The hole in the ground gaped like a throat swallowing darkness. The night pearl in the girl's hand threw light no farther than three steps ahead, yet she walked without hesitation. Chang Ning watched the faint glow recede and felt something shift in his chest.
The stone steps descended ten paces, bent at a corner, descended ten more, bent again. At the bottom sat a black-lacquered stone chamber, seven or eight feet wide and low enough that a tall man would feel the ceiling pressing on his thoughts. A table, a stool, a bed. Three iron shelves of assorted clutter bolted to the wall. Nothing else. A lamp on the table burned like a dying ember, cold and barely there.
It had been only one day.
Yet the young man looked as though he had aged three years and shed five pounds in a single night. His fine robes were crumpled, his hair unwashed and unbound. He sat on a straw-covered stone bed with one knee drawn up and no posture worth the name, the other leg dangling, an iron chain still fastened at the ankle and bolted into the wall. Beside him was a coarse bowl containing two cold steamed buns. One bore the marks of a few reluctant bites.
When he heard footsteps, Young Master Qian shot to his feet, chest thrown out.
"You needn't have bothered bringing food. I said I wouldn't eat it and I meant it. Feeding these cold, rough things to a dog would be an insult to the dog—" He stopped. "Who are you?"
He was staring at two strangers.
Cai Zhao tucked the night pearl into her collar. "Save your legs."
Young Master Qian's eyes went wide. He stared at Cai Zhao, then shifted to the tall young man standing behind her. "You... and you — that day — you two?!" He was a master of transformation and knew the human body's shapes better than most physicians. The recognition struck him a moment after the prompt.
It struck him hard.
"You have the nerve to show your faces here!" he exploded. "You were living well — good food, a warm bed — and you ruined it for yourselves and landed in this wretched hole! That's your doing, not mine!"
Chang Ning's voice was flat. "Pigs also live well. They eat well, sleep well, grow fat and comfortable. The moment they've gained enough weight, their purpose is fulfilled. Right now, these people are counting on you to pass on your art. Once someone else learns it, ask yourself — will you fare better than the pig that's already been fattened?"
Young Master Qian went pale. His voice dropped. "They said... it would only be this once. After this, they would find two proper disciples of their own..."
"A disciple who masters the craft kills the master who taught it," Chang Ning said.
Young Master Qian stiffened his neck, unwilling to crumble entirely. "I never agreed to take disciples. When they came pressing me, I swore I'd sooner die than cooperate. Go ahead and threaten me if you like. I won't say a word under questioning."
Cai Zhao didn't bother looking at him. She turned to Chang Ning. "Then I'll knock him out and haul him back. We can question him at leisure."
"Fine," Chang Ning said, and set his palm like a blade.
Young Master Qian stumbled backward onto the stone bed. "Don't be rash! This place is heavily guarded. One shout from me and neither of you gets out alive!"
Chang Ning glanced back at Cai Zhao. "You see the problem with killing him — we can't question a corpse. But consider: we're in a stone chamber underground. His shouts would need to travel through solid rock before anyone above heard them. Unless he's practiced the Lion's Roar..." He gave Young Master Qian a measured look. "He hasn't."
Cai Zhao's mouth curved slightly. "Not the Lion's Roar. More like the Eight-King Market Brawler's Screech."
Young Master Qian's face cycled through red, blue, and several shades with no names. At last he said, quietly, "Ask what you want. If I know it, I'll tell you."
Chang Ning said nothing further. He settled into a corner and let the girl lead.
"Don't worry," Cai Zhao said, moving toward the stone bed. "This won't be painful. First question — were you the only Thousand-Face practitioner they captured?"
Young Master Qian's color faded. "I don't know how many others they've taken. But when our sect was destroyed, only my master escaped. When my master died ten years ago, I was the last one left."
"Lie — right out of the gate," Chang Ning cut in. "The Thousand-Face Sect was destroyed ninety years ago. How could your master have survived?"
"Master was thirteen when it happened!" Young Master Qian snapped. "He was ninety-six when he died ten years ago. Do the arithmetic!"
Chang Ning had nothing to say to that. He let it go.
Cai Zhao pressed on. "Second — how many people have you transformed for them so far?"
Young Master Qian thought for a moment. "Not counting the one surnamed Fan yesterday — eight and a half in total. Half a failure. Though that's hardly surprising. I had only one likeness to work from. What can you do with that?"
"Do you know who those eight people were?"
Young Master Qian threw up his hands. "They caught me and chained me here. Do you think they handed me a guest list? I only ever saw faces. No names."
Cai Zhao asked whether any of the faces had been round. Young Master Qian answered with academic precision that three had been round, then proceeded to distinguish between perfect circles, wide ovals, and narrow ovals. She asked about square faces. He confirmed three of those as well, then elaborated on the difference between true squares, rectangles, and rhomboids.
