Chapter 300: Main Shadow Enters the Kiln, All Seventeen Shadows Complete

Lu Yuan did not draw his sword.

He only pressed the half-broken blade across the child-name register.

The blade was broken, but the iron was still iron.

The six characters on the ledger—“Witness, Lu Yuan”—stopped seeping into the paper at once, no longer bleeding ink into the page.

The fake Zhou Heng stood by the well, his facial features paling away until only the smile at the corner of his mouth remained.

“You don't dare to cut.”

“These names just came out of the old altar.”

“If the blade falls, the paper tears, and the names tear with it.”

Lu Yuan said, “So you purposely hid yourself in the register.”

“Not hidden.”

The fake Zhou Heng slowly raised his hand and pointed at the seal floating in the well water.

“Guarding.”

“These children have no relatives, no ancestral graves, no one who remembers birth or death. When the evil altar was severed, they became unclaimed child names.”

“The Mountain-Regulation Assembly won’t take them, the righteous manor refuses recognition, and the living only burn two sheets of paper for them on festival days.”

“Someone still has to set rules for them.”

A small hand beneath the water lifted, supporting the seal.

The seal “Child-Name Public Guard” surfaced.

It was carved from white wood, with fresh wood shavings at the four corners as if just whittled from a tree. But the seal knob was a child's face—no eyes, only a tightly shut little mouth.

Meng An hugged the copied supplementary ledger to his chest.

“Big Brother Lu, what he says isn't all lies.”

“These names do need someone to guard them.”

“True.”

Lu Yuan looked at the fake Zhou Heng.

“A lie that slips in a rule is harder to break than a bare lie.”

The smile on the fake Zhou Heng's face stiffened a little.

Lu Yuan raised his hand and pointed at the people gathered beside the table.

“Who copied the child-name register?”

“Meng An and Asheng.”

“Who verified it?”

“Witnesses from the seven hamlets and three gullies.”

“Who keeps it?”

“The righteous manor, each hamlet rotating custody, and the families who claim the children together.”

“If living people copied, verified, and managed it, then what do you need this seal for?”

The fake Zhou Heng said, “Living people forget.”

“A seal will not.”

“Living people die.”

“A seal can be passed down forever.”

“Living people are biased.”

“A seal does not distinguish who has kin and who does not.”

Lu Yuan nodded.

“Well put.”

Xu Erxiao grew agitated.

“Senior Brother, that's demonic talk!”

“Not every sentence of it,” Lu Yuan said.

“If we dismiss everything the evil thing says, how are we different from those who hear the bell and kneel?”

He turned to the crowd around the well.

“If living people forget, what should we do?”

Mister Meng spoke first:

“Keep three copies of the register.”

“One for the righteous manor, one rotated among the hamlets, and one for the family to take after claiming.”

Lu Yuan asked again, “What if the keeper of the register dies?”

Zhao Shoushan held the new mountain-regulation ledger.

“Change keepers every three years, the old keeper hands it over to the new keeper in person.”

“What if the register is destroyed?”

Song Qinghe said:

“Leave a stele to record names, a copper plate to keep the numbers, and the paper register to keep details.”

“What if someone tampers with it privately?”

Wang Cheng'an tapped his abacus.

“Each time the register is verified, the seven hamlets and three gullies each send one person.”

“If a name is missing, ask until it's clear.”

Lu Yuan looked at the fake Zhou Heng.

“Hear that?”

“Living people forget, so keep a copy.”

“Living people die, so rotate the keeper.”

“Living people are biased, so publicly verify.”

“This is using rules to guard against human mistakes.”

“Not handing responsibility over to a single seal.”

The smile on the fake Zhou Heng finally vanished.

“Can you guarantee they'll follow those rules forever?”

“No.”

Lu Yuan answered quickly.

Everyone by the well was momentarily stunned.

The fake Zhou Heng seemed to have found a flaw.

“If you can't guarantee, why do you destroy the seal?”

“Because no one can guarantee forever.”

“So rules must be changeable, accounts must be auditable, and register keepers must be replaceable.”

Lu Yuan stared at the white wooden seal.

“And what you want is once the seal is stamped, it can never be changed.”

“Child names belong to the public guard.”

“The public guard belongs to the seal keeper.”

“The seal keeper then uses the child names to issue commands.”

“Loop around, and these children become offerings in your hands again.”

The well water suddenly produced tiny ripples.

The little hand supporting the seal sank half an inch.

The fake Zhou Heng barked:

“Without me, they wouldn't even have names!”

