By the time the morning fog rose from the valley floor, Xie Xiaoyue had been crouching in the medicine field for half a shichen.
The Undying Valley's mornings were always like this. The mist climbed the cliff walls inch by inch — first swallowing the dendrobium beds at the lowest point, then rolling over the honeysuckle frames that stood half a person's height, until the whole field dissolved into white and only the tips of a few bamboo stalks remained above the cloud-sea, like masts of ships run aground.
She reached out and parted the leaves of a pinellia plant to examine the colour at the base of the stem. A light rain had fallen in the night; the soil was moist, and the pinellia's tubers had swelled another measure since the last time she'd checked. She pressed one gently with her fingertip — firm and plump. Another half-month and they'd be ready to harvest.
Her knees were numb when she stood. She didn't rush to move. She stood still and swept her gaze across the whole field: the aconite in the far east was struggling, its leaf-tips yellowing — most likely a drainage problem; the agastache in the middle section was growing almost too vigorously, and if she didn't harvest soon it would crowd out the angelica beside it; at the far west, pressed against the cliff face, grew a small patch of heartbreak vine, dark and brooding, faint purple buds just visible through the leaves. From a distance it looked like a viper coiled in the shadows. That was the one her master forbade her to touch. *Your time hasn't come yet*, she'd been told.
Xiaoyue crouched back down and began to loosen the soil around the aconite.
She was quiet when she worked. No humming, no talking to herself. Her hands moved at an unhurried, even pace — one motion, then the next, as though she'd done it a thousand times before. In truth she had done it well more than a thousand times. Six years in the Undying Valley, and she'd turned over every inch of this field. She knew the temperament of every plant: aconite preferred shade and feared waterlogging; pinellia liked moisture and hated direct sun; agastache was undemanding but greedy for space; heartbreak vine asked for nothing — a little soil, a little water, and it would survive, survive harder than anything else around it.
In that respect, she and it were alike.
When the soil was loosened, she straightened up, wiped her hands on her apron, and let her gaze drift toward the mouth of the valley. Two cliffs, a narrow gap between them — no wider than three feet. Looking up from inside, you could see only a thin sliver of sky. Six years of mornings she had looked at that gap. Ash-blue in the early hours. Blinding white at noon. Dark orange at dusk. Nothing at night.
She looked away, and went to the bamboo rack to take a handful of flower petals.
At the far end of the medicine field was a clearing. Six wooden stakes had been driven into the earth at varying heights and uneven intervals. This was where she practised. Xiaoyue took her position — left hand loose at her side, right hand lifting a single petal between two fingers. A dried trumpet-vine blossom, thin as a cicada's wing, its edges soaked in a solution of her own preparation until the hardness of a copper coin.
No opening stance. She flicked her wrist. The petal spun out and thocked into the nearest stake, sinking deep into the wood.
The second followed immediately. This one took a curved trajectory, skirted the first stake, grazed the edge of the second, and lodged in the third.
For the third she switched to her left hand. The petal skimmed close to the ground, then suddenly lifted just before the fourth stake and embedded itself at the top.
Six petals. Six stakes. Six different paths. She had not moved her feet once.
She walked over and pulled them out one by one, examining each carefully. Two had caught on wood fibres and frayed at the edges — they couldn't be reused. She placed them in the leather pouch at her waist: good ones on the left, spent ones on the right.
That disciples of the Undying Valley used flower petals as hidden weapons was a thing outsiders found laughable. Xiaoyue had never found it funny. Petals were light, thin, and silent. Soaked in medicinal liquid, they could heal. Infused with poison, they could kill. Blades were too heavy; needles too narrow. Only a petal occupied that exact space between saving and ending — a single intention's difference, nothing more.
*That is what we call yì yào yì dú*, her master had said once. *Both medicine and poison.*
She untied her apron and hung it on the bamboo rack. She was heading toward the stream to wash her hands when a languid call drifted down from the upper floor of the bamboo building:
"Veratrum. Come up."
Mistress Duanchang's voice.
Xiaoyue answered and climbed the bamboo stairs.
