Chapter 92: After the Raid

By the time Lin Yuan reached the tavern, Su Mei was already waiting at the open doorway with a lamp in her hand. Her expression changed the moment she saw him.

Lin Yuan glanced down at his torn robe and the dried blood covering one shoulder. With Qiao Ren supporting him beneath his arm, he supposed he looked even worse than he felt.

"I’m fine," he said before she could ask.

Su Mei looked at his shoulder, then his swollen wrist and the cut along his thigh. "You can barely stand without help. What part of that looks fine to you?"

Lin Yuan considered explaining that he had looked considerably worse a few minutes earlier. Judging from her expression, however, that probably wouldn’t improve the situation.

"I made it back," he offered.

"Inside. Both of you."

Xiao Lan appeared behind her, still holding the wooden pole she had carried throughout the attack. She stared at Lin Yuan’s injuries before looking toward Qiao Ren.

"Did you manage to drive them away?"

"They’re gone for now," Qiao Ren said. "Your boss even managed to kick their leader’s saber into a ditch."

Xiao Lan blinked. "His saber? Not the man?"

"The saber. It was a surprisingly effective tactic."

Lin Yuan stepped through the doorway. "Can we stop discussing the ditch? I’d rather sit down before someone decides to demonstrate what happened."

Xiao Lan looked as though she had several more questions, but Su Mei had already turned her attention to getting Lin Yuan inside.

The tavern looked considerably better than the courtyard. Chairs stood near the entrance, ready to be pushed back into place. The board they had used to brace the damaged door now leaned against the wall, ready to be secured again once everyone was inside. Several guests who had been told to remain upstairs had gathered near the staircase again.

Nobody seemed interested in sleeping.

One of the merchants looked at Lin Yuan’s bloodstained robe. "Are those people really gone? We heard fighting long after the first group retreated."

"For now. The others withdrew, and their leader eventually followed them, but I wouldn’t advise anyone to go outside looking for proof."

The merchant glanced toward the damaged entrance.

Lin Yuan understood the concern. The caravan traders had confirmed that the raiders near the market were retreating, and Qiao Ren had checked the restricted site before following him west. Still, the wasteland beyond Blackstone remained dark, and he had no intention of promising safety until daylight.

"Stay inside until morning," he told the gathered guests. "If anyone needs food or water, ask Su Mei or Xiao Lan. And don’t go outside alone, even if you think you’ve heard someone calling."

Nobody argued. A few days ago, some of them might have complained about being given instructions inside a tavern they were paying to stay in. Tonight, they had heard weapons clashing outside their windows. That made the situation rather different.

Once the guests had returned upstairs, Xiao Lan closed the damaged door and secured the board across it again. Lin Yuan lowered himself into the nearest chair.

Su Mei brought warm water, clean cloth, and the small box of basic medicine they kept behind the counter. Qiao Ren sat across from him and carefully placed the captured saber on the table.

Xiao Lan immediately leaned closer to examine it.

"Don’t touch that," Su Mei said without looking up from the medicine box.

"I only wanted to see it."

"You can look after I’ve finished treating him."

Xiao Lan retreated behind the counter, though her attention remained fixed on the weapon.

Lin Yuan rested his injured arm on the table. The swelling around his wrist had grown worse, and while he could still move his fingers, gripping anything properly was another matter. His shoulder wound looked worse than it actually was, but that offered little comfort when Su Mei began cleaning it.

He flinched.

"Could you be a little gentler?"

"I’m being careful. If you’d come back with fewer injuries, this would be easier for both of us."

"I’ll remember that next time."

Su Mei paused and looked at him. "There had better not be a next time."

Qiao Ren turned his attention toward the captured saber. Lin Yuan suspected he was trying not to laugh.

After bandaging his shoulder, Su Mei cleaned the shallow cut on his thigh before examining his swollen wrist again. She looked increasingly dissatisfied.

"You’re going to rest. No more fighting, no more running outside, and no trying to repair things yourself."

Lin Yuan glanced toward the entrance. "One of the western formation nodes is broken. We can’t just leave the boundary unprotected."

"Are you planning to fix it with that wrist?"

He looked down at the swelling.

She had a point, though he disliked how quickly she had made it.

Qiao Ren leaned back in his chair. "We can inspect the damage when there’s daylight. The raiders had plenty of chances to continue fighting before they withdrew. If they’re still nearby, wandering around injured won’t make Blackstone any safer."

Lin Yuan remained silent for a moment. He didn’t like leaving the formation damaged, but neither of them was in a condition to face another organized attack.

"Fine. We’ll inspect everything in the morning."

Su Mei nodded with visible satisfaction and began putting the medicine away.

Outside, the caravan traders remained awake. Two took turns watching the western road while the others checked their animals and cargo. Their injuries were relatively minor: one trader had suffered a cut along his forearm, while another had taken a blow to the shoulder. Qiao Ren had escaped with similarly manageable wounds.

Blackstone had been fortunate.

Several armed cultivators had fought in darkness around buildings filled with travelers. The night could easily have ended with someone dead. Instead, most of the serious damage seemed to belong to the tavern entrance, the market stalls, and Lin Yuan himself.

He wasn’t sure which would cost more to repair.

That thought bothered him almost as much as his injuries.

