Page 38 of The Wind Dancer
He had spent a great deal of time exploring these tunnels. Judging by the notes, it wasn’t just for study purposes. He used them frequently.
Different inks marked different things. The black lines were the main tunnels, the red ones showed those that had collapsed or were blocked. Secret passages were marked ingreen. But the most interesting detail was the small blue icons scattered throughout the map. What did they mean? I could also tell the tunnels lay on different levels.
I leaned closer. Notes were written next to the blue icons.“The crossroads.”“Deep water.”“The web.”“The nest.”What did they represent? I knew these tunnels — some were used by thieves, smugglers, and fugitives — but my mentor saw something more. He saw them as a network, a living organism.
I sat cross-legged, studying the map as best I could. It was a treasure trove of information — passages I had never known existed, safe zones, bypasses. I remembered him telling me about the old sewer systems, how they had been built on top of ancient underground passages that predated the city itself.
“The real city is under our feet,”he had said.“Those who live above have no idea what is hidden right beneath them.”
My eyes moved across the map until they landed on the place the mercenary had told me about: the third basement level of the old pavilion at the Seven Bridges. The place where a meeting I couldn’t refuse was to be held.
A wicked grin spread across my face. Now I knew how to involve the Secret Chancellery. There was a hidden tunnel leading there...
CHAPTER 11
I didn’t have much time, but I had to at least check what was written on the stack of sheets. I knew this was the right call.
The thin, slightly yellowed pages were covered in small, neat handwriting. I ran my fingers along their edges, feeling the roughness of the paper and the weight of the knowledge he had left me. It was a carefully compiled and meticulously verified chronicle of power in the shadows. Many in this city would have killed for such information, or killed to bury it.
The papers listed everyone hiding and operating in the shadows of Cloud City. The expected names were there: heads of guilds and gangs, smugglers, owners of gambling houses, and other figures who had risen above the rest. But the list didn’t end there. Imperial officials, judges, merchants, temple attendants, and many other seemingly respectable citizens were involved in shady dealings. Each entry revealed how they were connected, what their weaknesses were, and who might betray whom. Everything one might need to upend their lives, or end them.
I leaned back in the chair for a moment and thought about it. This was like holding a lit bomb in my hands, and itdepended on me whether it went off. The longer I studied the papers, the more certain I became that my mentor had never been just a Shadow.
With this knowledge, he could have swayed or even controlled regional politics as he pleased, all through other people. He had used the Shadow Walkers’ guild as his own network of agents. The fact that he wasn’t an elder didn’t matter. For a moment, I even wondered if he had been the mysterious head of the guild, the one truly pulling the strings.
If that was true, then everything fit. Each of the elders played their own game, watching the others, while he quietly guided them. And if that was the case, then the elders were most likely responsible for his death. They realized who had them by the throat and decided to free themselves from his influence. Permanently.
I started to look further and whistled. The old man had collected a lot of dirt on all of them. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Lian Shu, the Daymaster, served the governor’s officials like a dog. In exchange for information about the guards, he would keep guild members in check and out of their way. His goal was balance. He hated change because he knew that if anything shifted, it would all crumble underneath him.
Old Yun was as slippery as a snake. She sold information without a second thought. Valuables, weapons, secrets — she didn’t care, as long as she was paid. There was hearsay that she had foreigners backing her, but she clearly didn’t care who she sold the city to. Traditions and clans meant nothing to her.
Jing Lei and his mercenaries were always ready to kill. It was no wonder then that he had close ties with the military.He had his people do their dirty work, it didn’t matter who got killed, as long as his name was respected. Strength and fear was all that mattered to him.
Tang Fei’s tendrils were everywhere. Spies, informers, snitches, every other person in the guild could’ve been his agent. He wasn’t just connected to the Secret Chancellery, he was one of its leaders in our region. As a proper imperial official, he believed that only complete control would keep this world from descending into chaos. He made schemes, dragging both friends and enemies into them. He considered order to be a leash, the tighter the better. And he wanted to put one on my neck.
The last file I examined contained information about Fu Shang. And what I found made my blood run cold. That bastard really had sent me there to die. He had been involved with the cultists for a very long time. It was his people who supplied them with the poor souls from the streets. After all, who would notice people like them missing?
I had always thought he was power-hungry, but this... this was beyond my comprehension. He had chosen the Broken Seal Cult. According to the notes, their doctrine was to release demons from the Underworld into our world in order to become counterparts to the dragonblood. Only instead of drawing power from mighty dragons, they would draw it from demons.
I kept reading further, and the more I read, the more I felt a chill run down my spine. The Broken Seal Cult had existed for over a century in the shadows, biding its time. They believed that power was stolen from humans by the gods and dragons. They didn’t worship demons, they just sought to break the seals that bound them in the Underworld.
Those who had gone through their rituals were changed, becoming something else. It was a slow process. First came strange dreams, then whispers in their minds promising strength. Then came irreversible changes to their bodies: skin turning to obsidian, hands strong enough to snap swords, eyes burning like fire. They became something new, something inhuman.
Their leader, a person known as the Harbinger, was accumulating strength. His goal was power that would allow him to become a new god.
The cult operated covertly, but my old man had monitored them. He had notes on how they infiltrated the ruling elite and spread their roots. They had allies everywhere, some among the officials and merchants, and some even among the priests of the Cult of Dragons.
It seemed that I now had something to offer Mei Lin in order to strike a deal. I carefully sorted the documents, laid them out on the table, and began to look them over again.
I took a deep breath, held it in for a moment, and exhaled slowly, putting my thoughts in order. I didn’t have time to make copies of the documents, and it was too dangerous to carry them with me. If anyone found out about their existence, I’d be pig food before morning.
The only option left was to memorize as much as I could.
I closed my eyes and concentrated, forcing my mind to enter a special state as my mentor had taught me. He called it a “memory palace”, a special place in the mind where you could keep images, connect them, and perfectly recall them at the rightmoment. The deeper you descended, the more you could hold. But it was very difficult, and the price was high.
I opened my eyes and started.
