out of this alive. He would, even if it killed him, goddamn it!
Grinding his teeth, he moved as slowly as he could, spreading his limbs around to reduce his weight on the fragile mantle of snow, and made his way to the first rock he could see. Blinking through the tears, he squinted at the landscape around him. There were only more rocks, and even more snow, nothing but snow as far as he could see.
Xie Yuchen let the tears flow out, for what relief they brought.
Just find the next step, he told himself.
He rolled onto his back, and looked up at the sky. What direction was he facing now? South-East? He vaguely remembered seeing a cirque on the map some way down from that awful ridge they’d climbled, which would fit the horseshoe-shaped mountains around him. South-East would bring him back down toward the city.
Eventually.
He should consider himself lucky to have even survived so far, but Xie Yuchen wasn’t one for silver linings, and thinking back to the ridge had made him remember Xiazi. He was still wearing the manacle but at he was alone now. His mind was quieter too. Maybe he had died in the avalanche.
The snow felt cold against his hair. Maybe he should rest for a bit, before making it to the next rocks.
Don’t you dare fall asleep.
The message had made its way through his tired brain without any resistance and his eyes shot open with a sudden burst of pain. He closed them again briefly, to alleviate the burn, but couldn’t resist looking around him. All was white. He could barely see the rocks now, but he had to keep moving. If Xiazi was still alive, he wasn’t safe. He had to get back down that mountain before Xiazi could get to him.
Was that rock moving? Maybe he was making way toward it without realizing. No, the rock was definitely moving, only it wasn’t a rock. The closer it got, the darker the shape became, and the more Xie Yuchen knew that it was leather he was seeing instead of stone.
It felt like fighting in a dream, the way his limbs seemed to move through thick glue, but he pulled them closer to himself, protecting his core, and readied himself to fight. He wouldn’t die lying down. He struggled to keep his eyes open, breathed out slowly…
And fell into the night.
Xie Yuchen burst awake, his heart pounding.
He couldn’t see anything. Around him something crinkled, and he was sitting on- what, stone? Wind blew nearby.
Where the hell was he?
“Relax, kid, you’re alright.”
Xiazi!
Xie Yuchen jumped to his feet and then immediately fell back down with a cry as pain shot up his leg. It hurt, but he had to get out anyway. He stumbled back up, using his hands to prop himself, when a pair of arms - Xiazi’s arms - wrapped around his waist and pulled him back down. Xie Yuchen managed to land an elbow against his clavicle.
“Ow! Can you cut the fighting for a second? I’m trying to help!”
Xie Yuchen felt a distinct sense of hysteria rise in him, born of the cold and the hunger and the pain and the years and years and years of sheer exhaustion. He wanted to cry and scream like a child, to bang his fists onto something until the world was made right again. He was tired and he didn’t want to die but couldn’t even protect himself anymore.
"Yeah, that’s a mood," commented Xiazi from behind him.
“Is this your idea of fair play?” he yelled. “You rescue me so you can finish me off yourself?”
The hands pushed him back down onto the stone, and now he could feel the heat of a fire coming from the place he was about to run through. He shivered. The crinkling sound came again as he felt something being wrapped around him.
“Gee, talk about dramatic. At least I know where you got that from,” replied Xiazi with a smile in his voice.
Somehow, his annoying casualness cut through the fear, and brought a semblance of normalcy back to Xie Yuchen.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I’m not gonna hurt you kid. You can poke around my brain if you don’t trust me, I’m not nearly smart enough to make up a whole memory. See for yourself.”
With that he took Xie Yuchen’s bound hand in his and opened his mind to him.
Er-ye’s aged face was what met the mental gaze, grave and concerned, and a heavy stack of paper money exchanged hands. Xie Yuchen could almost feel the phantom memory of them in his own palms. He did feel his mentor squeezing Xiazi's hand like it was his own.
“Do not let him be compromised,” he had told Xiazi. “I still remember my own first time alone, though I would rather not.”
