Chapter 3: Locusts and Blood

Hao Min spent the night in Dun's grain shed. The farmer did not ask him to stay and did not ask him to leave. He simply pointed at a pile of sacks and went inside his house. The door closed with a sound like a sigh.

Hao Min did not sleep. He sat in the dark and drew circles in the dirt floor with his finger. Over and over. The same broken shape. Each time slightly different. Each time producing nothing, because there was no rust paste and no blood-touched metal nearby.

By dawn he understood the rules.

First, the shape had to be close enough to Dun's original. Not exact, but close. If Hao Min made the bulge too big, nothing happened. If he closed the bottom loop, nothing happened. If the three lines did not cross near the center, nothing happened.

Second, the circle had to be drawn in a medium that carried rust. Dirt worked best. Ash worked. Dry dust worked. Clean stone did not. Wood did not.

Third, the target had to be metal that had touched blood.

That was the key. Hao Min tested it until the light came through the cracks in the shed walls.

He found a handful of nails in a corner. A nail that had never cut anything sat inside the circle and stayed whole. A nail with a spot of dried blood on it crumbled in three breaths. A copper coin with no blood history remained a coin. A copper coin that had been pressed into a dead man's palm turned green and fell apart.

Blood was the gate.

Hao Min thought about this as the sun rose. Almost every weapon in the cultivation world had drawn blood. Swords were not kept as decorations. Spears were not stored untouched. A cultivator's blade was a history of violence written in steel. Knives, arrowheads, axe blades, mace studs, the metal rims of shields, all of them had known blood at some point.

His circle was not useless. It was a scalpel in a world full of open wounds.

In the morning Dun brought him porridge. It was thin and tasted of grain husk, but it was hot. They ate in silence. The farmer watched Hao Min's hands, which were stained orange from the rust he had handled.

"You are going to use it to hurt people," Dun said.

"I am going to use it to stop being hurt," Hao Min said.

"That is the same thing, most times."

"Not always. Sometimes the people who need hurting are the ones who would hurt me first."

Dun nodded. He had lived long enough to know the difference was smaller than people pretended. "The man in black robes," he said. "Did he speak to you?"

"No. He drew the circle. The world turned to rust. Then I woke up."

It was a lie, or near enough. Hao Min had never lost consciousness during the siege. He had stood in the second wave and watched everything he was dissolve around him. But Dun was speaking the language of dreams, and dreams had their own truth.

"And you were not afraid?"

"I was terrified," Dun said. "But the wheat lived. So I kept drawing."

Hao Min finished his porridge. He stood and bowed. It was not a deep bow. He did not bow deeply anymore. But it was real.

"I need rust," he said.

"There is a blacksmith two villages east," Dun said. "He throws his scrap in a pit behind the forge. No one wants it. Rusted iron is bad for business."

Hao Min walked east.

The blacksmith's village was called Two Oak, though Hao Min saw only one oak and it looked dead. The forge was at the far end, belching smoke that smelled of coal and pig iron. A broad man with no neck and arms like hams watched him approach.

"You want scrap?" the blacksmith asked.

"Dun sent me."

"Dun sends everyone. He thinks my scrap pit is a charity." The blacksmith wiped his hands on his apron. "Take what you want. Just do not ask me to carry it."

The scrap pit was full of bent nails, broken horseshoes, cracked plow blades, and old knives. All of it was rusted. All of it had drawn blood at some point. Farmers cut themselves on plows. Horses threw shoes onto stones. Knives were knives.

Hao Min filled a leather pouch with the best flakes. He chose pieces that were orange rather than brown, flaky rather than powdery. The blacksmith watched him with narrowed eyes.

"You are that rust-eaten soldier," the blacksmith said.

"I am a man buying scrap."

"Same thing, around here." The blacksmith spat into the dirt. "My cousin was at the Nameless Hills. Lost his cultivation same as you. Drinks himself to sleep now."

"I am sorry."

"Do not be. He was an idiot before the circle. The circle just gave him a reason." The blacksmith turned back to his forge. "If you figure out how to hurt the people who sent us there, come back and tell me. I will give you better scrap."

Hao Min used his own blood to wet the flakes, mixing rust and water into a paste the color of old brick.

Then he sat by the road and drew the circle on his left palm with the paste.

It itched. Then it burned. Then he felt the warmth in his chest where his dantian used to be.

The trace was awake.

He held his hand up to the sun. The circle on his palm was already fading, absorbed into his skin. But the warmth remained, faint and steady, like a second heartbeat that had been waiting for him to notice it.

A cart passed on the road. The driver glanced at Hao Min, then away. A man sitting by the roadside with rust on his hands was not unusual in these parts anymore.

Hao Min stood and brushed the dirt from his clothes. He had what he needed. Rust, blood, water, and a shape that answered to all three.

The journey back to Rust Ford would take until evening. By morning he would be gone, heading south toward Gao Ling and whatever came after.

For the first time since the siege, he had a destination. It was not much. But it was more than he had owned yesterday.