Rebirth of the Weakest

14: The Hunter in the Shadows

A true enemy does not attack from the front. He waits until everyone doubts you, then strikes exactly where it hurts the most.

Ken barely slept that night. The accusation kept circling back through his mind, over and over, refusing to let him rest. Someone claimed he had stolen the clan’s medicinal herbs. The punishment itself did not scare him. What actually stung was that someone had used the Pill Pavilion to do it, the one place where he had finally earned real respect through nothing but his own effort.

Standing beneath the old tree in his courtyard before sunrise, Ken slowly circulated his Beast Qi. His cultivation had settled since breaking through to Beast Geek Level 13, and the Shadow Panther Spirit behind him had grown noticeably more solid, dark fur shimmering faintly before sinking back into his body.

Inside his soul space, Mirinda Chan watched him quietly. “You have been thinking all night,” she said. Ken nodded. “I keep asking myself one question.”

“What question?”

“If I were Wei Zhan, how would I frame someone?”

Mirinda smiled slightly. “Now you are thinking like your enemy.” Ken looked up at the endless silver sky stretching across the soul space. “I do not believe those herbs were stolen for money,” he said.

“No,” Mirinda agreed. “They were stolen for timing,” he continued. Her expression turned serious. “The Pill Pavilion assessment. The Forge Pavilion trial. The Sect Examination.”

Le Ken slowly connected the pieces in his head. “If I am suspended now, my preparation slows down. If my reputation is ruined, even if I make it into Pai Zhua Sect, people will always remember me as a thief.”

Mirinda nodded, clearly approving of where his thoughts had landed. “The Second Elder is not trying to defeat you,” she said. “He is trying to destroy your future.”

Ken slowly clenched his fist. “Then I will destroy his plan first,” he said.

After breakfast, instead of heading toward the main hall, Ken walked straight to the Pill Pavilion. The moment he stepped through the door, every conversation stopped dead. Several disciples exchanged glances before dropping into whispers.

“So he really stole the herbs?”

“I do not know.”

“Elder Wei would not accuse him without evidence.”

“But Elder Mei trusts him.”

Rumors, Ken had learned, always traveled faster than truth ever could. He pretended not to hear any of it and walked directly toward Elder Mei, who was busy organizing medicinal scrolls at her desk.

She glanced up. “I thought you would stay home today,” she said. “I need information,” Ken said. She studied his face carefully. “You do not look frightened.”

“I did not steal anything,” he said. “I know,” she said simply. Those three words caught him completely off guard. “You believe me?” he asked.

Elder Mei allowed herself a small smile. “A person capable of refining a high-grade Spirit Recovery Pill has no reason to steal common herbs,” she said.

Ken laughed, a short, relieved sound. “Thank you,” he said. Her expression grew serious again. “But believing you is not enough,” she said.

“I know,” he admitted. She walked over to a storage cabinet. “The herbs disappeared three nights ago,” she said.

“I was forging then,” Ken said quickly. “I already checked,” she replied. He blinked. “You checked?”

“I did,” she said, looking him directly in the eye. “The Forge Pavilion records confirm you were working until midnight.”

Hope flickered across his face. “Then that proves I am innocent,” he said. Elder Mei shook her head slowly. “No,” she said.

His heart sank right back down. “The theft happened after midnight,” she explained. Le Ken let out a long breath. So close, and still not close enough.

Elder Mei handed him a small scroll. “This lists the missing herbs,” she said.

He unrolled it. Most of the items were unremarkable, common ingredients any apprentice might use. Three names stood out immediately. Moon Spirit Grass. Blood Lotus Root. Golden Beast Vine.

Ken frowned. “These are not random choices,” he said. Mirinda’s voice echoed inside his mind. “They are ingredients for one specific pill,” she said.

“Which pill?” he asked. “The Bone-Melting Pill,” she replied. His eyes widened. “A poison?”

“An extremely slow one,” Mirinda confirmed. His thoughts began racing. This was not simple theft. Someone was planning to poison a person, carefully and quietly, over time.

Rather than heading home, Ken quietly made his way toward the herb gardens behind the Pill Pavilion, a place hardly anyone bothered visiting. Rows of medicinal plants stretched across the valley while clan servants watered them and a handful of guards patrolled the perimeter.

