Panic was a cold hand closing around Li Ming's throat. The torchlight from above painted shifting, monstrous shadows on the curved walls, exposing him. The grinding of a pulley echoed in the stone chamber as a large basket began its jerky descent from the hatch. He could hear the creak of ropes, the mutter of guards, the click of crossbows being armed.
They would see him. A blind, soaking wet boy standing over the body of their most infamous prisoner. There would be no questions, only bolts.
Think. Feel.
He forced his breathing to slow, clutching the ironwood badger. The massive new echo of the Still Iron Body Art sat in his spirit, a block of silent, heavy potential. It wasn't a voice; it was a state. A memory of absolute, unyielding solidity.
"You cannot fight them," Bai's voice was urgent. "Nor can you outrun them up that pipe. They will fill this pit with bolts."
The basket was halfway down, two guards silhouetted against the light, peering into the gloom.
"The Art you carry," the Silent Abbot's calm cut through the fear. "It is not just for defense. At its peak, it is unity with the unmoving. You are not separate from the stone, Keeper. Be the stone they do not see."
It was madness. He wasn't a cultivator. He couldn't perform techniques. But the Archive didn't hold instructions, it held essence. The ghost of the Still Iron Art wasn't speaking, but its memory, its very nature, was now a part of the psychic space he inhabited.
He didn't try to activate it. He invited it.
He focused on the feeling of the pit wall against his back. The cold, seamless blackstone. He imagined his own spirit matching its frequency, its utter inertness. He wasn't hiding behind the wall; he was asking to be the wall.
The heavy, silent echo within him stirred. Not lending him power, but shading his presence. It was like a spiritual camouflage, drawing the essence of stillness from the prison itself and wrapping it around him like a cloak.
He pressed himself flat against the curve of the wall, right next to the opening of the foul drainpipe. He stopped breathing.
The basket thumped into the shallow water. Torchlight flared, illuminating the pathetic form of the dead prisoner chained to the pillar.
"By the Serpent's tooth... he's finally gone," one guard grunted, poking the body with his boot.
"Good riddance. Fifty years of that damned vibration shaking the whole lower bastion. Check the seals."
The other guard knelt, inspecting the manacles. "Seals are intact. He didn't break out. Just... wore out." He stood, shining his torch around the pit. The light passed over Li Ming.
Li Ming didn't flinch. He held the image of being a seam in the stone, a natural irregularity. The Still Iron echo hummed in tune with the prison's own qi-dampening field. To the guards' spiritual senses, dulled by the environment and their own low cultivation, he was just another patch of cold, dead rock.
The torch beam moved on.
"Nothing. Just the corpse. Smells worse than usual. Let's get him up and burned. The Elder will want confirmation."
They roughly unchained the shriveled body, heaved it into the basket, and gave a signal. The basket began to rise. The torchlight receded, climbing with it.
The hatch closed with a definitive boom, plunging the pit back into near-total darkness, save for the sickly fungus glow.
Li Ming remained pressed against the wall for another fifty breaths, his heart slamming against his ribs. The echo of Still Iron receded, leaving him feeling drained and strangely hollow.
He had done it. He had become invisible.
"…well, I'll be a drunken donkey… that was colder than a cellar shadow… " Zhao's echo muttered, impressed.
"A clever use," Lady Silken Death conceded. "You borrowed the prison's own nature. A thief in the house of stillness."
There was no time for relief. They would be back, or others would come. He had to move.
He turned and felt for the drainpipe opening. It was a vertical shaft, slick and narrow. He had dropped down it. Climbing up was a different matter.
He reached into the pipe, feeling for handholds. The stone was slimy, but ancient mortar between blocks provided tiny, crumbling ledges. He took a deep breath, put the ironwood badger between his teeth, and began to climb.
It was a nightmare of strain and terror. His fingers, numb with cold, scrabbled for purchase. His toes slipped on the wet stone. He moved by inches, his muscles screaming. Below him was a twenty-foot drop to the pit floor. Above was only darkness and the faint, distant sound of dripping water.
He climbed for an eternity. The world shrank to the next fingerhold, the next toehold. The cold seeped into his bones. His arms trembled with exhaustion.
