Chu Ci was the sort of person who wore his enthusiasm on his face, carried it in his bones, and was perpetually ready to press it upon anyone within arm's reach.
Zhu Li's first day at the Bureau was, for the most part, spent being dragged around by him.
"Over here's the seal-array workshop — see those scorch marks on the floor? Last month a new curse-scribe drew a formation backwards and blew up half the room. When Lord Pei told him he'd have to pay for the damage, the fellow quit on the spot."
"Over here's the kitchen — the cook's a northerner. Puts vinegar in everything. If you can't stand vinegar, tell him beforehand, because he does not hold back."
"And over here's the training yard — that's where you saw me drenched in sweat yesterday. Don't get the wrong idea. I wasn't practicing martial arts. I was chasing that cat."
Zhu Li followed behind him without a word, but his eyes missed nothing.
The Bureau was far larger than he had imagined. The compound above ground was already considerable — two courtyards deep, over a dozen wing rooms, plus a training yard and kitchen. But what truly caught Zhu Li's attention was what lay below.
In the western corner of the courtyard stood an inconspicuous hidden door. Stone steps descended from it into an underground space of staggering scale. Side passages branched off the main corridor, connecting the seal-array workshop, the interrogation chambers, the archive room, and the containment cells. Overhead, some ingenious seal-craft projected an illusion of daylight so convincing that one could almost forget one was underground.
Almost. If you looked closely, the signs were there. A trace of dampness seeping through a corner. A faint glow at the end of certain passages that did not belong to the false sky overhead — something deeper, colder, leaking through cracks in the stone as though something far below were luminous of its own accord.
Chu Ci either hadn't noticed any of this, or had noticed and didn't care.
Zhu Li noticed.
---
At the deepest end of the corridor stood a storeroom. A wooden plaque hung beside the door — *Old Relics Archive* — scrawled in ink so crooked it could have been twin to the couplet by the front gate.
"That was definitely your handwriting too," Zhu Li said.
Chu Ci blinked. "How could you tell?"
"Because you're the only person in the entire Bureau whose calligraphy is that terrible and that unapologetic."
Chu Ci froze for a beat, then burst out laughing and clapped Zhu Li hard on the back. "Ha! You seem like such a quiet one, but that tongue of yours is sharp!"
The storeroom was large.
To be precise, it was large and chaotic.
The stone chamber was crammed with every manner of object — bronze mirrors, jade ewers, old swords, a lute with broken strings, a stone beast missing a horn, a black clay jar so deep you couldn't see the bottom, several bundles of bamboo slips sealed in yellow paper. Each item bore a label noting the year it was confiscated and its origin, though many of the labels had faded past legibility.
"Everything in here was seized during cases over the years," Chu Ci said, patting a dust-covered bronze mirror. "Some of them are demons in their own right. Some were steeped in demonic energy. Some were just in the way, so we grabbed them. A few still have traces of power left, but most are spent — so here they sit, gathering dust."
Zhu Li walked slowly through the storeroom, his gaze sweeping over the silent relics. They were like vagrants in a poorhouse, each carrying its own inscrutable history, crowded together in this dim stone chamber, forgotten in the margins of time.
He stopped in the depths of the room.
There stood a folding screen.
Six panels, gold-traced, depicting court ladies, standing just taller than a man. The silk had yellowed with age, but the brushwork was exquisite — twelve ladies arrayed across the six panels, their robes flowing, their ornaments glinting, some holding fans, some cradling lutes, some leaning close in whispered conversation, each with her own distinct expression. The gilt frame had faded, but one could still glimpse the splendor it once possessed.
Unlike every other dust-choked relic in the storeroom, this screen had been wiped clean. No dust on the silk. None on the gilt frame. Even the carved crevices of the base were spotless — someone had been tending to it with great care.
But the traces of that tending were no longer fresh. It had been perhaps half a month since anyone last touched it.
"Ah, that," Chu Ci said, walking over. His voice grew quieter. "That was the Caretaker's treasure."
"The Caretaker?"
"The Bureau's old handyman. He was already here when I first joined. Did all the odd jobs — sweeping, hauling things, feeding the captured demons. The Watchman's predecessor — the one the cat was chasing yesterday." Chu Ci's fingers trailed lightly along the edge of the frame. "The Caretaker didn't care about much of anything, except this screen. He wiped it down every single day. Every single day, for decades. He used to say it was 'the most human thing in the whole Bureau.'"
"He's gone?"
"Passed last month." Chu Ci withdrew his hand. "He'd been ill for a long time. In his last few days, he was still fretting that no one was wiping the screen. The Watchman did it for him once, and when the Caretaker heard, he actually got upset — said the man's hands were too rough, that he'd wear away the paint."
