The thing about being stuck in a tunnel was that there typically were only two options: go back or go forward. Yuehwa would much have preferred to go forward, but with the knowledge that there were likely Gi soldiers waiting ahead and that the entire tunnel system could collapse at any time, the unfortunately logical thing to do was to head back.

They turned and broke into a sprint, while fragments of rock began to break away from the rumbling walls and rain down upon their heads.

"If I ever see Baixun, I'm going to throw some of these rocks at his teeth!" Yuehwa shouted. Two more explosions had rung out after the first and she was convinced that it was the Gi army, since a bunch of mountain bandits had no reason to destroy one of their best hideouts, nor would they have access to gunpowder.

Another explosion went off.

Shoya lifted his arm and blocked a stray rock the size of a ripe gourd that had almost struck Yuehwa on the head. Then, he grabbed her arm and swung her aside, just in time to avoid a cascade of tumbling rocks.

A moment later, the ground stopped shaking, and the world fell silent once again.

The group looked around, realising in dismay that they had been trapped by walls of boulders on both side. The route they had taken to get here was now sealed shut.

"I don't suppose we can use our own gunpower to blow our way out?" Yuehwa grumbled. She gave the fallen boulders an indignant kick, then looked around.

Shoya was tapping at random positions on the rock, with his ear plastered to the cold surface. The white fabric of his robes had been tainted by gravel and sand, with a large rip along the right arm where the rock had struck, revealing a long, red gash beneath.

"You're bleeding," Yuehwa said, grabbing hold of his wrist.

"It's only a little scratch."

"This is a little scratch?" She ripped a strip of fabric off the hem of her sleeve and quickly wrapped it around his open wound. "I know you like pretending to be—" She looked up to find Shoya staring past at something past the top of her head instead, not paying the slightest bit of attention to what she was doing. "Hey, are you even listening to me! What are you doing?"

"Finding a way out."

Shoya pulled his arm free and walked over to the section of wall behind her, listening intently at the sound that travelled back into his ear following his continuous tapping. He exchanged glances with her and Ru Fei, and the both of them took the cue to do exactly what he had been doing.

Yuehwa rapped her knuckles against the part of the wall that Shoya had singled out, then she did the same at other sections.

"It's hollow," she said, noting how the reverberation sounded more echoey over here, suggesting that there was empty space behind that wall instead of miles of solid rock.

Ru Fei quickly instructed their men to detonate the wall segment with some careful placement of gunpowder. With a loud bang and a large cloud of dust, the wall collapsed, leaving behind a gaping hole large enough for a man to squeeze through.

Yuehwa and Shoya peered into the darkness.

"It's an entirely new passage," Shoya said. "And look, there are steps."

The new tunnel branched off perpendicularly to the one they were currently in, with steps chiselled into the stone that led downwards in a fairly steep incline. There were also wooden holders that had been nailed in on both sides, carrying torches that had not been lit for hundreds of years. Tiny white spiders scuttled over their surfaces, rapidly dispersing when they sensed the approach of other forms of life.

"Chrysanthemums," Yuehwa murmured, studying the symbol that had been carved into each torch holder. She turned towards Ru Fei, who had just clambered in through the hole to join them on this other side. "Do you remember any records of such a tunnel on the Horanjit maps?" she asked.

The young commander shook his head. "The tunnel we came from was supposed to be a direct route that would lead out at the other end of the Tangshan Pass. I don't remember there being any branches that break off from the main path," he said. He ran his fingers along the grooves of the chrysanthemum insignia of the wooden holders. "Is this not the symbol of the first queen of Feng?"

Yuehwa stared down the flight of steps, suddenly getting a sensation of déjà vu from when she had broken into the astrology building's secret vault with Shoya. A sea of chrysanthemums guarding secrets from a century ago.

"Legends aren't only legends after all," she said.

#

Shoya stood at the top of the steps, staring down into the shadowy abyss that it led towards. He could hear Yuehwa and Ru Fei talking behind him, but he wasn't listening to any of the words they were saying. Instead, he was listening to voices—the voice of a man and a woman, drifting towards him from below.

He took a step down. Then another.

"If we continue squatting in here we'll run out of food in less than a week, but if we leave we'll just become target boards for the arrows of Wudi's archers. We're trapped. Either way we're going to die."

