Late at night in early autumn, the air was cool as water.
In Xianglian City, Xiling, at the far end of Tiannan Street, stood a certain residence.
The main hall was spacious and brightly lit with candles, with fine wine and delicacies laid out in abundance. Yet it lacked the lively clamor of clinking cups and merriment. The soft, lingering melodies of silk and bamboo accompanied red leaves drifting slowly to the ground, lending the place an oddly desolate air.
The master of the residence, thoroughly drunk, embraced two singing courtesans and drank cup after cup of rich wine amid their coaxing. The only guest at this banquet was a man in a gray robe. His face was thin, with neatly trimmed short whiskers. He was not particularly old, yet deep lines furrowed his brow, as though he were perpetually burdened by endless worries.
He lowered his gaze to the wine in his cup. Unlike the host, he did not drink heartily. Instead, he seemed distracted, his fingertips tapping lightly against the table in time with the music.
“Venerable, why are you not drinking? Is the wine not to your taste?” The host, suddenly inspired, staggered over while leaning on a singing courtesan for support and laughed heartily. “Today is a day of great joy! With such good news, how can we not celebrate with wine? Come! Let me share a drink with you. I’ll drink first as a sign of respect!”
Though the drunken man hooked an arm around him, the gray-robed figure remained as steady as a mountain, without even a smile appearing on his face. Still, he cooperated, lifting his cup from the table and saying calmly, “Please.”
The host tipped his head back and drained his cup, yet made no move to leave. Shaking off the courtesan supporting him, he dropped heavily into a seat beside the gray-robed man, tugged drunkenly at his sleeve, and began rambling. “Venerable, these past years haven’t been easy for us… Think of how much we’ve suffered—living under false names, wandering from place to place. At long last, Heaven has opened its eyes. That evil ghost really has finally had his candle snuffed out…” He thumped his chest. “Let me tell you honestly… after all these years, tonight is the first time I can finally put my heart back where it belongs and sleep soundly without worry.”
By the end, his voice even carried a trace of tears. The gray-robed man’s expression softened slightly, and he said in a low voice, “Do not be careless. Although Yugong Fengting is dead, those people are still around. They may not let matters rest so easily.”
“Heh… heh…” The host laughed through drunkenly unfocused eyes, spilling more than half the wine in his cup onto his robe. “Venerable, you know what it means to be a ‘bird startled by the mere twang of a bowstring,’ don’t you?”
“Sometimes I think it isn’t that those people are truly so formidable. We were simply frightened out of our wits that one time, and ever since then, the slightest sound has sent us fleeing like startled rabbits…”
“Four years ago, Yugong Fengting personally ordered Bihua disbanded. Xiling, Qiyun, Dongyu—which of these great powers isn’t watching Longsha like a starving tiger, ready to seize on any weakness? Even if those Dead Man Lanterns were willing to keep risking their lives for him, would Longsha’s new king have the nerve?” He hummed an off-key tune, his body slumping to the ground like a heap of mud, while the manic delight in his voice climbed higher and higher. “We’ve been in Xiling for three years without a single mishap. They can’t find me… Hmph! They’ll never find me!”
“With that old bastard dead, we’re finally safe…”
Suddenly, a chill autumn wind swept through the hall, extinguishing every candle—and with them, the host’s final words.
At almost the exact instant the lights went out, the gray-robed man moved like lightning. He sprang from his seat, burst through the window, and landed in the shadowed corridor of the courtyard in the blink of an eye. “Who’s there?”
His reaction could hardly have been quicker, but since the attackers had dared choose this moment to strike, they had naturally prepared for such a response. The next instant, a faint hum of steel cutting through the air came from above. A cold flash gleamed like a star, descending precisely toward his head.
The gray-robed man reached beneath the corridor railing and drew a saber, raising it to block the descending blade. Steel crashed against steel, scattering sparks. The black-clad, masked assassin used the impact to rebound several paces away, while another ghostlike figure immediately swept in from behind, light as a whisper of wind in the night. The gray-robed man barely had time to turn his head before a slender, razor-thin blade carved a burning crimson wound across his cheekbone.
He knew every corner of this residence intimately. For three years, he had slept with weapons at the ready and never once relaxed his vigilance. Yet even after making every possible preparation, his heart was now pounding so violently that it seemed ready to burst from his chest.
