By dawn they climbed the mountain's southern spine — a jagged ridge where old spirit pines clung to black rock and the wind howled like wolves through broken crags. Below, the border wilds smoldered with word of them: the Bloodbound Immortal and the Saintess who betrayed her chains.
The path was no path at all — just frost-slick stone and half-forgotten hunter trails, each step a promise that someone would slip and never rise again. But Li Shen moved as if the wind itself bent to him now. Each breath fed the Codex's chained hunger, each heartbeat an oath not yet broken.
Behind him, Yue Lan stumbled once — spirit threads flickering at her shoulders, breath a ghost in the cold air.
He turned, offering her his hand without a word.
She took it. No Saintess, no prisoner, no mask. Just Yue Lan — her palm cold against his, her eyes bright with a stubborn fire that would not die.
---
Higher still they climbed. By dusk they reached the Ruin Shrine — an ancient arch of charred stone half-buried in snow. Once, elders said, it crowned a sect that called lightning down from the heavens. Now, only cracked sigils remained, half-swallowed by drifting ash and time.
They took shelter under the arch. Li Shen kindled a fire from dead pine needles and broken shrine wood. Sparks flickered up into a bruised sky — dusk purple, rimmed with drifting ash clouds.
Yue Lan knelt by the fire, warming her fingers. Her hair stuck to her cheek in wild strands. She looked nothing like the Saintess who had once stood above cold elders and bound spirits with a word.
"You should sleep," Li Shen said.
She shook her head. "I keep watch."
He almost smiled — but his eyes flicked past her, to the edge of the ruin. In the drifting snow, shapes moved. Flickers of Qi, muffled under heavy cloaks and stolen talismans.
Bounty hunters. No sect crest — just mercenaries drawn by rumors of a boy who could tear open the Codex Ku Mo with a thought.
Yue Lan followed his gaze. Her fingers curled — threads stirring like silver grass around her wrist.
"How many?" she murmured.
Li Shen closed his eyes. The Codex fed him sight beyond sight — pulses of fear, blades half-drawn, the heat of whispered prayers to spirits that would never answer.
"Too many for a clean run," he said.
Her voice was steady. "Then we don't run."
He looked at her — the fire painting her face in gold and shadow. Once, he would have told her to flee, to find some lost path back to the marble halls she hated and loved in equal measure.
Now he knew better. They were oathbreakers both — too deep in the dark to pretend the sun could be theirs again.
---
Snow fell harder. Footsteps crunched on the shrine's broken stairs. A leader stepped forward — a woman clad in patchwork iron plates, three spirit brands burned into her throat like trophies.
Her voice cut through the swirling frost. "Bloodbound! The bounty's doubled. We take you alive, or in pieces."
Li Shen rose. The Codex's runes crawled up his neck — embers in the dark.
"You can try," he said. His voice was calm — not a threat, but a fact.
Yue Lan stood beside him — spirit threads coiling through the snow like live wire.
The bounty hunters laughed. The leader lifted her crooked blade.
"So be it."
---
The first clash was thunder through frost. Li Shen lunged — a red streak against the storm — steel biting iron, the Codex's pulse boiling in his veins but not yet unchained.
Behind him, Yue Lan's threads snapped a spear mid-thrust, weaving binding sigils into the snow. One hunter screamed as spirit silk crushed the talismans on his chest.
The ruin shook — snow spraying from broken stone as old sigils flickered to life, half-awake after centuries of silence.
One hunter slammed a charm to the shrine's wall — a theft from some mountain temple. The sigil pulsed green, seeking to bind Li Shen's spirit to the stone.
The Codex roared at the intrusion — Li Shen's laugh cracked the binding like glass. He caught the charm mid-surge and crushed it to powder in his palm.
More, Ku Mo whispered. Let me drink them whole. Leave nothing for the wind but bones.
Li Shen's blade found another throat — clean, quick, no wasted cruelty. He kept the Codex's voice under his boot, teeth gritted against its biting hunger.
---
The leader lunged for Yue Lan — blade a swirl of stolen sect runes, venom in every swing. Yue Lan stepped into her strike, spirit threads flickering between her ribs and the iron edge. Sparks hissed. Steel kissed skin.
Too close.
Li Shen moved without thinking — hand snapping the leader's wrist, blade sliding under her guard. For a moment, the three of them stood locked in the storm — predator, prey, and something more.
Li Shen's whisper was ice. "You should've run."
He broke her blade, broke her stance, broke her oath to easy gold in the snow.
The ruin fell silent again — except for the wind howling through the shrine's black arch.
Li Shen turned — Yue Lan's shoulder warm against his arm, the fire behind them still alive.
"Next time they'll bring sect blades," she murmured.
Li Shen's eyes flickered with the Codex's ember glow.
"Let them."
---
⚡ End of Chapter Seventeen
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