Three days of borrowed life felt heavier than three years.
Wei Shen felt it in his bones—a hollow ache where those stolen days should have been. The Ledger's warning pulsed in his mind like a second heartbeat: LIFESPAN REDUCTION PERMANENT. He didn't know how much time he'd started with. Now he knew he had less.
They traveled northeast, following the River Foam's tributaries toward the Misty Peaks. The landscape shifted from soggy lowlands to pine-speckled foothills, the air sharpening with the scent of resin and coming frost.
Qinglan walked beside him, silent for hours. The sword-intent slate was wrapped in oilcloth and strapped to her back. She touched it occasionally, as if checking it was still there. Her master's remnant. Her only inheritance.
"We should talk about Yan Zihao's warning," Wei Shen said, breaking a silence that had stretched since dawn.
"What's to discuss?" Qinglan's voice was flat. "His father killed my master. He gave us information. The debt is paid."
"He said his father killed your master. Not the Bureau. His father."
She stopped walking. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying maybe this isn't just about forbidden artifacts. Maybe this is personal for Marquis Yan. Your master, my father… they might have crossed him somehow. Not just broken Bureau laws."
Qinglan's hand went to the slate. "My master never spoke of personal enemies. Only systems. Corrupt systems."
"Sometimes," Wei Shen said gently, "the system has a face."
She looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since they'd fled Back-Reed. The controlled mask had cracks now—exhaustion, grief, the beginnings of trust. "You think Marquis Yan is coming for us personally."
"I think he already is." Wei Shen pointed to a pine tree ahead. A fresh mark was carved into its bark—not a trail marker. A Bureau sigil. Three concentric circles with a slash through them. "Tracker's mark. They're herding us."
Qinglan's expression hardened. "How long have you seen these?"
"Since midday yesterday. Every few li. Subtle, but there."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I wanted to be sure." He met her eyes. "And I wanted to see if you'd notice."
A flash of anger, then resignation. "Test me again and I'll leave you in a ditch."
"Understood."
They kept walking, but the atmosphere had shifted. The forest felt watched.
The small problem announced itself an hour later, at a narrow crossing where the trail bridged a rushing stream.
The bridge was gone. Recently cut—the wood was still pale where the ropes had been severed.
"Ambush point," Qinglan murmured, hand drifting to her blade.
Wei Shen scanned the opposite bank. Thick brush. Good cover. The stream was too fast to ford easily—they'd be exposed mid-crossing.
"We go downstream," he said. "Find a narrower spot."
"They'll expect that."
"I know."
The Ledger pulsed. SOUL INK: 0.3/1.0 — it had regenerated slightly, the reward from completing the sketch destruction. Not enough for Audit. Barely enough for Record.
He focused on the stream. The water was milky with glacial runoff, but he could see stones beneath—some large, some small. The current's pattern…
"Qinglan. Your Dawn Light Breath technique. Can you use it to… I don't know, harden the water? Make stepping stones?"
She stared at him as if he'd gone mad. "That's not how it works. Water is fluid. Unstable."
"But if you flash-freeze the surface for just a second—"
"The energy expenditure would be enormous. And it would light up my spiritual signature like a beacon."
"Exactly."
Understanding dawned in her eyes. "A diversion."
"While I cross upstream where they're not looking."
She shook her head, but a reluctant smile touched her lips. "You're getting better at this."
"Survival is an excellent teacher."
They backtracked fifty paces. Qinglan positioned herself behind a thick pine, hands already moving through seals. "Give me three breaths after I start. Then run. Don't look back."
"You're not coming with me?"
"I'll meet you downstream. I'm the better fighter if they take the bait."
He wanted to argue. But she was right.
He nodded.
Qinglan took a deep breath, then stepped into the open at the stream's edge. Her hands came together, and the air cracked with cold.
Frost spread across the water's surface, jagged and brilliant, catching the afternoon light. The temperature plummeted. For three heartbeats, a fragile bridge of ice spanned the stream, glowing with borrowed qi.
Then the arrows came.
Not from the opposite bank.
From above.
Wei Shen looked up just as three figures dropped from the trees. Not Bureau agents. Mercenaries—mixed armor, mismatched weapons, hungry eyes.
He'd been wrong. The bridge wasn't the trap. The diversion was.