The tightness in Xie Yuchen’s heart lifted as he regained trust in his teacher, but it was replaced by a wet sort of sadness at the thought that this trust wasn’t returned. Was he so weak that even the person who knew him best couldn’t believe him capable of such a simple mission?
But Er-ye had been right not to, after all. If Xiazi had wanted to kill him, he would be a literal sitting duck right now. He pushed Xiazi’s hand away, cutting the vision off.
“Alright, I believe you.”
“Hey, don’t look so…”
“So what?” asked Xie Yuchen defensively.
He desperately wanted to glare at him but he had a terrible headache and his eyes burnt like mad every time he tried to open them.
“So disappointed. You’re not supposed to know everything yet. At your age I was home, helping my mother cook. And I could just as well be the one sitting there under the emergency blanket. You never know what could happen during one of our little explorations, so it’s best to always go in groups.”
“Unless you’re part of them, right?”
There was a long silence, long enough that Xie Yuchen started to wonder if Xiazi had left him for good this time.
“They paid me too, you know. To make you disappear quietly.”
“I figured, yeah.“
“Oh?”
“It’s probably what I would have done too,” Xie Yuchen admitted.
He had lost the moral high ground a long time ago.
“So who are you going to refund?” he asked after a moment.
Xiazi scoffed.
“Refund? Are you crazy?”
He seemed genuinely shocked by the idea, much more so than he had been by any of Xie Yuchen’s previous accusations, which was ridiculous enough to make Xie Yuchen want to laugh, and so he did. He laughed until his sides hurt and he toppled to the side, clutching the aluminum blanket to himself.
This ridiculous man, he thought. This stupid, infuriating, fascinating man.
“So what?” he finally asked again, wiping tears and then wincing in pain.
“If you want, I could help you disappear," offered Xiazi. "Everyone would be satisfied.”
“Except for me.”
“Not to concern myself with the business of others, but it doesn’t exactly sound like a great environment to grow up in.”
“Exactly my point. I have things to set right when I return. Plus they won’t expect me. You’re supposed to be good at your job, aren’t you?”
Even blind as he was, Xie Yuchen knew the smile that spread on Xiazi’s face, that broad sunshiny smile.
“The very best.”
He smiled in return.
“Then don’t worry, we will meet again once I’m done.”
Xiazi scoffed again and stood up noisily, ruffling his hair in what Xie Yuchen refused to acknowledge as friendliness.
"Don't speak as if the camera is gonna pan out dramatically. We still have to get off that fucking mountain."
"Do you have a plan?"
"Nope, I was hoping you would."
Xie Yuchen gestured toward his entire self with his left hand, making the manacle chain clank loudly in the air.
"Right," admitted Xiazi. "Then we are in deeper shit than expected."
It was Xie Yuchen's turn to scoff.
"The best of his kind and you're ready to admit defeat so easily? It's a wonder any of the others survive at all. Or do you consider forfeit a legit kind of victory?"
Maybe it was the bond, but Xie Yuchen would have sworn that he could see that eye roll.
"Every time we're in the fresh air you start questioning my methods. I wonder if I shouldn't drag your blind ass back in there - I can say that, I was blind first."
"I thought you were trying to kill me in that tomb. It's very easy to overestimate an immediate threat."
"Maybe I should ask Er-ye for that refund, then, and get on with it."
"Let's focus that energy on problem-solving, shall we?"
There was a pause, during which Xie Yuchen knew that he was observed with the primal certainty of long-time prey.
"You're going to make a formidable leader, kid, whatever you decide to lead."
The compliment took Xie Yuchen by complete surprise and, for the first time in living memory, he felt himself, there was no other word for it, he felt himself blush.
He knew that red suited his complexion admirably - he wasn't called Hua er for nothing after all - but he still had to fight the urge to bury his flaming cheeks in his hands.
He had felt pressure throughout the whole of his life, in one form or another, the pressure to excel just so he could survive. But for the first time too Xie Yuchen suddenly wanted to do well just … well, just because. He didn't want to find them an escape route simply to save his own skin. He wanted to do it in a clever way because he knew that Xiazi would appreciate it, and praise him for thinking of such a scheme.