The building was modest — three rooms connected end to end. The innermost was Mistress Duanchang's pharmacy, locked year-round; Xiaoyue had been told since childhood not to enter. The middle room served as a reception hall, though the Undying Valley had never received a guest. The outer room was Xiaoyue's own: a bamboo bed, a shelf of books, an oil lamp. Clean as if water had washed through it.
Mistress Duanchang sat in the bamboo chair of the reception hall. A letter was spread open on the low table before her.
She wore her mask — a face cast in age and severity: high brow ridges, sharp cheekbones, the corners of the mouth pulling faintly downward, the face of a harsh woman of sixty or seventy. Xiaoyue had grown up looking at this mask since the age of six. She had long since stopped finding it strange. Her master did not like to show her face; that was the rule of the Undying Valley. Xiaoyue had never asked why, because her master did not like to answer questions she did not wish to answer.
"Sit."
Xiaoyue sat down across the low table.
Mistress Duanchang did not look up. One long finger tapped a line on the letter. "From the watchers. Take a look."
Xiaoyue took the letter. The script was minuscule — the tiny, precise hand the valley's watchers used for sensitive correspondence, written on a special paper that dissolved in water, leaving no trace once read.
The letter was brief. Two matters.
The first: the Hundred Poisons Compendium had resurfaced. Someone in the jianghu had been employing techniques recorded in its pages. The details were sparse, but at least three sects had reported unusual deaths. The watchers believed that one or more of the Compendium's three volumes — medicine, poison, and technique — had entered circulation.
The second: a widespread and strange illness had broken out in Withered Leaf Town in the Northern Reaches, near the Jin border. The locals were calling it the Dried Corpse Sickness. The afflicted could take no water; their skin cracked and tightened by degrees until, like desiccated wood, they were simply gone. Dozens dead within two months; half the town sick. The imperial court had sent no one. The jianghu's Zhige Platform had dispatched investigators.
Xiaoyue read the letter twice and set it back on the table.
She did not speak immediately.
Mistress Duanchang waited. Behind the mask, her gaze settled on Xiaoyue's face. Eighteen years old, and an expression of stillness that had no business belonging to someone her age. Any other young person reading the words *the Hundred Poisons Compendium has resurfaced* would have reacted — excitement, or fear — it was bound up, after all, in the annihilation of her entire family. But Xiaoyue's face showed nothing. She might have been reading a report on the medicine field's yield.
Mistress Duanchang sometimes wondered if the girl had ground herself down too far. At twelve, when she'd come to the valley, she had still wept. By fourteen she had stopped. By sixteen she rarely showed anger. By eighteen her emotions had become something locked inside an iron chest — invisible from outside, nothing escaping from within.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, Mistress Duanchang could not say. But she knew that in the jianghu, those who could hold their composure lived longest.
"What are you thinking?" Mistress Duanchang asked.
"About the Compendium — how much can the watchers find out?"
"Not much. The information is too scattered. Which volume is where, whose hands it has passed through — they can give only a general direction. To know more, someone would have to go and look."
"And Withered Leaf Town?"
"Withered Leaf Town is in the Northern Reaches, near the Jin border. Dozens dead in two months, and the court takes no notice—" Mistress Duanchang's tone was even, as if commenting on the weather, "—that's not surprising. The place is poor and remote. Deaths of a few dozen people in a border town are not worth an imperial memorial."
Xiaoyue did not respond to this. She knew her master's view of the imperial court. There was nothing to agree with, nothing to dispute.
"I want to leave the valley," she said.
Mistress Duanchang's finger paused.
Xiaoyue met her gaze. "The Compendium is something that must be traced — but the people in Withered Leaf Town cannot wait. The Dried Corpse Sickness doesn't sound like an ordinary epidemic. Unable to take water, gradually desiccating — it sounds more like a poisoning. If it is a poison, I may be able to treat it."
"You have been in this valley for six years," Mistress Duanchang said. "Not one day outside."
"Then it is time."
Silence.
