Chapter 19: Weaving a Web in the Deep Underground
Before long, all twenty-three laborers along with Li Shun were brought up into the Changle Marquis's aerial mansion.
The Changle Marquis sat in the high seat of the main hall, her figure concealed behind layer upon layer of pearl-bead curtains.
She looked at the hollow-cheeked, bone-thin assembly of laborers before her and with an expression of perfect indifference, gave a quiet unhurried clap.
Plate after plate of exquisite food was then carried out by handmaids in a flowing, continuous stream.
"Eat." The Changle Marquis's clear, cool voice drifted through the curtains.
At first, every person was held frozen by the invisible aura of grandeur and authority that emanated from the Marquis's direction, not daring to move. But that resolve did not long survive the sight and smell of food so extraordinary none of them had ever encountered anything like it. After a brief standoff, they gave in and began to eat with everything they had.
"This has the look of a last meal." Li Shun thought secretly while his mouth kept moving.
Unlike the ordinary food available on the street, the dishes granted by the Changle Marquis were perfect in color, fragrance, and flavor — and once swallowed, they dissolved into warm, steady currents that spread through every limb and every bone, as though the whole body were submerged in heated water, suffused with wellbeing.
This peculiar warmth produced in Li Shun the half-formed illusion that he had grown younger simply from eating a single meal.
When his eye swept incidentally across the other laborers nearby, something in him went still. "Not an illusion. It's...
"The marks of age are genuinely receding. Something that extends life?"
Li Shun seized the moment and shoveled several more mouthfuls in. "Even for someone of the Changle Marquis's power and resources, a meal like this must cost something considerable. I still don't know what she's dragged this group of laborers here to do..."
Midway through this train of thought, a sensation like needles on the back of his neck made him go still. He became aware that the Changle Marquis's gaze, from beyond the pearl curtains had fallen on him, with a weight that felt almost physical.
His heart lurched. His reaction was immediate.
The vast majority of his consciousness retreated into the Fangcun space in an instant, leaving only the minimum required to continue operating his body, mechanically eating.
A moment later, that oppressively weighty gaze moved away.
"This woman's perception is terrifyingly sharp. Or perhaps is it that those who reach a sufficiently high level of cultivation in Great Qian commonly possess the ability to sense the movements of thought?"
He did not know what level of cultivation the Changle Marquis had reached. But that did not prevent Li Shun from marking this as an urgent warning for himself.
From this point forward, whenever he faced someone of this kind of unfathomable depth he must, as the very first response, bury his spirit sense deep within the Fangcun space.
To keep the many secrets he carried from being exposed.
When the meal was finished, several handmaids silently placed before each person a light, flowing garment of deep red.
"Put these on."
None of the laborers dared refuse. They fumbled themselves into the crimson garments with varying degrees of speed and awkwardness.
"These clothes feel like wearing nothing at all and yet there's a warmth circulating through them on its own."
Li Shun noted it silently as his body settled into the growing heat.
Once all preparations were complete, the heavy doors of the aerial mansion swung open with a low, resonant rumble.
Led by the handmaids in a quiet procession, the laborers stepped uncertainly out of the mansion and looked up. Every face went slack at once.
Sometime during the meal, the flying mansion had silently departed Lengshan County's city entirely. What stretched before them now was the yawning, lightless mouth of a mine tunnel, set deep within a range of cold and forbidding mountains.
"You have eaten well, and you have been clothed with the Langhuan Flame-Robes." The head handmaid surveyed the group and spoke clearly. "Now it is time to render your service to the Marquis.
"Your task is to descend into the mine before you and locate the traces of Lengshan Grass..."
She laid out the assignment with calm thoroughness.
At the words descend into the mine, every laborer's face went a sickly shade of pale. But upon hearing that their task was simply to search for Lengshan Grass, an audible collective exhale moved through the group.
They had spent nearly their whole lives in the company of Lengshan Grass, after all. Its scent was as familiar to them as their own breathing.
Only Li Shun understood clearly that this task was nowhere near so simple.
"I have a surplus of over a hundred stalks myself. Someone of the Changle Marquis's standing would hardly lack for Lengshan Grass. Whatever is hidden in this underground mine, it must be intimately connected to the distribution of the grass." His mind worked with perfect calm.
"You may all rest easy, what you have eaten will sustain you without hunger or thirst for two months. Furthermore, the Marquis has arranged for each of you to be accompanied by a personal lèshì attendant. With them at your side, you will come to no harm."
The moment those words left the head handmaid's mouth, a group of attendants in white robes, each moving with a lightness and grace that made them seem barely substantial, appeared quietly at the side of each laborer.
Most of these men had not been in close proximity to any woman for the better part of their entire lives. Their eyes went immediately and completely fixed, their gazes adhering to the beautiful attendants beside them as though stuck with glue.
"Very well. Begin.
"Should your efforts satisfy the Marquis, she may be in such a pleasant mood when it is done that she gives you these attendants as a reward." The head handmaid's final remark sent a charge of energy through the entire group of old men that made them look as though they'd been struck by lightning, a kind of revitalizing lightning.
The dark, gaping mine entrance before them no longer looked forbidding. It seemed, suddenly, like the gateway to a life of wealth and luxury.
No one needed to be urged. They surged forward and filed in, practically competing to be first.
What the laborers could not perceive, however, was this: as they advanced through the dark passages of the mine, a trail of threads finer than spider-silk, glowing with faint red light, was being laid silently in their wake. The threads appeared to be shed from those crimson Langhuan Flame-Robes they wore.
As the laborers spread deeper and fanned out through the tunnels, those countless red threads wove and spread through the underground, forming a vast and peculiar blood-red web extending inch by inch through the labyrinthine passages beneath Lengshan Mountain.
And meanwhile, in the grand hall of the aerial mansion above, a miniaturized version of this red web hovered before the Changle Marquis, a map-formation that pulsed and moved like a living thing, its threads constantly crawling outward, extending, growing.
Every so often, at the end-point of one of those red threads, a small, faint point of silver-white light would flare briefly into being.
That was the signal transmitted by one of the attendants, indicating that a stalk of Lengshan Grass had been found.
The Changle Marquis's devastating face remained utterly still. She watched the red web spread silently deeper and deeper underground.
...
Ten days later. The thirteenth day of the third month.
Deep inside the mine tunnel.
"Why have you stopped again?" The fine-featured attendant beside Li Shun frowned.
Li Shun bent forward and laughed apologetically. "Please don't take offense, young lady. When you get old, the back goes. Especially in these narrow passages where I'm constantly stooping. I could manage at first, but after so long, I simply can't hold up anymore.
"Besides, the Marquis's orders were to find traces of Lengshan Grass, were they not? We've found and marked five or six stalks in these past days. The pace isn't slow by any measure." Li Shun leaned his back against the cold, damp stone wall, kneading his lower back with one hand while pleading his case with the other.
"But you've done nothing but drift around the upper levels of the mine! You haven't gone any deeper at all!" The attendant said, with barely restrained frustration.
At that, a flicker of quiet light moved through Li Shun's eyes, though his expression arranged itself into one of genuine puzzlement. "Young lady, what do you mean? Our task is to search for Lengshan Grass, why would we need to go deeper underground?"
...