“You two know each other?” The Greenvalley City gate guard looked from the scout thief to the former gate-captain of Black Ridge City.

“…” The gate-captain’s face arranged itself into an expression of pure suffering.

The problem was layered. Deny it, and nobody would believe him — the scout thief had just greeted him like a childhood friend he’d grown up sharing clothes with. But admit it, and he’d be implicitly confessing membership in what was very obviously a terrifying and extremely illegal operation. That was categorically not an admission he could afford to make.

There was no good answer. So he did the only sensible thing: he pretended he hadn’t heard.

The scout thief, apparently immune to social cues, nodded cheerfully and confirmed it anyway. “That’s right, we’re together!”

The gate-captain briefly entertained fantasies of murder.

Impractical, given the power differential. He held his tongue and continued not hearing anything.

No point making a scene at the gate. Get into the city first. Then find an opportunity to slip out the other side, disappear, and never think about any of this again.

He shouldered through the crowd flowing into the city, using the busy street traffic as cover, moving as fast as he could without actually running. His goal was the opposite gate — out, gone, as far away as his legs could carry him. Whatever was about to happen in Greenvalley City, he wanted no part of it. The Windstill national ruler was Sky-rank tier five, which was genuinely formidable, and he commanded a considerable number of Sky-rank warriors besides. But a force that had swept through nearly ten cities in the space of a few days, then casually rolled up to the capital with the defeated city lords stuffed into prison wagons — the gate-captain did not like the national ruler’s odds. Nobody walked into the lion’s den unless they were certain of winning. These people were certain of winning.

He tried not to think about the figures in those wagons. The ones who had held ranks equivalent to his own and above, reduced to something that barely qualified as human. Every time he pictured it, his stomach dropped.

Only a domain emperor could have swept through so many fortified cities so easily. And only a domain emperor could have tracked down a man fleeing by gryphon, through a secret spatial rift that shaved seventy percent off the journey, and still beaten him to the destination on foot.

He kept sneaking glances at the two silver-armored warriors on the golden throne. There was no reading them by eye — he’d tried, and gotten nothing. But the moment he tried to sense them with anything deeper than visual assessment, some instinct at the bottom of his gut screamed at him not to. They were there the way mountains were there. Not aggressive. Just undeniable.

The Revenge Domain Emperor, perhaps? The Revenge Domain Emperor had a reputation for this kind of thing — taking in the discarded and the overlooked, the slaves and the refugees. But the Revenge Domain Emperor’s territory was nowhere near Windstill Nation. The Windstill Swamp region was deep rear territory, nowhere near the actual front lines…

He couldn’t work it out. He gave up trying and focused on moving faster.

“Hold on.” The scout thief materialized at his elbow on the Swiftlizard, grinning. “Your cultivation is pretty terrible, honestly — worse than mine by a significant margin — but your eye for situations is decent, and your speed is nothing to sneeze at. How about I recommend you for our escort unit? Good career prospects. And as a senior member, I would personally extend you a very warm welcome to the team. I’m Fengji, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Fengji?” The gate-captain stopped despite himself. “Weren’t you the city lord of Jinyang City?”

That was why the scout thief had looked vaguely familiar. The legendary Jinyang City lord — the one everyone in the region had heard about, the cat-tribe man who’d ended up with a starving city and no prospects.

“That was ten days ago,” Fengji said, with the breezy confidence of a man who had fully made his peace with recent life decisions. “These days I’m a qualified and loyal escort.”

“You gave up a city lord position to be an escort?”

The gate-captain’s first instinct was to call this insane. Then his second thought arrived. Serving a domain emperor was, objectively, better than running a bankrupt city with no tax base. And Jinyang City hadn’t exactly been a plum posting — there was nothing there to extract even if you wanted to. More to the point: everyone who hadn’t taken the escort position appeared to be riding in one of those prison wagons. Fengji’s employment terms, all things considered, were extraordinarily favorable.

