Shu Yan activated the extraction array.
Twelve jade markers around the well pulsed with light. The light was blue-white, cold, steady. Spiritual energy flowed between the markers in visible threads, forming a web that sank into the ground around the well's base.
The web reached the secondary formation. The love-formation. The one that drew on the village's warmth.
The extraction prodded it. Tested its edges. Searched for anchor points.
The love-formation responded.
...
Fuxi felt it first.
She was sitting at the eastern edge of the square. She felt something shift in her chest. A pull. As if someone had hooked a thread to her breastbone and tugged. The pull was gentle. Then it was not.
Across the square, Grandmother Liu's hands flew to her chest. She stood up from the well rim and took one step. Her face was confused. Not afraid. Confused. Something was wrong inside her and she did not know what it was.
Uncle Bao sat down. He had been standing with his arms crossed and he sat down on the ground as if a chair had been pulled from under him. His hands went to his ribs.
The cultivators saw it. Shen Qing saw it. The villagers were clutching their chests. Not all of them. The ones who had stayed. The ones whose bonds to this place ran deepest.
"Abort," Shen Qing said. "Shu Yan, abort the extraction."
Shu Yan was already moving. Her hands worked the control array. "I can't. The secondary formation is in cascade. The extraction triggered a defense response. It's pulling back."
"Pulling what?"
"Everything. Every bond. Every connection. It's drawing on everything the village has."
The jade markers flared. The light turned from blue-white to white. Pure, cold white. The threads of energy thickened into ropes that drove into the ground. The love-formation was pulling its fuel source. Not a trickle. All of it. Every connection between every person in the village, pulled at once.
Fuxi watched.
Old Wei was on his knees in the terrace path. His hands were flat on the ground, the same way he pressed them flat when they were shaking. But his hands were not shaking. His hands were still. His face held nothing. His eyes were open and he was looking at the dirt between his fingers.
He fell forward. His face met the ground. He did not try to stop the fall.
A woman named Lian was at the river. She was too far to see the extraction array. She was beating laundry on the stones. Her three children were in the shallows. The pull hit her and she doubled over. She tried to call for the children. Her mouth opened. Nothing came out. She fell beside the laundry stones and the water carried a shirt downstream.
Grandmother Liu was walking. She had turned away from the well and she was walking toward her house. Each step was slower than the last. Her hand reached for the wall of the communal hall. She found it. She leaned against it.
Her hand relaxed on the wall. She slid down. She came to rest sitting with her back against the building. Her eyes were open. She was looking at the well. Her lips moved. She was mid-sentence.
She stopped.
...
Shen Qing's team tried to help.
Jiang He ran to Uncle Bao and tried to lift him. Uncle Bao was still breathing. His eyes were glazed. Jiang He carried him toward the road, out of the square, away from the well. He ran fifty yards and set the man down.
Uncle Bao's breathing stopped.
The bonds were not physical. Distance did not matter. The formation drew on connection, not proximity. Carrying a person away from the well did not break the connection that bound them to the village. Nothing broke the connection except the formation's pull.
Deng Liang was at the western edge, herding the families who had tried to evacuate further from the village. A mother carrying two children collapsed on the road. Deng Liang caught one of the children before it hit the ground. The child's eyes were closed. The child was cold.
Yun Xiao had not moved from the square. She was on her knees. Around her, the villagers were falling. Each one fell differently. Some collapsed. Some sat down slowly. Some reached for something. Most reached for someone.
Tao and Mingzhu fell together. He had his arms around her. His hands locked behind her back. Her face was pressed against his shoulder. They went down together and they did not come apart.
...
Desheng was running.
He was running toward Yun Xiao. He was running because she was the cultivator who taught him to throw rocks and she was his friend and a child's logic said friends keep you safe.
He was running and the butterfly was on his shoulder. The same butterfly from yesterday, or a different one that looked the same. It sat on his shoulder as he ran.
His legs stopped working. He was running and then he was falling and then he was on the ground. He slid forward on his chest across the stones and lay still. His arm was extended toward Yun Xiao. His fingers were open.
The butterfly stayed on his shoulder. After a few seconds it moved to his hand. It sat on his still fingers and opened its wings.
Yun Xiao watched him fall. She did not move. Her mouth was open. Her hands were on her knees. She was kneeling in the village square surrounded by the dead and she could not make her body do anything.
...
Two hundred and three.
The formation drew everything. Every bond. Every warmth. Every connection between every person who had ever lived in this village and loved it. 30,000 years of accumulated warmth, pulled in four minutes.
The extraction array went dark. The jade markers cracked, one by one. Shu Yan's talisman workboard shattered in her hands.
Silence.
The wind moved through the square. Dust settled. Somewhere a door banged against its frame.
Shen Qing stood at the center of it. His team stood around him. Nine cultivators, alive, surrounded by the dead. Their techniques, their training, their twenty years of service had accomplished nothing. The formation had not needed them to kill. They had triggered it and it had killed on its own.
Shu Yan was bleeding from her palms where the talisman board had broken. She looked at the blood on her hands.
Yun Xiao had not moved from beside Desheng.
The well water was still. It had been warm for 30,000 years. It was cold now. Cold and still and dark.
...
Fuxi was alive.
She was on the ground at the eastern edge of the square. She was lying on her side. Her eyes were open. She was breathing.
The pull had hit her. She had felt it. Every bond, every connection to every person in this village, pulled and severed. She had felt each one go. Grandmother Liu. Uncle Bao. Old Wei. Tao. Mingzhu. Desheng. Lian. The girl who counted clouds. The boy who lost track at thirty-seven. Each one a thread cut.
She had felt them all go and she was still here.
Something below grief. Something below feeling. A break in the structure of what she was. Not an emotion. A change. The camera that had recorded everything without interpretation had cracked. The lens was different now. The recording continued but the device was not the same.
She lay on the ground and she breathed and she looked at the well.
The water was cold.
Then the water was hot.
Light came from below. Not spiritual light. Something older. Something that had been waiting for 30,000 years beneath a village of the dead.
The well began to glow.