Stage two was different.
Not worse exactly. Different in the way a larger fire is different from a smaller one. The principle is the same. The scale changes everything.
The forearm had twelve bones if you counted the radius and ulna as separate objects and included the small articulating bones at the wrist junction. The Black Bone Scripture was precise about the order. Start at the wrist end. Work toward the elbow. Do not attempt both arms simultaneously until the second attempt.
He read that instruction three times.
'Second attempt,' he noted. 'Implying there is a first attempt that goes poorly enough to require a second.'
He started on the right wrist.
The first three days of stage two were not productive.
The first day he got through four bones before the spiritual pressure required to hold the alignment exceeded what he could sustain and the reconstruction went wrong. Not catastrophically. The bones re-fused in approximately the correct configuration. Approximately was a problem the Scripture was clear about.
He broke them again and redid it.
The second day he managed six bones before the same problem.
The third day he sat in the cave and did not practice and instead read the relevant section of the Scripture four times until he understood what he had been doing incorrectly.
The spiritual pressure needed to sustain alignment was not supposed to be constant. It was supposed to cycle. A pulse, like a heartbeat, timed to the body's own reconstruction rhythm. Fighting the reconstruction with steady pressure was why he kept losing control. He needed to breathe with it instead of against it.
He tried again on the fourth day.
Eight bones. Clean.
He lay on the sleeping mat afterward and stared at the ceiling and breathed carefully for a long time.
'Progress,' he decided.
On the fifteenth day Pei Suihua knocked on his cave door.
Not tentatively. Three knocks, evenly spaced, the pattern of someone who had already decided they were coming in and was performing the courtesy of knocking as a professional formality.
He opened the door.
She looked at his right arm, which he had not bothered to cover, and the faint grey discoloration visible at the wrist where the bone quality had changed.
She said nothing about it.
"Ma Songhe was taken this morning," she said instead. "Elder Hu Wanzhong's tributaries. Unpaid fees, officially. He is being held in the tributary house on the eastern slope."
He processed that. "How much does he owe."
"Nothing. He paid three weeks in advance." She looked at him steadily. "Someone told Hu Wanzhong's people that he was running an information trade. The same information trade he has been running for two years without anyone apparently noticing."
"Someone decided he was more valuable as leverage than as an independent operator."
"Yes." A pause. "He has information I need. He also has information I suspect you need."
He considered the eastern tributary house. Hu Wanzhong's operation ran four tributaries at full-time capacity. The house itself had a formation on the door, basic but functional, and usually one or two second-year disciples inside as additional deterrence.
Not insurmountable. Noisy though.
"There is a cleaner approach," he said.
Pei Suihua raised an eyebrow slightly.
"Hu Wanzhong took him to create leverage. Which means he wants something from someone who values Ma Songhe. If we go in directly we become the thing he was trying to catch." He leaned against the door frame. "Who did he tell."
She was quiet for a moment. Reassessing something.
"He sent word to three people," she said. "A second-year disciple who uses the information trade regularly. A senior disciple in Elder Cao Mingzhi's orbit. And you."
"He did not send word to you."
"No."
"Because you are the one who runs him and that is not information Hu Wanzhong needs to have."
The corner of her mouth moved. "You are faster than I expected."
"What does Hu Wanzhong actually want."
"The second-year disciple has a cultivation resource that Hu Wanzhong has been trying to acquire for six months. Ma Songhe knowing the disciple's location and habits makes him useful as bait." She paused. "The second-year disciple is named Chu Feng. He has been avoiding Hu Wanzhong's tributaries for six months with a competence that suggests he knows exactly what they want and has been planning for this specific situation."
He turned that over.
'Chu Feng has been evading a Foundation Building cultivator's tributary network for six months using Qi Condensation cultivation,' he noted. 'Either he has backing he has not made visible or he is considerably more capable than his level suggests.'
"What resource does Hu Wanzhong want from him."
"A demonic beast core. Third tier. Chu Feng found it in a mission six months ago and has been sitting on it." She looked at him. "A third tier core at his level is either very good luck or very deliberate planning."
Yan Mochen's memories stirred faintly.
He filed it for later.
"Find Chu Feng before Hu Wanzhong's people do," he said. "Tell him what is happening. He already knows to run. Give him a reason to deal instead."
"What do we offer him."
"Ask him what he needs." He pushed off the door frame. "He has been alone in this for six months. Someone showing up who is not trying to take the core from him is already unusual enough to be interesting."
Pei Suihua looked at him for a moment with the specific expression of someone revising an estimate.
"I will find him," she said.
She left.
He went back inside and picked up the Scripture.
Chu Feng was seventeen years old and had the eyes of someone significantly older.
He sat in the northern slope water source clearing that evening with Pei Suihua on one side and Wei Liang on the other and a third-tier demonic beast core in his inner robe and the posture of someone who had rehearsed multiple versions of this conversation and was waiting to see which one was actually happening.
'Flesh Hall,' he noted from the boy's posture and the faint residue of technique on his hands. 'But not recently. Former affiliate, current independent. Which explains the six months of careful evasion.'
He let Pei Suihua talk first. She explained the Ma Songhe situation cleanly and without editorializing.
Chu Feng listened without interrupting.
When she finished he said, "What do you want from me."
Not what do you want for me. What do you want from me.
'Practical,' he noted. 'He understands this is a transaction, not a rescue.'
"Information," he said. "About the Flesh Hall. About why you left and what you took when you went."
Chu Feng was quiet for a moment.
"I did not take anything from the Flesh Hall," he said carefully.
"The core," he said. "You found it on a mission six months ago. The same month you cut your Flesh Hall affiliation. I am not asking you to confirm that the core is connected to that affiliation. I am asking you to tell me what you learned about the Flesh Hall in the time you were affiliated with it."
