Leaving the yamen.

Shen Yi stopped at a small eatery, ordered a pot of yellow wine and six stuffed flatbreads.

He hesitated, then added a portion of salted pork.

Since crossing into the Threshold Realm, his body had developed the practitioner’s instinct for foods dense with refined essence over plain grains and vegetables. On a constable’s salary, that was a fantasy he couldn’t afford.

Food was still food, though. He’d just have to manage his expectations.

He found a seat and worked through the meal — a bite of wine, a bite of meat.

The lunch hour should have packed the place. Instead it was oddly empty. The few people passing outside wore expressions from which joy had been quietly removed — not grief exactly, just a settled, practiced blankness. People who had long since stopped expecting things to be different.

Shen Yi lowered his head and bit into a flatbread.

He was a minor official. The suffering of the common people was not a problem his rank gave him the tools to solve. All he could do was keep dragging himself up and out of the mire.

The scattered tables kept mostly to themselves. No one was holding court or telling stories. So the one pair who were talking — even at a murmur — carried clearly enough to reach him.

“Someone died on Willow Leaf Street.”

“I heard. Just came from that direction. Don’t, don’t talk about it — I won’t be able to finish eating.”

Shen Yi lifted the wine pot and drank without expression. The sour, faintly bitter wine at least helped the dry flatbread go down.

Willow Leaf Street was his jurisdiction. More specifically — it was where he’d woken up in this body.

He hadn’t received a single word about this. He’d learned it from two strangers in a tea shop.

Song Changfeng’s parting words came back to him.

The people above moved quickly. In this short a time, they’d already managed to cut off his information.

“Bitten to death, they said?”

“I told you not to talk about it. Are we eating or aren’t we — I got there early, I saw it for a moment, and I’m still feeling sick thinking about it.”

The two men shook their heads and said no more.

Shen Yi stared at the flatbread in his hand. His appetite had gone the same direction.

He asked for a lotus leaf, wrapped up the remaining bread and salted pork, picked up his saber. “Check, please.”

Baiyun County. Willow Leaf Street.

A group of constables came backing out of a small courtyard, hands over their noses. “Disgusting. Wish I hadn’t come.”

“Not even our beat. Why are we wading into this.”

“Officer Zhang, put in a word for us — managing two extra streets, fine, but the pay needs to go up.”

Zhang Pengfei turned on them. “Less complaining. Don’t want the work, leave. Plenty who do.”

He swung back around — and stopped short.

A familiar young man had appeared in front of him at some point, standing quietly at the courtyard entrance, saber resting at his hip, looking in.

“Well! Constable Shen!”

Zhang Pengfei recovered and clasped his hands together with a grin that didn’t reach his eyes. “What brings you out this way?”

Shen Yi nodded and stepped forward.

Zhang Pengfei moved quickly to block him, smile still in place. “Outside a pleasure house, brother, I’d carry you in myself — tab’s on me — but this is official business from above. You being here doesn’t quite fit, does it?”

Shen Yi looked at the hand in his path.

Two days ago he’d been standing in this same street, doing the same thing to someone else.

“Shen Yi, even if you don’t respect me, at least give the senior clerk some face.” Zhang Pengfei dropped the smile when Shen Yi still didn’t move. “I’ll say it plain — anyone in Baiyun County can walk into that courtyard today. Anyone except you.”

The fear these men had once felt for Shen Yi had been rooted in the yamen’s backing. That backing had visibly shifted. Strip away the tiger’s hide, and all that was left was a fox making noise.

“Brothers — show Constable Shen our blades. Help him clear his head.”

Zhang Pengfei flicked his wrist. At his signal, the men behind him drew three inches of steel and turned cold eyes forward.

Then a boot connected with Zhang Pengfei’s stomach.

The force arrived before he’d processed that it was coming. He left the ground like a sack of grain thrown from a cart.

Shen Yi straightened his hem and walked through.

“You — you think you can just—!”

The remaining constables hadn’t expected that, and now stood frozen with drawn blades and no idea what to do with them.

At that moment, Chen Ji came running up the street with the Niu brothers and Zhang Dahu close behind.

He reached the gate and brought his scabbard down on the nearest man’s head without breaking stride. “Are you blind? Whose street do you think this is? Tie them up!”

Zhang Dahu blinked.

That was normally his line. He delivered it to civilians, usually. Hearing it aimed at fellow constables from the mouth of Chen Ji — of all people, Chen Ji, who’d always considered that kind of behavior beneath contempt — was genuinely disorienting.

Still, a job was a job. Zhang Dahu and the Niu brothers piled in, and within moments the group was trussed up neatly.

Whatever any of them thought of Shen Yi, this was playing out in front of outsiders. That was reason enough.

“Called it,” Chen Ji muttered.

“‘Called it,’ like you’re something special,” Zhang Dahu spat. “Obviously Shen Da-ren wasn’t going to let someone else fish in his waters. That’s just how he is.”

Chen Ji gave him a sideways look and decided that was a reasonable enough explanation — Zhang Dahu could be the one to go apologize to the brass.

The actual reason Chen Ji believed — though he barely believed it himself — was simpler.

The family here had been killed by demons.

Based on what he’d seen at the village, if Shen Yi’s behavior there hadn’t been an act, then he would come. He’d want to see.

Inside the courtyard.

Shen Yi crouched down and looked at the two bodies that had been reassembled as carefully as possible on a grass mat.

He breathed in slowly and arranged the five scattered fingers of the girl’s thin dark hand back into place.

This same hand had washed his feet not long ago — inexpert, clumsy, but there was something about that memory that sat quietly in his chest.

By the usual pattern of a demon attack, what was left would be scattered remains and not much else. But today was different. The Liu family — father and daughter — had been torn apart, every piece collected and placed back, ears and eyes included, and yet nothing had been eaten.

This wasn’t predation.

This was revenge. Methodical and deliberate.

Like Yellow Six, demons had people they cared about. If any of them had traced where the black-furred Dog Demon had gone that night, they might not have known who was responsible — but demons settling a score didn’t require proof. Grief and rage didn’t ask for evidence.

“You know these people?” Zhang Pengfei had dragged himself upright, still twitching. “You kick a man half to death and then just — what are you going to do? Go complain to the magistrate? Go fight the demons outside the walls?”

He wasn’t finished. “It’s obviously Dog Demon work. So which ones? Can you even find out? And if you do — what exactly are you going to do about it?”

The noise kept coming. Shen Yi felt it landing somewhere tight in his chest.

He took the white cloth and drew it back over the two bodies.

A minor constable. No path to the Demon Suppression Division. No command over the city garrison. The best he could summon were a few underpaid men who ran errands.

The only thing he had to work with was the blade at his side.

He couldn’t find out who specifically had done this.

So he wouldn’t look.

…

(End of Chapter)