The world had shrunk to a brutal rhythm: sore feet on unfamiliar ground, the cold bite of high-altitude wind, and Baili's silent, brooding back a few paces ahead. Lorel's travelling robes, once a fine grey-green, were stained with dust and the dark ichor of strange beasts they'd been forced to fight. Her body ached in new ways—not from training, but from survival.
They crested a rocky pass, and a town lay nestled in the valley below, clinging to the knees of jagged, snow-dusted peaks. Smoke rose from stone chimneys in thin, straight lines.
"Why are we here?" Lorel asked, her voice thin with fatigue. She hugged her arms against the chill. "The man at the crossroad said Gen's group headed for Three Rivers Cross, toward the Four Kingdoms. This is… the opposite direction."
Baili didn't slow. "You follow. That is your role. You don't need to understand the path, only to walk it."
"But we're looking for him—"
"Iam looking," he cut her off, finally glancing back, his eyes sharp with impatience. "You are tagging along because you would have gotten yourself killed or enslaved within a day on your own. You are a burden I am managing. Do not mistake your presence for a partnership. Now, keep up."
The words were a familiar knife, twisting in the old wound of her inadequacy. She swallowed her protest, the frustration a hot stone in her throat. Speak up, a small, new voice whispered inside her. She smothered it. He was right, wasn't he? She'd never been beyond the estate walls without an escort.
The town, Stonewatch, was a rugged, practical place. The buildings were low and sturdy, built from the mountain's own bone. Cultivators here moved with a weary competence, their auras mostly First or wobbly Second Wheel. Few flew; most walked beside or rode shaggy, sure-footed mountain goats with crystalline horns—low-level Infant Milky Beasts suited to the harsh terrain. The air smelled of pine, forge-smoke, and roasting meat.
Pushed along by Baili's momentum, Lorel was scanning the crowded market lane when she walked straight into a solid, surprisingly soft wall.
"Oof! Pardon me, I—oh."
She looked up. The wall was a young man. He was big, with a round, honest face flushed pink from the collision, and kind, startled eyes. He wore simple, serviceable clothes, a large pack on his back. He stared at her, his apology dying on his lips.
"My sincerest apologies, fair traveler!" he blurted, his voice warm and surprisingly melodic. "These lanes are treacherous, more fit for goats than clumsy fellows like me. I was blinded by the sun, but I see now it was not the sun at all, but a vision gracing this dusty path. A pearl, truly, misplaced among the rough stone." He bowed, a little clumsily, but the flowery words were delivered with such genuine, artless admiration that they lacked all sleaze. It was like being complimented by a friendly, over-enthusiastic bard.
Lorel blinked, utterly disarmed. No one had ever spoken to her like that. As a "vision." A "pearl."
Baili's hand shot out and grabbed the front of the big young man's tunic. "Watch where you're walking, you oaf," he snarled.
"Baili, no! It was an accident!" Lorel said, finding her voice.
The big man held up placating hands, his eyes wide. "No trouble, no trouble! A thousand apologies! My name is Chuix, but… well, everyone calls me Chubbs." He gave a self-deprecating shrug that was oddly charming. "My feet are as big as my appetite and just as hard to control. I bid you good day and, again, my humblest regrets!" He extricated himself from Baili's grip with a surprising, fluid twist, bowed again to Lorel, and melted back into the crowd with a speed belying his size.
Baili sneered, adjusting his sleeve. "Clumsy fool. Come on."
They turned to go. Lorel felt a faint tug at her side, a whisper of displaced air. She glanced down. The small leather pouch at her belt, containing their remaining Milky Stones, was gone.
Her heart stopped. "Baili."
He followed her gaze. His face, already stormy, darkened into pure fury. His head snapped up, scanning the crowd.
There, twenty paces away, moving with that same surprising agility, was Chubbs, already glancing over his shoulder. Their eyes met. His friendly expression vanished into one of pure, deer-in-lantern-light panic.
"THIEF!" Baili roared.
Chubbs ran.
Baili didn't give chase on foot. He raised a hand. The moist mountain air around him coalesced, condensing into a thick, roiling bank of white cloud at his feet. With a pulse of Shidow energy, he shot forward, riding the cloud like a sled, weaving over the heads of startled merchants and cultivators with lethal precision. Cloud Juggernaut—not for flight, but for devastating, terrain-ignoring pursuit.
Lorel gasped and pushed off after them, her feet pounding the hard-packed earth. Her Jingdao was solid, her foundation in the First Wheel far better than her timid demeanor suggested, granting her speed and stamina. But she was still earthbound, far slower than Baili's gliding cloud-form.
The chase was a chaotic blur. Chubbs, for all his size, was nimble, ducking under stalls, vaulting barrels, using the dense crowd as a living maze. People shouted, some shaking fists, others laughing.
"Hah! Chubbs picked the wrong mark this time!"
"That cloud-rider looks like he'll feed him to the mountain!"
"Run,Chubbs, run!"
They cornered him in a dead-end alley behind a smoky forge, the high stone walls blocking escape. Chubbs turned, his back to the wall, chest heaving, his round face pale with fear.
Baili landed, the cloud dissipating. He cracked his knuckles, the sound echoing in the sudden quiet of the alley. "You have three seconds to hand over the pouch before I break every one of your 'clumsy' bones."
"I—I swear!" Chubbs stammered, hands up. "It was a reflex! A bad habit! I was going to… to find you and return it! Surely! I just… panicked!"
Lorel skidded to a halt beside Baili, breathing hard. She looked at the terrified young man, then at her brother's merciless face. A strange feeling rose in her—not just pity, but a spark of defiance. This wasn't a cultivator duel. This was bullying.
"Baili, stop," she said, her voice firmer than she felt. "He's… he's clearly not a real threat. Just… misguided." She turned to Chubbs, her twilight eyes holding his. "That was a very stupid thing to do. And your flattery was… excessive."
Chubbs's pitiful, fearful expression shifted. The panic faded, replaced by a flush of what looked like profound shame, and something else—gratitude. She wasn't screaming for his blood. She'd called him misguided, not evil. His shoulders, which had been hunched, lowered a fraction.
"You see?" Baili spat, not taking his eyes off Chubbs. "Even my sister, who wouldn't say boo to a spirit-goose, thinks you're a pathetic worm. Now. The pouch."
But Lorel had seen it. The change in Chubbs's eyes. He wasn't looking at Baili anymore. He was looking at her. And in his round, honest face, now burning with a mixture of shame and that unexpected gratitude, she saw something she hadn't seen in a long time: someone seeing her, not the Stag's daughter or Baili's shadow, but Lorel. And in that moment, the hot stone of frustration in her throat melted, reforged into something cooler, harder, and entirely her own.