Chapter 37: The Weight of Shadows
Lianshan died in stages.
From his perch atop the Silk Pavilion, Li Yuan Tian watched the city's death throes—merchants abandoning stalls with arms full of unsold silks, mothers dragging children through alleys blackened by corpse-fires, guards discarding helmets stamped with the Heng Clan's insignia. The air reeked of spilled wine and something darker beneath: the metallic tang of fear-sweat, the sour stench of voided bowels.
The sky above pulsed a sickly orange, clouds roiling like a wounded beast.
Zhao Qilin shifted beside him, his sword hand tensing with Imperial Academy precision—too sharp for a mere sellsword.
"We should help."
"Help?" Li Yuan Tian didn't look up from the stolen ledger's damning figures. "The strong don't need it. The weak won't survive it."
He pointed north, where Lin Ji Chen's guards moved like reapers through wheat, their blades cutting down only those who dared flee toward the gates.
"Watch. They're not killing. They're pruning."
Zhao frowned—that infuriating aristocratic tilt to his chin.
"You sound like you've studied this."
A dry laugh. Li Yuan Tian brushed the scar beneath his ribs—a gift from Dongping's alleys. Somewhere below, a child's scream cut off mid-breath.
"Survival writes transcripts."
The Art of Unseen Theft
The vault's entrance was guarded by two mercenaries slumped against blood-smeared walls, their armor mismatched but their weapons sharp.
Li Yuan Tian palmed a smoke pellet from his sleeve.
"Left guard's right knee buckles when he stands."
He tossed the pellet into a nearby alley.
The explosion sent both men rushing toward the sound—just as the Forbidden Valley murals had predicted Heng's men would react.
Three breaths later:
A nerve strike to the first guard's cervical plexus.
A knuckle-driven pressure point to the second's brachial artery.
Two bodies lowered soundlessly to the stones.
Zhao stared, posture slipping into the Zhao clan's tactical assessment stance.
"You didn't kill them."
"Blood leaves calling cards." Li Yuan Tian stripped a robe from one of the guards, tossing the other to Zhao. "Lin's scent hounds track slaughter for leagues."
Zhao fingered the robe's frayed hem—too coarse for imperial silk, too filthy for Zhao dignity.
"You're... efficient."
Li Yuan Tian adjusted his stolen disguise.
"Rats learn fast when the cats have fangs."
Whispers in Forbidden
The vault's true treasure lay behind a Seven-Pillar Defense—third variation, exactly as the murals had shown.
Li Yuan Tian's dagger tapped the cracked floor tiles in an old rhythm.
On the seventh strike, the wall sighed open to reveal: 2 things
A jade slip, vibrating with suppressed power.
The Blood Ginseng, its roots coiled like sleeping vipers.
The air tasted like old copper.
Zhao recoiled. The jade slip bore a lotus wreathed in crimson flames.
"That's—"
"The Crimson Lotus Arts," Li Yuan Tian said. "Martial techniques of the Crimson Lotus Flame Sect."
"The murals in the inheritance space showed me how to utilize this art."
Zhao hesitated. "We've achieved our goal. Shouldn't we leave now?"
The Price of Patterns
Their escape route snaked past the burning market. A girl no older than ten knelt beside a groaning merchant, pressing a torn cloak to his gut wound.
Zhao froze.
Li Yuan Tian yanked him behind a collapsed stall.
"His boots have silver toe-caps."
"Mo Clan spies," Zhao whispered, recognizing his family's oldest enemies.
The Mo Clan—an imperial city power on par with the Zhao Clan—had been their sworn enemy for generations.
The "merchant" twitched a hidden dagger as the girl sobbed.
Zhao's hand dipped to his coin purse. For a heartbeat—just one—his imperial mask cracked.
A silver tael flashed through the smoke, landing silently near the girl's feet. The Zhao silversmith's mark glinted—a death sentence if traced, a lifeline if spent wisely.
Li Yuan Tian said nothing. Some lessons had to be learned bleeding.
Lessons in the Dark
In the cellar hideout, the Blood Ginseng paste bubbled like something alive.
"You knew about the girl," Zhao said.
Li Yuan Tian stirred the mortar.
"Mo Clan plants orphans near wounded agents. Lin Ji Chen uses beggars as lookouts."
He lifted the pestle—dripping crimson like a fresh wound.
"The world's ugly when you're small enough to see its seams."
The cellar walls groaned as another explosion rocked the dying city above.
Zhao's gaze drifted to the jade slip.
"And that?"
"An opportunity," Li Yuan Tian said, packing the ginseng into vials.
"We're not the monsters here."
A lie.
They all were.
The Hunger
As they shouldered their packs, the jade slip shivered against Li Yuan Tian's chest.
Above them, Lianshan's final towers collapsed in a shower of sparks.
The screams had grown thin, almost... fragile, like a song fading into ash.
A city burned.
A secret stirred.
And far to the east, beyond the mountains stained red with war, a crimson lotus bloomed in the dark.