He squashed down that thought before it could fully express itself, aware on some meta-level that if he started judging himself for that last bit he was done for.
Now he just had to figure out that clever plan for himself first.
Starting a mental headcount of their resources, he turned to Xiazi.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Nice of you to ask."
"I'm asking because I can't see for myself if you're injured. I'm not about to offer you a cup of tea, I'm wondering if you can make it down by yourself."
"I'm… I'm fine."
"Why the hesitation?"
"I'm fine."
"Hm."
So Xiazi was injured too. He was injured himself, at any rate, but he couldn't send Xiazi down for help, so he crossed out that branch on his mental diagram. The sliver of light that he allowed past his closed lids - and immediately regretted - told him that it was probably midday and very, very bright, so neither of their visions would be at their best now, but they couldn't afford to spend another night on this mountain without shelter. From what he could guess, they weren't in another cave, at best under a rocky outcrop that managed to cut most of the wind, and he wasn't sure that they could make it back to the tomb even if they tried.
"Do you still have your flare?"
Xie Yuchen had packed the twin packs himself and was aware of their contents, but a lot could have happened in the time he was unconscious.
“Yeah, but there is no one to see it. We’re three valleys in. Not to mention the general, you know, illegality of what we’ve been doing. Plus you’re a minor and people are gonna think weird stuff about me if they find us like this.”
Xie Yuchen let out a small cough.
“Let’s keep it as a plan B then.”
“Do we have a plan A?”
“Yes but you’re not going to like it. Or you will. I’m not sure which is worse.”
“O ye of little faith…” laughed Xiazi.
“So. We have nothing to ride, no horse, no skis, not even a board, correct?”
“Correct.”
“But we could, and hear me out before you say anything, ride the mountain itself.”
“Come again?”
“You’ve said it yourself, the ground is incredibly unstable in this season. The problem would be to get separated, but by some miracle we have these,” he said, lifting his wrist so the chain could jangle as support to his argument.
“You call that a miracle?”
“It’s convenient, given the circumstances.”
“I’ll grant you that. So what, I strap myself to you and we roll?”
“Or the converse.”
“That’s… not the worst idea I’ve ever heard because I’m getting on in years, but I’d rank it in the top five. Top three, even.”
“If y-”
“I didn’t say I won’t do it.”
“Really?”
“It’s a solid plan. Completely insane, which is par for the course for grave robbers, but solid. Good job.”
“I didn’t even mention the dry bag in your pack.”
“Hm?”
“I figured the builders couldn’t have held their breaths for too long so I kept our diving equipment fairly minimal, but I did add a dry bag each in the top part of the pack, to blow up if we needed to bring stuff back to surface quickly, or if we were stuck somewhere underwater. Just pull on that orange tab near your left shoulder.”
“Interesting,” Xiazi said in a bored tone.
“What I mean is, if we get stuck under too deep a layer of snow, we can blow yours and rise back to the surface.”
Xiazi made musing noises for a few moments.
“Okay, I take it back, it’s a top ten worst idea at most. We probably won't die. Let’s do this.”
Xie Yuchen wished he still had his own backpack. He also wished that he could open his eyes without wanting to gouge them out. It felt extremely odd to be led onto the fresh snow, to follow in someone's path but not be able to gauge the depth of it or where best to put your feet.
Xiazi picked their starting point on his own, some way away from the rocks they were hiding under and in a place from which the trajectory of the descending avalanche was most likely not to kill them. He sat down and pulled Xie Yuchen down, who landed on his lap with an embarrassed noise. Then he took Xie Yuchen’s hand and wrapped it around himself, knotting his own arms around him, before doing the same thing he had done earlier to the manacles but in reverse.
“You have to tell me how you did this,” Xie Yuchen told him to distract himself from the warmth at his back.
“If we survive this I will.”
“Afraid I’ll leave your dead body on the way if I know it too soon?”
“You’re a fast learner.”