Finally, his searching hand found not another slimy block, but the rough, horizontal edge of the drain channel he had originally crawled through. He hauled himself into the blessed, relatively open space, collapsing onto his stomach, gasping and shivering.
He was out of the pit. But he was still deep inside the Iron Bastion.
He lay there until his breathing steadied. He needed a new plan. He couldn't retrace his path, the outer grate was broken, and light might now be shining into that shaft from the pit below, drawing attention. He had to find another way out.
He began to crawl again, following the main flow of the foul water. The channel grew larger, joining others. The sound of dripping water was joined by new sounds echoing through the pipes: distant, muffled footsteps, the clang of metal, occasional gruff voices. The prison was awake.
He reached a junction where several channels met, emptying into a slightly larger culvert. Here, a faint, cool draft flowed, different from the stagnant air. It came from a vertical shaft to his left, covered by a heavy iron grate. But this grate was intact, and beyond it, he could hear the unmistakable, free sound of wind. Outside air.
It was a storm drain outlet. His way out.
But the grate was solid, the bars thick. He pushed against it. It didn't budge. He was trapped in the sewer, with freedom just a few feet away.
"The Still Iron memory is of density, of immovability," Bai mused. "But pressure, applied correctly, can break even iron. You do not have the strength. But you have a ghost who understands imbalance and misdirection."
Li Ming understood. He focused inward, not on the heavy, silent block of Still Iron, but on the chaotic, stumbling presence of the Drunken God's Steps.
"...you need a push, boy? A little... off-kilter leverage?" Zhao's echo chuckled.
Li Ming didn't try to perform the style. He let its essence color his intent. He placed his hands on two adjacent bars of the grate, not in the center, but low and high. He didn't push straight out. He imagined his push as a stagger, a falling twist. He pushed and turned, putting his meager weight into a corkscrewing motion that was all wrong for straight strength, but perfectly right for exploiting weakness.
The grate groaned. Rust flaked away. One bar, weakened by decades of damp and neglect, bent slightly. Then, with a shriek of tortured metal, the entire grate tore free from its moorings on one side, swinging outward like a twisted door.
The rush of cold, clean night air was the sweetest thing Li Ming had ever felt. He scrambled through the opening, tumbling out onto a steep, rocky slope littered with scree. He was on the mountainside, well below the main walls of the Bastion. The fortress loomed above him, dark and silent.
He was out.
But he wasn't safe. He was on the wrong side of the mountain from Mirror Lake, exhausted, soaked, and leaving a clear trail of wet footprints and disturbed stone. Dawn was not far off; the sky to the east was a deep charcoal grey.
He had to move. He oriented himself by the feel of the slope and the memory of the pull that had led him here. Mirror Lake was east and south, back through the forest at the mountain's base.
He half-slid, half-ran down the treacherous scree slope, his feet skidding on loose rock. Every sound seemed amplified in the pre-dawn stillness. He reached the treeline and plunged into the blessed cover of the forest.
He ran until his lungs burned and his legs gave way, collapsing against the broad trunk of an ancient pine. He listened. No shouts. No sounds of pursuit. The Bastion had not yet noticed the broken grate, or they didn't care about a minor drainage issue when they had a dead legend to dispose of.
As he sat there, panting, a new sensation bloomed in the Archive's psychic space. The heavy, silent block of the Still Iron Art was... shifting. It wasn't speaking, but it was presenting itself. He felt a sudden, instinctive understanding.
He looked down at his own hand, still scratched and filthy from the climb. He focused on the memory of the wall, of the unyielding stone. He let the echo shade his spirit again, but this time, he directed it not to hide, but to harden.
He didn't become as strong as the Wall of the West. But the trembling exhaustion in his muscles lessened. The ache in his bones dulled. A faint, cool solidity settled into his limbs, not granting strength, but granting endurance. The ability to keep going, to be unmoved by fatigue.
It was a fragment, a whisper of the Art's true power, but it was real. The echo was not just a memory to be stored; it was a tool he could learn to use.
He pushed himself to his feet. The forest was still dark. Mirror Lake was far.
But he was the Keeper. He carried a mountain's stillness within him now. He took a deep breath of the pine-scented air, turned his face toward the growing light in the east, and began to walk, his steps firmer, quieter, more sure than they had ever been before.