By morning, rain had blurred COME into a pale trench and left REMEMBER sharp enough to read.
Qiao Ming wanted both words covered before the children saw them. Fu Lan wanted the mud dug out and thrown over the cliff. Lan Jue wanted samples from three depths. Shen Qing wanted everyone to stop touching evidence until he had decided whether the evidence could touch back.
Tianhui wanted to know why Feng Zhen had gone quiet.
He did not say that aloud.
Feng Zhen had been dead for three thousand years. The voice Tianhui heard was memory shaped by repetition, not a ghost he could interrogate. That distinction had always been clear to him. It felt less useful while the remembered voice refused to speak.
Qiao Rui discovered the title before lunch.
"Were you a buried king?"
Tianhui turned from the road marker.
The child had been listening behind the shrine door again. Qiao Ming closed his eyes.
"No."
"What were you buried with?"
"My body."
"That is not treasure."
"It was the only thing available."
She considered this, dissatisfied. "Kings usually get better funerals."
"I will complain to the responsible parties."
"Are they alive?"
"No."
"Then that is inconvenient."
Qiao Ming led her away before the inquiry reached inheritance law.
The title itself had come from Xue.
During a short voice contact that morning, she reported that the masked people had returned to the northern trees. They had not entered the false village. They had not threatened anyone. They had asked one question through a speaking tube made from black wood.
"Is the buried king awake?"
Tianhui had closed his eyes when she repeated it.
Shen Qing asked the practical question first. "How many people could recognize that title and reach this road?"
"In this era, I had hoped none."
"Hope is not a perimeter. Give me the old number."
"Fewer than twenty knew it when it was used. Some served beside me. Some tried to kill me. Several did both at different times."
Shen Qing rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Names, habits and likely descendants when you have them. History can remain complicated after the watch roster is written."
Lan Jue ignored both men. "Why buried?"
Tianhui answered because a technical question was easier. "I disappeared. People needed a story. Some believed I died beneath a mountain. Others believed I was sealed deliberately. The title outlived the facts."
"King?" Xiulan asked.
"I was never a king."
"People called you one anyway."
"They required a title after I disappeared. Accuracy was not their first concern."
"That sounds like a problem that could happen again."
Tianhui did not enjoy how quickly she had found the useful part.
They established three rules for the northern road.
No one answered alone.
No one crossed an unverified relation.
No one used Tianhui's ancient titles as passwords simply because an unknown stranger knew them.
Fu Lan added a fourth rule in the margin: IF A MASKED PERSON ASKS YOU TO COME SOMEWHERE, DO NOT GO BECAUSE THEY ASKED POLITELY.
Lan Jue left it.
The rest of the day belonged to the door project.
They needed a stable relation that could be opened from both sides without Tianhui forcing every correction through his channel. The first attempts were ugly.
Lan Jue placed three survey plates around the well. Ren Yu rigged the mill wheel to provide a regular pulse. Xiulan collected reference objects from Lin Xue's family and refused most of them.
Her husband objected when she rejected their wedding blanket.
"It matters."
"I believe you."
"Then use it."
"It is too large, too damaged and smells like smoke."
"That last part is because our roof burned."
"I remember."
He folded the blanket with offended dignity.
They kept the hairpin, Fu Lan's spoon and a strip cut from the sleeve of his winter coat. Xue had repaired that sleeve three times. The thread pattern differed in the false village.
Lan Jue approved the set.
"Why these?" Qiao Rui asked.
"Because objects acquire relation through repeated use," Tianhui said.
The child frowned. "That sounds like a long way of saying people touch them a lot."
Lan Jue said, "She is correct."
Tianhui stared at both of them.
"An ancient formulation has been defeated by an eight-year-old."
"Write it down," Qiao Rui said.
They failed six times before sunset.
The first relation opened toward the wrong Lin Xue. The second produced only sound. The third caused every spoon in Fu Lan's house to ring at once, which she considered a personal insult. The fourth collapsed when Tianhui tried to correct the angle too quickly.
Lan Jue slapped his hand away from the plate.
"You are doing it again."
"What?"
"Treating control as proof of understanding."
Tianhui almost objected.
Then he remembered the eastern Anu vanishing.
He withdrew his hand.
"Show me."
Lan Jue did.
Her method was slower. She let the plate drift until the response became legible, then changed only one variable at a time. Tianhui found the pace maddening.
He also found that it worked.
On the seventh attempt, the hairpin became cold.
A woman's voice emerged from the well.
"Stop using the spoon."
Fu Lan shouted from the courtyard, "Return it and I will consider your request."
Xue laughed from another world.
The contact lasted twenty-seven heartbeats.
No image. No open path.
But Tianhui had not held the relation alone.
Lan Jue released the plate and flexed her fingers. "Again tomorrow."
Tianhui wanted to continue.
His shoulder ached. The channel had begun to narrow.
He stopped.
That evening, while the village ate, the northern marker knocked once.
No copied child's pattern.
No ancient word in the mud.
One knock.
Then another, exactly when the first had faded.
Tianhui went to the boundary with Shen Qing.
The mist was empty.
On the ground, where the watcher had stood, lay a small disk of black wood.
No one touched it.
Lan Jue examined it from three paces away and said, "I have no idea what that is."
Shen Qing nodded. "Best news I have heard today."
Tianhui knew the carving on its face.
A grave without a name.
He kept that knowledge to himself for exactly eleven seconds.
Then he told them.