They didn’t discuss a plan.
There wasn’t time for one, and afterward Tianyun couldn’t have told anybody what the plan had even been, only that somehow, without a word passing between them, Chen Hao and Feng Li peeled off toward the nearest cluster of villagers scrambling for the tree line, while he and Lin Yueqing rode straight for the center of the village, straight for the man standing very still on Old Zhao’s roof.
The heat hit him before the smoke did, a wall of it rolling off the burning buildings on either side, and somewhere close by he heard someone screaming a name that wasn’t his, and further off, the ugly ring of steel meeting whatever passed for a farmer’s weapon against a trained blade.
He didn’t let himself look for his house yet.
He couldn’t.
If he looked and it was gone, he didn’t know what would happen to the rest of him.
The man on the roof watched them come the whole way, unhurried, and only when they’d closed to within twenty paces did he finally step down, landing light and easy on the packed dirt of what had once been Old Zhao’s front yard.
Up close he didn’t look like the other cultists — no wrapped face, no tattered robes.
Just a man, older than Tianyun expected, silver threading through black hair pulled back severely, crimson robes cut fine and deliberate, like a man who’d dressed carefully for this exact evening.
“Li Tianyun,” he said, and his voice carried none of the layered wrongness of the puppet-cultists from before.
Just a voice.
Almost pleasant.
“I wondered if the rider would reach you in time.
I confess I was hoping he would.
It seemed a shame to burn a village for nothing.” “Where’s my family.” “Direct.
I appreciate that in a young man.” The cultist tilted his head slightly, studying him the way Xuan Zhen once had, back on the mountain, except without any of the warmth underneath it.
“Your mother and father are, as of this moment, alive.
I’d like to keep that true, and I suspect you’d like the same thing, which gives us a shared interest to build on.” “What do you want.” “You already know what I want.
I’d rather not waste breath restating the obvious.” The man’s eyes drifted, briefly, to the jade shard visible at Tianyun’s collar, hunger flickering behind an otherwise composed face.
“Four fragments now, I’m told.
Impressive, for how little time you’ve had.
My master will be pleased.” “Your master can–” “Careful,” the man said, mild as ever, and lifted one hand.
Somewhere behind him, out of sight past the burning wreck of a neighboring house, a woman screamed — a scream Tianyun knew, had known his whole life, had heard a thousand times over small things, a spilled bucket, a dropped basket, nothing like this, nothing like the raw terror in it now.
“Mother–” The word tore out of him before he’d decided to say it, and he was already moving, already off the horse, when the cultist’s voice cut through the chaos, still mild, still unhurried, somehow worse for it.
“Ah.
Careful, boy.
My people are gentle with her, for now, so long as you don’t do anything rash enough to change my mind about that.” He watched Tianyun freeze mid-stride with something like genuine curiosity.
“You have four fragments.
My master needs all nine before he can do what he intends to do.
That means I need you alive, and cooperative, for a while yet — which is the only reason your mother is still breathing right now instead of feeding this fire like the rest of her neighbors.” Lin Yueqing had drawn her blade without Tianyun quite noticing, positioned half a step in front of him, jaw set hard.
“You don’t get to have him,” she said.
“I don’t recall asking your opinion, healer.” “You’re getting it anyway.” The cultist’s mouth curved, not quite a smile, more the shape one makes out of habit.
“Nine Lotus Palace training.
I recognize the stance.
You’re better than most of your peers, I imagine, and it still won’t matter here.” His gaze slid back to Tianyun.
“Here is my offer, boy, and I’ll only make it once.
Come with me.
Quietly.
No more fighting, no more fires.
I’ll leave what’s left of this village and everyone still breathing in it exactly as they are.” “And if I don’t.” “Then I burn the rest of it slowly enough that you get to watch every part of the decision land.” He said it without cruelty, without heat, which was somehow worse than if he’d shouted it.
“I’d genuinely rather not.
It’s inefficient, and my master values efficiency.
But I will, if you make me.” Tianyun’s hands had curled into fists so tight his nails were cutting into his palms, four sealed fragments burning hot against his chest, and underneath all of it, that same terrible, patient rage from the courtyard back at Cloudmist stirred again, closer to the surface now than it had ever been.
He thought about what Elder Bao said.
If it happens again, mid-fight, it could kill you.
He thought about his mother’s scream, and how many more of those he could stand to hear before something in him broke in a direction he couldn’t take back.
“Tianyun.” Lin Yueqing’s voice, low, urgent, close to his ear.
“Don’t.
Whatever you’re thinking right now — don’t.
There has to be another way.” “Listen to the healer,” the cultist said, almost gently.
“She’s the only sensible person standing in this yard tonight.” A shape moved at the edge of the firelight then, low and fast, cutting between two burning houses with a speed that didn’t belong to any villager Tianyun had ever known — and the cultist’s composed expression flickered, for the first time, into something like genuine surprise, as a walking stick that was very clearly not a walking stick anymore drove hard into the side of his skull.
Li Wei didn’t say anything as he moved.
He’d never needed to be loud to be dangerous, Tianyun realized, watching his father fight in a way he’d never once seen in seventeen years of herb-gathering and firewood and quiet mountain lessons — economical, brutal, every strike placed with the kind of precision that only came from years spent doing this exact thing, a very long time ago, before any of them had been born into the life they thought they knew.
The cultist recovered fast, twisting away from the blow that should have ended things, blood welling along his temple, and for the first time that night his composure genuinely cracked.
“General Li,” he breathed, disbelief bleeding into something closer to fear.
“You’re supposed to be dead.
Everyone says you died at the Fall of Xuanwu–” “Everyone’s wrong about a lot of things,” Li Wei said, voice flat and cold in a way Tianyun had never once heard from him, and struck again.
The fight that followed happened too fast for Tianyun to properly track — his father moving like something remembered rather than decided, the cultist matching him blow for blow with a skill that made the earlier puppet-cultists look like children by comparison, both of them driving each other back and forth across Old Zhao’s burning yard while Tianyun stood frozen, torn between helping and understanding that he had no idea how to help against something moving this fast.
It was Lin Yueqing who grabbed his arm and hauled him sideways, hard, just as the cultist’s blade — where had he even drawn a blade, Tianyun hadn’t seen it happen — cut a line through the space he’d been standing a heartbeat before.
“Focus,” she snapped.
“Your father can hold him.
We need to get to your mother, now, before–” She didn’t finish, because from somewhere past the burning wreckage, closer now, his mother’s voice rose again — not a scream this time, but his name, shouted with a kind of desperate, warning urgency that stopped his heart cold in his chest.
“Tianyun!
Behind you–” He turned too slow.
The last thing he saw clearly before the world tilted sideways and the ground rushed up to meet him was a second crimson figure, one he hadn’t even known was there, already closing the last few feet between them with something dark and glinting raised high overhead — and behind that, past the flames, past everything, his mother’s face, twisted with a terror he had never once seen on her in his entire life.
To be continue….