10: Chapter 10 Absorbed Smoke and Blue Light

Pine needles burned through in the fire, emitting a faint 'crackling' sound, like someone counting seconds in one's ear.

Chen Jie squatted before the stone stove, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the canvas of his backpack—the seam where the black smoke had entered was now radiating a faint chill, somewhat similar to the feel of pebbles in a mountain stream.

"What are you dazing for? The fire is going out."

Zhao Kai kicked a piece of dry pine wood over. The wood rolled to the edge of the fire, and the sparks it kicked up landed on Chen Jie's work pants, but he didn't jump up and brush them off as usual; his eyes were fixed on the seam of the backpack's zipper.

The choking, burnt smell from just a moment ago, which should have been pouring toward him with the wind, seemed to have been gripped by an invisible hand and was being sucked entirely into the backpack.

Now, leaning in to smell it, only the clear fragrance of pine resin remained on the canvas, without even a hint of the smell of smoke, as if it had been 'washed' by something.

"Smell this bag." Chen Jie pushed the backpack toward Zhao Kai.

Zhao Kai frowned and leaned in; his nose had barely touched the canvas when he froze: "This is weird. That smoke just now was like tear gas, so why does your bag smell like it just came out of a pine forest?"

He reached out to open the backpack, but Chen Jie pressed his hand down.

"Don't move."

Chen Jie's voice was very low as his fingertips touched the outline of the jade stone inside the backpack—it was heating up, not with a scorching heat, but like a freshly warmed spice packet, with the warmth seeping out through the canvas bit by bit.

Lao Liu squatted under the walnut tree smoking, the sparks in the bowl of his pipe flickering, but the smoke didn't disperse as usual; instead, it swirled around Chen Jie's backpack and slowly drifted into the zipper seam, much like iron filings attracted to a magnet.

"The path this smoke takes is as strange as the mist at Suiyu Slope."

He tapped his pipe, "The elders say that things touched by the Spiritual Qi of the Jade God can swallow clouds and spit mist, just like a Essence Spirit in the mountains."

Zhao Kai sneered and took out a lighter, moving it toward the pile of pine needles: "I want to see just what kind of Essence Spirit is that capable."

He 'clicked' the lighter, deliberately letting the flame lick the damp moss, and a thick cloud of black smoke rose up instantly, like a writhing black snake, rushing straight toward Chen Jie's face.

Chen Jie instinctively turned his head, only to see the black smoke make a sharp turn half a foot from his nose, abruptly veering toward the backpack.

Even stranger, when the black smoke entered the canvas seam, it made a very faint 'sizzling' sound, like water droplets falling onto a hot iron pan.

"Damn it!" The lighter in Zhao Kai's hand dropped to the ground with a 'clatter'. "Is this stone a vacuum cleaner come to life?"

Chen Jie yanked the backpack zipper open. In the dim firelight, that dark green jade stone was lying on the top layer of the tool bag, and the patterns on the stone's surface were glowing with a clear blue light—three times brighter than it had been by the fire, with horizontal and vertical lines like a suddenly powered-up circuit board, the blue light flowing slowly along the patterns and swirling at the corners, just like the current in a stream winding around pebbles.

He reached out to touch it, and the moment his fingertips grazed the stone's surface, the blue light suddenly 'hummed' and brightened for an instant, and the wrench in the backpack 'clanged', as if it had been pulled by something, actually shifting half an inch toward the jade stone.

"It moved!"

Zhao Kai's voice cracked, and he stood pointing at the wrench, unable to speak.

Chen Jie ignored him, his attention entirely on the jade stone.

The blue light flowed faster and faster, and the patterns on the stone surface seemed to come alive; the horizontal lines glowed with a whitish light, while the vertical lines had a hint of cyan, weaving together into a dense net that caught all the smoke that had just drifted in.

He could even 'see' the burnt particles in the smoke being 'eaten' by the jade stone along the path of the blue light, and the dark green of the stone's surface actually became clearer because of it, like a piece of jade covered in a thin veil that had been wiped clean in one corner.

"These patterns... don't they look like the gears in the old ancestral hall clock?"

Chen Jie suddenly spoke, his fingertips tracing the path of the blue light on the stone's surface—the curve at the corners was exactly the same as the transmission gears he had seen while repairing Grandma Zhang's old clock last week.

Lao Liu leaned over to look for a long while, turning his pipe in his hand: "Now that you mention it, it really does look like the 'Water-Suppressing Talisman' drawn in the old genealogy. They say when the Jade God refined jade, the talisman patterns could channel water vapor, turning blue when encountering smoke, just like it was alive."

He pointed toward the stream, "The gaps in the stones at Suiyu Slope also emit this blue light before dawn, just not this bright."

Zhao Kai suddenly remembered something and took out his dead mobile phone, trying to stuff it into the backpack: "Since it can absorb smoke, maybe it can absorb water? Maybe my mobile phone can still be saved!"

"Don't mess around." Chen Jie pulled the mobile phone out, "If this stone truly has a spirit, how can you just use it as you please?"

As he spoke, he stuffed the jade stone more tightly into the tool bag, but the blue light didn't fade as it had just now; instead, it shone through the canvas, casting a layer of faint cyan shadows that projected scattered spots of light on the ground, like someone had scattered the wings of a firefly.

The fire gradually weakened, and the last wisp of blue smoke drifted slowly toward the backpack; the moment it was 'swallowed' by the canvas, the blue light of the jade stone suddenly flashed, then went completely dark.

Chen Jie touched the backpack; the stone's temperature was slowly fading, returning to the icy cold it had when first fished out of the stream, only the patterns on the stone's surface were much clearer than before, and within the horizontal and vertical lines, one could actually discern the outline of something resembling a wrench.

"Well, now it won't even leave us the smoke." Zhao Kai kicked a clod of wet mud into the fire, and the sparks 'popped' and scattered, but there was no longer any smell of smoke.

Chen Jie slung the backpack over his shoulder, suddenly feeling that the jade stone was a bit lighter, yet also a bit heavier—lighter in weight, but heavier with the doubts in his heart.

He looked at the mountain ridge in the distance, dyed golden-red by the sunset; in the direction of Suiyu Slope, a layer of thin mist was drifting, and the mist vaguely shimmered with a faint blue, somewhat like the light from the jade stone just now.

"Let's go, find a place to pitch the tent."

He pulled Zhao Kai along, but his steps involuntarily veered toward the direction of Suiyu Slope.

The jade stone in the backpack was quiet, as if it were asleep, but Chen Jie always felt that it was waiting for something—perhaps waiting for the next wisp of smoke, perhaps waiting for the moonlight in the stream, or perhaps, waiting for him to truly understand the secret hidden within those patterns.

The wind passed through the pine forest, bringing a cool, refreshing breath mixed with the warm fragrance of burnt pine needles, sending the three figures into the twilight.

Only the stone stove under the walnut tree still retained its lingering warmth, and on the soil by the stove, the patch of light cast by the blue glow was slow to be swallowed by the night mist.