"We're not going to die, Nanzhe. We'll find a way. We always do."

"Jue-er, you shouldn't have come here with me. I told you to stay behind. What were you thinking!"

"If you expect me to stay at home and do nothing but wait, then you don't know me at all."

"I forgot, you always run towards danger, not away from it."

There was reproach in the man's words, but indulgence in his tone. And a familiarity that struck the chords in Shoya's mind.

Hwang Nanzhe. Wan Jue.

He was listening to a conversation several hundred years in the past, echoes of the memories belonging to two people that had somehow remained frozen in time within the depths of these mountains.

"Shoya, what's the matter?"

Yuehwa's question brought him out from his trance, and the voices disappeared. He blinked, realising that he had already arrived at the foot of the stairs. There was a short passageway ahead of him that led into—

—an underground city.

The enormous cavern comprised a series of little caves leading off from the central open space, stacked three storeys tall, one above the other like the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb. Carefully piled rocks had been used to form low walls that delineated small living spaces, with stone circles left where fires had once burned. There were even remnants of spears, axes and swords, rope and straw tarp left behind by the people who had once inhabited this place.

"I was not expecting that," Yuehwa said. She came from behind and stepped past him, entering the buried hideout that they had unwittingly discovered.

Shoya walked over to one of the abandoned fireplaces, picking up a stone tablet that had been left on the ground. It was a simple daily living record, written in characters chiselled in the old language of the Wudi empire.

"Ru Fei, have you ever been here before?" Yuehwa asked.

"No," the commander replied. He had ducked into a nearby cave, and his voice drifted out from within. "This must be one of the missing sections from the maps." When he emerged, he was holding a tattered white flag with large holes that had been gnawed by the tiny creatures living in the wall cracks. "I think this was the base used by the first king of Feng when he was hiding from the armies of Wudi," he said.

On the flag, they could still make out the fierce black strokes that outlined the stylised head of a watchful tiger, the same tiger that graced the Feng coat of arms today. However, there was something else—a chrysanthemum in full bloom, upon which the tiger rested.

"They were truly never apart," Yuehwa murmured, running the tips of her fingers down from the beast to the flower. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then she looked back up at Ru Fei. "Isn't there supposed to be treasure here then? I don't see any of it," she said.

The Firebrands searched the entire cavern, but other than broken weapons and sundries, there was absolutely nothing of value here. No gold or silver, no precious stones, not even a single bit of metal ore that could be used to forge weapons.

"Baixun's going to be so disappointed when he finds this," Yuehwa remarked. "Unless we're at the wrong place and he's discovered the treasure trove somewhere else instead." She had hopped onto the highest ledge, peering around curiously. "We're still walled in though. There doesn't seem to be a way out."

Although they had accidentally found the centuries-old hideout of Hwang Nanzhe, they had also run into another dead end. The route behind them was sealed, and there was no other way to leave this cave.

"There has to be another way," Shoya said.

"What makes you so sure?"

Shoya tossed one of the small stone tablets up to Yuehwa. At the very top, wriggly characters spelled out "Day three hundred and fifty-two".

"Three hundred and fifty-two? That's almost an entire year!" Yuehwa exclaimed.

"If they managed to survive for close to a year being holed up in this place, then there has to be another way out in order for them to get supplies. Hwang Nanzhe couldn't have used the same tunnel that we came through, because that leads directly to the mouth of the Tangshan Pass, where the enemy would have been camping in wait," Shoya said. "Everyone look around carefully at the caves and walls. The other passage could be blocked, or hidden with some secret mechanism."

He joined Yuehwa on the highest tier, venturing into one of the little caves. It was empty, save for a straw blanket strewn on the ground. He bent down and lifted the blanket. There, hiding beneath, was an ordinary red silk knot in the shape of a clover, the sort that the common people of Feng made to pray for good fortune. He picked it up, flipping it back and forth between his fingers.

"It's unlike you to be so superstitious," a deep, mirthful voice said.

Two silhouettes seemed to move before his eyes, a man placing his hands upon the shoulders of a seated woman, the latter's fingers deftly folding the knot that he now held in his hand.

"I'm not, but the men are. It's been almost seven months. They need some hope, even if it comes in the form of these little trinkets."

