Up close, the state of the man's robes told most of the story before he said a word. What had once been pristine white cloth — fine, tightly woven fabric, the kind that didn't belong anywhere near a forest floor — now hung in shreds, torn open by briars and soaked through with dark, drying blood. Even ruined, the quality of the material stood out against the mud and moss around him, too clean a weave for anything Li Fan had seen back on Blue Star.
Neither of them moved. The forest held still around them, the only sounds were the wounded man's ragged breathing and the faint drip of water somewhere off in the ferns.
Finally, the cultivator broke the silence, his voice tight and strained. "Who are you?"
Li Fan kept his hands open and visible at his sides, stepping forward slowly. "I am Li Fan. I am lost, and I don't know where to go."
The man's eyes moved over him — the torn, mud-caked work clothes, the dried filth smeared across his skin and jacket, nothing about him matching whatever this man expected to find out here. His gaze narrowed, sweeping Li Fan head to toe a second time, then a third, lingering too long to be simple curiosity. Li Fan felt it — a pressure behind the man's stare, something searching for a reaction, a flicker of hidden intent, anything that would mark him as more than what he appeared to be.
Whatever the cultivator was looking for, he didn't seem to find it. Still, his hand didn't fully relax where it rested near his belt, and for a moment his eyes stayed hard, calculating, as if weighing whether it was safer to strike first and ask nothing at all. He let out a heavy breath instead and sagged slightly against the tree root behind him.
"Come here," he said. "You're just a mortal. How can a mortal be found deep in a place like this?"
Li Fan's eyes dropped to the gashes tearing through the man's side, deep enough that the blood hadn't stopped welling even now. "Do you need help?"
The cultivator didn't answer right away. His gaze flicked toward the tree line behind Li Fan, then back, some private calculation running behind his eyes — whether this mortal had been sent ahead as bait, whether some hidden puppeteer's technique moved behind that ordinary face, whether it was simpler and safer to strike him down now and be done with the risk entirely. His fingers twitched once at his side.
Then something in his expression settled, worn down by exhaustion more than trust. He gave a weak nod, jaw tight against the pain. "Come forward."
Li Fan closed the distance between them, boots crunching softly over leaf litter, until he was within arm's reach.
The man's hand shot out.
It happened too fast to react to — a grip closing hard around Li Fan's wrist before he'd even seen the arm move. A jolt of raw fear slammed through his chest, and he froze completely, certain for one long second that this was it, that some powerful stranger had lured him close only to finish him off in the middle of nowhere.
Then the cold came.
A strange, foreign sensation slid into his wrist from the point of contact, spreading fast up his arm, crossing his chest, sinking lower until it settled somewhere just above his waist. It didn't hurt. It simply moved through him, methodical and searching, like something running its hands along the inside of his ribs — checking for anything hidden beneath his skin. A foreign will riding inside him. A technique wearing his face like a mask. Something the man's instincts refused to rule out until he'd confirmed it himself.
Li Fan stood rigid, too startled to pull away, watching the man's face for any sign of what was happening.
After a few seconds, the sensation withdrew all at once, retreating back out through his wrist and vanishing. The cultivator's grip loosened and fell away, and he slumped back against the root, staring at Li Fan with open confusion.
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"Just an ordinary mortal," he muttered, mostly to himself. "How did he even manage to arrive here?"
Li Fan said nothing, still catching up with the fact that he hadn't just been killed.
The man studied him a moment longer, and whatever answer he'd hoped the inspection would give him clearly hadn't come. None of this made sense — a mortal, alone, this deep in territory that should have killed him a dozen times over. He still didn't trust it. He still didn't understand it. But the blood loss was pulling at the edges of his vision, and the enemies somewhere behind him weren't going to stop hunting just because he'd run out of strength to keep moving. A stranger he didn't understand was still better odds than the ones closing in from the trees.
His fingers curled tight against the dirt, knuckles whitening as he forced himself to focus through the pain.
"You," he said. "Come closer. Quickly."
The cultivator reached into the torn folds of his robe with a shaking hand and pulled out a heavy, sealed pouch, pressing it into Li Fan's palms before he could react. A moment later came a polished wooden token, its surface carved with symbols Li Fan didn't recognize but somehow understood belonged to something called the Myriad Craft Sect.
"Two more things." The man's hand dipped back into his robe, producing a pair of thick paper slips, each covered edge to edge in dense, complicated ink markings that seemed to shift faintly if Li Fan stared too long. "This one is cut from the hide of a beast a thousand years old. It will stop one killing blow — only one. After that, it's ash." He pressed the first slip into Li Fan's hand, then held up the second. "This one won't carry you through the air. It only quickens your legs for a short stretch, and it will leave you gasping like you've run for miles the moment it fades. Don't waste it on anything less than your life." He pressed both into Li Fan's other hand, then followed with several large pills, dry and faintly warm, forcing them into his grip as well. "These will sustain you. Eat them if your strength fails."
Li Fan's arms were full before he'd said a single word of agreement.
"Return... these..." the cultivator forced out, breath catching mid-sentence. "To the Myriad Craft Sect. As quickly... as you can. They'll reward you. Handsomely."
His eyes drifted past Li Fan's shoulder for a moment, toward the direction he'd pointed out, and something in his face went distant. "I told my master I'd be back before the frost," he said, quieter now, almost to himself. "Tell them I tried."
For a moment, Li Fan forgot about the weight in his hands. The man's final words carried a regret that had nothing to do with treasures or sects. But regret didn't make someone trustworthy.
His mind was already working faster than his mouth could keep up. The pills could be poisoned, planted to finish off whoever this man didn't trust enough to let live. The talismans could carry some mark that let others track whoever carried them. And the sect itself was an unknown — it might reward him exactly as promised, or see a mortal holding a dying disciple's belongings and decide the simplest answer was to make him disappear. He had no way to know which, not yet. All he could do was carry the risk forward and stay alert for whatever came next.
The man lifted a trembling, blood-streaked finger and pointed through a gap in the massive trunks ahead, the direction cutting a narrow path through the undergrowth. "Run. That way. Now."
Li Fan didn't argue. He turned toward the gap, tightening his grip on the pouch, the token, and the talismans, and broke into a run.
Behind him, the cultivator's voice rose one last time, hoarse and urgent.
"Danger — crush both talismans! Keep moving — that direction — don't stop!"
Li Fan didn't look back. He sprinted into the thicket, branches whipping past his shoulders, the items clutched tight against his chest as the forest swallowed him whole.