Before Xie Yuchen could respond, Xiazi twisted back and shot the flare up the mountain behind them. There was a small, insignificant little ‘poof’ and then in mere seconds that now familiar rumble, only louder, stronger, and much, much closer. He had time to take in a deep gulp of air, and then the ground disappeared from underneath him.
The ride down was a breathless blur of noise and cold dizzying snow, pressing on him from all sides. It felt terrifyingly fast and interminably long at the same time, but then the chaos reassembled and they started to slow, at the same time as the snow around them transformed from soft flying particles back into solid clusters and then coalesced into walls. Xiazi wiggled behind him and suddenly they were yanked upward with a loud bang.
“Did it work?” Xie Yuchen gasped when they resurfaced. “Where are we?”
“Close enough to walk. Come on,” grunted Xiazi in response, shrugging them out of the snow.
He undid the manacles and half-dragged, half-pushed Xie Yuchen out, until Xie Yuchen could get a hold of some rock formation and pull himself upright.
“That’s it. To your right, yes, it’s straight ahead now,” he continued to instruct.
Xie Yuchen realized that what he had thought of as midday had been at best a late morning, and the warm sun shining down on them now was a different sort of enemy to face. Even through closed lids the light was painful, so he had to shield himself with a hand, which didn’t help him keep the fragile balance he had with that sprained ankle. When Xiazi realized this, or when he was done dealing with his own injuries, he came and stopped Xie Yuchen mid-step, before slipping a pair of thick sunglasses over his face.
“Don’t you need them?” he asked, out of politeness.
“It’s my backup pair.”
Xie Yuchen sighed with relief and straightened them up his nose. He wasn’t sure he would have given them up even if Xiazi had. Instead he tightened his hold onto Xiazi's leather-covered arm and limped on.
The hike back to the village was slow and painful in many more ways, but Xie Yuchen would have been hard pressed to tell details of it to anyone afterwards. Like the avalanche, it became an indistinct whole, this time made up mostly of silence and slippery gravel. Neither of them talked more than necessary, not even during the many breaks they took to let their tired bodies rest.
Finally, a clatter of voices broke the quietness, along with the growl of a diesel engine coming to a stop. For a moment Xie Yuchen tightened with apprehension but it wasn’t another avalanche, just the villagers coming up to see what had become of the two hikers.
“My friend!” exclaimed Xiazi.
A voice that Xie Yuchen recognized as the bar owner greeted them in return, and soon Xiazi let go of him. He was sat on something that was neither stone nor snow, and his leg was lifted up and wrapped. “Doctor,” declared a woman’s voice beside him, and he wasn’t sure if she was presenting herself or announcing his next destination, but Xie Yuchen nodded in agreement.
He could still hear Xiazi a little way ahead.
The engine roared to life, but Xie Yuchen didn’t hear it. He rested his head on the window and let sleep claim him again at last.
He woke up to the distant sounds of beeping machinery and the smell of disinfectant. Around his eyes was a thick piece of gauze instead of the sunglasses, and over his body was thin starched linen.
A hospital.
He fumbled around the bed until he found a call button and pressed it.
“Where’s my… where’s my friend?” he asked when someone entered.
“The man in black? He didn’t want us to see to him so he left yesterday, right after bringing you in. But he did give us this for you,” she added.
She put a piece of paper into his hands, which Xie Yuchen scoffed at.
“How am I supposed to read this?” he asked, gesturing toward his face.
“He said not to tell you, that it’ll give you a good reason to focus on healing properly. He’s right, you know. You need to rest your eyes if you want your full vision to return.”
“Then tell me what it says!”
The nurse didn’t respond, and left the room.
It wasn’t until the next morning that Xie Yuchen realized that his wrist was bare. He called her back, but to no avail. Damn them all, trying to help him!
By the end of the week, once he could see again, he squinted at the blurry shapes of Xiazi’s writing on a garishly colored post-it. It read:
“The trick is to bring them together instead of apart. I’ll return them once you’re old enough. Good luck with everything.”
Xie Yuchen smiled, and sat back against the pillows. He would need it.