The first thing Wei Ji did was breathe.
He stood in the center of the empty room, closed his eyes, and just breathed. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The technique wasn't for Qi circulation—he had none to circulate. It was to quiet the hammering in his chest, to force the politician's calm over the animal's fear.
You have a desk. You have a chair. You have thirty days. You have a secret admirer who wants to kill you in three.
Priorities.
He opened his eyes and began to inspect his kingdom.
The walls were plain plaster, cracked in places. The floor was worn wood. He walked a slow circuit, trailing a finger along the wall. Near the window, his finger caught on a slight bump, no larger than a coin, almost invisible. He didn't stop. He kept walking.
A listening formation. A crude one. The Qi in it felt stagnant, like stale water. He found a second one by the door, and a third behind where the shelf had been.
Amateurs, he thought, almost offended. In his old ministry, the bugs were so advanced you'd never find them. These were like shouting in an empty hall.
He decided to leave them active. For now. If they were listening, let them hear what he wanted them to hear.
The sun had moved halfway across the small courtyard when the door creaked open again.
A man shuffled in. He was old, his back bent, wearing the simple grey robe of a minor clerk. His face was a map of wrinkles, and his eyes held the dull sheen of long-term disappointment. He carried a wooden writing box under one arm.
"Minister Wei," the old man said, his voice a dry rustle. He gave a stiff, perfunctory bow. "I am Wen. I have been assigned as your scribe."
Wei Ji looked at him. No cultivation aura. None at all. But not like his own hollow nothingness—this was a broken nothing. A void that had once been full.
"Old Wen," Wei Ji said, nodding. "You are my entire staff?"
"It would appear so, Minister."
"Why you?"
Old Wen's eyes flickered. A spark of old pain. "My meridians were shattered twenty years ago. A training accident. I can no longer hold a brush with the steadiness required for official court documents. I am… surplus."
An insult. They'd given the useless minister a broken scribe. The message was a symphony of contempt.
Wei Ji pulled the room's single chair over to the desk. "Sit, Old Wen."
The old man looked at the chair, then at Wei Ji, confused. A minister did not offer a chair to a scribe.
"Sit," Wei Ji repeated, his tone leaving no room for debate. "My legs are tired from kneeling."
Slowly, Old Wen sat. He placed his writing box on the desk.
"Tell me about this office," Wei Ji said, leaning against the windowsill. "The Office of Strategic Affairs. What did the previous ministers do?"
Old Wen's thin lips pressed into a tighter line. "They died, Minister."
"How?"
"The first was found in this room. Qi deviation, they said. He was a low-level cultivator. The second fell from a roof while inspecting palace defenses. The third took a wrong dose of medicinal pills. The fourth challenged a junior officer to a duel. The fifth died of a fever. The sixth was caught in a collapsed formation tunnel. The seventh… disappeared. His body was found in the river outside the city walls."
Seven. In five years.
"A cursed post," Old Wen added, almost whispering. "A polite way to remove a problem without staining the executioner's blade."
Wei Ji looked at the dust on the floor. He saw it now—not just neglect, but a kind of erasure. "And the office's duties? Its budget? Its authority?"
Old Wen let out a sound that was almost a laugh. "It has no formal duties. Its budget is whatever is not needed elsewhere. Its authority extends precisely to this door, Minister. And no further."
Perfect. A blank slate. A space that officially existed but functionally did not. It was the perfect place to hide, and the perfect place to die.
"Good," Wei Ji said.
Old Wen blinked. "Good?"
"If nothing is expected, then anything we do will be a surprise." Wei Ji pushed off from the windowsill. "First action. I need you to go to the Central Archives. I want a request—no, a requisition—for every logistical and bureaucratic document produced by the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Revenue, and the Imperial Guard for the past twelve months."
Old Wen stared. "Minister… that is thousands of scrolls. Tons of paper. We have no shelves. No space."
"We don't need to read them," Wei Ji said. "We just need to request them. Loudly. With the proper forms. In triplicate."
Understanding dawned slowly in the old man's eyes. A flicker of something that wasn't disappointment. "Activity. You want to create the appearance of activity."
"I want to be a bureaucratic ghost," Wei Ji corrected. "A rustle of paper in a forgotten hall. Annoying, persistent, but too trivial to swat. Until it's too late. Can you do it?"
Old Wen straightened, just a fraction. "The forms… I know the forms."
"Then begin."
As Old Wen shuffled out, the energy in the room shifted. It was no longer just an empty box. It had a purpose, however thin.
The purpose lasted until the afternoon.
A young messenger boy, couldn't be more than fifteen, peeked in. His face was pale. "M-Minister Wei?"
"Yes?"
The boy thrust three folded pieces of expensive paper onto the desk, then jumped back as if the desk were on fire. "For you!"
Wei Ji picked them up. The paper was heavy, scented.
The first bore the seal of the Minister of Revenue, Hua Tai. The script was flowing, generous. 'To honor your new appointment, a modest banquet of welcome at my estate this evening. Your wisdom is eagerly anticipated.'
Wei Ji's memory supplied the background. Minister Hua. His banquets were famous. Three guests in the last two years had left with fatal stomach ailments. 'An imbalance of culinary Qi,' was the official finding.
