Quiet side courtyard.

Shen Yi drew water from the well, wrung out the cloth, and walked over to the dejected figure with its bowed head.

The dazed, frightened expression. The ridiculous ink patterns covering the face.

“I have to admit — you actually do look the part.”

A flicker of something wicked passed through the clear eyes. Having had his moment of teasing, he pulled the pig snout and the ears off Zhang Tuhu’s face and handed over the cloth, his voice warm with a steadiness that settled something.

“Get that off first.”

“I—”

Zhang Tuhu took the pig-demon accessories away, gripped the cloth, and stood there with his rough face shaking.

Then he put his whole body into scrubbing at the ink, as if trying to take a layer of skin off along with it.

Shen Yi turned and went inside.

“Start from the beginning. Every word, in order.”

He glanced sideways, his gaze going level again. “No performance, no worrying about me. Just tell me what happened. The rest is mine to deal with.”

At that—

Zhang Tuhu’s body, which had been holding itself upright through force of will alone, gave out. The big powerful frame folded down in a crouch, and the man who stood like a small hill began to shake like a child. He buried his face and let it out.

“I didn’t break the rule — I didn’t — I never touched her — they did it deliberately — they drove her to it — she ran her own head into the doorframe—”

The words were coming out tangled, and he was barely holding together.

Shen Yi listened quietly and took off his outer robe. “The Jingang School has rules about that?”

“They didn’t before, and formally they still don’t — only for inner disciples, and I am one — but I didn’t break it. The child isn’t mine.”

Zhang Tuhu raised his head with venom in his wet, desolate eyes.

Shen Yi pulled on the new yin-yang fish robe. He remembered something — Zhang Tuhu had mentioned once that he’d been considered talented when he joined, taken as an inner disciple, then spent years being pushed down because he’d offended the wrong people. Forced to spend all that time grinding out the Golden Sun technique on his own, half a volume at a time.

“Yuangang and his brother joined the Jingang School together. His brother died in the outskirts of Qingzhou city. He looked at who was in the area at the time and settled on me — though he had no proof. Yuanzhi and I had always gotten along. No grudge, no competition between us. But Yuangang kept working on his master, pressing from the shadows, always targeting me.”

Zhang Tuhu’s voice had drifted somewhere else. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

“So they framed you?”

Shen Yi straightened the robe and reached for the wolf-devouring-the-moon cloak.

“No. I killed Yuanzhi.”

Zhang Tuhu’s face went blank. His wide palms closed into fists.

“I didn’t care about the sutras in those days. I was drunk one afternoon, bored, heard Yuanzhi had taken a group of lay followers out for spiritual cultivation somewhere. I followed to make fun of him.”

“What I found—” the voice broke. “He had a dozen or so people penned up. Chained like livestock. All of them hollowed out, filthy, out of their minds. He was drawing the vital yang essence from the men, the yin blood from the women — bathing in it to cultivate some sinister body-refinement method. Behind the Jingang School’s back.”

“When I walked in on it, he chased me out. I was frightened — I’d never thought someone I’d lived alongside could show that kind of cold, vicious face. There was a rage in me and it came up all at once, and I killed him. I nearly died there myself.”

“Most of the people he’d kept were already broken by the drugs. Their minds were gone. There was one woman — she’d been kept separate because she was pregnant and he couldn’t take her blood. He’d just been using her. She was still conscious. I took her out quietly and got her to a village some distance from Qingzhou.”

When the words stopped, two tears made their way down the creases of Zhang Tuhu’s face. The life had gone out of him completely.

Because he’d tried to find a teacher to give the child some learning — and he’d let something slip.

“Yuangang had just finished closed-door cultivation when they found out I’d come back. They followed me quietly, watched me asking about tuition costs, traced it back to the village.”

“She wouldn’t betray me. Wouldn’t say anything against my name.”

“So she ran her own head into the doorframe—”

“I got there after she’d already gone.”

“The child is still in their hands.”

The words were faint and didn’t lift.

“Face clean? Come with me.”

Shen Yi stepped out of the room toward the courtyard gate.

He knew more than Zhang Tuhu might have guessed.

A school with no obvious source of power suddenly showing signs of revival. A jianghu sect inexplicably raising a Buddhist shrine and building a pagoda. Everyone else had put it down to flattering a scripture-obsessed new prefect. The picture was different now.

Zhang Tuhu looked after him.

The gilt openwork wolf crown held the dark hair in place. A straight profile against the night. The yin-yang fish emblem catching the light, jade at the belt, the golden-thread dark scabbard, and the wolf cloak catching the wind.

Shen Yi tugged his collar. The sharp features carried a coldness that had settled in and showed no signs of leaving.

“Where are we going?”

“To finish what the people who actually should have run headfirst into that door never got around to doing.”

The hand rested easily on the hilt. The footsteps were steady. The figure passed into the dark.

Jingang School.

Thousands of cold-faced Division Commanders had the perimeter sealed from every direction. The disciples’ weapons hit the ground almost in unison.

“We have not colluded with demons!”

“Please — investigation — please—”

Hong Lei looked through the crowd with a slight frown. This crowd didn’t look like they were looking for trouble.

But the monks inside the pagoda — not one of them had come out.

What were they afraid of?

“Sir, please, we beg—”

The disciples were in genuine panic. More than a few of the weaker-spirited ones had gone boneless to the ground, faces wet. Most of them were ordinary practitioners or below — they’d joined the Jingang School hoping to be noticed by one of the monks and eventually receive the body-refinement teaching. They had never encountered anything like this.

Then something was kicked through the air.

A body hit the lacquered gate with a bang, spread across it, slid to the bottom. White cloth soaked red. Every bone broken. Barely breathing.

When the face became visible, every Jingang School disciple’s noise stopped in their throats. Every breath held.

Y—Yuangang?

Before they could process it, a figure stepped calmly from among the Commanders.

Wind through the night. The cloak moving.

The golden wolf emblem on the Division crest passed in front of eye after eye, holding everyone’s attention.

Hands gripping demon-suppression chains tightened. The young face was being memorized. Every figure already standing straight stood a little straighter.

Some things spread fast. Like a few golden-eagle Commanders, wine loosening their tongues, telling the story of the one who reversed the caiman and frightened the Elder of Fury Sword into breaking his own sword. And the sight of someone riding through Qingzhou city on horseback, three ranks promoted in one day — it made every word of those stories easier to believe.

Zhang Tuhu crept through the crowd of important people with his head down, not daring to look up — and gradually noticed that every one of them seemed just as taut as he was.

“If I could be that, someday—”

Li Xinhan stared at the slightly lean back ahead of him and felt something move in him that he couldn’t name.

He turned to look for his sister — and found her standing still, looking forward, lips barely parted, breathing faster than usual.

“…”

Shen Yi walked unhurried to the gate, grabbed Yuangang by the clothing, and dragged him up the long stone steps one by one.

A dark red trail soaked into the grey stone behind them.

About twenty steps up.

He dropped Yuangang, stepped over him, and sat down on the stairs. One forearm across his knee. Robe moving quietly.

His back was to the sealed pagoda door.

He extended his free hand and raised one long index finger.

No threat in the pale face. No threat in the voice either.

“One incense stick.”

“If I don’t see what I’m here for — there will be no more Jingang School in Qingzhou.”

(End of Chapter)