2026-09-10 20:47:44Thirty feet of shattered wall, and behind it, disciplined ranks of armored soldiers advancing in silence no shouted orders, no chaotic charge, just the cold, deliberate approach of a force that had planned this down to the minute and expected no meaningful resistance from a minor outer sect.
"That is not a raiding party," the woman beside Ren Xiao said grimly, already scanning the courtyard for the nearest usable cover. "That is an extraction force. Someone in the Imperial hierarchy
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 15: The Tracker
The figure that emerged from the ravine's rocky bend was smaller than Ren Xiao expected, and considerably younger a boy, perhaps fourteen, dressed in the plain, undyed robes of an outer disciple, breathing hard from what had clearly been a long and difficult pursuit.Mei Lian's blade lowered slightly, though not fully, as recognition crossed her face. "Tao," she said, startled. "What are you doing out here?""Following you," the boy said between ragged breaths, "since you left the herb racks two hours before the wall came down. I couldn't find you after the bells started, and everyone was screaming about soldiers, and I thought" He stopped, swallowing hard, his eyes darting nervously between Mei Lian, Su Yan, and finally settling, with obvious uncertainty, on Ren Xiao. "I thought you might be in trouble. You're always disappearing on things you won't explain. I wanted to make sure you weren't dead in a ditch somewhere."Xue Wuchen studied the boy with careful, rapid asse
Chapter 14: What the Tunnel Remembers
The tunnel ran longer than Ren Xiao expected, and colder, its ancient stone walls sweating with a damp that smelled of centuries rather than years. Mei Lian moved close behind him in the dark, one hand still gripping the back of his torn robe as though letting go might cost her the only thread connecting her to solid ground. Ahead, the woman who had knelt to him in the archive led without hesitation, her steps sure in a passage she had clearly walked, or at least studied, long before tonight."You still haven't told me your name," Ren Xiao said quietly, more to fill the suffocating silence than from any real expectation of an answer."Su Yan," she said, without breaking stride. "I served your court as a scout, my lord, among other things less easily explained in polite company. I am, as far as I know, one of perhaps a dozen loyalists still living who ever laid eyes on you directly, before the purge scattered the rest of us into hiding under names that were never truly ours."
Chapter 13: One of the Seven
Jiang Heng had not aged the way Ren Xiao expected a traitor to age.In the throne room, in the last clear memory of his first life, Xue Wuchen had watched this man stand silent among the seven while another held the blade, offering no protest, no hesitation, only the flat, professional stillness of someone who had already made his peace with what was about to happen. He looked exactly the same now, armored differently, older by whatever years had passed, but carrying the same unhurried certainty that had made him one of the most effective commanders Xue Wuchen had ever raised from nothing."I told the others you might still be alive somewhere," Jiang Heng said, stopping a careful distance away, his own blade still sheathed, his eyes moving over Ren Xiao's borrowed face with an unreadable, searching intensity. "No one believed me. A man doesn't survive seven blades and a burned court. But I always thought you were too stubborn a bastard to die properly the first tim
Chapter 12: The Breach
Thirty feet of shattered wall, and behind it, disciplined ranks of armored soldiers advancing in silence no shouted orders, no chaotic charge, just the cold, deliberate approach of a force that had planned this down to the minute and expected no meaningful resistance from a minor outer sect."That is not a raiding party," the woman beside Ren Xiao said grimly, already scanning the courtyard for the nearest usable cover. "That is an extraction force. Someone in the Imperial hierarchy authorized this, and authorized it fast which means whoever felt your signature three days ago wasted no time reporting it upward."Mei Lian's blade was already drawn, her earlier shock at the archive's revelations replaced by the sharp, focused calm of someone whose training had, at last, found an enemy simple enough to understand: soldiers, breaching a wall, coming for disciples who could not possibly fight them off. "There are perhaps forty outer disciples still asleep in the eastern dorm
Chapter 11: The Day He Was Born
The words landed harder than the blade in Elder Kang's hand.What I should have finished the day he was born.Ren Xiao felt the fragmented memories of the boy whose body he wore shift under that sentence, seventeen years of half-understood cruelty suddenly rearranging themselves into something far more deliberate than simple institutional contempt. He had always been told he was found, an orphan of no particular importance, tested and found wanting by ordinary bad luck. He had never once been told that an elder of the sect had wanted him dead from his very first day of life."You knew," Ren Xiao said slowly, and for the first time since waking in this body, he let some measure of Xue Wuchen's old, cold authority bleed openly into his borrowed voice, no longer bothering to disguise it. "Not suspected. Not feared. Knew. You knew exactly whose bloodline you were looking at the moment this child was born, and you chose to let him live anyway, in squalor, close enou
Chapter 10: The Second Blade
The figure that emerged from the archive's outer shadows moved with the same trained, economical grace Ren Xiao had felt in the dark of his own shed two nights before not identical, but cut from the same discipline, the unmistakable signature of someone who killed for a living and had long since stopped finding anything remarkable about it.Mei Lian moved first, placing herself half a step in front of Ren Xiao with her blade already drawn, and in that single instinctive motion Xue Wuchen felt something shift in his estimation of her that surprised even him she had not hesitated, not for a heartbeat, despite having every reason in the world to leave a stranger's secret to fend for itself."Sect grounds," Mei Lian said, voice low and hard. "You're trespassing on sect grounds. Leave now, or the alarm bells will do the rest of this conversation for us."The figure a woman, Ren Xiao judged from the build and stance, face obscured beneath a dark wrap did not ans
You may also like
Into The Unknown World
Einvee16.6K viewsMonster Girl Ranching in Another World
Magic_35.4K viewsAlchemist In The Cultivator World
Ace19.6K viewsThe Ultimate Devourer
Daoist Of Lies16.5K viewsBlood of the Fallen
Kiyomi110 viewsThe Shadow Blade Returns
Mani Mayox268 viewsThe Villain's Guide to Not Dying Twice
Sweet Minion215 viewsThe Thousandth Exitence
DNA3856 views