Cai Zhao's patience wore thin. "These were prominent people in the martial world. Surely you recognized at least one of them."
"My master was worse than a rat in the gutter when it came to reputation!" Young Master Qian cried, genuinely aggrieved. "He spent his entire life in hiding. He had no dealings with the martial world. He was barely out of concealment a year before he died. How would I recognize anyone?"
Cai Zhao's palms itched. She stepped away from the stone bed before she did something she'd regret, and crossed the chamber to the iron shelves. When she turned around, her voice was controlled. "One last question. And you will know the answer to this one."
She exhaled. "How does one break the transformation?"
Young Master Qian's expression shifted — proud, then embarrassed, then something between a smirk and a wince. "The most reliable way... is to wait it out. No transformation holds forever. Once the time limit passes, the original form returns on its own. Please, don't come closer—"
Chang Ning had already risen from his stool and lifted the stone bench.
Young Master Qian pressed himself against the wall. "How long?" Cai Zhao asked, keeping her voice steady. "For each of these eight."
"Half a year," he whispered.
Cai Zhao stepped onto the stone bed and seized him by the collar. Six months. Her father's fate could be sealed six times over in six months.
"There's another way!" Young Master Qian threw his arms over his face.
She stopped.
He caught his breath. "Death. The moment the practitioner dies, the transformation breaks immediately. Didn't you see it yourself? The moment Komiya died, his face reverted on the spot."
Cai Zhao's gaze went distant. She was back in the shadow of Fan Xing's house, behind the dark pavilion, in the final seconds of yesterday — the bang, the blood-soaked carpet, the corpse of Fan Xing's man twisting and shifting as the technique unraveled.
She refocused. "Does it require death specifically? What about severe injury — knife wounds, internal damage?"
"Useless," Young Master Qian said. "No amount of injury breaks it. The only exceptions are if the practitioner willingly dissolves the technique themselves, or if they die. Death collapses the dantian, severs the qi, breaks the meridians — only then does the original form surface."
He pulled at his collar, agitated now. "Why do you think the orthodox and unorthodox sects united to annihilate our sect all those years ago? If the transformation had any weakness worth exploiting, they wouldn't have feared us half as much. The Mountains transform into oceans and back — rivers move, sun and moon shift — the Great Body-Changing Art does not bend. My master said so."
Cai Zhao looked at Chang Ning.
Chang Ning spoke slowly. "If we kill the imposter, we gain nothing and lose our only lead. But if we leave him alive, he could recant everything the moment someone applies pressure. This is a real problem."
He turned to Young Master Qian. "When did you arrive in Qingque Town?"
Young Master Qian blinked. "This is Qingque Town. They boxed us in and transported us here before March — kept us in the back of corner restaurants and similar places, observing the target at close range. Two and a half months of observation before I dared attempt the transformation. The man had real bearing — everyone deferred to him."
He sighed. "And now that the one surnamed Fan is finished, he has no skills at all. Even with rest, he can't attempt another transformation."
"So you were already embedded in Qingque Town before the ceremony." Chang Ning's expression cleared, something locking into place. He turned to Cai Zhao with a slight smile. "You were puzzled yesterday — why they risked moving someone onto Ten-Thousand Mountain. Here's why. In another month, Song Shijun comes to see his son."
Cai Zhao felt the blood leave her face. "And a month after that — Uncle Zhou comes too."
Chang Ning lowered his head, smoothing a fold from his sleeve, his voice almost idle. "Siqi wavers with every wind. The Taichu Lodge is already half-dismantled. Your father and the Qi Sect Leader are captives. Replace the Song Sect Leader with a Zhou Sect Leader — and everything falls into place. Quite the elegant design."
He stood, unhurried, his expression pleasant. "In order to spare the Six Factions of Beichen the embarrassment of being implicated all at once — we kill him first. If this man dies, no one in the world will ever master the art of transformation again."
Young Master Qian pressed himself flat against the wall, shaking. "No — no, please. I've never harmed anyone. My whole life, I hid. I kept clear of the martial world. I never got involved—"
Cai Zhao had her back to him. She stood still at the iron shelves, fingers resting on the cold metal.
After a moment, she turned, took Chang Ning's sleeve in her hand, and spoke quietly. "Let's go. We've been down here too long. Someone will notice."
Chang Ning stared at her, incredulous. His voice hardened. "Don't let compassion make this decision for you. If this man lives, the consequences won't end."
"I can't hold you back if you decide," Cai Zhao said, letting go of his sleeve. She turned to face Young Master Qian instead. She forced a smile — it didn't quite reach her eyes, but the light in them was real. "Have you ever heard of the two things my aunt was most proud of in her life?"
Chang Ning made a sharp sound in his throat.
