Page 11 of The Scarlet Alchemist

The man jerked away, his eyes dark and empty, his face bloodless. He was a shell of the real Gou Jau Gam, an empty vessel like our unpainted míngqì, nothing but powdery white clay.

“Who are you?” he said.

I didn’t answer, waving for him to follow me down the empty riverbed. I didn’t like to be in a place like this any longer than I had to. There was always the chance that you wouldn’t be able to find your way back. I took off walking, and after a moment, his uneven footsteps stumbled after me.

Sure enough, just around another bend, we reached a stone wall that formed a dam in the riverbank, just barely restraining the water as tiny leaks dribbled down the stones. I let out a tense breath. At least some water was still getting through.

I sank my fingers into the cracks between the stones and pulled hard, jostling a few stones but not managing to pull any out, the surface too slick. I looked over my shoulder at Gou Jau Gam, who watched me with hollow eyes.

“Are you going to help me or not?” I said. “This isyourqi, not mine.”

He shook his head. “The dam won’t break. I’ve tried.”

“Of course it won’t break for justyou,” I said. People couldn’t go around resurrecting themselves, after all. “I’ve used bloodstone to get here. It will break.”

When he still didn’t move, I sighed. “The longer we wait, the stronger the wall will become.”

His eyes widened and he stepped forward, hands ghosting across the wall, feeling for weak points but not quite daring to use any force. I returned to my own section, and after a few minutes of loosening stones, I finally managed to yank one out. Water sprayed through a hole the size of a coin, the pent-up force of it like a solid punch to my ribs. While the qi of the living always ran clear, this river was scarlet, tainted from the bloodstones. Red water pooled around our feet, the parched riverbed drinking it up instantly.

Gou Jau Gam froze, staring at his wet feet, toes tapping in the ground that was now soft instead of sharp beneath him.

“This is mine,” he whispered in wonder, as the last of the water disappeared into the earth. “This is my life, isn’t it?”

I sighed, my hands slipping off another stone. “What’s left of it,” I said. “There’s more where that came from if you hurry.”

At once, he turned to the wall and started grabbing at the stones with fervor, splitting his nails and cutting his palms. When that didn’t work, he slammed his fists against it, stones clanking against each other, the whole wall trembling.

With a heavy crack, the wall folded in toward the center.

The water spilled through slowly at first, lapping over the sinking lip of the wall, then all at once, it gushed over and roared toward us.

The stones flew at us first. I’d barely thrown an arm over my face before the river pummeled us with rocks, forcing my breath out in a choked gasp as they slammed into my ribs. I couldn’t draw another breath before the waters surged on top of us, crushing us to the riverbed.

I threw out a hand and grabbed Gou Jau Gam’s robes as the river scraped us along the bottom of its parched maze. He thrashed in my grip until I managed to grab his wrist. I had to make sure to take him back with me, or all of this would be for nothing. I sank my fingernails into him until I drew blood, just to be sure he was tethered to me. Then, just as my lungs started screaming for air, I opened my eyes.

Gou Jau Gam was thrashing on the floor of our pigpen, Yufei sweating as she forced him into the ground. I knelt before him, bone-dry, hands crushed into his spine, the bloodstones in my left hand gone, choking down deep gasps of air that tasted like corpse and ginger.

His body rattled like a cage full of snakes, fingernails raking up handfuls of dirt, teeth gnashing into the ground. I’d dragged the heavy anchor of his soul back with me and dumped it onto the mortal plane. Just like creatures of the deep sea, dead souls didn’t take kindly to being forced up into the sunlight. His soul would flee again if it wasn’t bound.

I kept my hands clenched just above his heart meridian. I was the one holding the anchor, and if I let go, he would plummet back down.

“Jiejie, hold him harder,” I said to Yufei, struggling to even form words when my mouth tasted like bloody water and silt. It was hard to keep my grip on the body with how slippery his skin was. Some of it was tearing near his nape, so I readjusted my grip, hoping I wouldn’t accidentally peel him like a grape.

Wordlessly, Yufei pressed her knees into the small of his back, her hand driving his face into the ground. Despite being half my size, her strength was immense. It wouldn’t shock me if she could one day break bricks in half with her bare hands.

“Gege,now,” I said, gritting my teeth.

Wenshu knelt beside me, pulling a patch of skin taut. He wielded a tool that looked like a calligraphy brush, but with sharp needles instead of hairs. He’d gotten it from one of theBaiyuèpeople from the southern coast when they’d traveled to Guangzhou for trade. The needles were coated in black ink that Wenshu would tediously slip under the skin, spelling out the name of the dead man in writing that wouldn’t wash away. His hands moved fast over the grayed flesh, the characters appearing line by line.

As he finished the first character, the man jolted and Wenshu hissed, reeling back so as not to stab any stray marks into the skin.

“Harder, Yufei,” he said.

Yufei leaned more of her weight into his neck and Wenshu carried on, sweat dripping down his brow. My hands were starting to grow numb, and it was getting harder to hear the river the longer the man grunted and thrashed beneath me. This man’s soul was farther away than usual, a thin kite string I was trying to snatch out of a clear sky.

Finally, Wenshu leaned back. Three characters, red and inflamed, marked the man’s spine.

?

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