It took Xiaoyue twenty-six days to reach Withered Leaf Town.
The road was longer than she had expected. Setting out from the mountain ranges of the south where the Undying Valley lay, she walked north — the terrain shifting from hills to plains, then back to hills again, until finally the landscape became a continuous ridge of gray-brown mountains. The further north she went, the fewer trees there were, the harder the wind blew, and the sky changed from the damp gray-blue of the south to a dry, leaden white.
The first few days she found it difficult going. Six years without leaving the valley had left her feet knowing only the soft soil of the medicinal gardens and the wooden planks of the bamboo towers. The coarse gravel of the official road bit into her soles with every step. But she said nothing, and she did not slow down. By the third day blisters had risen on her feet. She pierced them with a needle, applied the salve she had mixed herself, and walked again the next morning. By the seventh day the blisters had turned to calluses. The pain was gone.
The sights along the road unrolled like a scroll being slowly opened.
The market towns to the south were lively. Storytellers held forth in teahouses; singers performed in entertainment quarters. Old men selling steamed buns outside shouted loud enough to drown out the noodle vendors across the street. At one small town Xiaoyue sat in a teahouse for half an hour — Mistress Duanchang had taught her: when you arrive somewhere new, sit in a teahouse first; all the news is soaking in the tea. She ordered the cheapest rough-grade leaves and for half an hour listened to idle chatter: silk prices rising in the east, the salt routes troubled in the west, a strange sickness in the north killing quite a few people.
When the strange sickness in the north was mentioned, the voices in the teahouse dropped a little — but they were quickly buried under other topics. That was a thousand li away. What did it have to do with them?
Xiaoyue finished her tea and left.
Further north, the market towns grew sparse and people fewer. Roadside tea-stands went from tiled awnings to canvas, then disappeared altogether, leaving nothing but the bare official road and the occasional merchant caravan. Some caravans had men who, seeing a young woman traveling alone, offered in good faith to let her join them. She shook her head without breaking stride. A few others let their eyes travel over her with less benign intent. She met their gaze. They looked away — not because her look was fierce, but because it was too still. Still in a way that wasn't normal. Like a pool whose depth could not be measured, and that instinct warned you away from.
On the fifteenth day she resupplied dried provisions in a small border city. The atmosphere there was nothing like the south: soldiers patrolled the streets, the Great Yan banner flew from the city walls snapping in the north wind, and a notice posted at the city gate warned citizens not to leave without authorization — the Jin Kingdom's border was showing unusual movement.
Xiaoyue bought several flatbreads and a packet of dried meat, then replenished a few medicinal herbs at a pharmacy. The pharmacist watched the way she sorted through the herbs. His eyes brightened. "You know medicine, miss?"
"A little."
"Heading north?"
"Yes."
The pharmacist lowered his voice. "I'd advise against it. Withered Leaf Town has a strange sickness — many dead, the whole town nearly emptied. They say it's a plague. Touch it and there's no coming back."
"Thank you for the warning."
Xiaoyue paid and left.
Around the twentieth day she began encountering people fleeing south. They came in ones and twos, whole families in tow, fear written plainly across their faces: old men pushing wheelbarrows; women bent double under bundled loads; children led by the hand, too tired to walk, sitting down on the road's edge and crying.
From a fleeing old man, Xiaoyue pieced together more of the picture. The strange sickness in Withered Leaf Town had been spreading for over two months. Anyone who could run had run; those who couldn't only waited. The court? The court had sent no one. A group of jianghu people had arrived, however — they had cordoned off a section of the town, gathered all the sick in one place, and were letting no one in or out.
"Do these jianghu people know what they're doing?" Xiaoyue asked.
The old man shook his head. "They've kept it contained, but there's no medicine. Inside that fence people are still dying one after another."
Xiaoyue quickened her pace.
The twenty-sixth day.
Withered Leaf Town.
Seen from a distance it was a small town wedged between two hills: a hundred or so households, gray walls, black roof-tiles, nothing remarkable. To the north the mountain that divided Great Yan from the Jin Kingdom rose steep and difficult — natural fortification. From a military standpoint, the position commanded the one narrow passage between north and south. Not easy to storm, but hold it and news from the north would reach the south as fast as it could travel.
An unassuming nail that couldn't be pulled out.
Xiaoyue stood at the edge of town. Her first impression was: dry.
The air was dry — carrying an unnatural astringency that filled the lungs like a mouthful of sand. The ground was dry too, cracked open in fissures, the roadside verges stripped down to yellow stubs of dead root. This was not the crisp, cold dryness of northern winters. This was something that came from the inside — as though the land itself had been sucked empty.
