The darkness inside the cabin was absolute. As the first vibration of hooves thrummed through the floorboards, Han Jue moved with the frantic, silent speed of a man who lived on the edge of a blade.
He pinched the candle flame, the smell of burnt wick stinging his nose in the sudden blackness.
"Go! Take the back hatch!" Han Jue hissed, his voice a jagged whisper. He shoved the trembling doctor toward the rear of the cabin where the driver was already dragging the moss-bed containing the unconscious Zhou Yan.
"If he stops breathing, keep his chest moving. Don't stop until you hit the ravine floor!"
Once the faint scuffling of their retreat faded, Han Jue stood alone. He reached into the folds of his ruined indigo silks and pulled out a straight-edged sword—not a warrior's heavy blade, but a merchant's hidden defense, thin and sharp.
His palms were slick with sweat. He wasn't a hero. He was the guy who used to sell snacks and hedge bets. He didn't know how to parry a strike; he only knew how to survive.
---
Outside, the forest screamed with the sound of a hundred horses. The Imperial Black Banners didn't just arrive; they surrounded the cabin like a tightening noose.
The door creaked—a slow, agonizing groan of wood on iron—as a guard pushed it open an inch, testing the silence. They didn't enter. They were waiting for the Command.
Then, a voice cut through the rain. It was deep, resonant, and carried the weight of the Dragon Throne.
"The Merchant," Li Feng called out from atop his stallion. For a split second, the "Captain" flickered in his throat. His heart felt the pull of the cabin's misery.
"Surrender. If you give me the General now... I will petition the Emperor for your life. I will speak to my father. No more blood needs to be spilled tonight."
It was a plea—a desperate, human moment from a boy who just wanted his friends back.
But then, the air seemed to turn to ice.
The "Identification" of the Crown Prince surged through Li Feng like a poison, drowning his empathy in a sea of ancient, royal cruelty.
His posture shifted, his spine turning to iron, his eyes flashing with a predatory yellow light.
When he spoke again, his voice was no longer human. It was a roar that made the horses shiver.
"Or perhaps,"Li Feng snarled, the words dripping with a lethal arrogance that made the guards at the door visibly flinch, "I shall simply burn this rot to the ground. Why should I negotiate with a scavenger who hoards a dying dog? Merchant! Bring me the God of Death's head, or I will let the Black Banners feast on your entrails. I am the Sun of the Great Jing, and I do not ask twice. Crawl out on your knees, or die in the smoke."
Inside the cabin, Han Jue's breath hitched. He had never heard a voice so cold. It sounded like the end of the world.
He pressed his back against the wall next to the door, his knuckles white around his sword hilt. He had to stall. He had to play the only card he had: greed.
"Your Highness!" Han Jue shouted back, his voice shaking but pitched with the practiced silkiness of the Shadow Merchant.
"You speak of heads and entrails, but you forget the ledger! The General is a corpse, but the information in his head is worth more than the gold in your Treasury! If you burn this cabin, you burn the names of every official who took a bribe from the Northern tribes! Is that what your father wants? A pile of ash where the truth used to be?"
Han Jue gripped his sword tighter, his eyes darting toward the half-open door. He was terrified, a high schooler playing a part in a play that had turned into a slaughterhouse.
"I am a businessman, Prince!" Han Jue yelled, his voice cracking with a desperate bravado.
"And I don't close my shop for threats. Come in and talk, or stay out there and wait for the rain to put out your fire. But the General doesn't leave this shack without a contract signed in blood!"
Outside, Li Feng's eyes narrowed until they were nothing but slits of gold. He raised his hand—a signal to the archers.
"A contract?" Li Feng whispered to the dark woods, a terrifying, mirthless smile touching his lips. "Then let the ink be red."
The arrows were notched. The air was thick with the scent of wet pine and the metallic tang of impending slaughter.
Li Feng dropped his hand, the signal to fire—but the whistle of wood and feathers never came.
Instead, a different sound sliced through the rain: a sharp, metallic thrum-thrum-thrum.
Four of the Black Banner guards at the front of the line collapsed without a cry, silver flying blades buried deep in their throats. From the impenetrable shadows of the ancient pines, a figure blurred into the moonlight.
She didn't run; she moved like a ghost made of silk and steel. She wore a deep charcoal robe that bled into the night, cinched at the waist with a cord of braided leather. A dark veil fluttered behind her, but it couldn't hide the lethal focus in her gaze.
"Protect the General!" she commanded, her voice like a bell struck in a storm.
From the darkness behind her, a dozen female warriors—cloaked in similar robes—erupted into the clearing.
The woman didn't stop for the soldiers. She fixed her eyes on the Crown Prince. She launched herself off a gnarled root, her body spinning in mid-air as she unsheathed a slender, curved saber that caught the moon's pale glow.
"Oh shit!", Li Feng's mind gone mad.
His royal "Identification" screamed danger, but it was the muscle memory of a Prince trained by the Empire's greatest masters that saved him.
He didn't think; his body simply reacted. He vaulted backward off his black stallion, his heavy fur cloak billowing behind him like wings as he landed with a silent thud on the muddy earth.
He drew his heavy broadsword just as she descended.
CLANG.
The impact was violent. The collision of their blades sent a shower of white-hot sparks into the air, lighting up the night like a flash of lightning.
For a second, the world turned into a tableau of high-contrast noir: the sparks falling like burning snow between them.
They stayed locked, blades grinding against each other with a screeching sound like a welding machine, the vibration rattling both their bones.
Li Feng looked up. At this distance, the mask of the Prince wavered. He caught the scent of wild vanilla and rain—a soft, jarring contrast to the violence of the moment.
Under the moonlight, her eyes weren't just determined; they were fiery, burning with a personal vendetta he didn't understand.
"You move well for a pampered wolf," she hissed, the force of her lean weight pushing against his sword.
Li Feng's eyes narrowed, his golden robes reflecting the orange sparks.
"And you bleed easily for a shadow," he countered, his voice a low, royal growl.
Li Feng lunges, his broadsword a heavy arc of gold. The woman spins, her charcoal robes flaring out like a blooming lotus. As she passes him, her veil brushes his cheek—a fleeting touch of silk and the sharp, haunting scent of Wild Vanilla.
The steel of their blades screamed as they ground against one another, the friction producing a smell of burnt metal that cut through the scent of wet pine.
Li Feng didn't wait for her to recover. He twisted his wrist, using the weight of his broadsword to shove her blade aside, then followed through with a brutal, high-lateral kick aimed at her ribs.
The woman didn't flinch; she dropped low, her charcoal robes snapping like a whip as she performed a sweeping leg-spin that forced the Prince to vault backward into the mud.
She rose in a fluid, circular motion, her curved saber spinning in her grip until it was a blur of silver light. She lunged, a flurry of three rapid-fire strikes.
Clang. Clang. Clang!
Each blow was faster than the last. Li Feng parried them by the skin of his teeth, his heavy boots treading deep furrows into the earth as he was pushed back.
The sparks from their blades lit up her face in staccato flashes—her jaw was set, her eyes reflecting the cold fire of the moon.
---
A hundred yards away, hidden behind a massive oak tree near the riverbank, Su Cheng watched the carnage. His breath was shallow, his analytical mind struggling to categorize this new variable.
"Oh, damn! This is too much for me!"
'A third faction. Highly trained. All female. Not the Northern tribes... something else.'