CHAPTER 5: THE HEART OF THE GARDEN
The gates of the **Summer Palace at Blue Mist Lake** groaned shut behind them, the sound echoing like the sigh of a slumbering giant. **Zhi'er** shivered, not just from the damp mist curling off the water, but from the sheer, oppressive silence. The courtyard they stood in was a graveyard of forgotten grandeur. Weeds clawed through cracked flagstones. Statues of serene immortals lay toppled, moss-bearded and blind. The palace itself loomed – dark stone streaked with damp, windows shuttered like closed eyes, towers piercing the low, grey sky.
**Prince Yan Ling** stood motionless, his white hair stark against the gloom. He didn't look surprised by the decay. He looked… *resigned*. His deep grey eyes swept the desolate courtyard, lingering on a collapsed moon gate choked with brambles, then on a specific, boarded-up wing on the upper floor. A flicker of something profound and old passed through them – not fear, but recognition, laced with a bone-deep weariness Zhi'er couldn't fathom.
"Welcome to the garden," Yan Ling murmured, his voice barely disturbing the silence. "The thorns have grown thick."
A figure shuffled from the shadowed portico – an old man bent nearly double, leaning on a gnarled stick. His face was a roadmap of wrinkles, eyes milky with cataracts. He wore patched servant's robes several sizes too big. This was **Caretaker Chen**.
"Prince," Chen rasped, his voice like dry leaves. He didn't bow, his clouded eyes seeming to look through Yan Ling rather than at him. "Rooms… east wing. Less damp. Mostly." He gestured vaguely with his stick towards a yawning, dark doorway. "Food in the kitchen. If you find it." He turned and shuffled back into the shadows, leaving them alone in the misty silence.
"Charming," Zhi'er muttered, hoisting the meager provision sack.
Yan Ling offered no reply. He moved towards the east wing doorway, his cane tapping softly on the stone, a frail ghost navigating a tomb he seemed to know by heart. Zhi'er hurried after him, the sense of being watched intensifying.
---
The interior was worse. Dust lay thick as snow, swirling in the weak light filtering through broken shutters. Tattered silk hangings hung like cobwebs. The air smelled of mold, damp stone, and something else… a faint, metallic tang, like old ink and rust. Yan Ling led them through cavernous, empty halls, past doorways leading to darkness. He didn't hesitate at intersections, turning with quiet certainty.
**Seeding Past Connection (Subtly):**
*Passing a grand, ruined staircase, Yan Ling paused. Half-buried under debris lay a shattered mosaic fragment. It depicted a strong, sandaled foot and the hem of vibrant blue robes. Zhi'er wouldn't recognize it, but Yan Ling's gaze lingered. He remembered the mosaic whole – a mighty warrior striding under a star-filled sky, a sword like captured moonlight at his hip. A depiction of the **Azure Vanguard**, elite guardians of the Jade Heaven. He remembered his uncle, **Prince Jian**, pointing it out to a much younger version of himself. "See the strength, nephew? Not just in the arm, but in the *stance*. Rooted. Unyielding." Now, it was rubble.*
They reached a suite of rooms in the east wing. Slightly less derelict. A main chamber with a cold fireplace, a smaller adjoining room for Zhi'er. Dust motes danced in the grey light. Yan Ling went straight to a large, grime-covered window overlooking a walled, overgrown garden below – a jungle of skeletal trees, thorny vines, and the skeletal remains of ornate pavilions.
"He tended this garden," Yan Ling said softly, almost to himself, tracing the grimy glass with a fingertip. "My uncle. Called it the 'Heart's Repose'. Said beauty could silence the loudest ghosts." A dry, humorless chuckle escaped him. "The ghosts are louder now."
**Zhi'er:** "He taught you? Here?"
**Yan Ling:** "Here. When the court became… too much. He saw the rot, even then. Saw *me*." He didn't elaborate on what Prince Jian saw.
---
Night fell like a suffocating blanket. Zhi'er managed to find the kitchens – cavernous, cold, inhabited only by scuttling roaches and a few moldering sacks of rice. He cooked a meager, tasteless porridge. Yan Ling ate little, his gaze distant, listening to the sounds of the ancient palace settling. The silence wasn't empty; it was *thick*. It pressed in, broken only by the drip of water, the skitter of unseen things in the walls, and the incessant, mournful sigh of the wind off the lake.
Then came the rattling.
It started faintly, high above them – the dry, rapid clatter Zhi'er had heard the first night, like bones shaking in a box. It seemed to come from the boarded-up tower Yan Ling had glanced at upon arrival. It grew louder, more insistent.
Zhi'er froze, spoon halfway to his mouth. "What *is* that?"
Yan Ling set his bowl down slowly. He didn't look frightened, but his gaunt face tightened. "An echo," he said, his voice low. "Something… restless."
The rattling intensified, becoming a furious drumming against wood. Then, a new sound – a soft, wet *splattering*, like ink dripping onto stone, coming from the hallway outside their door.
