Chapter 8 | New Patriarch and Vengence

The moss curtain parted and Liang Hao’s face appeared in the gap, pale and wide-eyed, his lips moving silently.

He’d been counting.

“What number?” Calid asked.

“One thousand, four hundred and, Elder, your robes, there’s blood—”

“The number, Liang Hao.”

“One thousand four hundred and twelve left!”

“Then I’m well within budget. Move aside.”

Calid stepped into the cave and lowered himself against the wall with the careful, controlled descent of a man who was absolutely not collapsing and was merely choosing to sit down at this particular moment for reasons of personal preference. The limestone was still cool and merciful.

The boy with the splinted arm had woken up and was staring at him with the expression of someone who had fallen asleep in one reality and woken up in another that was louder and more confusing. The unconscious girl remained unconscious, which was, at this point, probably the most restful option available to anyone in the cave.

Calid closed his eyes and focused on keeping the armour matrix stable.

The Qi was settling into the spiralling channels with increasing comfort and the reinforcement at his joints had held through the entire engagement without catastrophic failure, which was more than he’d expected and less than he’d hoped.

He opened his eyes.

“Liang Hao.”

“Yes, Elder?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

The boy straightened. The fear was still there, in the white knuckles, the shallow breathing, and the way his eyes kept darting to the cave entrance, but underneath it was the desperate need to be useful.

To do something other than sit in the dark and count.

“The students I sent out earlier. Some of them should be returning soon with anyone they’ve found. I need you at the entrance, watching. When they arrive, bring them inside quietly. No shouting, no names called into the dark. A tap on the wall, four times, then silence. That’s the signal.”

“F-Four taps. Yes, Elder.”

“Good lad.”

Liang Hao moved to the entrance and Calid let his head rest against the limestone and waited.

The first group returned forty minutes later.

Four taps on the wall, hesitant, then silence.

Liang Hao pulled the moss curtain aside and five figures stumbled in, led by a boy whose name Shao Wen’s memories supplied as Chen Yi, an outer disciple who had been assigned to the kitchens before the world ended and was now, by the brutal situation of reality and survival, a scout.

He had four others with him, two girls and two boys, all younger than him. All of them wearing the tattered remains of white robes and looking at the cave interior with the hollow, grateful eyes of people who had been running for hours and had finally found a wall to put their backs against.

One of the girls was carrying another girl on her back.

The carried girl’s left leg was bent at an angle that legs were not designed to achieve.

Calid got up, directed them to the far wall, checked the broken leg with fingers that the armour matrix kept steady, and set it with a compression matrix so small and precise that the girl barely screamed. He tore strips from the cleanest robe he could find and splinted it, working with the efficient, impersonal competence of someone who had treated battlefield injuries before and preferred not to think about when.

The second group arrived twenty minutes after the first.

Seven this time, led by a foundation establishment cultivator named Duan Rong who was missing most of his left ear and all of his composure. He was carrying a boy who wasn’t moving, and when Calid checked, the boy’s pulse was there but faint, a thread of life that was fraying at both ends. He had internal injuries and Qi deviation from a technique that had been interrupted mid-execution, probably by the same attack that had taken Duan Rong’s ear.

Calid stabilised what he could, but he knew it wasn’t enough.

It was never enough, in situations like this, but it was what they currently had.

The third group was Lin Mei’s.

She came through the moss curtain with eleven disciples behind her, her sword still in her hand and jaw still set in that wire-tight clench that Calid was beginning to suspect was less a temporary expression and more a permanent feature. Her robes were torn in new places and there was blood on her blade that wasn’t hers.

She bowed, fast and sharp. “Elder, I found them scattered along the southern ridge. There are more. I’m going back.”

“How many more?”

“I don’t know. I could hear them in the trees, the gullies. Some of them are hiding while others are—” Her voice caught, but she killed it before it could crack and show any emption. “Some of them are being hunted.”

“Take two with you, foundation stage if any are able.”

“Duan Rong can barely stand—”

“Then take the best of what you have and bring back what you can. Don’t engage unless cornered. The demonic sweep teams are operating in groups of four, mid-stage Qi Condensation, staggered formation, sixty-yard front. They signal when they lose contact with a member. You have perhaps an hour before the next line reaches this area.”

Lin Mei stared at him. “How do you know their formation patterns?”

“I had a conversation with four of them. It was brief and one-sided. Go now, you don’t have much time.”

She went.

Among the eleven she’d brought was a girl who moved through the cave entrance with no wasted motion or sound. Calid watched the a fluid transition from outside to inside that made the moss curtain seem like it had parted of its own volition out of professional courtesy.

Lin Shui.

Calid immediately remembered.

Shao Wen’s memories lit up with recognition so intense it bordered on physical sensation. Lin Mei’s younger sister, fifteen years old and a sword disciple. The word genius appeared in the memories several times, always accompanied by the particular mixture of pride and concern that teachers reserved for students whose talent outpaced their judgment.

She was carrying a sword that was too clean for the evening’s events, which meant she’d wiped it recently.

It also meant she’d used it recently.

Her eyes found Calid across the cave. She studied him for a few seconds with an intensity that had nothing to do with deference and everything to do with assessment. Then she nodded, once and sat down against the wall nearest the entrance, her sword across her knees, her back straight, her eyes on the moss curtain.

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She closed her eyes in a meditative pose and didn’t speak.

Calid got the distinct impression that this was not unusual for her because everyone gave her a wide berth.

The hours passed.

Lin Mei went out a few more times. Each time she returned with more disciples, more injured. Some with hollow eyes and trembling hands and others with the particular silence of young people who had learned something about the world that they would spend the rest of their lives trying to unlearn.

Other groups filtered in, scouts he’d sent along different vectors, returning with clusters of survivors they’d found hiding in root hollows, under fallen trunks, bushes, and in a streambed where the water had masked their Qi signatures from the sweep teams.

The cave held fifty-seven people by the time the sky outside the cave began to lighten from black to the deep grey that preceded dawn.

Calid counted them twice, because the first count had seemed too high and the second count confirmed that it was exactly as high as he’d feared.