"We'll not be here forever. The monks told me that there are rumours of other warriors joining the fight. If they are besieged in other directions, Wudi will not be able to continue stationing so many men here to force us out. When that day comes, we'll fight our way down the mountain."

"The reverends are already doing much too much for us. I do not wish to put them in any danger."

"Neither do I, but we need their help. Reverend Hongtian believes there is a corruption taking hold of Wudi's army. He is worried for the fate of the people."

"A corruption?"

"Dark magic. Magic that feeds off the sins of men, magic that is spun from innocent blood. The Wudi emperor's quest for eternal power and immortality has finally led him down a path of no return. We must win, Jue-er. If we don't, then we are all doomed to hell."

Hell.

The word lingered in Shoya's mind like an ugly leech, and a sense of foreboding took root in the pits of his gut.

There it was again, the voices in his head. He hated them. He didn't want Sheng Yun to be right, yet each time he witnessed these memories, saw these shadowy figures from the past, he was forced to admit that she could be. That by some divine intervention, his fate was not his to control.

Yuehwa reached over his shoulder and plucked the silk knot out of his hand. Once again, the memory faded.

"Pretty, but doesn't seem to fit your image," she joked. Taking the loose end of the knot, she secured it to the base of his sword's crystal hilt. "I've heard that the people of Feng believe that knots like these bring luck. We don't have that custom in Hwa."

"Wan Jue made that."

"Wan... Jue?" Yuehwa arched a brow. "That queen of Feng?" She lowered her lids and looked away, with a nonchalance that felt almost too intentional. "Are you seeing those visions again? Hearing voices?"

"Yes." He didn't want to lie, not to her. "I hear them talking. In my head. Conversations that feel like a distant memory. I almost remember being in this place." Although he knew that he never had. No one had, not for centuries.

"Is that so? Then you must know how to get us out of here."

Did he?

Shoya took another look around the spartan dwelling, then he walked over to the wall across from the entrance. There was a little nook there, an indentation that looked like it could have been used to fit a candle. He picked up a rock from the ground and set it in the hollow. The base of the nook sank downwards a notch, and rotating gears could be heard rumbling from within the walls.

"There's a hidden door!" Ru Fei shouted from down below.

Shoya followed Yuehwa out, joining the commander and the other men at the first level of the cavern where a section of wall had swung open, revealing yet another darkened passageway.

It seemed futile for him to deny it any longer.

Reincarnation aside, there had to be some link between him and the first king of Feng, for there was no other way to explain how he came about this knowledge, or why he had access to these memories.

Shoya held out his hand and caught Yuehwa by the arm.

"Let me go first," he said.

He somehow knew how to open the secret door, but those fragmented visions had not told him what lay beyond. There was still Baixun and his men lurking in the vicinity, and possibly other hidden enemies that wanted them dead.

The passage was extremely narrow. With the exception of Yuehwa, the rest of them had to squeeze through sideways, inching their way in the darkness because it was impossible to hold torches with the little amount of space they had.

Shoya kept the blade of his sword held out in front of him, ready to defend against any attacker coming the other way. But there was none.

As they moved along, the air seemed to get colder, but also fresher. There was even an icy breeze that was flowing through the passage, carrying the sweet scent of morning dew and pine trees.

"Look, there's an opening up ahead," Shoya said.

The darkness had given way to a small blotch of light. A hole in the rock that was just large enough for a man to squirm through. As they approached, Shoya caught sight of the blinding carpet of white that lay beyond.

Snow.

He put his arms through the hold and used them to push himself out. A blast of cold mountain air struck him straight in the face, along with a face full of icy flakes carried by the howling wind. He was standing on a snow-covered ledge that stretched only a couple of feet ahead.

They were out of the tunnels.

Shoya turned to help Yuehwa out, and the other men came crawling behind.

"The snow's blinding," Yuehwa said, shielding her eyes as she surveyed their surroundings. "We must be near the mountain peak."

"That's not possible," Shoya replied. "We've been moving downwards, not up." Although tunnel topology could be misleading at times, it was impossible for them to have gone much higher than where they had started from.

Before he could figure it out, someone moved in front of him, stepping towards the edge of the stone ledge. It was Commander Ru, shoulders visibly trembling.

Shoya and Yuehwa moved to join him, and the latter gave a sharp intake of breath at the sight of what lay before them.

"Horanjit..."