That thought completed, the gate-captain went cold, lowered his voice, and tried his most sincere tone: “My lord, I beg you — please let me go. I only want to live. I won’t say a word to anyone, I swear it. Whatever is happening here is far above my level. I have nothing to do with any of this. Please.”

Fengji looked disappointed. “That’s a shame. I thought you had potential. Turns out you’re just a coward.” He waved a hand. “Fine. Get lost.”

“Thank you, my lord, I’ll be going immediately and you’ll never see me again—” The gate-captain’s heart, which had been lodged somewhere near his throat, began cautiously descending back to its proper location.

And then, from the golden throne, a voice.

The mysterious silver-armored man — the one who had quoted poetry about rich gates and frozen corpses — called out to Fengji: “Why have you stopped?”

Fengji trotted back cheerfully and delivered his report. “My lord, I spotted someone promising. Decent eyes, decent speed. Thought he might be worth bringing into the escort unit. Bit small in the courage department, honestly. Hard to say yet whether he can actually execute.”

He turned and pointed directly at the gate-captain, which was almost enough to make the gate-captain sit down in the road and weep.

The female warrior on the throne gave her verdict immediately: “Small courage means useless regardless of eyes. We don’t want cowards.”

The gate-captain could have kissed her. He stayed very still and waited for the man’s agreement, which would let him walk away from this alive.

“Cowards, no — agreed.” The man nodded thoughtfully. “But a person’s courage isn’t always what it looks like on the surface. Some courage is buried and needs to be activated. Some is underdeveloped and needs the right conditions to grow. Courage generally tracks with capability — the stronger you become, the more backbone follows naturally. You can’t expect everyone to be fearless from birth. In fact, clever people tend to be more cautious than reckless ones, because they think before they act.” He paused. “Give him a chance. Assign him a task. If he completes it, bring him on as provisional escort and see if he develops. If he can’t complete it—”

“Kill him,” the woman said. “I have no patience for cowards who are also useless.”

The gate-captain felt the sky go dark.

A chance. They were calling this a chance. This wasn’t an opportunity. This was a box with no exits. He couldn’t refuse — refusing was dying. Accepting and failing was also dying. The question had somehow become not whether to join, but whether he’d survive long enough to find out what the task was.

The silver-armored man tossed something across the gap. The gate-captain caught it on reflex, looked down, and flinched.

It was a monster core. Specifically, a core from a Devouring Dragon Beast — a creature native to the Windstill Swamp region, Sky-rank tier three. An extraordinary specimen even by that standard: some unknown energy had passed through it and rendered it in a state of absolute perfection, without a single flaw or impurity. A core like this — he could have traded it to the national ruler for a city lord appointment, no questions asked.

This person had just thrown it to a random stranger at a city gate.

“Your task,” said the silver-armored man, “is to deliver that to any one of the national ruler’s three Grand Stewards. Tell them the Titan Merchant Guild would like an invitation to the birthday celebration of the national ruler’s eighty-eighth concubine, three days from now.”

“…” There was nothing to say. The gate-captain bowed his acceptance and waited for them to pass.

When the procession had gone by, Fengji swung down from his Swiftlizard and clapped the gate-captain on the shoulder with the easy authority of a senior member sponsoring a junior. “Honestly? This is straightforward. I’ve done this exact kind of errand in Black Ridge City, Oxhorn City, Thornwall City — all of them. You’ve got the capability. Do it right and there’s a real path forward for you here.”

The gate-captain very much wanted to put his hands around Fengji’s neck. If this man hadn’t flagged him down, he’d be three streets away and accelerating.

He couldn’t, of course. Fengji was near-Sky-rank. He was Ground-rank tier seven. That math didn’t work in his favor.

He arranged his face into something that was aiming for a smile and landing somewhere closer to a grimace. “I’ll give it a try.”

