Two days passed.
Shen Qing told himself he was preparing. He told himself preliminary investigation required planning, assessment, coordination. These things were true. They were also the reason he had not filed the excavation request.
During those two days, Shu Yan worked.
She built a sensing array around the well. Twelve jade markers positioned at measured intervals, each inscribed with resonance-detection patterns. The markers created a field that mapped changes in the formation below. Not a clear picture. A shadow of a picture, cast through twelve layers of stone and sealed energy.
On the second afternoon, she called Shen Qing.
"The formation is layered," she said. She was sitting cross-legged beside the well with her talisman workboard across her knees. Her notes covered three sheets. "I told you that. What I didn't tell you is that the layers serve different functions."
"Explain."
"The primary structure is ancient. I can't date it. The energy patterns don't correspond to any cataloged formation era. It is massive. Its function is containment. Something is sealed below this well, and the primary formation is what keeps it there."
"Something alive?"
"I don't know. The readings show stable energy output. Constant. If it's alive, it has been alive down there for a very long time."
Shen Qing looked at the well. The water was warm, as always.
"There's a secondary structure," Shu Yan continued. "Wrapped around the primary. Newer. I'd estimate a few thousand years old, but I could be wrong by a factor of five."
"Purpose?"
"That's where it gets strange." She set down the workboard. "The secondary formation draws energy from the surrounding environment. But it doesn't draw spiritual energy. It draws on emotional states."
Shen Qing waited.
"Specifically: love. Warmth. Contentment. Positive emotional bonds between people within the formation's radius. The stronger the emotional connections in the area above the well, the more energy the secondary formation generates. That energy feeds into the primary seal. It reinforces it."
Shen Qing was quiet for a long time.
"The village is the power source," he said.
"Yes."
"Their kindness. Their warmth. Their trust. The doors without locks. The children who don't fight."
"All of it feeds the seal. Every genuine bond between every person in this village generates energy that keeps whatever is below us contained."
Shen Qing looked across the square. Grandmother Liu was crossing with a basket of greens. Two children ran past her. She said something to them and they laughed.
Every laugh. Every kindness. Every shared meal. All of it converted into binding energy by a formation that was older than the name of the village.
"Who built the secondary formation?"
"I don't know. The formation language doesn't match the primary. Someone added it later. Someone who understood the primary seal's structure well enough to build a reinforcement layer around it. Someone who understood that emotional bonds could serve as a power source."
Someone who understood that love could be used as a chain.
"Has the primary seal degraded?"
Shu Yan nodded. "Slowly. The secondary formation compensates, but the underlying structure shows stress fractures. Microscopic, but accumulating. The seal was designed to hold whatever is beneath it indefinitely. It's been holding for a very long time. Nothing holds forever."
Shen Qing walked to the eastern house and sat at the desk. He took out a fresh sheet of paper and wrote.
*Updated assessment. Formation beneath the well is a sealed containment structure of extreme age. Entity or object sealed within: status unknown, energy output stable. Secondary formation reinforced by conscious emotional bonds of local population. Estimated village population serves as involuntary power source. Recommend extreme caution regarding excavation. Disruption of the population or their bonds may compromise seal integrity.*
*Village population count: 203.*
He looked at the number. He had counted twice.
He folded the report and placed it on the desk. He would file it in the morning.
...
That evening, he walked the village again. He could not stop seeing it now. The formation diagram in his mind, overlaid on the village like a second image laid over the first.
The buildings. Shu Yan had noted their positions matched the formation's geometry. They were built on the formation's node points. Every house, every shed, every wall in this village sat on a position that optimized the secondary formation's energy intake. The village had been built, generation by generation, in the shape of its own prison.
Nobody knew. Nobody had ever known. The formation drew on unconscious bonds. The villagers loved each other because they loved each other. The formation used that love because using love was what it was built to do.
Shen Qing found the girl at the well again. Same position. Hands in her lap. Watching the water.
"What's your name?" he asked.
She looked at him. Her face was still.
"Fuxi," she said. Her voice was flat. Quiet. The voice of someone who did not use it often.
"How long have you been sitting here?"
"Today?"
"Any day."
She thought about this. "I always sit here."
"Why?"
She looked at the well. She looked at him. She looked at the well again.
"The water is warm," she said.
Shen Qing nodded. He walked back to the eastern house.
Behind him, the well water caught the last light. The girl sat beside it with her hands in her lap. The formation beneath her drew on the warmth of 203 people and held something vast and patient in the dark.