The leather door of the carriage groaned as Lin Kai gripped the handle, his gloved fingers tightening with lethal intent.
Inside, the sound of the latch clicking was like a countdown. Han Jue's anxiety spiked into a cold, paralyzing sweat. He was trapped between a legendary Assassin at the door and a delirious God of Death behind him.
Zhou Yan, his face ghostly pale and slick with fever-sweat, felt the "Identification" roar one last time. The stitches in his shoulder pulled and tore, a dark red bloom soaking through his silken bandages.
In a sudden, jagged movement fueled by pure survival instinct, he swung the surgical blade.
The doctor didn't even have time to gasp before he slumped onto the floorboards, the life draining out of him into the grain of the wood.
Just as Lin Kai prepared to rip the door off its hinges, the sound of thundering hooves and the frantic rattle of a second carriage filled the ravine.
Su Cheng's carriage skidded to a halt just yards away, the wheels throwing up a spray of icy mud.
The sudden intrusion of the Marquis's seal fractured Lin Kai's focus. He snapped his head toward the approaching vehicle, his hand instinctively moving to a throwing star. For a heartbeat, the "Shadow" was distracted by the arrival of the "Bureaucrat."
That heartbeat was all Zhou Yan needed.
With a pained grunt, Zhou Yan kicked out the front window of the carriage—the small opening leading to the driver's bench.
He scrambled through the jagged frame, his heavy robes snagging on the wood. Reaching down, he slashed the leather traces binding the lead horse to the carriage with a single, desperate stroke of his dagger.
"Yan! Wait!" Han Jue scrambled after him, not daring to stay behind with an assassin and a Marquis.
Zhou Yan hauled himself onto the horse's back, his breath coming in ragged, historical gasps. He didn't look back at the carriage or the blood he had left behind. He kicked the horse into a gallop, disappearing into the thick fog of the ravine.
Han Jue, driven by pure adrenaline, threw himself onto the second horse, cutting it loose and riding hard on Zhou Yan's heels.
Lin Kai took a sharp step back as the two figures bolted into the mist. His mission was slipping through his fingers.
Sensing the overwhelming presence of Su Cheng's guards, he melted into the shadows of a massive willow tree, his dark form vanishing before the light of Su Cheng's lanterns could touch him.
Su Cheng stepped out of his carriage, his face pale and his breathing shallow. He didn't wait for his attendants; he walked straight to the discarded, silent carriage.
He pulled back the leather door, expecting to find the General and the Merchant. Instead, the lantern light illuminated a grisly scene: the doctor lay dead in a pool of thickening blood, the surgical tools scattered like silver teeth.
The carriage was cold. It was empty.
His "Identification" as the Marquis analyzed the scene with cold, clinical efficiency—the angle of the throat wound, the discarded stitches, the frantic exit through the front window.
But beneath that mask, the Nerd was screaming. He felt a profound sense of loss he couldn't explain, as if a vital piece of a puzzle had just been crushed under a horse's hoof.
"Master," Official Lu whispered, hovering several feet back with a line of armed guards.
"We must go. The Prince's men will be scouting these woods within the hour. If they find us with a dead Imperial physician and an empty carriage, even your title won't save you from the executioner."
Su Cheng didn't move. He stared into the darkness of the ravine where the riders had vanished.
"They're gone," he muttered, his voice hollow. "The General and the Merchant. The only two people who could tell me the truth about the Northern border... vanished into the fog."
Lin Kai didn't blink as he watched Su Cheng stand by the empty carriage. Every fiber of his being wanted to leap down, grab his friend by the shoulders, and ask him how the hell a physics nerd became a high-ranking Marquis.
But he stayed rooted to the branch. His eyes darted past Su Cheng to the men in the shadows—the "affiliates" and guards.
He didn't recognize their faces, and in the world of the Shadow Pavilion, a stranger was just a witness you hadn't killed yet.
If I show myself now, those men will see a target, Lin Kai thought, his jaw tightening behind his mask. And if they see us together, your cover is blown, Cheng. They'll know the 'clean' Marquis has a 'dirty' shadow. I won't be the reason you lose your head.
But there was a darker reason for his stillness.
Lin Kai could feel the hair on the back of his neck rise. He wasn't the only one in the trees.
The Shadow Pavilion never sent a single hunter on a high-stakes mission without "Overseers"—hidden assassins meant to watch the watcher. If he showed any sign of personal connection to the Marquis, the Pavilion would mark Su Cheng for death before the sun rose.
He watched Su Cheng's trembling hand grip the doorframe. He saw the genuine grief in his friend's eyes—a look that didn't belong to a cold politician.
Go back to the city, Lin Kai urged silently, his hand tightening on his blade until the leather grip creaked. Don't look for me. Don't look for the General. Just get back to your palace where it's safe.
As Su Cheng was ushered back into his carriage by the armored guards, Lin Kai felt the "Identification" settle back over him like a shroud of ice. He waited until the rattle of the wheels faded into the distance.
Only then did he shift his gaze to a nearby oak tree, where the faint shimmer of a silk thread caught the moonlight.
The Overseers were there. They had seen the Marquis, but they hadn't seen the connection.
---
Miles away, tucked into the side of a jagged cliff, Han Jue practically fell off his horse. He caught Zhou Yan just as the big man began to slide sideways from his saddle.
"I've got you, I've got you!" Han Jue hissed, his boots skidding in the wet gravel.
He dragged the delirious General into the mouth of a shallow, hidden cave. The air inside smelled of damp stone and old moss.
Han Jue collapsed against the wall, his chest heaving. He looked at his hands—they were stained dark with Zhou Yan's blood and the grime of the road.
"Big Cat?" Han Jue whispered, reaching out to touch the man's forehead. It was burning.
"Stay with me, man. I... I don't know where we are. I don't know who that mask guy was. But I'm going to get us out of this."
Zhou Yan groaned, his eyes fluttering. He wasn't speaking in the Great Jing tongue anymore; he was just a broken man in pain.
"Stay with me, Big Cat," Han Jue whispered, his voice cracking. He ripped a strip of his own expensive silk robe to bind the wound, but the blood just kept coming, hot and relentless. "Don't go AFK on me now. Not here."
He didn't know that the person coming to kill him was the same person who used to draw sketches in the back of his notebook.