“May I ask what faction you belong to? Why not state your affiliation? We can talk this over—why start killing the moment you arrive?”
Only the cold night wind answered him. Clearly, the other side had no intention of talking. The gray-robed man wiped the blood from his cheek. Knowing that a vicious battle was unavoidable tonight, he thrust forward with his saber in his right hand and pursued the black-clad assassin in the courtyard, while his left hand secretly gripped two iron darts. When the second assassin tried the same trick again, suddenly emerging from behind him, he flung the darts backward.
A brief whistle and the assassin’s muffled grunt of pain sounded at the same time. The gray-robed man relaxed for an instant before immediately gathering himself and slashing at the opponent before him. Without warning, searing pain tore through his shoulder and back. Before he could complete his technique, the enemy seized the opening and struck back. The thin blade narrowly skimmed past the tip of his nose and tore open a wound along his brow ridge.
A young woman’s clear, laughing voice rang out from above. “What kind of scrap metal is that? And you dare show it off? Here, take it back!”
Two sharp whistles came from his right rear. The gray-robed man twisted aside to evade them, only for a bright male voice to immediately laugh: “Why not try mine instead?” The two voices followed one another in perfect coordination, all within the span of a turn. One of the gray-robed man’s eyes was smeared with blood, obstructing his vision, and he no longer had time to dodge again. Relying on sound alone, he raised his saber to knock aside the hidden weapons.
The instant they made contact, he knew something was wrong. The two projectiles struck with almost no force at all, far too light to be lethal weapons. Looking down, he saw that the objects lying on the ground were plainly two apricot pits.
Fury at being toyed with surged through him. His grip tightened around the saber, but the stinging pain from the wound along his brow ridge pulled his reason back into place. Who exactly were these people? How many of them had come? Ordinary thieves would never dare behave so boldly. If they were robbers after money and valuables, there was no reason for them to conceal their purpose. He was certain he had never offended any martial sects. Then there was only—
The night wind brushed across his skin, but the true cold crept gradually from between his bones. His hands could barely remain steady, yet his heart was sinking into a bottomless abyss.
From the hall came the screams of the singing courtesans and the crash of shattered cups. There was no moonlight tonight. By the faint, dim illumination, he glimpsed several figures darting and weaving through the room. Those musicians were undoubtedly assassins in disguise, while the guards he had carefully selected for the outer courtyard remained as silent as though they were already dead.
If he still failed to understand the situation now, then he was truly not far from death. This residence had long since been under surveillance. The apparent calm had been bait, and the news of his old enemy’s death an even stronger lure. At the moment when they were most relaxed, that unseen serpent had already coiled tightly around them, baring its venomous fangs beside their throats.
If he allowed the fight to drag on, sooner or later they would wear him down to death. He could not be drawn into a prolonged battle. Money and property could all be abandoned. He had to escape immediately!
The gray-robed man’s thoughts raced, and he made his decision in an instant. Once again, he swung his saber and forced back the two black-clad assassins. No longer lingering in combat, he turned and leapt back into the inner hall, kicked aside a musician blocking his way, and seized the host’s hand as the man flailed wildly in resistance. “Go, now!”
A strange, inexplicable sensation suddenly washed over him, as though he had accidentally stumbled into a fog. As if burned, he flung the man’s wrist away. That piece of flesh dropped limply, then abruptly stopped in midair at an unnatural angle.
The hand he had grasped had no pulse.
His eyes, now accustomed to the darkness, finally made out the face before him. The man’s eyes were wide open and his lips slightly parted, his expression forever frozen at the instant of terror. At the center of his brow was a bloody hole resembling a black mole, while a thin line of blood encircled his neck and extended upward into the strings hanging from the rafters overhead.
This was a corpse.
All those movements just now—the fighting, struggling, dodging—had been deliberately manipulated, a puppet show staged specifically for him to see.
At last, the gray-robed man understood where that fleeting sense of wrongness had come from. He lowered his head and looked at the dark stain of blood spreading continuously across the front of his robe, then raised his gaze once more to meet his companion’s unfocused pupils.
It had been a single strike—fast, yet utterly silent.
Decisive, clean, and swift. The force and distance had been calculated perfectly, so precisely that not even a speck of blood had splashed onto the attacker.
The strings, slender as fine snakes, silently withdrew into the rafters. The master of the residence’s corpse crashed heavily to the ground, revealing the assassin who had been standing quietly behind him—the one who had succeeded with a single strike.