And then there was the silence.
Too quiet. A town of a hundred households should have roosters and dogs, children shouting, firewood splitting. There was nothing. Every door was shut. Some had strips of white cloth hanging from the lintels; others were nailed closed with planks. The streets were empty. Wind moved through the alleys carrying a dry, faintly sweet rot — like sun-dried meat jerky, or herbs desiccated past use — and if you breathed it long enough your throat tightened.
Xiaoyue walked into the town.
Her footsteps echoed off the empty lane, startlingly loud. She walked two streets before she saw a living person — an old woman sitting on her doorstep, holding an earthenware bowl. The bowl was empty. She watched Xiaoyue approach, her clouded eyes stirring; her lips moved without sound.
Xiaoyue crouched in front of her.
The old woman's skin was dry as old bark, cracked deep in the creases, the cracks filled not with blood-color but with a grayish-white powder. Her lips were chapped and peeling, dried blood at the corners. Her eye sockets were sunken. The whole of her looked like a piece of fruit that had been drained of moisture.
"Grandmother, have you had any water?" Xiaoyue asked, keeping her voice quiet.
The old woman nodded, then shook her head. She tried to speak; the sound that came from her throat was like sandpaper on wood. "Drank... can't keep it down. Drink and then vomit."
Xiaoyue reached for her wrist and felt her pulse.
Extremely thin and weak — like a thread on the verge of snapping. But something was off. If this were simple dehydration, the pulse should float and be empty. This was thin and rough — *se*. The thinness meant depleted fluids. The roughness meant something was blocking.
Xiaoyue's brow drew together slightly.
Something blocking. There was an obstruction inside.
She released the old woman's wrist and stood. She didn't rush to conclusions. One patient's pulse was not enough. She needed to see more.
Walking further into the town, she began to notice other wrongness. At the roadside lay several dead cats and dogs — not dead of starvation. Their bodies were similarly desiccated, their fur clinging to bone, like wind-dried specimens. An old pagoda tree that should have been in leaf at this time of year stood bare of branches, its bark cracked and split as though it had endured three months of summer sun.
But it was not high summer. This was late spring on the Northern Reaches. The temperature was not severe.
This dryness was not caused by weather.
She continued on, and at last found the Zhige Platform people.
The threshing ground at the center of the town had been cleared, enclosed by a wooden stockade, with two young men standing at the entrance, short swords at their waists, faces serious. Inside the fence several rows of makeshift shelters had been erected; under the shelter roofs, reed mats had been laid out, and on the mats lay people, crowded close.
Xiaoyue stopped outside the fence.
She studied the arrangement: patients sorted by severity into three zones — lighter cases in the outer ring, severe in the middle, the dying isolated in the innermost shelter. Only one entrance and exit, staffed by someone recording names. Water and food were brought from outside and left at the entrance; those inside fetched their own. No one delivering supplies went inside the fence.
There was method in this. Not something thrown together — this was the work of trained people.
Xiaoyue looked a moment longer, then approached the entrance.
The two young guards stepped into her path. "Miss, this is a quarantine zone. No unauthorized persons."
"I'm not unauthorized," Xiaoyue said. "I'm a physician."
They exchanged a glance. One looked her up and down with undisguised skepticism — eighteen years old, gray-green clothing, no medicine chest on her back, no medical bag in her hand, and she called herself a physician?
"Miss," the other said carefully, "we've had a few people come by claiming to be physicians. They all took a look around and said they couldn't treat it, then left. If you're looking to satisfy your curiosity —"
"I'm not curious." Xiaoyue's tone did not change, flat and even. "I walked twenty-six days to get here. I'm not here out of curiosity. Let me examine the patients. If I can't treat it, I'll leave on my own."
The two hesitated. A slightly older man standing nearby stepped forward — thirty or so, stern-faced, a Zhige Platform copper token at his waist. He looked at Xiaoyue briefly. "Which sect?"
"The Undying Valley."
The man's brow creased slightly. The Undying Valley — he'd never heard of it. Still, he turned aside. "Go in and look. Don't touch anything belonging to the patients. Don't take anything back out."
Xiaoyue nodded and went inside.
The smell inside the quarantine zone was far stronger than outside. That dry sweet rot had grown nearly palpable — it hit her in the face, like a warm damp cloth pressed over her nose and mouth. Xiaoyue did not cover her face. In the Undying Valley's dispensary she had smelled things ten times worse.
