The rain had stopped.
Daylight broke through the leaden clouds, casting a glaring white sheen across the wet, slippery bricks of the Fengtian Division courtyard.
Ye Qingxuan stood in the courtyard, listening as Hong Qingshan assigned today's street-patrol duties. The old constable's voice was as steady and unhurried as ever, but the atmosphere in the courtyard was far more oppressive than usual.
The constables coming and going, whether the formally appointed ones in black or the temporary workers in short jackets, wore less of their usual slickness and more solemnity. The sounds of sabers sliding into their scabbards and footsteps splashing through puddles were all heavier than usual.
Ye Qingxuan held the Water-Fire Cudgel in his hand, but his mind was nowhere near the words reaching his ears.
Half his thoughts remained in that little courtyard in Southern District.
Was his sister safe? Would any constables come knocking to question her? At her young age, could she handle it?
"...Things have been unsettled in Southern District lately. You lot, keep a closer eye on it." Hong Qingshan's words pulled him back to himself.
The old constable's murky gaze swept over his and Wei Datong's faces, seemingly both intentionally and unintentionally.
Wei Datong was quick to speak. He leaned over and lowered his voice. "Qingxuan, have you heard? Something happened to Hu Jiudao's gang last night."
Ye Qingxuan did not even raise his eyelids. He merely wiped the cudgel's head with a cloth, his movements unhurried.
"What happened?"
"They're dead. All of them!" Wei Datong spat as he spoke. "I heard they started a fire while drinking. The people and the whole house were burned to charcoal! Tsk, tsk, the coroner went to look. He said it was a horrific sight—their skeletons couldn't even be pieced back together."
Beside them, Xiong Tiezhu rumbled, "Serves them right. Those hooligans never did a single good deed."
"That's true." Wei Datong glanced around, then lowered his voice even further. "But the strange part is that people from Fierce Tiger Hall sealed off the alley first thing this morning and wouldn't let our Fengtian Division investigate properly. Chief Constable Zhang took people over, but they drove them back. The two sides nearly came to blows."
Ye Qingxuan's wiping motion paused slightly.
Fierce Tiger Hall had reacted faster and more forcefully than he had expected. A man like Duan Tianbao would never believe the nonsense about a fire caused by drunkenness.
"There have been a lot of sinister incidents in the city lately, so the higher-ups are on edge too." An old constable passing by added his own comment. He had just come out of the division, and worry showed on his face. "Haven't you heard? The fiends of the Myriad Tribulation Sect have shown themselves in the city again. Lord Xiao has issued a death order for us to investigate rigorously. At the first sign of trouble, kill without mercy."
The Myriad Tribulation Sect.
Those three words stabbed into Ye Qingxuan's ears like a needle.
His father had been left with the roots of his illness during the campaign to wipe out the Myriad Tribulation Sect all those years ago.
The old constable sighed and walked away, shaking his head. "What a troubled time..."
An invisible cloud of gloom seemed to hang over Linyuan Prefecture. The pressure on the Fengtian Division, the gangs' strange movements, and that demonic sect that had vanished for many years... In this murky world, the currents beneath the surface were far more turbulent than he had imagined.
Ye Qingxuan spent the entire day in a state of unease.
While patrolling the streets, he was even quieter than usual. Wei Datong's chattering and the clamor of the marketplace all seemed very far away.
After tempering his sinews, his senses had become extraordinarily sharp. He could hear mosquitoes and flies beating their wings dozens of paces away with perfect clarity. But now, those sounds had become torture. He could not help trying to catch even the slightest stirrings coming from Southern District.
After barely making it to the end of his shift, he returned the Water-Fire Cudgel and hurried home.
The closer he got to Southern District, the more oppressive the atmosphere in the alley became.
At this hour on ordinary days, cooking smoke would rise from every chimney, children would chase one another through the alleys, and the women would gather at their doorways to sort vegetables and chat.
Today, however, the alley was so quiet that the wind could be heard.
Every door and window was tightly shut. Even the old yellow dog that usually loved lying by the doorway in the sun was nowhere to be seen. Now and then, a curtain would be lifted a crack, revealing a pair of prying eyes. The instant they met his gaze, they would dart back out of sight.
The air was saturated with a strange smell of rain-soaked earth mixed with scorched wood and charcoal.