Outside the bamboo building, the morning fog was dispersing. Light filtered through the narrow mouth of the valley in a long, slanted column that crossed the medicine field and lit the pinellia leaves to translucency. In the distance the stream murmured; somewhere a bird called, its name unknown.
The Undying Valley was quiet. It had been quiet for six years.
"Withered Leaf Town is over a thousand li from here," Mistress Duanchang said at last. "Even travelling hard, the best part of a month. The farthest you have ever walked is from the valley mouth to the foot of the mountain. Half a shichen."
"Then I walk from half a shichen to a thousand li."
Mistress Duanchang looked at her. The mask's expression did not change, but Xiaoyue felt something shift in the gaze behind it — light, quick, like a ripple stirred by wind across a still surface, then gone before she could see it clearly.
"Go to Withered Leaf Town," Mistress Duanchang said. "Treat the people first. As for the Compendium — keep your eyes open as you travel, but do not go chasing it. What you can do now is enough for this valley; it is not enough for the jianghu. Do not think of yourself as the Compendium's rightful owner. Think of yourself as a wandering physician. That is all."
Xiaoyue nodded.
Mistress Duanchang rose and walked into the pharmacy — that room which was always locked. Xiaoyue heard the sound of a cabinet opening, the soft collision of medicine bottles, the shake of cloth being unfolded. After a moment, Mistress Duanchang emerged with several items.
A set of clothing. A grey-green long robe — the fabric was nothing special, but it was tough and durable, with sleeves that could be cinched tight for ease of movement, and inner lining stitched with hidden pockets for the flower petals. It was neither the fighting-trim of a jianghu wanderer nor the layered skirts of a well-born woman. Wearing it, one would look like an entirely ordinary traveller. It would not invite attention.
Three medicine pills. Greyish-brown, about the size of a fingernail, rough-surfaced, carrying a faint bitter-almond scent.
"Feign-Death Powder." Mistress Duanchang placed the pills in Xiaoyue's palm. "After taking one, breathing, pulse, and body temperature all drop to levels that a normal person cannot detect. The effect holds for two shichen. After two shichen, you wake on your own. There are only three. Do not waste them."
Xiaoyue placed the Feign-Death Powder into the inner hidden pocket.
Mistress Duanchang handed over a small leather pouch next. "Silver. Not much — enough to get you to Withered Leaf Town if you spend carefully. After that, you find your own way."
Xiaoyue took it.
The instructions were complete. Mistress Duanchang stood where she was, as if there was something more to say, and as if she did not know where to begin. She looked at Xiaoyue — this child she had raised for twelve years, handed over by the Old Matriarch when she was six years old, thin and small, eyes full of fright. Now she was eighteen. She had grown tall. The fright in her eyes had long since been replaced by something harder to describe — a stillness.
A stillness that had gone, perhaps, too far.
"Xiaoyue." Mistress Duanchang spoke her real name.
Inside the Undying Valley, Mistress Duanchang almost never used her real name. Usually it was just "Veratrum." When she called her by her real name, it meant either a serious mistake had been made, or something important was being said.
Xiaoyue looked up.
"When you leave this valley, you are Veratrum of the Undying Valley." Mistress Duanchang's voice dropped. "You are not Xiaoyue of the Xie family. Before anyone, at any time — the Xie name, the Xie identity — do not reveal it unless there is absolutely no other choice."
"I know."
"You don't." Mistress Duanchang's tone shifted — no longer its customary evenness, but something Xiaoyue rarely heard from her: a near-stern seriousness. "You think 'don't reveal it' means merely being cautious. It does not. The Xie family has been gone six years. Everyone in the outside world believes the Xie line is extinguished. The moment anyone learns there is a Xie survivor — it will not be one person who comes looking for you. It will be everyone. You could not hold them off."
Xiaoyue was silent for a moment, then nodded.
This time the nod was deep and deliberate.
Mistress Duanchang's manner eased. She reached out and patted Xiaoyue once lightly on the shoulder — one of her rare gestures of physical contact; for a person outwardly cold and inwardly warm, it was already a considerable thing.