Zhu Li studied the ladies on the screen. All twelve, accounted for. In the dim lamplight their faces were strikingly lifelike — not the stiff quality of ordinary portraits, but something the artist had breathed into them. A vitality.
At his waist, the Illusion-Breaking Bell stirred — the faintest movement. Not a tremor. A turn. As though it had glanced at something.
His gaze came to rest on the twelfth lady — the figure painted on the rightmost panel. She was different from the others. Everyone else was doing something — playing a zither, holding a fan, murmuring to a companion — but she simply stood in stillness, hands at her sides, her head slightly turned, her eyes gazing beyond the edge of the screen.
Gazing toward the place where the person who cleaned her would have stood.
---
Chu Ci showed him the living quarters next — wing rooms in the rear courtyard, one per person. Wooden doors, wooden shutters, modest by any measure, but the window opened onto the old scholar tree in the yard and rows of seal-papers hung out to dry.
"I'm on your left, Rong Zhi is on your right." Chu Ci rapped on the partition wall. "The soundproofing's not great. I snore. You'll have to live with it."
"Rong Zhi?"
The words had barely left his mouth when a figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
She was not tall, dressed in a dark grey robe, but the most striking thing about her was her face — or rather, what concealed it. A plain white mask covered her from forehead to the tip of her nose, leaving only her lips and chin exposed. The mask bore no markings whatsoever, smooth as a shard of porcelain.
She walked past Zhu Li and Chu Ci at an unhurried, unvarying pace, eyes fixed straight ahead. In her wake lingered the faint scent of medicinal herbs.
"Rong Zhi — new recruit's here, come say hello?" Chu Ci called after her.
Her footsteps faltered for a single beat.
Then continued.
She did not turn around. She did not speak.
"...See what I mean?" Chu Ci spread his hands. "Rong Zhi, curse-scribe. She's the last of the three disciplines still practicing the curse-arts in the Bureau. Brilliant with spellwork. Even more formidable in temperament. Don't cross her."
"Her mask —"
"Don't ask." For once, Chu Ci offered no elaboration. He just shook his head. "She won't answer if you do. Lord Pei's told us not to ask, either. So — don't ask."
Zhu Li watched Rong Zhi's figure vanish at the end of the corridor. Her gait was perfectly steady, each step falling in the same precise rhythm, like a meticulously calibrated clock.
But her shoulders were held just slightly taut. The posture of someone who had been on guard for so long it had become second nature — not afraid of anything in particular, but accustomed to being afraid.
---
After nightfall, the seal-crafted sky beneath the Bureau dimmed, fading from the blue heavens and white clouds of daytime to a deep violet dark — no stars, no moon, just a vast pall of shadow, as though someone had upended an iron pot over the world.
Zhu Li's first night watch.
The rules were simple enough: from midnight to before dawn, patrol the main corridors three times, note any irregularities. It sounded easy — but Chu Ci had left him with a parting remark:
"Things haven't been quiet down here lately. You saw that cat yesterday — it's not the only one. Some of the other captive demons have been acting strange too. Keep your wits about you on watch."
"Keep them about me for what?"
Chu Ci considered. "Hard to say. It's just... sometimes, walking through these corridors, you'll feel like something's off. Not that something's following you — the air itself is wrong. Like something underground has woken, but not all the way. Like it just rolled over in its sleep."
He clapped Zhu Li on the shoulder, gave a carefree wave, and left.
Leaving Zhu Li standing alone in the empty corridor.
"Thanks for that," he said to Chu Ci's retreating back. His voice echoed briefly off the stone walls before the darkness swallowed it.
---
Midnight.
First patrol. Nothing unusual.
The torches along the corridor were spaced far apart, their light dim and fitful. His shadow stretched long before him, walking ahead like some other person leading the way. Occasionally, faint glimmers of seal-script flickered across the stone walls — the wards doing their work. Everything was as it should be.
The small hours.
Second patrol. From somewhere near the containment cells came a low, muffled whimper — probably one of the captive demons having a nightmare. (Did demons have nightmares? He wasn't sure, but the sound certainly resembled one.) He went to check. Inside an iron cage, a toad-demon was huddled in the corner, the warts on its back pulsing with a dim green phosphorescence. When it saw him, the toad-demon went quiet, its great eyes unblinking, fixed on him.
He stood before the cage for a while. The toad-demon cocked its head, puffed its throat, and let out a small, tentative *croak*.
