The sky was darkening.

Shen Yi knocked as usual, then pushed the door open.

Lin Baixi was in the back courtyard as she’d taken to being, and only poked her head in when she heard his voice.

Unlike yesterday’s damp and disheveled state, she’d changed back into the white robe — a fitted, flowing thing that gave her a certain ethereal quality. If that refined face of hers could manage to stop conveying raw appetite for five consecutive minutes, and if she’d stop swallowing visibly every time food came near, she might have actually passed for someone from another world entirely.

“Oh, I can smell meat.”

“Did you get paid?”

She took the clay jar and lotus-leaf package from his hands and set them on the table, unwrapping them before she’d fully sat down.

Shen Yi watched her from the side and felt something that was almost envy.

Whether it was a flatbread or a proper meal, the expression was exactly the same. If he’d had that kind of relationship with small pleasures in his previous life, he might not have worn himself down quite so thoroughly.

“Blood on your clothes again — every time you go out—”

Lin Baixi was saying it lightly, but as the lotus leaf and the jar came open, her brow drew together, and some of the brightness went out of her face.

Shen Yi noticed the change and had no idea what had caused it.

He also couldn’t be bothered to ask. Eat or don’t eat.

He sat at the table, picked up the goose leg, and let the crackling skin and the scent of rendered fat do their work on his tongue. It covered the somewhat austere quality of everything else.

Lin Baixi’s nose twitched. She closed her eyes and folded her arms. “Too rich. Completely lost my appetite.”

Shen Yi looked at her sideways and drank directly from the spout of the huadiao jar.

Lin Baixi opened one eye a sliver, lashes shifting, watching him sidelong. Her teeth found her lower lip. “If you’re tired of flatbreads, tomorrow I could buy some pork and soy sauce and cook for you — you don’t have to go taking other people’s—”

“You can cook?”

He looked up, genuinely surprised.

“I’d have starved to death if I couldn’t. There aren’t food stalls everywhere, you know.” She paused. “Are you even listening to me?”

She counted on her fingers. “A jin of pork is about twenty cash. If you’re careful with the salary, factoring in fuel and rice and condiments, you could realistically eat meat almost every day. I also know needlework — clothes and shoes don’t need replacing if they can be mended.”

In the dimness of the room, Shen Yi looked at her reciting this domestic arithmetic with the comfort of long familiarity, and thought about Master Lin producing eight hundred taels of silver with a casual wave.

“Are you actually the Lin family’s daughter?”

“Are you deaf?” Lin Baixi’s frustration surfaced. Why wouldn’t this sink in?

A clean constable drawing a government salary — and he either spent his time tangled up with demons or bullying ordinary people. What a waste of his abilities. In another time she’d have grabbed him by the ear.

Her indignation had a certain pouting quality that Shen Yi found vaguely amusing. He looked away, reached into his belt, and dropped a few pieces of broken silver onto the table — cutting off her lecture. “Your father gave these.”

Lin Baixi went completely still.

Her gaze traveled between the silver and the blood on his clothes.

“You went to find her?”

Before he could answer, she was on her feet, leaning across the table to put her face close to his, voice tight with urgency. “Do you understand how serious this is? They’re not what you think — the Beiya fox clan has an elder traveling through this area. The only reason it hasn’t come into the city is that it’s wary of my identity. But if you’ve actually killed its junior, if you’ve genuinely provoked it — nobody will be able to protect you.”

She was genuinely frightened. That much was clear.

Shen Yi absorbed the closeness and the faint fragrance without changing his expression. “So — what is your identity?”

Lin Baixi stopped mid-sentence.

A long silence.

“Of course that’s the part you actually heard,” she said, with significantly less energy.

Shen Yi stood as well. His expression stayed flat as he quietly excised the small, inconvenient feeling that had started to form somewhere in his chest.

This woman was still holding things back. The complications she carried were considerably larger than he’d estimated.

“Eat your food.”

He returned to the bed.

“I’m not a bad person, for what it’s worth.” She felt the distance he’d put between them and sat back down, poking at the yellow croaker with her chopsticks.

The appetite really had gone this time. After a while she said quietly, “My father — he’s all right?”

“For now.”

Shen Yi had some sense of what she was feeling. “The fox demon wasn’t at the estate. But it had brought other demons in.”

“Thank you.”

The blood on his clothes and the silver on the table had already said enough.

Lin Baixi worked to keep her hands from trembling, cradling the jar and taking small sips of the fish broth.

She breathed slowly until the feeling settled.

Shen Yi thought about what she’d said earlier — I have to stay alive. The fuller meaning of it was coming into focus now. Even with her own parents’ lives uncertain, she had to stay alive. And the fox clan elder, apparently, was wary enough of her identity to stay out of the city.

“I want to renegotiate.”

“What?”

Under Lin Baixi’s startled look, Shen Yi picked up a cloth and began wiping down the scabbard with methodical care. “The two Threshold Realm cultivation methods — not enough. I want Jade Liquid Realm instead. Still two. And I want one delivered now as a down payment.”

The terms had changed because the situation had changed.

Lin Baixi stared at him in silence. Then, somehow, she accepted the extortion.

She picked up her chopsticks again. “I can only write from memory. Give me paper and brush. Three days.”

She chewed the fish with more force than necessary, using it to keep anything else from showing in her expression.

She wasn’t used to being seen like this. Not by anyone.

Then that detached, infuriating voice came again.

“Does your earlier offer still stand?”

“Which offer.” Lin Baixi stuffed another piece of fish into her mouth, cheeks rounded, a smear of oil at the corner of her lips — not wanting him to hear anything unsteady in her voice.

“Cooking.”

Shen Yi hung the cleaned scabbard on the wall.

She was still a puzzle box, but the outlines were getting clearer.

The fox demon had refrained from killing her because of who she was — but had casually handed a defenseless woman to the predecessor, clearly expecting him to do the job for them. Even foxes with considerable power couldn’t watch her every moment.

They’d wanted to use the predecessor as a disposable tool.

Which left the question of what made him different. The only thing Shen Yi could come up with was the uniform. And from there, the thing Lin Baixi had been dancing around confirmed itself with very little effort.

So the Lin family sent their only daughter away to train, and she ended up in the Demon Suppression Division.

She wasn’t afraid of the fox demon. She was afraid of him.

If a court constable killed her, the foxes could walk away clean — hands unstained, no involvement.

If his instincts had been slightly different that first night — if he’d made the obvious decision and cut her down — he’d have personally murdered a Demon Suppression Division operative.

Shen Yi considered what it would feel like to be wanted across the entire Daqian Dynasty, and felt a chill run down his spine. He also found several new and colorful things to think at the predecessor for good measure.

What is wrong with you. Some women you don’t touch.

“…”

Lin Baixi had no idea what was running through his head. She swallowed the fish, drew in a slightly unsteady breath through a reddened nose, and said in a roughened voice: “Fine. I’ll cook.”

It’s just food. I’ll stuff you until you burst.

She gripped her chopsticks hard enough to make them creak, and made herself a quiet promise. Once she’d gotten through this month and found a way to break the seal—

She was going to prepare a full basin of dish-rinse water and pour it down his throat while pinching his nose shut.

The thought improved her mood considerably. She reached for the wine jar and drained what was left in one long pull.

(End of Chapter)