She went from shelter to shelter, working her way through.
The lighter cases could still sit up. What they had in common: dry skin, cracked lips, vomiting after drinking water. Some were coughing — what came up wasn't phlegm, but dry powder.
The moderate cases were lying down. Their skin had begun to crack, like a riverbed drying out. Eye sockets hollow, fingernails brittle — they snapped at a touch. Some moaned; some could no longer make any sound at all.
At the innermost shelter, Xiaoyue stood in the doorway for several breaths.
The severe cases.
The people lying on the mats no longer looked like people. Skin adhered tight to bone, muscles completely wasted away, as though dry paper had been pasted over a skeleton. The features of the face had collapsed inward; only the mouth still gaped slightly, emitting a breath so faint it could barely be called breathing.
Like dried corpses. Living dried corpses.
Xiaoyue crouched down and picked up the hand of one severe patient. The fingers were thin as dead twigs, the skin rough as tree bark, the cracks at the joints filled with grayish-white powder — the same as she had seen on the old woman in the street. She turned the patient's wrist over and felt the pulse.
The same. Thin, weak, rough.
She took the pulses of three more severe patients. All identical.
Xiaoyue rose and stepped back out of the shelter.
She found an unoccupied corner at the edge of the quarantine zone, leaned against the wooden fence, closed her eyes, and thought.
There were too many things that didn't fit.
First: ordinary plagues had routes of transmission — airborne droplets, contact, water. Yet the Zhige Platform people managing this quarantine, despite close contact with so many sick for so many days, had not a single case among them. If this were a plague, that would be impossible.
Second: that roughness in the pulse. A rough pulse indicated stasis and obstruction — something inside the body was blocking the normal circulation of qi and blood. Pure dehydration would weaken the body but would not produce roughness. Roughness meant something foreign was at work inside.
Third: the grayish-white powder. She had taken a careful look while taking pulses — that was not dead skin, not ordinary dry flaking. The granules were too fine, too uniform. Like a residue left behind by something metabolizing out of the body.
What could make a person unable to keep down water, causing them to dry out progressively, while leaving microscopic metabolic residue inside?
She opened her eyes.
This was not a plague.
But to confirm her suspicion, the living were not enough. She needed to see the dead — the long dead, in whom the body's changes had fully expressed themselves.
The burial grounds.
Xiaoyue stayed in the quarantine zone until dusk. When she emerged the sun had already sunk behind the ridge. The Northern Reaches' dusk was brief — once the sun went down, the light dropped as though someone had yanked a curtain across the sky, going from dark amber to iron-gray in seconds.
She found a place on the edge of town — an abandoned woodshed, its owner most likely fled, the door unlocked, nothing inside but several bundles of dry firewood and a water jar with a cracked bottom. Not clean, but it kept out the wind.
Xiaoyue stacked the firewood against the wall, spread her bedroll on the floor, and ate half a flatbread.
Full dark fell.
She did not light a lamp.
The night in Withered Leaf Town was quieter than the day — even quieter. No insects — the insects too had died, or fled. Only wind. The Northern Reaches' wind sharpened at night, pressing through the gaps in the door, carrying the cold of the mountains beyond.
Xiaoyue sat in the dark, and waited.
She was waiting for the deep of the night.
After the second watch, the last light in the town went out. Even the quarantine zone's watch-torches were down by half — the night guards were dozing.
Xiaoyue stood.
She tied her gray-green sleeves tight at the wrist, fastened the blade pouch to her waist, pushed open the woodshed door in the dark without sound, and melted into the night.
The burial grounds lay to the east of the town, in a hollow between stretches of rock and wild grass. She had heard it mentioned that afternoon while inside the quarantine zone — the dead were taken there; no time for burning or burial, they were simply laid out. She knew the route. Walking into the town that morning she had taken note of the exits — that was the rule Mistress Duanchang had taught her. Wherever you go, know the way out first.
Xiaoyue moved quickly along the eastern path, her footsteps so light they made almost no sound. The night wind brought a heavier drift of that dry rot than the day had held. She followed it, circled past a low earthen wall, and the ground suddenly dropped away before her —
The burial grounds.
In the moonlight, the hollow held several dozen bodies, lying at every angle. No coffins, no mats — some wrapped loosely in rags, others lying bare amid the rocks.
Xiaoyue stood at the edge and let her gaze move slowly across the scene.
She drew one breath, and walked down.
The moonlight was bright. She needed no torch.