The second was stamped with the insignia of the Central Military Drill Yard. The writing was blunt. 'Observation of combat drills is essential for strategic understanding. You are invited to observe sparring matches tomorrow at noon.' Sparring matches where 'stray' sword beams had a history of finding their way to the viewing stands.
The third was on plain paper, but the ink was of the highest quality. It carried a faint scent of plum blossom. 'The rhythms of the inner palace are the heartbeat of the empire. The Head Maid, Su Lin, requests the pleasure of your company for tea to discuss household management.' The Empress's personal servant. A spider at the center of the purest web.
Three invitations. Three different paths to a quiet, accidental death.
Wei Ji looked at the messenger boy, who was still hovering in the doorway, watching him with wide, anxious eyes.
"You seem nervous, young man," Wei Ji said, his voice gentle.
"N-no, Minister!"
"Were you paid extra to deliver these?" Wei Ji asked, not unkindly.
The boy froze. His silence was answer enough.
"Were you paid extra to see my reaction?" Wei Ji pressed, softer still. "To see if I looked scared?"
A tiny, frantic nod.
Wei Ji smiled. It was a warm, genuine smile. The one he used for terrified first-time voters. "Tell them I looked… deeply thoughtful. Burdened by the weight of my new responsibilities. Tell them I studied each invitation as if it were a battlefield report."
He walked to the desk, took a blank piece of the cheap paper Old Wen had left behind, and picked up a brush. His handwriting was functional, not elegant.
'To the esteemed inviter: Your graciousness is a light in these turbulent times. I am, however, presently immersed in deep strategic planning for the enduring prosperity of the Azure Dragon Empire, as mandated by Her Majesty's probation. I regret that I cannot, at this critical juncture, spare a single moment for diversion. My duty is my feast, my vigil my sparring match, my tea the bitter brew of responsibility. I remain your humble servant, Wei Ji.'
He wrote it three times. Folded each copy. Handed them to the boy.
"Deliver these, exactly as they are, to each of the senders."
The boy took them, confused but relieved, and scampered away.
Refuse them all. Politely. With flattery so thick they choke on it. Make your inaction look like the most intense action of all.
The light was fading, painting the room in long shadows, when Old Wen returned. He was followed by two grunting archive porters carrying the first of many wooden chests. The chest was deposited with a thud.
"The request is processed," Old Wen said, a hint of grim satisfaction in his voice. "The archivists were annoyed. It will take a week to gather it all."
"Excellent," Wei Ji said. "Now, help me with something else. There must be old ledgers here, from before the office was cleaned out. Check the floorboards. The gaps in the walls."
They searched as the last light died. Wei Ji, by the window, found it. A single, discarded ledger sheet, used as stuffing to plug a drafty hole in the wall. He smoothed it out.
It was a quarterly resource allocation list. Six months old. His eyes scanned the cramped entries: ink, paper, lamp oil, spiritual stones for maintenance formations…
His finger stopped.
*Office of Strategic Affairs: Monthly spiritual stone allocation – 3 low-grade stones.*
And next to it, in a different, fresher ink, a single stark character:
Rejected.
The date of the rejection was yesterday.
His blood ran cold. It wasn't just neglect. It was active starvation. Someone had personally intervened to cut off the meager energy that might power a warming formation in winter, or a light formation at night. They weren't just waiting for him to fail. They were ensuring he froze in the dark while doing it.
Old Wen saw his expression. "They have cut your heat and light," he said quietly. "The nights are still cold, Minister."
Wei Ji folded the paper and put it in his robe. "Then we'll work by daylight."
He sent Old Wen home to his family. The old man protested, but Wei Ji insisted. "You are my only asset, Old Wen. I cannot have you collapsing. Go. Rest. Come back at dawn."
Alone again, Wei Ji sat at the desk in the gathering dark. No lamp. No heat. The cold seeped up from the floor. He could see his breath.
This was the reality. The polished danger of the court was one thing. This slow, quiet suffocation was another.
He lay his head on the hard, cold wood of the desk. Sleep was a trap, but exhaustion was a deeper one. His eyes drifted shut.
A sound.
A soft, almost imperceptible shfft of paper on wood.
Wei Ji's eyes snapped open. The room was pitch black. Moonlight from the courtyard window painted a pale rectangle on the floor.
There, in the stripe of light, just inside the door, was a white slip of paper.
His heart thundered in his ears. He hadn't heard the door open. He hadn't heard footsteps.
He waited, counting his own breaths. One hundred. Two hundred.
Silence.
He stood, his muscles stiff with cold, and walked to the door. He picked up the paper.
It was a crude, hand-drawn map of the palace grounds. Three locations were marked with a rough 'X'.
Kitchen Storage B.
Garden of Whispering Willows.
Archives Annex.
Below the map, four characters were written in a harsh, angular script, like knives scratching the page:
Choose your death.
Wei Ji held the paper in the moonlight. The cold wasn't just in the air anymore. It was in his bones.
Three days. The first move begins.
The first move wasn't an invitation. It was a multiple-choice question.
And his admirer was waiting for his answer.