Chapter Four: The Man Without a Shadow

At sunset, all shadows lengthened toward the tower, weaving a net over the city. Its center contained a man-shaped vacancy. Ye said the Correctors would place an unregistered condemned prisoner there. Better one man lose his past, he argued, than an entire city become infants. “You have repeated that sentence for four hundred years,” Su said. “That is why you have never solved the rule.” Lin reread the warning. A shadowless man could not *follow*. It did not say others could not follow him. At the tower's ten-marked clock, Lin placed Ye in the empty center. Zhou aimed ten film projectors at him. Ordinarily Ye cast nothing, but Lin shone the beams through the human-ash paper of the calendar record.