Chains Of Eternity: Defiling Heaven

Who is the Thief?

Nobody believed him.

"Early Qi Refining?" Lu Heng's eyes narrowed. "Impossible, just yesterday you didn’t even have a spirit core, so how? That’s just impossible!" He sent out a thread of spiritual sense, and his brows rose. Deep in Xiao Meng's lower dantian, thin as a strand of spider silk but unmistakably real, a thread of qi was turning. "...It’s impossible, just what demonic technigue did you use."

"Demonic technique? Is it so hard?" Xiao Meng asked. "To become a Qi Refining cultivator?"

The guards burst out laughing.

"Hard?" one wheezed. "First you temper the flesh, that's Body Refining. Then you open the meridians, sense the qi of heaven and earth, and draw it into your dantian. Most men spend years on that threshold, and plenty never cross it."

"Even a gifted child needs two or three years," another added.

"Only prodigies and exceptions do it faster," Qingyue said, folding her arms. "And I have tutors, pills, and a spirit spring, and I'm still in early Body Refining after two years! Brother Xiao, you cheated!"

"Cheated?" Xiao Meng was honestly confused

"You must use a demonic technique! No one does it in one night!"

There was silence, it was true only those related to the demonic path could raise there stats this quickly and unknow nobody like Xiao Meng fitted that category.

“Liars! Brother Xiao isn’t part of the demonic sect!” Qingyue defended him, stretching her hands to shield him, “nobody this handsome can belong to the demonic sect!

Nobody moved, they watched, even guards began unsheathing their blades.

“That is enough, the technique Xiao Meng used I gave it to him, unless you mean the Su techniques belong to the demonic path then drop the accusation!”

“But master, how do you explain how quickly he improved!” Lu Heng complained.

“Lu Heng, we have been in the, national academy and have watched geniuses improve even faster, are you trying to say all of them belonged to the demonic path?”

“That is right!!” Qingyue folded her hands, puffing as she raise airs around her, “Brother Xiao is a genius!!”

There was silence then murmurs amongst the guards.

Lu Heng turned to Su Beichen. "Master, this is all very well, but there is still the matter of the horse and the jars...."

"The tracks lead from the east postern straight toward the canyon," Zhao Bao, a broad-faced guard, pressed. "Who else but him?"

Su Beichen's fingers drummed his sleeve. "Let the boy speak."

Xiao Meng was confused, he did overhear it but didn’t quite catch what they were accusing him off, so he looked at Qingyue.

“Don’t look at the young miss, you are the thief, plain and simple,” Zhao Bao roared.

“At least show me your evidence before accusing me, I think I do have a right to defend myself,”

On Su Beichen order, they headed to the east postern, it was a narrow door in the manor's rear wall, barred from the inside with a beam of black iron. Beyond it, in the red dust, ran a neat line of hoofprints toward the canyon.

"There," Zhao Bao said triumphantly. "The thief rode out through this door."

Xiao Meng crouched. Something cool and orderly stirred in his mind, like a lamp being lit in a room he had forgotten he owned, and for one breath he felt a shiver of surprise. Where did I learn to look like this? But the lamp did not go out, so he followed its light.

"Little sister," he said, "listen, and tell me what you think."

A door that never woke, yet a horse has passed.

A bar that never lifted, yet a hoof has left.

Two voices tell two tales, and one of them is lying.

Which one is lying?

Qingyue screwed up her face, counting on her fingers. "The door is barred from within. The bar is untouched. So the door can't be lying, because a door has no mouth to lie with. It's the hoofprints!"

"And why?"

"Because hooves can be painted on the ground by anyone, and a door can't be fooled!"

"Wise little sister," Xiao Meng said gravely, and she flushed to her ears.

Lu Heng frowned. "A thief might have broken the bar and repaired it."

"A bar mended by hand leaves a scar in the iron, and a formation broken in the dark screams like a woken child, but look." Xiao Meng pointed to the upper corner, where a spider's thread stretched silvery and unbroken across the door and the beam. "The spider spent last night sleeping. This door never opened."

There was a short silence.

"Then explain the hoofprints," Zhao Bao muttered.

"Gladly." Xiao Meng walked along the line, step by step. "Behold how they begin. They have no mother, for they spring from a wall without a gate. They have no weight, for a horse that carries a rider and three heavy jars would press its hooves deep and drag them at the end of each stride, yet every print here lies crisp as a seal in wax, all four feet sunk to the same depth, as though someone pressed a stamp into the dust by hand. These are not hooves that walked away. These are hooves that were drawn to be seen."

"Too clever," Zhao Bao scoffed. "A convenient story for a man with no name."

"Then I shall tell you a less convenient one." Xiao Meng turned to Qingyue again.

Three jars, heavy as sleeping men,

vanished from a courtyard where a hundred ears sleep lightly,

without a cart, without a creak.

What carries a weight that no one dares to look inside?

Qingyue's nose wrinkled. "A coffin? No. A... oh!" Her eyes lit. "A dung barrow! No one ever looks into a dung barrow!"

Several guards began to laugh, Xiao Meng did not.

"Dung barrows leave at dawn," Lu Heng objected. "If the jars were in one, they would already be gone."

"The steward who showed me my room grumbled that the dung is hauled out only every third day, and the barrow still stands full beside the stables." Xiao Meng's tone did not change. "What leaves on the third day cannot leave on the second, and a thief who is clever enough to paint hooves is clever enough to know it."

Lu Heng's jaw tightened, but he said nothing more.

"Exactly. The false hoofprints exist to make us stare toward the canyon, while the true treasure sleeps behind our own backs. If the jars had truly left, the thief would have no need to paint a road for us. He painted it because the jars have not left. They are still within these walls, buried beneath the one thing every man in this manor would sooner run from than touch."

"The compost yard behind the stables," Su Beichen murmured. His eyes had sharpened.

"Now think, little sister, and tell me who can do all this."

A hand that shapes the shoe of a horse,

and a hand that guards the door by night.

Only two hands could have drawn the road and lifted the jars.

Whose are they?

"The stable keeper," Qingyue said slowly, "who has the iron shoes and the dung barrow, and the watchman of the east postern last night, who..." She glanced at Zhao Bao. "...was you."

Old Qian, the stable keeper, dropped to his knees and wailed. Zhao Bao went red to the ears.

"Absurd! You accuse me on the word of a mad foundling?"

"I accuse no one," Xiao Meng said softly. "A name is only a shadow, and a shadow follows the light, so let us simply keep the lamp burning." He lifted his gaze. "Tell me, Zhao Bao. At dawn, when Miss Su asked after me, you were the first to answer. What did you say?"

"That you had run off..."