The valley was colder than it should've been.
Mist clung to the slopes as Shi Yan and Xiao Lan moved cautiously along a mountain trail once used by traders—and by monks. Far behind them, the monastery's smoldering ruin faded into memory. No word yet if Brother Wen survived. No answer yet from the scroll.
Shi Yan had not opened it.
Not because he didn't want answers.
But because he feared he already knew them.
Their destination was Windvale—a remote town where an underground monk network once smuggled Shaolin scriptures to safehouses across the Murim. If anyone knew about the Black Lotus' movement—or what happened the night of the massacre—it would be there.
But first, they had to cross the Red Needle Gorge.
Xiao Lan tugged at his sleeve as they passed a broken trail marker. She pointed: someone had scratched a black lotus sigil onto it—small, barely visible, but fresh.
They were being followed.
The attack came swift and silent—three men cloaked in grey, no insignia, no faces, just fists wrapped in ash-black cloth. Not Black Lotus. Not bandits.
Shaolin.
Shi Yan recognized the footwork instantly.
He moved before they struck. A blur of motion, a shoulder-roll, a sweeping leg technique taught in the advanced inner halls of the Temple. He dropped the first man with a brutal open-palm strike to the sternum.
But he hesitated on the second.
Their style was his own.
The third attacker whispered as they clashed:
"You still fight like a monk, Shi Yan. But you're not one anymore".
Shi Yan froze.
That Voice, He knew it.
The last attacker pulled of his hood.
It was Jin Long, once closest brother in training. Thought to have died the night of the massacre.
"Still chasing ghosts?" Jin Long sneered. "Or have you come to bury the truth, too?"
Shi Yan staggered back. "You—? You were there that night?"
"I survived that night," Jin Long said. "But not because of you."
He didn't attack again. He stood, waiting, as if daring Shi Yan to ask more.
Jin Long lowered his voice.
"The Temple isn't what it was, Yan. The robes are clean, but the hearts underneath? Rotten.""A They sent me to kill you," he added. "But part of me needed to know… if you were still the boy I knew."
Shi Yan's fists unclenched. "And?"
"I don't know yet." Jin Long tossed him a medallion—Shaolin steel, engraved with the mark of the Inner Chamber. "Someone up high gave the order. But no one signs their name anymore."
He turned and vanished into the mists.
Shi Yan stared at the medallion, turning it in his palm. Xiao Lan crept beside him, silent, confused.
He whispered to no one in particular:
"If they sent Jin Long to kill me… who else have they turned?"