He drew the short knife he'd taken from one of the Back-Reed guards and moved.
The first mercenary landed awkwardly, off-balance. Wei Shen was on him before he recovered, driving the knife into the gap between chestplate and shoulder. The man screamed, but Wei Shen was already spinning away.
The second mercenary swung a heavy axe. Wei Shen ducked under it, felt the wind of its passage, and slashed at the man's leg. The blade bit, but not deep enough.
The third was smarter. He hung back, a crossbow leveled.
Wei Shen saw the trigger finger tighten. He threw himself sideways just as the bolt released. It grazed his ribs—another burning line of pain.
He hit the ground, rolled, and came up behind a tree as another bolt thudded into the wood.
Across the stream, Qinglan was fighting two more mercenaries who'd emerged from the brush. Her blades were a silver blur, but she was outnumbered.
Wei Shen's mind raced. The crossbowman was reloading—slow, heavy weapon. The axe-man was limping toward him, bleeding but angry.
The Ledger offered nothing. No ink for combat analysis. No tricks.
So he used the forest.
He kicked a pile of damp leaves into the axe-man's face, then darted not away, but toward the crossbowman. The man's eyes widened—he hadn't expected that. He fumbled with his reload.
Wei Shen closed the distance and slammed his shoulder into the man's chest, driving him back into a tree. The crossbow clattered away.
Behind him, the axe-man roared, charging.
Wei Shen dropped low, and the axe swung over his head, biting deep into the tree trunk. Stuck.
He drove his knife upward into the axe-man's exposed armpit. The man gasped, eyes wide, and collapsed.
The crossbowman scrambled for his weapon. Wei Shen kicked it into the stream, then faced the man. Unarmed now.
The mercenary drew a short sword. "Bounty said alive preferred. Didn't say unhurt."
He lunged.
Wei Shen parried with his knife, but the force knocked the blade from his hand. He retreated, hands up, scanning for anything—a rock, a branch.
His foot hit something. The fallen crossbowman's belt pouch.
He snatched it, tore it open. Coins scattered. And one small, glass vial filled with viscous green liquid.
No time to think. He threw the vial at the mercenary's face.
The man flinched, batting it aside. The glass shattered against a rock, and the liquid inside hissed, emitting a cloud of acrid smoke.
The mercenary coughed, eyes watering. "What—?"
Wei Shen didn't wait. He closed in, drove his palm into the man's throat, then swept his legs out. As the mercenary fell, Wei Shen grabbed a rock and brought it down once. Hard.
Silence, except for the stream and the sounds of fighting across the water.
He looked up. Qinglan stood over two bodies, breathing hard, one hand pressed to a cut on her arm. She met his eyes across the stream, nodded once.
They were alive.
But the small problem had revealed a larger one: someone had put a bounty on them. Alive preferred.
They regrouped, looting the bodies quickly. No identification. Just coin and cheap gear. But on the leader, Qinglan found a small bamboo token carved with a character: 林 — Forest. Or possibly, the Lin Clan.
"Mercenary guild," she said, pocketing the token. "The Forest Killers. They work for anyone with coin. No questions asked."
"How much is our bounty?"
She checked the leader's pouch, found a folded slip. Read it, and her face went grim. "Five hundred spirit coins alive. Two hundred dead."
Wei Shen whistled softly. That was more than the Azure Cloud token had cost. "Who pays that?"
"Someone who doesn't want us reaching the trials." She looked toward the Misty Peaks, visible now as a jagged line of white against the sky. "We have two days. And every cutthroat between here and there will be hunting us."
They moved faster after that, abandoning the trail for rougher terrain. The forest thickened, the air growing colder as they climbed.
By nightfall, they found a shallow cave behind a waterfall—a good defensive position, the sound of water masking their voices.
Qinglan tended to their wounds. The cut on her arm was shallow. The bolt graze on Wei Shen's ribs was deeper, bleeding sluggishly.
"You need stitches," she said, examining it in the dim light of a spirit-stone she'd taken from the mercenaries.
"Do you know how?"
"I know how to sew flesh. It won't be pretty."
"Pretty is low on my priorities."
She heated a needle in the spirit-stone's flame, then threaded it with gut from her repair kit. "This will hurt."