A long pause.
The water source moved quietly beside them.
"Why," Chu Feng said finally.
"Because I need a map of how this peak actually works," he said. "Not the official one."
Chu Feng looked at him. Then at Pei Suihua. Then back.
"You have been here seventeen days," he said. "You killed Shen Yue on day one."
He said nothing.
"Shen Yue worked for Wei Chuan. Wei Chuan works for Elder Fang Renhe's outer network. Nobody has touched you since." Chu Feng tilted his head slightly. "Fang Renhe should have moved on you by now. He moves on everyone who disrupts his network."
"And yet."
"And yet." The boy looked at the water. "That is interesting."
It was, in fact, interesting. He had noted it himself. Fang Renhe's silence after Shen Yue's death was either a decision to wait and watch or evidence that Shen Yue's connection to his network had been more deniable than usual. He had not been able to determine which.
"I will tell you what I know about the Flesh Hall," Chu Feng said at last. "In exchange for help with Hu Wanzhong. Not fighting him. I do not want a fight. I want the situation to go away quietly."
"Agreed."
Chu Feng reached into his robe. He did not produce the core. He produced a folded piece of paper covered in small dense writing and held it for a moment before setting it on the stone between them.
"The Flesh Hall's outer sect operation runs through seven senior disciples on this peak. Three of them also work for Elder Cao Mingzhi. Two of those three do not know they work for both. Wei Chuan knows everything and is the actual operational center, not the senior disciple who officially runs the outer affiliate." A pause. "Wei Chuan has been on this peak for four years. His official cultivation level is mid Foundation Building. His actual cultivation level is late Foundation Building. He has been concealing the difference for fourteen months."
He looked at the paper.
'Someone who has been on a peak four years and is concealing a cultivation advancement,' he noted. 'Concealing advancement meant concealing resources. Concealing resources meant concealing something about how those resources were acquired.'
"Why is he hiding it," Pei Suihua said.
"Because the technique he used to advance is not registered with the peak's Elder council," Chu Feng said flatly. "It came from outside. From the inner sect. Someone in the inner sect gave Wei Chuan a technique and resources in exchange for something Wei Chuan is providing from the outer sect."
He was quiet for a moment.
'Inner sect reaching into the outer sect through an unregistered channel,' he noted. 'Bypassing the outer sect Elders. Whatever Wei Chuan is providing, the inner sect party does not want the Elders to know about the arrangement.'
"What is he providing," he said.
Chu Feng looked at him directly. "Disciples. Specifically, new disciples with unusual characteristics. Spiritual anomalies, uncommon constitution types, specific fate-markers." He paused. "I was on the list. That is why I left."
The water source moved.
Pei Suihua's expression had not changed. He noted that her hands were very still.
'She already knew some of this,' he thought. 'Or suspected it. This is confirmation, not revelation.'
He picked up Chu Feng's paper and folded it into his inner robe.
"The Ma Songhe situation," he said. "I will handle it tonight. You will not be connected to it."
Chu Feng studied him for another moment.
"You are not from this world originally," he said.
The night sounds continued around them. The water moved. Somewhere down the slope a disciple was practicing a technique that crackled faintly against the dark.
He looked at Chu Feng with a neutral expression and said nothing.
Chu Feng looked back at him for a long moment.
Then he looked away.
"Ma Songhe will be in the secondary room," he said. "Not the main holding area. Hu Wanzhong's tributaries keep the complicated ones separate." He stood. "The secondary room has a ventilation gap on the north side. The formation on it is newer than the one on the door and the person who set it made a mistake at the third anchor point."
He filed that.
"Thank you," he said.
Chu Feng left without responding.
Pei Suihua watched him go. "He knows more than he said."
"Yes."
"He will be back."
"Yes," he agreed. "When he decides we are more useful than we are dangerous."
She considered that. "Are we."
He thought about Wei Chuan and the inner sect arrangement and the list of disciples with unusual characteristics and Rong Bai's immaculate record and the line Fang Renhe had been watching for eleven years that had not been there before he arrived.
"Not yet," he said honestly. "We are working on it."
He retrieved Ma Songhe at the second hour of night.
The ventilation gap was exactly where Chu Feng said it would be. The formation's third anchor point had a flaw that took him four minutes to identify and thirty seconds to temporarily suppress. The secondary room had two senior disciples in it who were both asleep, which was a professional failing on their part and a convenience on his.
Ma Songhe was sitting against the back wall with his wrists tied and an expression of profound personal resentment.
He cut the ties.
Ma Songhe looked at him. Then at the sleeping senior disciples. Then at the suppressed formation gap.
"You are not who I thought you were," he said very quietly.
"Who did you think I was."
"A new disciple with slightly better instincts than average."
He helped Ma Songhe to his feet. "Go to Pei Suihua. Stay there until morning."
Ma Songhe moved toward the gap and then stopped.
"Wei Chuan is going to know someone came in here," he murmured.
"Yes."
"He will not assume it was a new disciple."
"No," he agreed. "He will assume it was someone with the capability to suppress a formation and move past two senior disciples without waking them. He will spend the next several days trying to figure out who on this peak has that capability." A pause. "That is useful information for me to have about what he suspects."
Ma Songhe looked at him in the dark for a moment.
Then he went through the gap.
He restored the formation's anchor point carefully. Left the room exactly as he had found it. Took the same route back across the lower slope in the dark.
The cave was quiet when he returned.
He lay down on the sleeping mat and looked at the ceiling and thought about a list of new disciples with unusual characteristics, and an inner sect party who wanted them delivered quietly, and Rong Bai's two-year immaculate record, and the bamboo leaning against the wall with its invisible line trailing into somewhere else.
He thought about all of it for a while.
Then he closed his eyes.
Stage two tomorrow.