The jade tablet in the Ancestral Hall of the Blazing-Cauldron Sect did not shatter. Shattering indicated death, a violent rupture of the soul-flame that coated the chamber walls in ash. Instead, Gongsun Ye’s life-slip simply stopped casting a shadow. Elder Tao of the Blazing-Cauldron Sect held the thin green slate up to the noon sun, turning it end over end. It possessed no thickness. Viewed from the front, it bore Gongsun Ye’s blood-carved signature; viewed from the edge, it vanished entirely into thin air. He brought it before Patriarch Kuang Ren within the hour, dropping it onto the heavy cedar meeting desk with a clatter that sounded like dry mica flakes. "The boy has been abducted by an elder demon of the Void-Splitting realm," Elder Tao hissed, his scorched-beard whiskers twitching with volcanic fury. "A space-devouring array. An invisible maw! We searched his private quarters, his training courtyard, even the brothels down in South Ferry. Nothing. The boy was dissolved into a conceptual snare!" Patriarch Kuang Ren leaned forward, his graying topknot bristling. He prodded the paper-thin life-slip with a finger armored in golden earth-qi. It slid across the grain of the desk with no resistance, as light as a dried locust wing. "First, the sky itself loses an entire tribulation cloud over the outer western bluffs," Kuang Ren murmured, rubbing his temples where a dull ache throbbed. "Now, the premier seed of our roster is flattened into a shadow-curse without an ounce of stray spiritual residue left behind. Elder Tao, sound the iron bell. Double the sentries at the academy gates. A foreign patriarch walks our corridors in plain cloth, executing invisible strikes. Search every subterranean cavern, every array cellar, every forgotten crypt." "And the Myriad Scroll Repository?" Tao demanded. "He was seen walking toward the outer edge of the archives to inspect the demolition site!" Kuang Ren waved an impatient hand. "I visited that rat-hole yesterday. An octogenarian with ink stains on his cuticles and a mute girl suffering from vellum-rot. There isn’t enough spiritual essence in that building to kindle a pipe. Do not waste manpower rummaging through mortal rot while an assassin strips our prodigies from the mortal plane. Go!" *** In the quiet kitchen corner of the Myriad Scroll Repository, water bubbled lazily over a low charcoal brazier. Su Zhiqiu sat upon a low stool, an apron of bleached linen tied over her faded gray robes. On the table lay an open text: *One Hundred Recipes for Pickled Wild Mustards*, its cover gnawed by silverfish long before she was born. Between pages forty-two and forty-three stuck a sliver of cinnabar silk. Zhiqiu reached out, hooked two fingers under the corner of the stiff, colorful bookmark, and lifted it. Gongsun Ye’s flattened face gazed out from the rectangular strip with silent, two-dimensional indignation. The details were remarkably vivid; she could distinctly see the tiny gold phoenix embroidered upon his collar and the tiny mole beside his left nostril. He was delightfully rigid, possessed of a sturdy cardstock consistency that resisted the ambient moisture of boiling cabbage. "Quite an improvement over the rat," she said to herself, using the flattened prodigy to mark page fifty-eight—*Brined Bitter Melons with Fermented Soy*. She smoothed him flat against the open pages, closed the heavy vellum covers with a soft thud, and returned to chopping scallions. The brass knife moved in a steady rhythm, click-clack, clicking against the pear-wood board. Old Wen emerged from the deep aisle of historical tax ledgers, carrying an unpeeled turnip and a folded parchment sealed with red academy wax. He walked with the slow, shuffling gait of a man whose lower back had negotiated an uneasy peace with gravity several centuries ago. "Zhiqiu," he said, tapping the parchment against his hip. She wiped her hands on her apron and turned. "Yes, Master Wen?" "A runner dropped this under the garden latch half an incense stick ago." Old Wen laid the scroll upon the clean edge of the table, avoiding a stray ring of scallion. "It appears to be an official summons for the Preliminary Ring-Matches of the Autumn Dragon Meet." Zhiqiu paused, her knife hovering. "The meet? But Master Wen, my meridians are dried vellum. The outer sect discarded me three weeks ago. Only initiates registered under an active cultivation hall are permitted on the sands." "Precisely," Wen