Krahe’s brief bout of reminiscence was broken by Yao’s voice.
“This is… Not ‘anthrocite’,” the talisman mistress said without looking away from the hand for so much as a second. The tone of her voice and the expression on her face spoke of a mixture of surprise, mild confusion, concern, and slight excitement. In short, she knew what the hand really was made of, and it was probably above anthrocite in value.
“Any clue what it is?” Krahe prodded.
Yao gave a slow nod, her focus remaining on the hand.
“I can not be entirely certain, as it does not exactly match the signs, but I can make a guess,” the older woman said. Finally, she tore her gaze away from the relic, shutting the book-box.
“Where to start… I suppose the beginning would be easiest. The myth of human charcoal containing the ritual subject’s soul as part of its material is not entirely without basis. It came about from suicide rituals, carried out by the elders of the Onyx-black Puppet Hall to pass down some of their cultivation to their students before they departed for the wheel of reincarnation. The practice died out early in the Onyx-black Hall’s history, as the ritual is, for lack of a better term, a spiritual suicide by a thousand cuts. The master would gradually break down his astral body, while compressing it into as small a region as possible, creating something much like this. It’s… Well, I suppose the continental term would be something like ‘astrocite’.”
“And you believe your ‘acquaintance’ carried out that ritual with the intention of creating an inheritance?”
“Not quite the same, but something similar. He must have been crippled and near-dead at the time, but I can sense it. He condensed his remaining cultivation into this. It would be useless to me even if I stole it from you - your anathema signature is imprinted upon the astrocite. It likely took place when you opened the keyless lock,” Yao said.
A wry smile came onto her face, and she added: “Shang was ever the cautious one.”
“How much longer?” Krahe nodded towards the Hexkey.
“Twenty minutes, assuming no further disruptions,” Yao said, rising from her seat. She approached the ritual circle, performing various gestures that caused the talisman rings to speed up in their rotation.
And so, Krahe waited.
Two cigarettes and twenty minutes later, it was finished. The talisman rings came to a halt, returning to the mass of Yao’s left arm the moment she plucked the Hexkey from their midst. In the same manner, the papers making up the sound and light suppression barrier rejoined her right leg when she stepped outside the barrier.
Clack. Clack. Clack. The sound of her sandals echoed through the room, the commotion outside having quieted for the moment.
“That scoundrel,” she uttered as she took a seat at the table, turning the Hexkey back and forth in her hand. “He buried a trap array into the key’s structure. It’s not active at the moment, but there is a switch keyed specifically to Shang’s cultivation. Using his hand to complete the key would activate the array. I cannot guess the specifics, but I recognize the pattern. A curse, guidelines to remove it partially, which would likely include steps to make you a suitable vessel, then a guiding impulse to lead you somewhere for the ‘full cure’, most likely a tomb with Shang’s True Soul and facilities for its transplantation into your body. An insidious body-theft scheme, but I cannot say I am surprised.”
By the sound of it, the trap array would bypass her direct immunity to mental manipulation through indirect coercion. Even if it was direct mind control, Krahe just didn’t want to take the unnecessary risk.
“Can you remove the array?” she asked. “If not, would it be a better idea to simply use human charcoal in bulk? I have access to… I would guess at best two adult humans worth.”
Yao shook her head.
“Not good enough. Anthrocite is the bare minimum, and it would require at least six more humans who have been put through the Five Torments Blast Furnace Refinement. Sorayah also most likely used an inferior version of the ritual, reducing the anthrocite ratio, thus raising the likely minimum to eight or nine rather than six.”
“Her offensive artifact likely went through seventeen people’s worth of fuel in its lifespan, and she had a nearly intact victim in her ritual chamber. The numbers line up, but I doubt she was behind all eighteen…” Krahe thought aloud.
Yao connected to the line of thought: “It is entirely possible she found the artifact and the box together with an already partially-complete Hexkey, subsequently continuing the work of one or more individuals who attempted its completion before her. Regardless, deactivating the array is not possible, Shang was the superior array master between the two of us by far.”
There was a “however” hidden in those words, and with a self-satisfied tone, Yao spoke it soon enough, looking up at Krahe from her work.
“He was, however, not my equal in artifact crafting. I can remove the array altogether. I have determined that the voidkey’s fundamental functions will not be harmed by this, but it will lose all defensive qualities, as Shang purposely embedded the array within as precarious a section as possible - I suspect to prevent exactly what I am about to do.”
“And his True Soul will be left to rot in some tomb, probably for a thousand years until the vessel fails,” Krahe guessed.
“A thousand years of dreamless slumber means little compared to the chance at a fresh start without the downsides of starting from nothing,” Yao shrugged.
“How long will it take to remove the trap array?”
The noise outside picked up again. Wasting no time with a verbal answer, Yao waved her hand over the voidkey and towards the ritual circle in the room’s center. A swarm of talismans from her arm carried it there, forming an armillary-like structure yet again, now enveloped in a spherical barrier of seething golden symbols.
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