*Zhi'er crept to the door, peering through a crack. The dim light from their room spilled into the corridor. On the dusty floorboards just outside, a thick, viscous pool of pure *blackness* was spreading. It wasn't liquid; it seemed to absorb the light. As Zhi'er watched, horrified, the pool *rippled*. A shape began to form – a crude, elongated shadow with too many spindly limbs, pulling itself up from the ink-stain like a spider emerging from oil. It had no features, only a pulsating core of deeper darkness where a head should be. It emitted a low, subsonic *hum* that vibrated in Zhi'er's teeth.*
> *"Back," Yan Ling whispered sharply, pulling Zhi'er away from the door. He moved with surprising speed to a writing desk shoved against a wall. He grabbed a sheet of rice paper and his inkstick. Not bothering with water, he spat a mouthful of blood onto the inkstone, grinding it furiously with the stick, creating a thick, dark crimson paste. With a finger, he drew a complex, interlocking series of circles and bars on the paper – a **Containment Glyph**, far more intricate than the one used on the Jackal.*
*The ink shadow oozed under the door, flowing like tar. It coalesced fully inside the room, rising to the height of a man, its spindly limbs twitching. The humming intensified, filling the room with dread. It lunged towards them, a limb like solidified darkness lashing out.*
*Yan Ling slammed the blood-inked glyph onto the floor directly in front of the creature. The glyph flared with a muted, crimson light. The lashing limb struck the light and *rebounded* as if hitting solid iron. The creature shrieked silently, a wave of psychic pressure washing over them, making Zhi'er's vision blur. The glyph pulsed, the crimson light flaring brighter, forcing the shadow back. It writhed, trying to flow around the barrier, but the light held it contained within a small circle.*
*Yan Ling coughed violently, doubling over, fresh blood staining his sleeve. Maintaining the glyph was visibly draining him. "Zhi'er!" he gasped. "The window! Open it! To the garden!"*
Zhi'er, heart pounding, fumbled with the heavy, rusted shutters. He wrenched them open, letting in the cold, mist-laden night air. Yan Ling staggered towards the contained, thrashing shadow. With a grunt of effort, he kicked the edge of the glyph-etched paper. The entire construct – paper, glowing glyph, and the contained shadow – slid across the dusty floorboards like a rigid tile and tumbled out the open window into the dark garden below.
The psychic pressure vanished instantly. The unnatural humming stopped. Only the dripping sound remained, fading quickly.
Yan Ling slumped against the wall, breathing ragged, wiping blood from his lips. Outside, in the garden, they heard a faint, wet *squelch*, then silence.
**Zhi'er:** "What... what *was* that?"
**Yan Ling:** (Voice weak but steady) "A memory stain. A fragment of pain, or violence, or despair… soaked into the stones of this place over centuries. The Suppression… weakens here. Near the lake. Things… fester." He looked at the spot where the glyph had been. "Like ink spilled on paper. It bleeds through if not contained."
---
The next morning, under a grey, drizzling sky, Yan Ling led Zhi'er into the walled garden – the "Heart's Repose." It was a beautiful ruin. Jade pathways were cracked and buried under moss. Ornamental ponds were choked with scum. But amidst the decay, life stubbornly persisted: ancient, gnarled plum trees, defiant clumps of wild orchids, and, in the very center, a small, miraculously tended patch.
Here, sheltered by the remnants of a white marble pavilion, stood a single, healthy **Chrysanthemum** plant in a pristine **blue-glazed pot**. Its flowers were a vibrant, defiant gold. Yan Ling approached it with a reverence Zhi'er hadn't seen before. He gently touched a velvety petal.
"My uncle's last gift," he murmured. "The true heart of this garden. The only thing that never succumbed." He carefully removed a single, perfect bloom. Then, his gaze shifted to a nearby corner, almost hidden by rampant ivy. There stood a small, dead-looking **Bonsai tree** in a plain clay pot. Its twisted branches were bare, grey, and lifeless. Yan Ling approached it, not with sadness, but with profound, heartbreaking tenderness. He brushed a layer of dust from its miniature trunk with infinite care, his touch feather-light. Zhi'er saw a flicker of something ancient and protective in the prince's eyes as he looked at the dead tree. *Why tend something so obviously gone?*
**Yan Ling:** "Sit, Zhi'er." He gestured to a mossy stone bench near the chrysanthemum. He placed the golden bloom on the bench between them. "You have courage. Instinct. You see… more than most." He picked up a fallen twig and a handful of damp earth. "But courage without control is like fire without a hearth. Destructive." He began to sketch in the dirt: a simple circle. "The world is fractured. Power leaks. Pain echoes. Like that shadow." He drew a jagged line cutting through the circle. "Chaos bleeds in." He smoothed the dirt, erasing the line. Then, with deliberate slowness, he drew the circle again, and within it, the same complex series of interlocking circles and bars he'd used the night before – the **Containment Glyph**. "This… is control. Not suppression, not destruction. *Containment.* Channeling the chaos. Giving it boundaries. Making it… safe."
He picked up the golden chrysanthemum and carefully placed it in the center of the glyph drawn in the dirt. "Beauty," he said, his deep grey eyes locking onto Zhi'er's, "is not the absence of thorns, Zhi'er. It is the space we carve for it *despite* the thorns. It is the glyph drawn around the storm."
He handed Zhi'er the twig. "Draw the circle. Feel the boundary. Contain the flower."
---
High above, perched on a rain-slick gargoyle on the boarded-up tower, a single, sodden **Vermilion Bird feather** lay discarded. It hadn't been there the day before. Below, unseen in the mist-shrouded pines at the edge of the lake, a pair of crimson eyes watched the walled garden, then vanished silently.
*Zhi'er stared at the twig in his hand, then at the golden flower resting within the lines Yan Ling had drawn in the dirt. The glyph looked impossibly complex. The prince's words echoed: *Contain the flower.* He took a deep breath, the scent of damp earth and chrysanthemums filling his lungs, and touched the twig to the soil, beginning his first, hesitant line.*