Asheng stood up from behind the table.

“Names were given by their parents.”

“For those without names, Meng An wrote them down, stroke by stroke.”

“What does that have to do with you?”

The fake Zhou Heng turned to him.

“You yourself came out from the child names.”

“If the Protect Life altar hadn’t kept Xiaoman, you would have scattered already.”

Asheng's face went white, but he did not step back.

He picked up the rattle drum.

“I came out because people remembered me.”

“Not because the altar kept me.”

“Before, they called me Xiaoman because they didn't know who I was.”

“Later I called myself Asheng, because I recognized myself.”

“If you truly guard names, you should let people reclaim them themselves.”

“You won't let them.”

“You only want to bind all the names together.”

The rattle drum suddenly sounded once.

Dong.

Many small reflected shadows surfaced beneath the water.

Some wore short braids, some wore torn felt hats, and some were only vague silhouettes. They did not go to fetch the white wooden seal. Instead, they all stared at the child-name register on the table.

Lu Yuan murmured:

“Names want to return to the ledger, not to the seal.”

The fake Zhou Heng suddenly stepped forward.

The real Zhou Heng leaped down from his horse and drew his sword to stand between him and the wooden table.

Two identical faces faced each other across the well rim.

The real Zhou Heng's chest heaved violently, his left shoulder stained with blood, clearly having ridden in a tremendous rush.

“When did you borrow my shadow?”

The fake Zhou Heng looked at him.

“From the West Ridge boundary stake.”

Zhou Heng remembered, and his face darkened.

On the way to the grass temple, they had stopped at a boundary stake carved with a censer mark. At that moment Lu Yuan examined the carving while Zhou Heng stood in the shadowed area behind him, and his shadow happened to fall across the stake.

“Only for that instant.”

“Enough.”

The fake Zhou Heng smiled.

“A shadow doesn't need to be stolen.”

“Once you remember the shape, you can make one to match it.”

Xu Erxiao immediately looked at the snow.

Both the real and fake Zhou Heng had shadows at their feet.

Same length, same direction, even the way the hems swayed in the wind matched.

“How do we tell them apart?”

Lu Yuan said, “No need to separate.”

He took from his chest the hemp cord they had used climbing the ridge and tossed it to the real Zhou Heng.

“Tie it to your wrist.”

Zhou Heng quickly tied the cord on his left wrist.

As soon as the knot was made, the other end naturally drooped into Lu Yuan's palm.

The fake Zhou Heng's wrist remained empty.

“A shadow can copy a shape, but not the things you walked with,” Lu Yuan said.

“This cord has been with us up to the skylight and through the seven offerings.”

“It recognizes not Zhou Heng's face, but the path walked together.”

The fake Zhou Heng's skin twitched, and his features completely collapsed.

He turned into a faceless gray silhouette, and the clothes on him ran like water-soaked ink, flaking off into the snow.

Just as the crowd was about to retreat, Lu Yuan said suddenly:

“Circle the well. Do not touch the shadows.”

“His plan is to force us apart so the seal comes out of the water.”

Zhao Shoushan immediately called the witnesses from each hamlet to surround the righteous well.

No one knelt, no one burned incense.

Each person simply announced their name.

“Zhao Shoushan, witness.”

“Ma Qingshan, witness.”

“Chen Laokan, witness.”

“Liu Dayou, witness.”

Voices circled the well once. The children’s reflected shadows beneath the water gradually steadied.

The faceless shadow man stood in the circle, his body growing thinner and thinner.

“Do you think naming a few living people will keep hundreds of child names down?”

“It is not suppression.”

Meng An placed the supplementary ledger beside the main register.

“It is to wait with them for someone to claim them.”

“If no one claims them?”

Meng An bit his lip.

“If no one claims them, record them anyway.”

“For how long?”

“As long as I live, I will record them.”

“What about after you die?”

Asheng stood beside Meng An.

“I will continue to record.”

A woman from Ma family gully stepped forward.

“If my family claims one, I will also record one for each unclaimed child.”

Then others came to the table.

“I can read; I can copy the register.”

“I’m a carpenter; I can make a box to store the register.”

“My household has a dry cellar; I can temporarily keep the supplementary copy.”

“I go to Beiguan each year with the cart; I can deliver verification to the righteous manor.”

More and more people spoke up.

There were no spells, no magic in these words.

But each time another person accepted a task, a fine crack ran along the white wooden seal.

The faceless shadow reached toward the well.

“Return!”

