Dragonblood Chaos Heir

Chapter 17: A Debt Called In

The side door to the South Gate guardhouse was unmarked, blackened oak set in a soot-stained stone wall. At the second bell after curfew, the artisan's quarter was a tomb of shutters and shadows. Lin Feng approached silently, a phantom in the deeper dark.

He gave three sharp raps, paused, then two more, the signal the quartermaster had relayed.

A slit at eye level slid open. A pair of suspicious eyes, bloodshot and weary, scanned him. The door creaked inward just enough to admit him, then shut with a solid thunk. He stood in a narrow, lamplit corridor that smelled of stale sweat, oiled leather, and a pervasive undercurrent of fear.

Captain Li, the man from the gate, stood before him, out of his polished public armor. He wore a simple guard's tunic, his face looking older, more careworn in the flickering light. With him was a man Lin Feng hadn't expected: Master Wang, the City Lord's steward. The public servantlooked out of place, his fine silks seeming to shrink from the grime of the walls, his face a mask of pinched distaste and deep anxiety.

"Talk," Captain Li said, dispensing with pleasantries. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword. "The waterfall cave. You're sure?"

"I saw movement there three days before the big hunt," Lin Feng said, maintaining his fabricated wanderer's accent and a demeanor of wary greed. "Not a beast's movement. Too upright. Too... purposeful. The water noise was wrong. Dulled. Like something was soaking up the sound."

Master Wang's eyes sharpened. "Purposeful. You think it's intelligent? A cultivator?"

Lin Feng shrugged. "I hunt beasts, lords. I know cunning animals. This was different. It felt like being watched by something that understood. And the ground near the cave mouth... plants were dead. Not eaten. Just empty. Like the life was sucked right out."

He was describing the effects of his own Gasp of the Withering Root, but attributing them to a location he'd never used it. The description was pinpoint accurate, and it hit its mark. Captain Li and Master Wang exchanged a grim glance. This matched the reports from the withered guards in the woods.

"One hundred mid-grade stones is a fortune for a sighting," Master Wang said, his voice slick as oil. "We need more than a story. We need something we can use."

Lin Feng met his gaze, letting a calculated hardness enter his own. "I can take you there. Show you the exact spot. For an additional fifty stones."

Captain Li snorted. "You think we're fools? You lead us into an ambush, and this 'ghost' finishes what it started in the clearing?"

"The ghost, if it's there, doesn't know I saw it," Lin Feng countered. "I was downwind, using a Scout's Veil talisman." He tapped his now-empty pack where such a common, low-level item might have been. "I'm not a fighter. I'm a survivor. I want the stones and to be on the next caravan out of this cursed province. You want a location to scour with your full force. This is a transaction."

Master Wang studied him, the servant's mind weighing risks and ledgers. The city was bleeding commerce. The Lei Clan was circling. Elder Tian was useless. They needed a win, any win, to restore a semblance of control.

"Seventy-five additional stones upon verification of the site," Wang said finally. "And you accompany a small, fast scouting party at first light. Captain Li will lead. You show them the cave. If it is as you say, you are paid and escorted to the northern trade road with our... gratitude. If you are lying, you will learn the price of wasting the City Lord's time in the deep cells."

Lin Feng inclined his head. "Agreed."

The deal, a trap within a trap, was set.

An hour before dawn, a party of eight gathered at the sally port of the South Gate. Besides Lin Feng and Captain Li, there were six of the guard's best: two archers with hawk-keen eyes, three veteran swordsmen whose auras were a disciplined, coordinated hum of low-level Qi Condensation, and a wiry, silent scout who seemed to blend with the greying light.

No Deng or Lin clansmen. This was a city guard operation. Master Wang wanted control of the narrative, and any potential glory.

"Move fast, stay quiet, stay together," Captain Li ordered, his voice low. "We go to the location, verify, mark it, and return. No engagement. Our job is eyes, not swords. Understood?"

Nods all around. The guards were professional but tense. The stories of the clearing had reached even them.

Lin Feng led the way, falling into the familiar, silent rhythm of the woods. He took them on a circuitous route, avoiding the main hunting trails, skirting the edges of the true danger zones. He played his part perfectly—the competent, cautious hunter, pointing out subtle signs (which he had himself planted the previous night: a scuff on a rock, a deliberately withered branches away from the cave).

As they neared the real waterfall he'd described—a forty-foot cascade of silver water plunging into a frothing pool—the tension thickened. The roar of the water was oppressive, masking all other sound, just as he'd said.

"There," Lin Feng whispered, pointing to a barely-visible seam in the rock face behind the left side of the falls. "The entrance. See how the mist doesn't curl there? It's being drawn in."

