The path wound through the woods like an old scar, fading and uneven, half-swallowed by thornbush and damp leaves. Li Fan moved slowly, breath misting in the cool morning air, a wicker basket strapped to his back and a short sickle hanging by his side. He didn't look like a man with purpose—more like someone trying to remember what it felt like to live.
It had been six months since he returned to Qinghe Village. Six months since he'd abandoned the ink-stained walls of the Ministry of Revenue and the bloodless corruption of the capital. His hands used to tremble when he signed off on falsified ledgers. Now, they trembled from carrying water and cutting herbs.
And yet, he preferred this.
"Bitterroot… flamegrass…" he muttered to himself, crouching beside a moss-covered rock where purple-edged leaves unfurled. The herbs would help his mother's cough. Not cure it—nothing could—but ease it.
He worked methodically, fingers trained not from cultivation, but from years of counting coins and balancing accounts. His back ached from the climb. His boots, once city-made and fine, were caked in mud and nearly split at the toes.
Overhead, a crow cried out. Once. Twice.
Li Fan paused. A strange silence followed. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
He straightened slowly and scanned the dense trees. Something pulled at his thoughts—not fear, but... curiosity. The same itch that used to push him to dig into forbidden account books. That instinct had nearly gotten him killed before. Now, it tugged at him again, deeper into the mountain.
He hesitated.
"Foolish," he whispered, but still he moved.
The trail led him to a steep ridge rarely tread. Trees leaned in as if guarding secrets. Vines draped like old curtains, and beneath them… a shape.
A stone altar, ancient and half-buried, worn by wind and rain. Glyphs were carved into its surface—illegible but faintly glowing.
Li Fan's breath caught.
He reached out without thinking, brushing away the vines. Beneath them, nestled in the altar's center, was a jade pendant, black as ink with veins of silver lightning flickering through it.
As his fingers closed around it, pain erupted in his chest.
He gasped, stumbling back. The forest spun. His heart slammed against his ribs, and a voice echoed in his mind—not with sound, but sensation.
"The Art of Silent Reaping. The Way of the Shadow Root. Accept or perish."
The pain deepened, threading through his bones like icy needles. His eyes rolled back. He fell.
Darkness.
Time passed.
When he awoke, dusk painted the forest in gold and blood. His limbs ached, but his senses… they burned.
He could hear the river two valleys away.
He could smell the exact number of deer in the glade behind him.
And when he looked at the rusted knife in his belt, he knew exactly how to kill a man in three precise motions.
"What… happened to me?" he whispered.
He staggered to his feet and checked the jade pendant—it now hung around his neck, warm despite the cold. Words had etched themselves into his memory. Techniques. Movements. Breathing patterns. Kill zones. All assassin arts.
He was no cultivator.
But now, he was something worse.
That night, Qinghe Village burned at the edges. Bandits had come again—thugs wearing old armor, drunk on stolen wine and armed with weapons they barely knew how to wield. The Crimson Flame Pavilion tolerated them. They paid tribute to the sect to keep killing.
Li Fan arrived just as screams began.
A girl—no older than ten—was being dragged toward the forest by a greasy-haired man with a cleaver. Her father lay behind her, throat slit. Others cowered, too terrified to resist.
Li Fan didn't shout.
He didn't warn them.
He moved.
In a blur, he crossed the dirt road, ducked under a swing, and stabbed once—through the ribs, upward. The man gasped. Blood sprayed. Li Fan was already behind the next one.
It was as if his body moved on instinct.
One... two... three.
The bandits died without ever realizing what killed them. Not a trace of spiritual energy in sight. Just blood, silence, and a shadow that passed through them like death given form.
When the last fell, villagers stared.
"L-Li Fan?" someone said.
He didn't answer. He knelt beside the girl and cut her bonds with a flick of his knife.
She looked at him with wide eyes, too stunned to cry. Then, slowly, she nodded and fled back to her mother.
Li Fan stood there for a long time.
That night, he sat alone on the edge of the village, under the moonlight, the pendant against his chest. He didn't feel triumph.
Only resolve.
He had found something he never asked for. Something built not for honor or cultivation fame—but for judgment.
Silent. Precise. Irrevocable.
A thought rose in his mind. Not his own—but it didn't matter.
"They buried the sword in numbers. You will cut them down, one name at a time."