As the night wore on, the guests finally settled upstairs. Su Mei and Xiao Lan took turns resting, while Qiao Ren remained downstairs with Lin Yuan.

The two men spoke little at first. Between the occasional footsteps outside and the crackling of the lamp, the tavern gradually became quiet again.

The captured saber lay on the table between them.

After examining it for some time, Qiao Ren shook his head. Its dark leather grip and simple guard were well made, but he couldn’t find any obvious sect markings or family emblems.

"Nothing useful. Whoever owned this weapon didn’t leave us a name to work with."

Lin Yuan had been hoping for exactly that.

"Could the markings have worn away?"

"Not unless someone went to considerable trouble removing them. This looks intentional."

Qiao Ren turned the weapon over once more before setting it down.

"That man knew what he was doing. And he seemed awfully confident that something valuable was buried north of here."

Lin Yuan knew what he meant.

You have no idea what you’re sitting on.

The masked cultivator’s final words had been troubling him since the man disappeared into the wasteland.

"He wanted me to believe he knew more than I did," Lin Yuan said. "That doesn’t necessarily mean everything he said was true."

"But it doesn’t mean he was lying either."

"No. Considering what his people went through to reach the restricted site, I doubt they were interested in ordinary stone."

Lin Yuan looked toward the northern side of the tavern.

The Association investigators had already confirmed that the buried structure continued beneath the ground. They had identified worked stone, grooves, and construction patterns significant enough to justify restricting access to the area.

But they had told him very little about what those discoveries meant.

Now armed cultivators had attacked Blackstone and tried to carry away a piece of the structure. Whatever the site contained, remaining ignorant about it was becoming increasingly difficult.

Qiao Ren rested his arms on the table.

"When the Association comes back, you should ask them exactly what they found. Not another explanation about keeping the area untouched."

"I did ask before."

"And you accepted their vague answers because nobody was causing trouble yet. That’s changed."

Lin Yuan sighed. He disliked how often Qiao Ren had been correct tonight.

"I’ll ask again. This time, I’d like something more useful than a warning not to dig."

"Good. Because if another group comes looking for that place, we should at least know what they’re risking their lives to find."

Neither had an answer to that question, and they were too exhausted to keep guessing. Eventually, their conversation faded, leaving only the quiet sounds of the tavern around them.

Dawn arrived slowly.

The first gray light revealed more damage than the lanterns had shown during the night. Lin Yuan stood outside the tavern with his right wrist tightly bound and his shoulder covered beneath a clean robe.

Su Mei had objected to him going outside so soon. They had eventually compromised after he promised not to fight anyone or attempt repairs.

She hadn’t found that particularly reassuring.

The tavern entrance was their first problem. The frame had survived, but the latch needed replacing, and a section of wood had split where the club wielder had repeatedly kicked the door.

Lin Yuan pressed the damaged area gently. The wood creaked beneath his fingers, and he immediately withdrew his hand.

Qiao Ren came up beside him. "Think Master Han can repair it?"

"I hope so. Replacing the entire door would be a waste if the frame can still be saved."

"Considering how much trouble that door has given us, perhaps we should ask him to make the next one stronger."

Lin Yuan looked at the battered entrance.

"Let’s find out what repairing this one costs before we start discussing improvements."

They continued toward the market.

Two stalls had been overturned completely, another leaned badly to one side, and broken pottery lay scattered among pieces of splintered wood. The damage looked worse in daylight, especially where the fighting had spread between the stalls.

Lin Yuan stopped beside one familiar wreck.

It was the stall he had tried unsuccessfully to kick over during the fight. When the support refused to move, he’d eventually resorted to pulling the entire structure down.

Looking at the collapsed frame now, he wondered how much Master Han would charge for the damage.

Qiao Ren noticed him staring.

"Something wrong?"

"Just trying to remember whether that stall was already loose."

Qiao Ren examined the broken supports. "It certainly is now."

Lin Yuan decided there was no need to explain how much effort it had taken to make that happen.

They continued to the western boundary, where the damaged warning node was immediately visible.

The post had been broken near its base, probably by several heavy strikes. Part of its inscribed section had split along with the wood, leaving little doubt that it would need professional attention.

Lin Yuan started to crouch for a closer inspection, only for pain to flare through his ribs. He straightened again with a quiet hiss.

Qiao Ren watched him.

"You know, I could inspect the lower part while you stay standing."

"I wanted to see how badly it was damaged."

"And?"

"Badly enough that I regret bending down."

Qiao Ren shook his head and crouched to examine the broken section himself.

The second post, the one struck during Lin Yuan’s fight with the saber wielder, was still standing. A deep mark ran along its wooden surface, but the blade appeared to have missed the carved formation markings.

Lin Yuan examined it carefully from several angles.

"The inscriptions look intact, but I don’t know whether the damage affected anything inside. We’ll need the formation shop to test it."

"So that’s two posts needing attention," Qiao Ren said. "One broken and another that might fail later."

"Exactly."

Neither looked particularly pleased.

Lin Yuan still remembered paying thirty-eight spirit stones to install the warning formation. Repairing two posts should cost considerably less than replacing the entire system, but he wasn’t willing to trust that assumption until someone gave him an actual price.

"The formation shop is going to enjoy seeing us again," Qiao Ren remarked.

Lin Yuan looked at the broken post.

"I wish I shared their enthusiasm."