said, picking up the heavy oxhide dictionary from the neighboring shelf to check its alignment with the edge of the desk. Finding it out by three millimeters, he nudged it back with his thumb. "However, the clerk who drew up the roster neglected to cross-reference your dismissal form with the academy's central ledger before the third quarter closed. In the eyes of the Registrar's Bureau, you remain a registered student, defaulted into the open-entry pool. You owe twelve silver pieces in unpaid arena-maintenance levies if you do not present yourself." "Can we not simply submit an exemption?" Old Wen sighed. The sound was ancient, dry, and laden with the soul-crushing weariness of a bureaucrat who had once spent three hundred years arguing with the Jade Court over whether a thunderclap belonged in the *Atmospheric Disturbances* or *Nocturnal Disturbances* ledger. "To file an exemption post-deadline requires Form 8-B, signed by three Elders of the Hall of Rectitude, followed by a formal petition stamped by the Grand Chancellor. The line at the front wicket currently stretches around the eastern moat. It would take four days. Four days of standing in the wind while adolescent sword-fanatics yell about honor and spit on the cobbles. Absolutely unacceptable. It interrupts the binding of the Southern Chu agricultural rolls." "Then... what should I do?" "Go to the sands," Wen said placidly, fishing a flat piece of polished ox-bone from his wide sleeve. It was a bone folder, five inches long, worn smooth by years of pressing creases into stubborn manuscripts. "Stand in the perimeter circle. When the bell sounds, present your presence so the ink marks the register. Then step outside the chalk boundary. You will be disqualified for desertion, your file will receive a standard red nullification stamp, and we may return to the cabbage by noon." He handed her the bone folder. "Keep this in your sleeve. The humidity near the southern arena is foul; if you encounter loose corner-folds on the sign-in book, press them down properly before you affix your signature. The clerks use miserable flour-paste that curls at the slightest heat." Zhiqiu took the smooth bone tool. It felt cool and reassuring against her palm, balanced perfectly like a familiar pencil. "Step into the ring, get disqualified, mark the book, come home?" "And do not touch the arena carpets with muddy boots," Wen added, already turning back toward the dim corridor of ledgers. "They never air out the wool properly, and the dust drifts into our eastern windows." *** Beneath the mid-morning sun, the Grand Sovereign Arena shook with the roar of twenty thousand spectators. Tiered stone benches rose toward the azure sky, packed with spectators waving sect banners, drinking spiced plum wine, and shouting wagers. The central pit, paved with reinforced basalt slabs, bore the scorched scars of previous clashes. In the stone gallery perched above the royal box, Patriarch Kuang Ren sat alongside the furrowed-brow elders of the Blazing-Cauldron Sect. Kuang Ren barely watched the junior fighters battling below. His gaze constantly swept the high perimeter walls, his golden divine sense pulsing through the flagstones, searching for any ripple of spatial folding, any trace of the invisible demon who had stolen Gongsun Ye from the mortal world. "Ring Seven, Match Fourteen!" the arena arbiter bellowed, his voice amplified by an echo-bell that made the stone railings hum. "Bao Hu of the Iron-Gale Hall versus... Su Zhiqiu of the Independent Registry!" Down on the western ramp, Bao Hu stepped out. He was a mountain of a youth, broad-shouldered, stripped to the waist, his skin stained a deep bronze from daily bathing in crushed iron-slug marrow. His aura roared outward, a fierce third-tier foundation-establishment gale that rustled the robes of the front-row spectators. In his right hand, he spun a spiked iron cudgel that weighed eighty catties, whistling viciously through the air. From the opposite gate emerged a girl in faded gray hemp. She squinted against the bright sunlight, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her sleeves were neatly pinned with cedar clips to keep them from trailing in dirt, and she carried no sword, no talismans, and not a trace of spiritual aura. In her left hand, held loosely like a carpenter holding a ruler, was a mundane piece of white bone.

A Misplaced Prodigy and the Tournament's Eve