The little hand still held the seal but did not hand it to him.

The faceless shadow's voice sharpened.

“Who kept you when you had no names?”

“Who left you when no one sacrificed for you?”

“Now you want to go with the living?”

A faint child’s voice sounded from the well bottom.

“Cold.”

Another voice said:

“The well is cold.”

A third voice said:

“I want to go home.”

The faceless shadow froze.

Lu Yuan finally raised the half-broken blade.

“Do you hear?”

“The evil altar says it took in the dead.”

“But the dead only feel cold.”

“The altar is not a home.”

“The seal is not family.”

He used the tip of the blade to cut through the “Witness, Lu Yuan” he had written earlier.

He did not wound any child name.

Those six characters fell from the paper like a black worm, curling and crawling toward the faceless shadow.

The shadow reached out to grab them.

Lu Yuan performed the “Name Withdrawal Formula.”

“Witnessing must arise from direct sight, not from dark additions.”

“Names belong to the person, not to the keeper of the seal.”

“Lu Yuan does not consent; this evidence is invalid.”

“The people have not agreed; this seal is not public.”

“Child names have a register, and lost souls have a place.”

“Evil shadows borrow names to establish an altar—

Return!”

Black characters suddenly wound around the faceless shadow’s feet.

He was dragged down to his knees at the well’s edge.

Xu Erxiao's eyes lit up.

“Senior Brother, can we cut it now?”

“No.”

Lu Yuan said.

“He still has a thread tying him to those unclaimed child names.”

“To cut the shadow would cut the tie as well.”

“What then?”

“Make him hand the thread over himself.”

The faceless shadow gave a low laugh.

“I won’t hand it over?”

Lu Yuan looked at Zhao Shoushan.

“In the old mountain regulations, who retrieves a public seal?”

Zhao Shoushan immediately opened the mountain-regulation book.

“Established by public deliberation, abolished by public deliberation.”

“Seven hamlets and three gullies must witness over half, state reasons to void a seal, and the original keeper hands the seal over.”

Lu Yuan said, “He is not the original keeper.”

Zhao Shoushan understood.

“Then it is a forged seal.”

He turned to the crowd, loudly declaring:

“A public guard of child names, if not decided by the seven hamlets and three gullies, not recorded in the grass temple mountain-regulation book, and not endorsed by each hamlet’s mark, is not a public seal.”

“It is a private seal!”

The witnesses from the seven hamlets and three gullies responded in chorus.

“Private seal!”

“Those who privately set up nameless divine tablets are expelled from the Mountain-Regulation Assembly!”

“Those who use child names to found altars will have their evil accounts recorded!”

“Those who impersonate witnesses must publicly return the contracts!”

With each mountain-rule declared, a corner split off the white wooden seal.

The faceless shadow’s body began to convulse.

He stretched his arms desperately, trying to pull the seal from the well, but the small hand suddenly turned its palm.

The white wooden seal dropped.

It did not sink to the well bottom.

Instead, water buoyed it and it slowly drifted to Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan did not take it by hand.

He had Meng An fetch an empty wooden box and placed the seal and its water inside.

“An evil seal is still evidence.”

“First seal it, do not burn.”

The faceless shadow roared in anger:

“With the seal, you will never sever me!”

“I do not plan to sever you now.”

Lu Yuan said.

“I want to find your true body.”

The edge of the well suddenly went quiet.

The faceless shadow stopped struggling.

Lu Yuan stared at his blank face.

“Shadows do not learn rules on their own.”

“Nor do they carve seals by themselves.”

“Someone first taught you the mountain regulations, then let you borrow Zhou Heng’s shape to infiltrate the people.”

“You say you were left by someone who guarded the rules.”

“Where is the one who left you?”

The faceless shadow did not answer.

The real Zhou Heng took a half-length of gray cloth from his pocket.

“At the Northern Guan righteous manor.”

Everyone turned to look.

Zhou Heng said:

“When I reached the righteous manor, I found a gray-clothed man standing outside the gate.”

“The same one we saw on the skylight ridge.”

“He handed me this cloth and said there would be two Zhou Hengs, and told me to come confirm the shadow.”

Xu Erxiao frowned.

“If he knew, why didn't he come himself?”

Zhou Heng unfolded the gray cloth.

There was only one line written on it:

“Shadows can be verified, but do not lightly trust the one who guards them.”

Lu Yuan took the cloth and flipped it over.

The reverse had a smear of dark red clay.