It did. Wei Shen clenched his jaw, focusing on the waterfall's roar. Qinglan's hands were steady, her touch surprisingly gentle.
"Why did you become a cultivator?" he asked through gritted teeth, needing the distraction.
She didn't answer at first, concentrating on a stitch. Then: "My mother was a seamstress in a border town. One winter, bandits came. She hid me in a bolt of cloth. I listened while they killed her." A pause, the needle dipping, pulling. "A traveling cultivator found me days later. He took me in. Taught me to fight instead of sew."
"Your master."
"Yes." She tied off the stitch, cut the thread. "He said cultivation wasn't about becoming immortal. It was about becoming strong enough to protect what matters. Then the Bureau took him for possessing 'contraband artifacts.'" Her voice went cold. "I wasn't strong enough."
Wei Shen looked at her. In the faint light, her face was all sharp angles and shadows. A girl who'd traded a needle for a blade.
"My father," he said quietly, "used to say contracts were like riverbanks. They channel power. They give shape. But if you build them wrong, they flood everything."
"Is that what happened? A flood?"
"I think so. I think he signed something he shouldn't have. Or refused to sign something. The Bureau doesn't arrest minor clan elders for spirit-rice discrepancies. Not unless there's more."
Qinglan finished bandaging his wound. "Rest. I'll take first watch."
"We should both rest. The waterfall covers sound. No one's tracking us in the dark."
She hesitated, then nodded. They settled on opposite sides of the small cave, backs to stone.
Wei Shen closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn't come. The Ledger pulsed softly, a new message forming:
SOUL INK REGENERATION RATE INCREASED.
CURRENT: 0.4/1.0.
NOTE: COMBAT STRESS ACCELERATES INK RECOVERY.
NEW CONTRACT SEED DETECTED: "SURVIVE THE FOREST KILLERS"
CONDITION: Reach Misty Peaks trial grounds without being captured.
REWARD: Soul Ink +0.5, Basic Contract Draft unlocked.
FAILURE: Bounty hunters deliver you alive to contractor.
He opened his eyes. Qinglan was watching him.
"Can't sleep?" she asked.
"The Ledger is… talkative."
"What's it saying?"
"That we need to reach the trials without being captured. And that fighting makes it stronger."
She considered that. "So it feeds on conflict."
"Or on survival." He shifted, wincing. "Qinglan. If we get separated at the trials—if something happens—I want you to take the slate and go. Get into Azure Cloud. Find your justice."
Her eyes flashed. "Don't."
"I'm being practical."
"So am I." She sat up. "You have the Ledger. I have the slate. Together, we might survive. Apart, we'll die. That's not sentiment. That's calculation."
He held her gaze. "And if the calculation changes?"
"Then we renegotiate." She lay back down, turning away. "Now sleep. Tomorrow will be worse."
He did sleep, eventually. And dreamed of ink spreading across water, forming contracts that bound not paper, but flesh.
---
Dawn came gray and cold.
They moved before full light, climbing higher into the foothills. The forest thinned, replaced by scree slopes and wind-stunted pines. The air grew thin, their breath fogging.
Around midday, they found the first trial marker—a stone pillar carved with Azure Cloud Sect's sigil: a mountain peak wrapped in clouds. Fresh offerings lay at its base: a few spirit coins, a bundle of herbs, a broken sword.
"Pilgrims leave tributes for luck," Qinglan said, examining the sword. "This was recent. A day old."
"Other aspirants are ahead of us."
"Or behind."
They pressed on. The trail became a narrow ledge along a cliff face. Below, a river roared through a gorge. Above, the peaks vanished into cloud.
Halfway across the ledge, Wei Shen felt it—a vibration in the stone. Then a rumble.
Avalanche.
Not natural. The cliff face above them was erupting, rocks and snow cascading down.
"Run!" Qinglan shouted.
They sprinted along the ledge as the world fell apart around them. A boulder the size of a cart crashed down ahead, blocking the path. They skidded to a halt.
Behind them, the ledge was crumbling.
"Up!" Wei Shen pointed to a crack in the cliff face—a narrow chimney just wide enough to climb.
They scrambled as rocks pummeled around them. Wei Shen boosted Qinglan up, then followed, his ribs screaming in protest. They hauled themselves into the relative shelter of the chimney as the avalanche thundered past below.
