CHAPTER 6: WHISPERS IN THE INKSTONE
The mist over **Blue Mist Lake** clung thick and cold the next morning, muffling the skeletal garden and the brooding **Summer Palace**. Inside the east wing chamber, **Zhi'er** stared at the rough circle he'd drawn in the dirt floor, the golden chrysanthemum bloom sitting defiantly at its center. **Prince Yan Ling's** words echoed: *"Contain the flower."* He'd expected a shield, a wall. Instead, the prince had drawn intricate, interlocking patterns – a **Containment Glyph** – that looked like frozen lightning captured on paper.
"Begin with the boundary," Yan Ling instructed, his voice a low rasp. He sat nearby on the mossy stone bench, sipping lukewarm tea, looking paler than the mist outside. "The circle is the foundation. Feel its edge. Not a barrier, but a... *definition*. A space you claim."
Zhi'er gripped his twig. He traced the circle again, trying to feel the "edge" Yan Ling described. It felt like drawing in dirt. Nothing more. He glanced at the complex glyph Yan Ling had sketched beside it. "How do you... remember all those lines?"
Yan Ling's gaze grew distant. "It's not memory. It's *understanding*. The shape of stillness. The pattern of restraint. Like the veins in a leaf, or the flow of water around a stone." He gestured towards the glyph. "This one... the **Threefold Seal**... is simple. A trinity of containment: Mind, Form, Echo." He pointed to three distinct sections within the interlocking circles. "Mind holds intent. Form shapes the boundary. Echo anchors it to the world's fabric. Start with the circle. Make it perfect. Make it *yours*."
Zhi'er focused, scraping the twig through the dirt. Circle after circle. Some lopsided, some egg-shaped, none feeling like a "defined space." Frustration gnawed at him. He'd seen Yan Ling stop a shadow monster with blood and ink. He needed to learn this, fast. For his sister. For whatever was coming.
After an hour of clumsy circles, Yan Ling rose stiffly. "Enough dirt." He placed a worn, ink-stained stone slab – a small **inkstone** – on the bench beside Zhi'er. He poured a little rainwater into its shallow well. "Use water. On stone."
*Zhi'er dipped his finger in the water and traced a circle on the cool stone. The water beaded, holding its shape better than dirt. He felt a faint... resistance? A slight tug against his fingertip as the water tried to flow, but he held the form. He managed a passable circle.*
*"Good," Yan Ling murmured. "Now, pour your focus *into* the line. Not to hold the water, but to define the *space within*. Feel the quiet."*
*Zhi'er frowned, concentrating. He imagined the circle as a walled garden, the waterline its boundary. He pushed his will into it. The water circle shimmered, seemed to deepen slightly, holding its shape unnaturally still. A tiny thrill shot through him.*
*Then, a faint *chime* resonated from the inkstone itself – a sound like a distant bell struck underwater. Zhi'er flinched, breaking concentration. The water circle instantly collapsed, spreading across the stone.*
*"What was that?"*
*Yan Ling picked up the inkstone, turning it over in his thin hands. His expression was unreadable. "An echo. This stone... it has known much ink. Much intent. It remembers." He ran a thumb over its surface. "You brushed against its memory. A faint ripple in the stillness you tried to create."*
---
Later, while Yan Ling rested – a sleep that looked more like a temporary cessation of pain – Zhi'er explored the decaying palace. He avoided the boarded-up tower, its silence now more menacing than the rattling. He found **Caretaker Chen** in the cavernous kitchens, stirring a pot of thin gruel that smelled vaguely of moldy grain.
"Careful, boy," Chen rasped without looking up, his milky eyes fixed on the steam. "Palace is full of... whispers. Listen too close, they get inside." He tapped his temple with a gnarled finger.
"What whispers?" Zhi'er asked, eyeing the gruel dubiously.
"Stones talk," Chen mumbled. "Walls remember. That one..." He gestured vaguely upwards, towards the east wing. "...the Ghost Prince. He stirs the pot. Makes the whispers loud." He ladled gruel into a chipped bowl. "His uncle knew. Knew how to... quiet them. Tended the roots." Chen shuffled away, leaving Zhi'er with the bowl and cryptic warnings.
*Driven by curiosity, Zhi'er searched the east wing for traces of Yan Ling's uncle. In a dusty, abandoned studio littered with broken brushes and dried paint pots, he found a half-rotted wooden box. Inside, carefully preserved beneath moth-eaten silk, lay a small, exquisite **jade hairpin** shaped like a crane in flight. It looked far too delicate, too feminine, to belong to Prince Jian. Beside it was a folded piece of rice paper. Unfolding it carefully, Zhi'er saw a charcoal sketch – incredibly lifelike – of a young girl, maybe five or six years old. She had Yan Ling's intense, deep grey eyes, but her expression was open, curious, framed by dark, unruly curls. On the bottom, in elegant, faded script: **"Ling'er – The Garden's Heart."**
*Zhi'er stared. The Ghost Prince had a daughter? Where was she? Was this the "Ling'er" mentioned? The pin... a gift for her? He carefully hid the sketch and pin back in the box, his mind racing. This was a secret deeper than paintings.*
---
The air grew heavier as the day wore on. The mist outside thickened into fog, swallowing the lake and pressing against the palace walls. Yan Ling awoke restless, his gaze constantly drawn to the window overlooking the walled garden, specifically to the small, dead-looking **bonsai tree**.