"And one more thing," she said. "No bleeding."
Xiaoyue blinked.
She had been hearing these words since childhood. The Old Matriarch had repeated them again and again — *no bleeding*; if you are hurt, the first thing to do is not treat the wound but wipe away the blood. As a child she had found it strange, and had once asked why. The Old Matriarch had only stroked her head and said: *When you are older, you will understand.*
After the Old Matriarch was gone, Mistress Duanchang had taken over the instruction. When Xiaoyue asked her, she said only: *The Old Matriarch's words. Do as they say.*
Xiaoyue did not understand why. But she had obeyed. Six years of training injuries and herb-cutting nicks — she had always dealt with wounds immediately, never allowing blood to flow free. By now it was instinct.
"I understand, Master."
Mistress Duanchang watched her pack. The grey-green robe went on; the petals were settled in the sleeve-pouches; the Feign-Death Powder was secured against her body; the silver was tied at her waist. Xiaoyue moved through these preparations the way she worked in the medicine field: unhurried, methodical, one thing following the next.
When she was finished, she stood at the door of the bamboo building and turned back.
"Master. I'm going."
Mistress Duanchang leaned in the doorframe, her gaze resting on Xiaoyue in the morning light. The young woman in grey-green looked, in this moment, older than her years — back straight, eyes level, no anxiety about leaving, no excitement about entering the jianghu for the first time. She looked, simply, like someone setting out to do something that was long overdue.
"Go," Mistress Duanchang said.
Xiaoyue nodded, turned, and descended the bamboo stairs.
She passed through the medicine field. She passed the heartbreak vine. The dark purple buds trembled faintly in the morning light, as though watching her leave. She did not slow her step.
At the stone gap marking the valley's mouth, she stopped.
She had looked at this gap for six years. Three feet wide, flanked by smooth cliff walls; looking up, only a thread of sky. She had tried to see out through it as a child — nothing visible except stone, and more stone beyond.
She took a long breath, turned sideways, and pushed through.
The cliffs were cold against her shoulders and back. The gap widened and narrowed unpredictably; at the tightest point she had to turn fully sideways to pass. After about the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the light ahead suddenly grew bright.
She stepped out of the gap.
Wind.
Wind reached her first. Inside the Undying Valley, wind was a captive thing — by the time it reached her it had spent itself against the cliffs and arrived exhausted. But this wind was open and horizontal; it struck her face and sent her hair streaming back.
Then light.
Not the sliver that leaked down through the narrow gap but the whole sky, pouring down at once. The sun hung above the eastern ridge, staining half the heavens pale gold. The mountains stretched away in layer after layer, deepening from green to grey-blue and finally dissolving into the horizon where sky and peak could no longer be told apart.
Xiaoyue stood at the cliff's edge and narrowed her eyes.
Six years. She had almost forgotten how large the sky was.
The dizziness lasted only a few breaths. She steadied herself and began to climb down the cliff face — a hundred-zhang drop, no path, only rock-cracks and jutting stones. She moved hand over hand, unhurried, like a grey-green lizard pressed flat against the rock, working her way down.
At the foot of the mountain, she turned and looked up. From below, the entrance to the Undying Valley was entirely hidden in the folds of the cliff. Without knowing where to look, even standing at the base you would never find that gap.
She turned north.
Withered Leaf Town lay in the Northern Reaches, a mountain away from the Jin border. A thousand li and more. Travelling hard: the best part of a month. At a normal pace: nearly two.
Xiaoyue took her first step.
She was not fast, but she was steady. Her stride was even, her rhythm constant — like someone accustomed to long roads. Even though the longest road she had ever walked was from the valley mouth to the foot of this mountain.
Behind her, the Undying Valley fell silent in the folds of the hills.
She did not look back.
The Old Matriarch's voice rose from somewhere deep in memory, clear as if she were standing at Xiaoyue's ear:
*A daughter of the Xie family never allows herself to be wronged. Not anywhere. Not by anyone.*
Xiaoyue's step faltered.
Then she walked on.