When the dust settled, the ledge was gone. They were trapped on a tiny outcrop, a hundred feet above the gorge.
Qinglan peered down. "We can't go back. Can't go forward."
Wei Shen looked up. The chimney continued upward, but the rock was smooth, wet with seepage. Nearly impossible to climb.
Then he saw it. A rope. New, sturdy, dangling from somewhere above, just out of reach.
A trap within a trap.
"They triggered the avalanche to force us here," he said. "Then left us a way out. A way they control."
"So we don't take it."
"We don't have a choice." He pointed. On the opposite side of the gorge, a figure stood on a promontory, watching them through a far-seeing glass. Too far to make out details, but the posture was familiar. Confident. Hunter's posture.
The figure waved.
Then lowered the glass and began climbing down toward the gorge floor. Coming for them.
"We climb," Wei Shen said, eyeing the rope. "But not the way they expect."
He reached into his pouch, pulled out the mercenary leader's bamboo token. 林. He tied it to his knife with a strip of cloth from his bandage.
"What are you doing?" Qinglan asked.
"Sending a message."
He threw the knife, not at the rope, but at the rock face above the rope's anchor point. The blade struck, bit, and held. The token dangled, spinning.
"Now they know we know," he said.
Then he turned to the chimney. "Can you make handholds? Small ones. Just enough for fingers."
Qinglan understood. She placed her palms against the wet rock, closed her eyes, and breathed. Frost spread from her hands, not thick ice this time, but a thin, rough layer—like rime on a window. It coated the rock, giving texture, grip.
"It won't last long," she warned.
"It doesn't need to."
They climbed. Slowly, painfully. Wei Shen's fingers ached, his ribs burned. Below, the river roared. Above, the rope dangled, tantalizing and deadly.
They were ten feet from the top when the frost began to melt.
Qinglan's hold slipped. She scrabbled, found a crack, held on. "I can't… maintain it…"
"Don't. Save your strength." Wei Shen looked up. The edge was right there. He could see sky.
He reached, strained, his fingers brushing rock—
A hand grabbed his wrist.
Not Qinglan's.
A man's hand, strong, rough.
Wei Shen looked up into a bearded face he didn't recognize. The man grinned, showing missing teeth.
"Got you."
More hands reached down, hauling them both over the edge.
They collapsed onto flat stone, surrounded by five men and women in rugged travel gear. Not mercenaries. Trial aspirants.
The bearded man helped Wei Shen up. "Sorry for the rough welcome. Saw the avalanche. Thought you might need a hand."
Wei Shen exchanged a look with Qinglan. Not bounty hunters.
"Thank you," he managed.
"Name's Kuo." The man jerked a thumb at the others. "We're heading to the trials. Safety in numbers, right?"
The group included two brothers who looked like farmers, a sharp-eyed woman with twin daggers, and a silent youth who kept glancing nervously at the sky.
Qinglan stood, brushing herself off. "The rope was yours?"
"Left it in case others came through. The trail's… problematic this year." Kuo's eyes lingered on the sword-intent slate strapped to her back. "You're well-equipped."
"We've had trouble," Wei Shen said carefully.
"Haven't we all." The sharp-eyed woman spoke up. "Bounty hunters on the trails. Sabotage. This isn't normal trial screening. This is a culling."
Kuo nodded. "Azure Cloud only takes twenty entrants this season. Hundreds are trying. Some are… thinning the competition."
Wei Shen understood. The bounty wasn't just to stop them. It was to eliminate rivals.
"We'll travel with you," he said. "If you'll have us."
Kuo grinned again. "More swords, better odds. Welcome."
As the group prepared to move out, Qinglan pulled Wei Shen aside. "You trust them?"
"No. But they're right about safety in numbers. And if they turn on us…" He touched the Ledger, now at 0.5 ink. "We'll be ready."
They set out with the group, climbing toward the cloud-wrapped peaks. But as Wei Shen glanced back, he saw the figure across the gorge had reached the riverbank. Standing there, watching.
And now there were two figures.
One waved again.
The other stood perfectly still, and even from this distance, Wei Shen felt a chill that had nothing to do with the mountain cold.
The Ledger pulsed, a single character burning in his mind:
七
Seven.