Hu Jiudao's death was like a massive stone thrown into the already-murky pond of Southern District, frightening every fish and shrimp into hiding in the silt at the bottom.
Ye Qingxuan pushed open his courtyard gate and walked inside.
The courtyard was very clean. The tables and chairs Hu Jiudao had kicked over yesterday had all been set back in place.
Ye Caiwei sat on a little stool in front of the stove, holding a fire poker and poking at the flames now and then. The firelight reflected on her small face, and there was nothing unusual in her expression.
"Brother, you're back." She stood up and clapped the ash from her hands.
"Mm." Ye Qingxuan shut the gate and slid the bolt into place. "Did anyone come by today?"
"No." Ye Caiwei shook her head.
She walked over to Ye Qingxuan, rose onto her toes, and straightened his slightly disheveled collar.
"Brother, I swept the floor at home. It's very clean." She raised her head and looked at him with her big eyes, a deeper meaning hidden in her words.
Warmth spread through Ye Qingxuan's heart. He knew that his sister understood.
She had not asked questions or thrown a fit. She had merely used her own way to tell him that she would protect this home.
He raised his hand, intending to pat her head as he usually did. But halfway up, he suddenly remembered something, and his gaze snapped toward the blue-brick wall in the courtyard.
Last night's rain had washed the wall completely clean.
And precisely because of that, the patches of white left on it stood out all the more glaringly.
They were the marks left by the stones striking the wall during his practice with the Locust Stone. Some were shallow white dots; others were deep pits embedded in the seams between the bricks. They were densely scattered across the entire wall.
In the eyes of ordinary people, these might have been nothing more than traces of children's mischief.
But an experienced martial artist or a seasoned investigator would see at a glance that the marks had not been made at random. Their distribution, force, and angles all revealed the disciplined patterns of long practice.
They were ironclad proof of his martial arts!
A chill crawled up his spine.
He had thought himself prepared for every eventuality, yet he had overlooked this most conspicuous—and most fatal—flaw.
"Brother, what's wrong?" Ye Caiwei followed his gaze and noticed the marks on the wall as well. Confusion appeared on her little face.
"It's nothing."
Ye Qingxuan steadied himself and hurried to the wall. He could not scrape them off, nor could he wash them away. That would only be trying to hide the truth and making it more obvious.
His thoughts raced as his gaze swept over the water vat in the corner of the courtyard. A thick layer of moss and silt had settled at the bottom.
He had an idea.
He found a broken ladle, scooped up half a ladleful of black, gooey mud from the bottom of the vat, then grabbed a handful of gray-white wood ash from the stove. He mixed them together and stirred them evenly with his hand.
"Nannan, come help your brother with something." He beckoned to Ye Caiwei.
He smeared a patch of the mud mixed with wood ash across the wall, then said to his sister, "Let's draw pictures and turn this whole wall into a big painted face, all right?"
Ye Caiwei had no idea why her brother had suddenly taken up such an interest, but seeing how excited he was, she happily ran over. Imitating him, she scooped up mud with her little hands and slapped it onto the wall.
The siblings, one tall and one short, one moving swiftly and the other clumsily adorably, smeared the mud in a chaotic mess across the wall, covering it with patches both fresh and old.
The glaring white stone marks were soon covered completely by the mottled spots of mud.
The entire wall became like an ugly monster covered in mold.
Only after finishing did Ye Qingxuan let out a long breath. This way, even if someone inspected it, they would take it for stains accumulated over many years or a child's prank.
He was just about to fetch water to wash his hands.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Three dull knocks suddenly rang out.
The sound was unlike a neighbor dropping by. It was more like the end of a saber scabbard striking heavily against the gate again and again.
The air in the courtyard froze instantly.
Ye Qingxuan's heart, which had just settled, leaped back into his throat.
He exchanged a glance with Ye Caiwei and saw a trace of panic in her eyes.
He gestured for silence, then pointed toward the inner room.
Ye Caiwei understood. She rose onto her toes and slipped soundlessly inside.
Ye Qingxuan stood in the courtyard and listened intently.
There was no voice outside the gate, only dead silence and that faint smell of scorched wood drifting from the direction of Hu Jiudao's courtyard.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The knocking came again, harder than before and far more impatient.
The gate groaned under the strain.
They were here.
People from Fierce Tiger Hall had come calling.
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