He crouched near the storage warehouse and closed his eyes, activating one of the Shadow Panther Spirit’s natural gifts. Even though his cultivation remained fixed at Beast Geek Level 13, his evolved spirit granted him senses sharper than most cultivators twice his level.

He breathed in slowly. Earth. Wood. The familiar scent of medicine. Then something else. Ash. His eyes snapped open. “Fire?” he murmured. “Follow it,” Mirinda said instantly.

He crept around the warehouse until he reached a small drainage channel behind the building, and there, hidden beneath a scatter of loose stones, he found black ashes. Someone had burned something here recently, and not long ago either.

He picked up a piece carefully. Mirinda examined it through his senses. “That is not wood,” she said.

“Then what is it?”

“Herb residue.”

Ken looked toward the forest stretching out behind the warehouse. Whoever stole those herbs had refined something out there, close by. Without a second thought, he stepped into the trees.

The deeper he walked, the quieter everything became. The birds stopped singing. Even the insects seemed to have fled the area entirely, which honestly was not a comforting sign. His instincts told him someone had passed through here recently, and not casually.

A twig snapped underfoot. He froze instantly.

A footprint. Fresh, pressed clearly into the soft dirt. He knelt beside it, studying the sole pattern.

Mirinda recognized it immediately. “Clan guard boots,” she said. Ken’s eyes narrowed. “The thief is a guard?”

“Or someone wearing their boots,” she said. He kept following the trail for several hundred meters until the footprints vanished near an abandoned wooden hut, its roof half collapsed, vines crawling thick over the crumbling walls. He approached carefully and stepped inside.

An old furnace sat cold in the corner. Broken bottles littered the floor alongside piles of burned herbs. Someone had absolutely been refining pills in this exact spot, and recently.

He searched the room until something beneath the table caught his eye. A wooden badge. He picked it up, turning it over in his palm. The emblem carved into its surface belonged unmistakably to the Grand Le Clan, and beneath the emblem sat a single carved name. Guard Captain Zhou Feng.

Ken frowned, recognition tugging at him. He had seen this man before, always standing a step behind the Second Elder, always silent, always watching.

Mirinda’s voice turned careful. “This is not enough,” she warned. “I know,” Ken said. “A badge can be planted,” she added.

He sighed, because she was right, and if he accused Zhou Feng now with nothing but a badge in hand, Wei Zhan would simply deny everything and walk away clean. He needed something far stronger than this.

As he turned to leave, a sudden chill crawled down his spine. “Move!” Mirinda shouted.

Ken threw himself sideways without thinking. A blade of Beast Qi tore straight through the wooden wall where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier, dust exploding into the air around him.

Before he could catch his breath, three masked figures surrounded the hut, black robes, curved blades, and an aura that made his skin crawl. Beast Geek Level 15, all three of them.

Ken slowly rose to his feet. Three opponents, each two full cultivation levels above his own. His expression, somehow, stayed calm.

One of the masked men laughed under his breath. “So you are Le Ken,” he said. Another leveled his blade at him. “You were not supposed to find this place,” he said. The third simply said, “Kill him.”

All three attacked at once. Le Ken’s Shadow Panther Spirit surged into existence, and his Devouring Beam Sword formed in his grip, the heavy blade drinking in his Beast Qi before releasing it back stronger than it went in. Steel met Beast Qi with a crash that shook the surrounding trees.

Even with his improved strength, Ken understood the math instantly. One opponent at Beast Geek Level 15, he could probably handle. Two, he could likely outrun. Three, coordinated and closing from every side, put his odds somewhere he did not particularly enjoy thinking about.

As the blades flashed toward him from three different directions, only one thought stayed clear in his mind. This was never a simple robbery. This was never even revenge.

Someone had sent assassins to make absolutely certain he never walked out of these woods alive.

Then, in the middle of the chaos, one of the assassins let his mask slip just far enough for Le Ken to catch a glimpse of the face underneath.

His pupils shrank. He knew that face. This was no ordinary clan guard. This was the personal bodyguard of Second Elder Wei Zhan himself.

And if Wei Zhan was bold enough to send assassins straight into Grand Le Clan territory, Ken had to wonder, with a cold feeling settling in his stomach, exactly how many more enemies were already walking around wearing familiar, friendly faces.