Captain Li squinted, then gestured to his scout. The wiry man nodded, slipped forward like an eel, and vanished into the spray. The party waited, weapons half-drawn, breaths held.

Minutes stretched. The roar of the water was a physical pressure.

The scout reappeared, dripping, his face pale. "Captain. There's a cave. Big. And... there's signs. Recent. A fire pit. But no ashes. Just... cold stone, scorched black. And on the walls... scratches."

"Scratches?" Li asked.

"Not beast marks. Characters. Or something like them. They make my eyes hurt to look at." The scout shuddered. "Place feels... hungry."

Perfect, Lin Feng thought. The "fire pit" was a circle of stone he'd superheated with a focused burst of chaotic qi, leaving no fuel residue. The "scratches" were random gouges he'd made with Frost Desire, their edges infused with a lingering wisp of devouring energy that would unsettle any spiritual sense.

Captain Li's jaw tightened. This was it. Non-denying evidence. A lair. He turned to Lin Feng, his expression unreadable. "You've earned your stones. We return to the city. Now."

But as they turned to retreat, Lin Feng's plan entered its final phase. He couldn't let them simply report a vacant, eerie cave. They needed a story. A mechanical, terrifying reason to believe the "ghost" was still a present, monstrous threat.

He lagged slightly at the rear of the column as they moved away from the waterfall's roar. When they passed a dense tangle of thorn-ivy, he subtly extended a finger. A single, hair-thin twigs of Gasp of the Withering Root, invisible in the dim light, shot out and brushed the ankle of the rearmost guardsman.

It was the lightest possible touch, not to drain, but to imprint.

The guardsman, a solid, reliable man named Bor, suddenly gasped. He stumbled, clutching his leg. "Captain! Something—!"

The party whirled, weapons flashing out. Bor was on one knee, his face a mask of confusion and dawning horror. He pulled up his leggings. Around his ankle was a perfect, greyish-black handprint, as if made of ashes. It didn't hurt, he said. It was just... cold. And empty. The skin felt numb, dead.

Panic, immediate and contagious, flared in their eyes. They stared at the mark, then at the surrounding, suddenly hostile woods.

"It's here," the scout breathed. "It touched him. Without a sound."

"FORM UP! BACK TO BACK!" Captain Li roared, his professionalism battling his own superstitious dread. "Move! Double time to the road!"

The return journey was a frantic, stumbling retreat. Bor was supported by two comrades, his "wound" a psychic weight on them all. The mark didn't spread. It didn't poison. It just was—a brand of their encounter with the unknowable.

Lin Feng moved with them, feigning equal panic, his mind cold and clear. The message would be undeniable: the ghost's lair had been found. The ghost itself was still active, so stealthy it could mark a man without being seen. The threat was not contained. It was intelligent and playing with them.

They burst onto the Muddy Leaf Road, gasping, and didn't slow until the city gates were in sight.

In the guardhouse, under bright lanterns, Master Wang examined the ashen handprint on Bor's ankle. He prodded it with a silver probe. No reaction. No infection. Just... void.

"He said it felt cold, master," Captain Li reported, his voice still tight. "No pain. The scout's description of the cave... the marks on the wall... it's not a beast. It's something that thinks. That marks its territory."

Master Wang's face was ashen. This was worse than a feral creature. An intelligent, malignant entity with paralyzing stealth. The political fallout would be catastrophic. The City Lord's position was weakening by the hour.

He turned to Lin Feng, who stood waiting, his face a mask of appropriately jittery relief. "Your payment." He gestured, and a guard brought forward a heavy, locked strongbox. Inside, gleaming dully, were one hundred and seventy-five mid-grade spirit stones. A king's ransom.

"Take them," Wang said, his voice hollow. "And go. The north road caravan leaves at noon. Be on it. Speak of this to no one."

Lin Feng hefted the strongbox, the weight satisfying. "Understood." He turned to leave.

"Hunter," Wang called out, a sudden, strange note in his voice. Lin Feng paused. "You saw it. What... what do you think it wants?"

Lin Feng looked back, meeting the steward's fearful eyes. He let the mask slip for a single, chilling instant, allowing the vast, cold emptiness he'd learned in the abyss to show through his own gaze.

"I think," Lin Feng said, his wanderer's accent gone, replaced by a tone of absolute, ancient certainty, "it's here to collect a debt."

He left then, vanishing into the awakening city streets, leaving Master Wang frozen, a new and more profound terror seeping into his bones.

The stones were acquired. The fear was amplified. The official investigation was now chasing ghosts of his own creation.

And somewhere in the city, a debt owed to a murdered father and a broken boy was now, finally, being called in. The next move on the board was his. And he had just been paid a small fortune to make it.p