"Don't be afraid." He had no idea why he was talking to a toad-demon. But he did.
The warts stopped flickering. The green glow steadied to a soft, constant light, like a tiny nightlamp. The creature settled onto its belly and closed its eyes, seemingly at ease.
Before dawn.
Third patrol.
He stopped when he reached the stretch of corridor near the old relics archive.
Someone was standing at the end of the hallway.
No — not someone.
A blurred figure stood before the archive door. Slender, clad in voluminous skirts, the hems drifting gently in the windless passage. And most tellingly — she was translucent. Torchlight passed clean through her body and fell on the wall behind, unobstructed.
Her features were indistinct, as though seen through a veil of water. But the elaborate coiffure, the ornamental pendants at her waist, the pleats of her skirt — all were perfectly clear. The dress of a court lady from centuries past.
Zhu Li held his breath.
At his waist, the Illusion-Breaking Bell vibrated softly — demonic energy. But so faint, so gossamer-thin, that the bell was merely *reporting*, not *warning*.
The lady did not look at him.
She was searching — her head turning slowly left, then right, repeating the same motion, the same unspoken thought: *find*. She was looking for something. Or someone.
She drifted upward. Not walking — drifting, the hem of her skirt trailing three inches above the stone floor, soundless, as she glided deeper into the passage.
Zhu Li followed.
His footsteps were light — his master had taught him to walk like a cat. But tonight he moved lighter than any cat, because the thing before him was quieter still. She made no sound as she drifted, disturbed no air, like a wisp of pigment peeled from a painted scroll, wandering through the dark.
She passed the kitchen. Did not stop.Passed the interrogation chambers. Did not stop.Passed the archive room. Did not stop.
She stopped before the iron door.
*Lantern.*
The word on the door flickered in and out of visibility in the torchlight.
The lady stood before the iron door. A translucent hand rose and pressed against its surface — no, pressed *into* it. Her hand passed through the iron. Then her arm. Then her shoulder.
She was moving through the door.
Like passing through water.
Instinct pulled Zhu Li forward a step — he wanted to follow, wanted to see what lay beyond. But reason held him fast.
The door was sealed. He had no key.
Half her body had already passed through. The half that remained lingered on this side — and in the instant before she vanished completely, that blurred face turned toward Zhu Li.
She saw him.
A pair of indistinct eyes regarded him from within that mist-like countenance. No malice. No fear. She was simply looking at him — the way one looks at a kindred soul: someone equally awake in the deep of night, equally alone, equally searching for something.
Then she passed through the iron door. And was gone.
Silence returned to the corridor.
Zhu Li stood before the iron door, his heart hammering. He pressed his palm against the surface — the metal was ice-cold, and the seal-script carved into it glowed faintly, brighter than he had ever seen it on any previous pass.
As though something had activated it.
He tried pushing. The door did not budge.
But his fingers found something — on the right side of the door frame, an impossibly fine crack. Not in the iron itself, but in the seal-script. One of the runes, at the exact point where the lady had passed through, was broken.
A hairline fracture, barely two inches long. Not damage — more like a thin channel melted through a sheet of ice.
Just wide enough to slip a finger through.
He did not.
He stood there, staring at the crack for a long time. What was behind that door? Chu Ci didn't know, and wouldn't let him ask. Pei Du knew, but wouldn't say. His master's words circled through his mind, around and around — *Do not light that lantern.*
Behind the door, there was a lantern.
He was nearly certain of it now.
---
Before dawn broke, he climbed out from below and crossed back to the rear courtyard, pushing open the door to his room. He set the Illusion-Breaking Bell on the pillow beside him and lay down — not sleeping, but with his eyes closed.
Two things turned over and over in his mind: the lady's blurred face, and that two-inch crack in the iron door.
She had come from the old relics archive. Inside the archive stood a folding screen. On the screen were painted twelve court ladies.
He did not go back to count. But he had a feeling — a gut-deep certainty — that if he went back now, there would only be eleven.
Chu Ci arrived in the morning to relieve him.
"So? Anything to report?" he asked through a yawn.
Zhu Li looked at him.
The lady hadn't been causing trouble. She had been searching. Searching, most likely, for the old man who had wiped her clean for forty years — the Caretaker. She was not an enemy. Not a threat. Just a painting that did not know the person she was waiting for would never come again.
If he reported it, what would the Bureau do? Reinforce the seal? Destroy her? Split that screen apart and burn it?
"Nothing," Zhu Li said. "Nothing at all."
It was the first lie he told after joining the Bureau.
On the pillow, the Illusion-Breaking Bell sat perfectly still.
It did not ring.