The Ma family gully area is all black soil; Beiguan righteous manor's ground is yellow sand. Only near the ruined brick kiln west of the old forest field is there this dark red clay.

“He went to the old forest kiln,” Wang Cheng'an said. “The gray-clothed man is not a Mountain-Regulation Assembly member?”

Zhao Shoushan shook his head.

“The assembly does have gray-clothed guides.”

“But ‘gray-clothed’ does not point to a single person.”

“Through the generations, those who knew the hidden paths and conveyed messages wore gray clothes.”

“Even I don’t know how many remain now.”

Lu Yuan asked, “Who can teach a shadow to guard the rules?”

Zhao Shoushan’s face changed.

“Only the Record-Shadow Officer.”

“What is a Record-Shadow Officer?”

“In past winters, the Mountain-Regulation Assembly handled household registrations. Living people registered names; outsiders might not report true names.”

“To prevent someone from committing crimes and fleeing, the Record-Shadow Officer recorded their shape, accent, gait.”

“Later, when the Protect Life altar collected shadows, the task changed.”

Zhao Shoushan looked at the faceless shadow.

“They not only recorded shadows.”

“They raised shadows.”

The faceless shadow suddenly spun and lunged toward his own reflection on the snow.

Lu Yuan had long been ready and threw a copper coin at the center of the shadow.

The coin pressed on the shadow, fixing it in place.

Zhou Heng placed his sword across the well rim like a bar.

Xu Erxiao looped the hemp cords around the wooden stake, linking the wrist cords of Lu Yuan, Zhou Heng, and himself together.

“Think you can run with a shadow?”

“Not a chance.”

The faceless shadow’s form melted quickly.

Seeing escape impossible, he tried to disperse himself.

Lu Yuan placed the rattle drum on top of the child-name register.

“If you disperse, the child names you borrowed will disperse with you.”

“But now there are supplementary registers for each name.”

“When you disperse once, a thread will appear once.”

“The faster you disperse, the clearer your true body becomes.”

The shadow’s melting abruptly stopped.

Wang Cheng'an couldn't help but chuckle.

“Now he dare not die.”

“A shadow was never a living thing.”

Lu Yuan said.

“He fears us following the threads to the place where shadows are raised.”

Song Qinghe moved the bronze lamp behind the shadow.

The lamp’s light passed through his body and cast many crisscrossing fine threads on the snow.

Some lines led to the righteous well, some to the West Ridge boundary stake, some to the Northern Guan righteous manor.

The thickest one indeed pointed toward the west side of the old forest field.

The line contained a speck of dark red clay.

Lin Zhaoxuan squatted and measured the direction with the ink-line.

“Ruined brick kiln.”

“From here along the mountain road, about thirty li.”

Zhao Shoushan exclaimed:

“That place was sealed long ago.”

“In the ninth year of the Republic, the brick kiln collapsed once, burying seventeen people.”

“The Mountain-Regulation Assembly set prohibition stakes; no one may approach.”

Lu Yuan asked, “Who set the prohibition stakes?”

“The previous Record-Shadow Officer.”

“What was his name?”

Zhao Shoushan thought for a long time.

“No one knows his true name.”

“People only called him Blind Zhou.”

The real Zhou Heng’s brows knit.

“Also a Zhou?”

Zhao Shoushan said:

“Not necessarily his real surname.”

“The Record-Shadow Officer did not leave a real name, only a shadow eye.”

Lu Yuan looked at the fake Zhou Heng.

“No wonder you borrowed his face.”

“Not because Zhou Heng is easy to impersonate.”

“But because the character Zhou is the very gate you use to return to the shadow-raising place.”

A crack slowly opened on the fake Zhou Heng’s blank face.

What appeared in the seam was not a mouth.

It was a vertical eye.

The eye had no pupil, only countless little silhouettes within it.

Lu Yuan immediately covered that eye with the gray cloth.

“Don’t meet its gaze.”

But a young witness in the crowd was a fraction too slow.

He glanced once and then turned to the person next to him, saying in the exact same voice:

“Don't meet its gaze.”

A second identical voice sounded instantly.

Then a third, a fourth person opened their mouths.

“Don't meet its gaze.”

A dozen people by the well all said the sentence together.

Second shadows appeared under all their feet.

Zhao Shoushan's face was ghastly pale.

“It is dispersing its shadows!”

Lu Yuan overturned the wooden table with one hand.

Song Qinghe caught the child-name register and the supplementary ledger in time; the table lay between the crowd and the well mouth.

“Everyone close your eyes.”

“State the task you just agreed to do!”