The gray-robed man clutched his spurting throat and gasped harshly for breath. His rapidly fading vision could no longer make out the assassin’s features, capturing only a faint, gently swaying trace of pale light, almost like an illusion.
Was that… moonlight?
He fell backward. His dilating pupils reflected the dark night sky beyond the window. There was nothing there.
The assassin stepped closer and bent slightly over him. That faint trace of light slid downward with the movement.
“Fooled by your own favorite trick. Surprised?”
The tip of the blade lifted open the gray-robed man’s robe. The broad expanse of tattoos across his thin chest rose and fell more and more weakly. The assassin crooked a finger toward someone behind him, then casually tapped the man’s face with the cold back of the blade and murmured a farewell. “Go keep company with the dead you love so much, Venerable Quanlin.”
The heavily made-up songstress pushed through the others and stepped forward. Her movements were light and composed, completely unlike the woman who had screamed in terror earlier. She accepted a small leather pouch from her companion, spread it open, and drew out a thin, razor-sharp silver knife.
At the second watch of the night, flames roared skyward and swallowed the entire residence.
Startled by the blaze, neighbors hurried from their homes with clothes hastily thrown around themselves to see what had happened. A drowsy young man carrying a bucket rushed into the crowd, only for the neighbors to seize him from all sides and drag him back. “Stay back, stay back! It’s too dangerous!” “The fire’s too big to put out! Be careful or you’ll get hurt!” “Don’t go, Erlang! Come back!”
“Isn’t that the home of Master Song from Dongfu Silk & Satin Shop? How did it suddenly catch fire?” Erlang squeezed among the crowd and craned his neck, trying to see more clearly. “I even heard singing coming from the courtyard earlier tonight!”
A neighbor waved away the smoke in front of him. “Who knows? Maybe they weren’t careful with the candles. Such a huge estate, and just like that, it’s gone!”
“What about the Song family? Did they get out?”
“They’re over there. That whole crowd by the gate is theirs.” The neighbor pointed them out, clicking his tongue in amazement. “Who would’ve thought the Song family hid their wealth so well? Usually they keep such a low profile, but just look at how many servants they employ. How enormous must their fortune be?”
Erlang nodded vaguely and murmured, “They really are rich…”
“What good is money? They hired all those people and still couldn’t prevent the fire. I say this is simply fate—when something is yours by destiny, you will have it in the end; when it isn’t, there’s no use forcing it…”
Erlang pricked up his ears, about to hear what other profound opinions the man had to offer, when the constables arrived. Seeing the night wind rising and the flames growing fiercer, they feared the blaze might spread to the main street ahead and dispersed the crowd without further discussion. Erlang was jostled along by the throng and nearly had his shoes trampled off. With no other choice, he carried his bucket back to his own courtyard.
He bolted the main gate behind him and confirmed that no one had followed him. Then he set down the bucket, walked to the western wing, and knocked gently six times.
The doors and windows had been covered with opaque paper and appeared pitch-black from outside. A sliver of candlelight spilled through the crack in the door. Erlang stepped quickly into the room, shedding his earlier drowsy and bewildered appearance. Straightening solemnly, he bowed slightly toward the black-clad figure standing in the candlelight. “Lord Hui Yue, aside from those two, no uninvolved members of the Song household were harmed. The constables arrived just now, but the fire in the inner courtyard was too intense. They couldn’t get inside, nor could they extinguish it in time.”
“I understand.” The black-clad man called Hui Yue raised a hand, signaling for him to straighten. “You did well. Thank you for your efforts these past few days.”
He accepted something from the companion behind him and pushed it toward Erlang. “This is for you. You may… dispose of it however you wish.”
It was a thin roll, lighter than a handkerchief. Erlang carefully accepted it with both hands, yet his entire body began to tremble as though he could not bear its weight.
The raging fire outside seemed to burn into his eyes. He stared fixedly at the roll, the muscles of his face twisting uncontrollably.
No one spoke. In the utter silence, even the distant crackling of the flames could be heard clearly.
“Thank you…”
Bean-sized tears splashed onto the floor as Erlang choked back his sobs and prostrated himself fully, bowing until his forehead struck the ground. “On behalf of my elder sister… on behalf of my entire family, I thank you all for your immense kindness!”