Cai Zhao looked down. The sound of the room seemed to fill with something quieter than silence. "Before she died, my aunt said the thing she was most proud of was never killing Nie Hengcheng. And the second — no matter how desperate things became, she never killed an innocent person. No matter how great the danger, she never stood by and let the innocent suffer for it."
She had heard those words in passing and thought little of them at the time. Only now did she understand how hard they were to hold to.
Chang Ning's breath came fast, his chest tight, his voice cold. "Your father's life hangs in the balance right now. Can you not set aside principle for one moment?"
The easygoing girl shook her head. Stubborn. Quiet. Certain. "No. You cannot cross that line. Once is enough to make the second time easy, and the third easier still."
She looked up, and this time the smile was real. "The first time we met, I didn't know you at all. It was only those two words from my aunt that made me lose my head completely and decide to save you."
Something inside Chang Ning went still. He saw her again as she had been that day — easy and unhurried, like green branches trailing over bright water in spring.
He said, softly, "All right. There may be another way. He has no skill left. It doesn't cost us anything to leave him here for now."
They turned toward the stone steps. They had reached the second landing when a voice drifted up behind them.
"There was actually someone who broke my clan's transformation art."
Both of them turned.
Young Master Qian stood by the stone bed, head bowed, fingers twisted together. His voice was barely above a murmur.
"Beichen's founding ancestor."
He began slowly. "Two hundred years ago, our ancestor used the Great Transformation Technique to help the Beichen patriarch defeat a demon. On the day the demon fell, the ancestor — gravely wounded and near death — called the patriarch to his side and asked him to transform into someone else, anyone he chose. The patriarch didn't understand, but he did it."
"Then the ancestor had his servants bring the Snow-Scaled Dragon Beast he had kept for many years. He drew a small amount of saliva from the creature's mouth and had the patriarch drink it. Snow-Scaled Ambergris is a rare restorative, highly beneficial to practitioners — the patriarch drank it without hesitation."
"Shortly after, his body went cold, as though life had left him. And his original form returned."
"There, on his sickbed, in front of everyone, the ancestor said to the patriarch: all things in heaven and earth, in yin and yang, across the whole of creation, carry their own counterpart. There is no unbreakable magic in this world. There is no eternal sect. Take care of yourselves."
Young Master Qian paused. "Then the ancestor died. Not long after, the patriarch went into seclusion. Whether it's true — my master told me. I don't know more than that."
He twisted his fingers tighter.
"Snow-Scaled Dragon Beast?" Cai Zhao's voice rose with genuine surprise. "I read about it once. The records say Beichen's ancestor kept many rare creatures — the Mosaic Ice-Wing Crane, the Red-Headed Eight-Legged Serpent, the Thousand-Li Qilin Horse. But the book also says that after the patriarch died, the spiritual energy of Jiuli Mountain faded, and the rare beasts gradually disappeared."
"The Snow-Scaled Dragon Beast is almost certainly real," Chang Ning said, brow knitting. "A hundred and sixty years ago, one surfaced and caused havoc across several regions. Injured a great many people before the martial world finally drove it off."
Cai Zhao's eyes lit up. "Where did it go?"
"North. Into the deep cold. The snowpeaks."
They left the dungeon and retraced their steps in silence. The mountain air had grown colder. Black-clad sentries drifted through the trees in slow, ghostly circuits.
Only once they had cleared the mountain did either of them breathe freely.
Chang Ning steadied the girl beside him — she was winded from the climb — and said, not unkindly, "See what being a good person costs you. Jiuli Mountain is north, yes, but even riding hard the whole way, the snow range is more than two weeks out. And we don't yet know if the Snow-Scaled Dragon Beast is even still alive."
"Forget the creature for now," Cai Zhao said, straightening up, breath evening out. "The imposter didn't bring many capable men with him when he made his move. Catch one or two of them. One question at a time. We may not need the beast at all."
Chang Ning laughed despite himself. "Listen to you. One or two. If you want to catch his men, you need the whole sect behind you. And how exactly do you propose to make them believe you?"
"Face to face. Confrontation." Cai Zhao's voice was calm. "True or false — even a perfect imitation leaves seams. If enough senior figures are convinced, the trap closes on its own."
Chang Ning's brow creased. "That's not so simple. Sometimes it isn't what you say that matters. It's who is saying it, and whether anyone is inclined to listen."
They were still talking when they rounded a bend toward Qingjing Lodge — and walked straight into a wall of torchlight. A group of armed men materialized from the dark, blades at their sides, lanterns raised, and closed in from every direction without a word.
The man at the front wore a light traveling cloak. He smiled.
"My, my. Such an interesting evening you two are having. Most people are asleep at this hour, yet here you are, roaming the mountains in the dead of night." The smile didn't reach his eyes. "Since sleep seems to be beyond you — follow me. The master is waiting."