*He moved slowly to the garden despite the damp. He didn't go to the vibrant chrysanthemum. He went to the bonsai. With a tenderness Zhi'er had only seen him use once before (with the hairpin sketch?), Yan Ling gently brushed accumulated moisture and dust from its bare, grey branches. He didn't speak to it, but his posture radiated a silent, protective vigil. He placed a single, smooth river pebble at its base – a small, deliberate gesture.*
*"Why tend it?" Zhi'er couldn't help asking, joining him. "It's... gone."*
*Yan Ling's hand lingered on a twisted branch. "Is it?" he asked softly, his gaze fixed on the tiny tree. "Or is it... waiting? Some roots sleep deep, boy. Deeper than winter. They remember the sun."*
Suddenly, Yan Ling stiffened. His head snapped up, not towards the tower, but towards the lake, his grey eyes narrowing. "They're here."
*The fog near the palace's water gate seemed to congeal. Three figures materialized, clad in scaled, mist-grey armor – not the fiery red of Xiao Hong, but stealthier. **Vermilion Bird Stalkers**. They moved with lethal silence, scaling the slick, low wall bordering the lake, blades like shards of obsidian glinting in the gloom. Their target: the walled garden. Yan Ling.*
*"Inside. Now," Yan Ling ordered Zhi'er, his voice low but sharp. He turned towards the Stalkers, raising no weapon, only his empty, ink-stained hand. Zhi'er hesitated, then bolted for the garden door.*
*The lead Stalker lunged, blade aimed at Yan Ling's heart. Yan Ling didn't flinch. He flicked his wrist. From the damp soil at his feet, a spray of water droplets rose, not falling, but *streaking* towards the Stalker like tiny, crystalline darts. They struck the Stalker's armor with sharp *pings*, not piercing, but staggering him, disrupting his charge. **Water Manipulation (Basic Containment)**: Channeling focus to momentarily bind/deflect.*
*The other two Stalkers split, one going for Yan Ling, the other heading straight for the garden door Zhi'er had just slammed shut. Yan Ling's focus fractured. He couldn't shield himself and the door simultaneously. He drew a sharp breath, preparing to pay a heavier cost –*
*Zhi'er, pressed against the inside of the garden door, heard the Stalker outside. Panic surged, then Yan Ling's lesson flashed in his mind: *Define the space. Claim it.* He saw the heavy iron bolt – simple, physical. But also the door itself – wood, grain, a boundary. He slammed the bolt home, then pressed both hands flat against the weathered wood. He poured every ounce of his fear and will into the door, imagining it as an unbreakable wall, part of the *circle* he couldn't yet draw. He focused on the **Form** aspect of the glyph – the boundary itself.*
*Outside, the Stalker slammed against the door. It shuddered but held. The Stalker struck again, harder. The wood groaned. Zhi'er felt the impact vibrate through his palms. He pushed back with his mind, picturing the circle, the definition of *inside* and *outside*. He didn't know a glyph, but he understood the *principle* Yan Ling had described: **Containment is the space you claim.***
*The Stalker struck a third time. A crack splintered the wood near the bolt. Zhi'er cried out, not in pain, but in desperate focus. He *pushed* his will against the crack, against the invading force. A faint, silvery shimmer, visible only for a heartbeat, flickered across the surface of the door where his hands touched. The Stalker's next blow landed... but the crack didn't spread. The door held. The shimmer vanished. Zhi'er slumped, gasping, his head pounding.*
Outside, the sound of clashing ceased abruptly. Silence descended, thicker than the fog. Cautiously, Zhi'er peered through a crack in the door.
Yan Ling stood alone in the garden. The three Stalkers were gone. Not dead, not fled – *gone*. Only three faint, greasy smudges on the wet flagstones remained, rapidly dissolving in the mist like ink in water. Yan Ling swayed, bracing himself against the trunk of an old plum tree. He coughed violently, crimson spattering the gnarled bark. The effort of banishing three Stalkers while weakened had exacted a heavy toll.
He looked towards the door Zhi'er guarded. A flicker of something akin to approval, mixed with profound exhaustion, touched his blood-flecked lips. "The circle holds," he rasped, his voice barely audible.
---
High in the **Celestial Peaks**, **Jiang Xi** stared into a polished obsidian mirror. Not glass, but a pool of liquid shadow. The image showed dissolving greasy smudges on wet stone, then the hunched, bloodied figure of Yan Ling. Jiang Xi's face, usually carved from ice, contorted with fury.
"Water darts?!" he hissed, his voice cracking the silence of his chamber. "He mocks us! Using parlor tricks while his lifeblood stains the dirt!" He slammed his fist onto the mirror's frame, making the shadow-image ripple. "He grows weaker, yet he defies me still! He protects that hovel... and the *secret* it holds." His eyes narrowed, blazing with cold fire. "Find the anchor, Xiao Hong. Find the **Garden's Heart**. Tear it out. Then we'll see how well the Nightless Blade paints when his own roots are bleeding!"