The orchard roots drank dawn frost like wine. Beneath the soil where rusted blades hid, a rumor older than crowns whispered: When the serpent strikes, the wolf bares its throat only to bite.
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Li Shen sat cross-legged on the orchard's frozen slope. The cut on his side bled slow — shallow, but clean. Yue Lan crouched behind him, spirit threads stitching cold balm through torn cloth.
Each thread left a thin web of frost across his ribs — a mark almost like ghost runes, fading as quickly as it formed.
"You should rest," Yue Lan murmured. Her fingers brushed a thread against his pulse — steady, slow, but never soft.
Li Shen barked a dry laugh. "Rest is for roots with no fangs circling them."
---
Master Tian limped up the slope, staff leaving twin dents in the brittle frost. He spat at Li Shen's feet, flecks of blood and phlegm hissing where they landed.
"Stupid to chase the Fang into the pine," he rasped. "Stupider to let him crawl back to the crown."
Li Shen didn't flinch. He pressed a palm against the stitched cut and rose.
"I want him to crawl," he said. "Snakes circle. They strike where they smell warmth. We'll give him warmth."
---
Tian's eyes gleamed sharp under his tangled hair. "You'd bait him with your throat?"
Li Shen turned, the wind tugging at the Wolfchain banner above the orchard's crest.
"No," he said. "I'll bait him with the orchard's heart."
---
That dusk, rumor spread like thawed blood: the chain-breaker wounded, the orchard unguarded, drills paused while the villagers feasted on the stolen rice and fish. A false hush settled over Tian's Watch — fires brighter than usual, laughter too loud to be honest.
Li Shen let it live. He limped openly from house to house, blade sheathed, arm bandaged high to show the Fang's cut to every curious eye. Children carried the tale down the slope. Old mothers whispered it into their hearth smoke.
---
Yue Lan did not leave his side. Her spirit threads wove through the shadows behind the orchard fence, brushing branches where none should sway. She left frost marks at choke points — tiny silver runes to bind a snake's throat the moment rumor hissed too close.
---
Near midnight, Li Shen sat alone by the orchard pit — the buried hoard half-exposed beneath flickering lanterns. His blade rested across his lap. The Wolfchain banner snapped once above him like a throat cleared in hush.
Master Tian waited behind a split trunk, staff across his knees, eyes half-lidded but glinting sharp when the wind rattled branches.
---
Frost thickened. Pines hissed as if they breathed rumor back to the crown.
Then, as the lantern flame fluttered low, Li Shen felt it — the hush twisting, breath where breath should not be. A cold coil brushing the orchard's oldest root.
The Fang was here.
---
He appeared behind the flickering lantern glow — no footsteps, no hiss, no threat. Just a glint of steel between moonlight and frost.
Li Shen did not move. He kept his palms loose on the blade's hilt, head bowed as if sleep might claim rumor's spine.
The Fang glided forward — a single exhale of dusk turned predator.
---
When the steel flicked down, Yue Lan's threads snapped like a ghost trap sprung. Frost seared the Fang's wrist. His dagger kissed Li Shen's shoulder — shallow, harmless, its poison lost in the shallow flesh Yue Lan's threads had already frozen.
Li Shen lunged up, teeth bared.
Blade hissed.
Steel bit.
Roots drank fresh blood.
---
The Fang staggered back, arm pinned by coiled frost. Yue Lan drifted behind him — her eyes empty, her threads a silver halo around his ribs.
He spat — a hiss of ruin and wasted poison.
"Roots rot," he wheezed.
Li Shen stepped in — his blade whispering the orchard's answer.
"Roots bite."
One clean stroke.
Rumor's oldest Fang dropped into the frost — eyes wide, mouth a frozen echo of the crowned serpent's promise.
---
By dawn, the orchard pit held new iron — the Fang's dagger, poisoned edge scraped clean, its handle stripped of the serpent's mark.
Li Shen wrapped the cold steel in cloth and laid it with the rusted blades.
Roots do not fear poison if they remember to bite back.
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⚡ End of Chapter Twenty-Four — Frost and Venom
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