Fengji shook his head. “Not try. One hundred percent. Do or die — and I mean that literally. You should feel lucky, honestly. Out of everyone who’s run from us in the last few days, you’re the only one still breathing. The lord saw potential in you. You think you actually outran us to Greenvalley? With your cultivation? I could crush you with one hand. The only reason you made it here is because we let you. Now do the job, and maybe — maybe — you end up with a Sky-rank war beast and a real future. I’m only provisional myself, mind you. You’ve got a long way to go yet.” He grinned. “Ha!”

He walked away.

The gate-captain stood in the street, drenched in cold sweat, legs trembling badly enough to be visible.

Tell the ruler. That was one option. If the ruler knew what was coming, there’d be a fight. If the ruler won, he might get credit for the warning. But if that young man on the throne really was a domain emperor — and the evidence was looking fairly conclusive — then telling the ruler wouldn’t save anyone. All it would do was put him on the wrong list.

He was going to obey. Any further hesitation felt like shortening his own lifespan. And for all he knew, there were eyes on him right now that he couldn’t see.

He took one careful look at his surroundings, suppressed a shudder, and walked toward the national ruler’s residence at a brisk pace.

Ten minutes later he came back out, thrown.

Literally thrown, by the guards at the door.

The Sky-rank tier-three Devouring Dragon Beast core had been accepted — pocketed, really, by a minor administrative functionary who had no business touching it. He’d been given a vague verbal assurance about the birthday banquet. None of the three Grand Stewards had appeared. The man who received him had the eyes of someone calculating exactly how much he could take from a person too weak to object, and the answer was: all of it.

The core was gone. The assurance was worthless. The task had failed.

This kind of thing happened in cities like this — officials preying on anyone who came without enough power to demand respect. If he’d been Sky-rank himself, the functionary wouldn’t have dared. But a Ground-rank tier-seven visitor carrying a treasure that tier-seven visitors had no business carrying — the temptation had been irresistible. He’d tried everything: pleading, citing his Black Ridge City credentials, insisting three separate times that he was acting on behalf of the Titan Merchant Guild, mentioning that he personally knew the Gold-Fang duty officer inside. The functionary had told him show up on the day and we’ll sort it out, shoved him toward the door guards, and that had been that.

He picked himself up off the pavement, dusted the blood off his face where the throwing had introduced it to the ground, and stood in the street with his jaw clenched and his eyes stinging.

He’d failed.

He’d used every tool available to him. He’d tried everything. And a minor corrupt official with slightly more muscle than him had simply taken the treasure and shown him the door, because there was nothing stopping him.

If I had real power, the gate-captain thought, staring at the ruler’s residence, I would burn this building to the ground. Every official inside it. Every stone.

“Things didn’t go smoothly, it seems.”

Fengji was standing behind him. Of course he was.

“I failed.” The gate-captain closed his eyes and waited.

“Now you understand what it is to have no power,” Fengji said. Not unkindly. “Eyes alone aren’t enough. You need eyes, strength, and nerve — all three. Miss any one and you don’t qualify to serve the lord.” A pause, and then a hand on his shoulder. “The Titan Lord knew you’d fail. He watched you try anyway. He thinks you’re worth developing — so he’s giving you a second task.”

A second task.

The gate-captain opened his eyes.

Something moved in his chest that he hadn’t felt in a long time — something sudden and completely unexpected. He had failed. And the man on that golden throne, who could have had him killed thirty seconds ago, had watched him fail and decided he was still worth something.

Who in his life had ever done that?

Who had ever looked at him after a failure and said: again?

A lord who sees your value even in defeat. The old phrase surfaced from somewhere. For such a lord, a man gives everything.

The gate-captain’s hands closed into fists.

He had never in his life felt quite this specific feeling — something igniting in him from somewhere deep, solid as stone, that he didn’t yet have a name for but recognized immediately as the kind of thing that didn’t go out once lit.

Whatever the second task was, he would complete it. Not for his life. For the first time in a very long time, for something that actually mattered.