My name is Shouxin — Heart-Keeper.
In the deepest chamber of Water Curtain Cave stands the Stone-Heart Altar, and on it rests a heart of stone. A stone heart is not a flesh heart — it doesn't beat — but it has intent. Three hundred years it has rested there, and the cave's waters run by the course it sets, the cave's breath turns by the rhythm it sets. Never mind the mechanics — understand it this way: the stone heart is the cave's loadstar.
I am its guardian spirit. The year the immortal stone quickened, I split off from that heart. I know nothing except keeping.
The night the stele cracked, the heart left.
Not stolen. Not seized. That night every ward around the altar stood untouched, and I never left my post. It simply — left. On its own. I still can't fathom it: no feet, no wings, unmoved for three hundred years — how does it leave?
Afterward I found a rub mark under the altar.
For three centuries the heart's base had bitten into the altar face. That night the base had shifted three inches. Not pried — prying leaves marks. It moved itself. You've seen a child turn in its sleep? That was the motion. It turned over, and it was gone.
Gone where?
I don't know. I know this: the night it left, the stele cracked. The day after, every yao in the hills woke hungry. Nine days later Taibai Jinxing came, stood before the empty altar for one incense stick, and said one sentence.
He said: "It heard it too."
Too.
That one word — "too" — ties three hundred years ago to now. Someone heard something then; this stone heart heard the same thing that night. And it went after it — not called away. It chased.
And the place a heart chases after — what kind of place is that?
Since then the altar stands empty. And what does an empty altar do? The cave's waters run wild, the cave's wind blows backward, and the dark at the bottom grows heavier by the day. The yao plague? That's the surface. Underneath: this cave's loadstar is gone.
Which is why the Stone Heart must come home.
Two easy words: come home. A heart is not furniture — you can't carry it back and set it down. It must choose to return. And how do you make a heart choose?
Three hundred years of keeping, and I've learned exactly one thing: a heart leaves because it heard something that mattered more than the cave. To bring it back, there is only one way —
Fill this cave again with sounds worth keeping.
What sounds?
I don't know. I only know the sound that matters must be kin to pounding clothes, to brewing wine, to a troop teaching its young to read. When you come, listen for me:
How many living sounds are left in this cave.