In panic, the people shut their eyes.

Meng An shouted first:

“I will copy the child-name register!”

Asheng shouted:

“I will continue to record!”

The carpenter shouted:

“I will make the storage box!”

The coachman shouted:

“I will deliver the verification!”

The woman shouted:

“I will clothe the unclaimed children!”

One after another, they recited.

They did not name empty promises, only the duties they had just personally accepted.

The extra shadows underfoot began to tremble.

Because the counterfeit shadows could mimic voices and shapes but did not know when, or why, a person agreed to a task.

Lu Yuan held the hemp cord and walked among the people.

“True shadows follow people.”

“Fake shadows follow commands.”

“A person's thought is their original heart, and the shadow belongs to their feet.”

“If a shadow is not your own, step forward to the lamp!”

The bronze lamp flared.

Dozens of extra shadows were peeled from the people's feet and gathered behind the gray-cloth-covered shadow man.

Those shadows overlapped into a hunchbacked old man.

The old man wore a gray sheepskin coat and a dog-skin hat.

It was the gray-clothed guide they had seen on the ridge.

But his right hand had six fingers.

Zhou Heng said in a low voice:

“The man outside the righteous manor had five fingers.”

Lu Yuan's gaze sharpened.

“We have seen more than one gray-clothed man.”

The composite image raised its six-fingered right hand and made an odd gesture toward Lu Yuan.

It was not a bow.

It was the measurement hand sign the Record-Shadow Officer used to gauge shoulder width and height.

Then, all the fake shadows simultaneously tugged westward.

The faceless shadow, pinned by the copper coin, split apart.

There was no flesh.

Only a folded tiny map of the brick kiln remained.

Seventeen black circles were drawn on the map.

Sixteen circles were filled in.

The last circle was empty. Beside it were two characters:

“Lu Yuan.”

Xu Erxiao drew his short sword.

“He already saved a place for Senior Brother!”

Lu Yuan picked up the brick-kiln map.

“Not saving a place.”

“Missing one main shadow capable of holding the others down.”

“The skylight did not let me gain the divine name.”

“The child-name register did not let me act as a witness.”

“So he will come again.”

Zhao Shoushan asked, “What do we do now?”

Lu Yuan put the kiln map into his chest and handed the wooden box containing the sealed white wooden seal to Mister Meng.

“Keep the child-name register in Ma family gully, separate the main and supplementary copies.”

“Leave the bronze lamp with Song Qinghe.”

“Zhao Shoushan take the hamlet witnesses and guard the well. Before dark, no one is allowed to look into the water alone.”

“And you?”

“Go to the ruined brick kiln.”

The real Zhou Heng gripped his sword.

“I go with you.”

Xu Erxiao stepped forward as well.

“I'll go too.”

Wang Cheng'an picked up his abacus.

“Shadow ledgers are still ledgers; I’m not leaving them out.”

Lu Yuan did not refuse.

As he stepped out of the crowd, the sky's edge had just begun to show a thread of gray-white.

The snow stopped.

From the west, in the direction of the old forest field, a straight pillar of black smoke rose.

The smoke did not look like it came from the ground.

It resembled a black incense stick thrust between heaven and earth.

At the top of that smoke, sixteen human faces opened their eyes in sequence.

The final empty face slowly took on the features of Lu Yuan.

At the same time, the gate of the Northern Guan righteous manor pushed inward from the inside.

A gray-clothed man with five fingers stood behind the gate, looking at the second child-name register that had just been delivered to the table.

At the end of the register, a small vermilion palm print had appeared at some unknown time.

The palm print was tiny, as if a newborn had pressed down.

The gray-clothed man dipped his finger in a little vermilion and held it to his nose to sniff.

It was not cinnabar.

It was the red clay from the ruined brick kiln.

He immediately looked up and shouted toward the gate:

“Shut the gate!”

“Don't let Lu Yuan go to the old forest kiln!”

But outside the gate there was no one.

Only a sharpened pine stake stuck in the snow.

Half a strip of gray cloth was tied to the stake.

The ink on the cloth was still wet:

“Main shadow enters the kiln, all seventeen shadows complete.”

The gray-clothed man’s face turned ashen.

He tore off the gray cloth and ran in pursuit.

At that moment the old clock in the manor courtyard began to toll on its own—seventeen times.

With each toll, another faceless shadow appeared on the courtyard wall.

When the seventeenth toll fell, the righteous manor gate slowly closed.

On the inner side of the doorboard, a six-fingered handprint appeared.