From the open doors of the inner hall, Young Master Wei watched. He was older than Li Wei by a few years, handsome in a sharp, predatory way, a folding fan half-open in his hand. When his eyes landed on Li Yan, the fan stopped moving. A slow, delighted smile curved his lips.
"Well, well," he said softly, voice rich with amusement and something darker. "Li Wei... you actually brought me something worth looking at. Come closer, little one. Let me see the face that made half my guards forget their manners."
Li Wei shoved Li Yan forward another step, already launching into a stream of oily compliments and price reminders.
Li Yan kept his head slightly lowered, lashes casting shadows—the perfect image of a frightened, beautiful Ger on the auction block.
Then his fingers, hidden in his sleeve, closed around the small, cold thing he had carried since morning.
He squeezed it gently.
Pain lanced through his chest, sharp and immediate. Li Yan’s breath hitched. He staggered, pressed a hand to his mouth, and coughed. Bright red blood sprayed between his fingers and spattered the pristine gravel.
A second cough tore out of him, wetter, heavier. More blood. He lurched sideways as if the world had tilted, eyes wide and unfocused, the picture of a body suddenly betraying itself.
"What—?!" Li Wei’s voice cracked. "What are you doing?!"
Li Yan did not answer. He turned and stumbled away from the hall, away from Young Master Wei, moving like something broken and rabid, blood running down his chin and dripping onto his plain robes. His extraordinary face, now streaked with crimson, looked even more haunting—like a spirit that had already half-left its shell.
"He’s faking!" Li Wei roared, face purpling. "He’s trying to ruin everything! Stop him! Beat him until he can’t move!"
The guards hesitated only a fraction of a second. Then they moved.
Boots and staves landed hard. Li Yan did not fight. He let them drive him down into the dust. Each blow forced another mouthful of blood from his lips. He curled in on himself, coughing, choking, until the red pooled beneath his cheek and his body went slack. His lashes rested against his blood-smeared skin. His chest no longer rose in any way the watching men could see.
Silence fell, broken only by Li Wei’s ragged breathing.
Young Master Wei’s fan snapped shut. His expression had cooled into open disgust.
"A corpse," he said flatly. "You bring me a dying toy and expect me to pay for it?"
Li Wei stared down at the still form, chest heaving. Rage and panic warred on his face. He kicked Li Yan’s side once. The body only jolted lifelessly.
"Take him anyway," Li Wei snarled suddenly, whirling toward the Wei guards. "He’s still warm. Drag him inside. Let Young Master Wei have his way with him if he wants—use him however he likes. I don’t care. The contract is sealed. He’s yours."
Young Master Wei looked at the blood-soaked figure, then at Li Wei, and gave a short, cold laugh.
"I don’t take corpses into my halls," he said. "Nor do I pay for ruined goods. Get that filth off my property."
Li Wei’s mouth opened, then closed. His hands flexed at his sides. For a moment he seemed ready to argue. Then something uglier and more practical settled over his features. He glanced once more at the beautiful, ruined face in the dust and looked away.
"Fine." His voice was tight. "You heard the Young Master. Find a corner. An alley. Anywhere out of sight. Toss him. I won’t have his carcass stinking up the road back."
The guards moved with visible relief. They seized Li Yan by the ankles and dragged him across the gravel, his head lolling, leaving a thin dark smear. They hauled him out through a side gate and into a narrow, refuse-choked alley that ran along the outer wall of the Wei estate—damp, shadowed, reeking of old garbage and stagnant water. There they dumped him against the filthy stones like a sack of spoiled grain and walked away without looking back.
Li Wei did not follow. He did not check the body. He stood in the courtyard, jaw clenched, and accepted a wet cloth from a servant to wipe imaginary dirt from his hands.
"We’re leaving," he told the driver. "Now."
Young Master Wei watched him with mild contempt, already turning back toward the comfort of his hall. The captain of the guard gave the alley one last uneasy glance, then followed his master inside.
The carriage door slammed. Wheels began to turn. Voices faded. Footsteps receded.
Soon the side gate was closed, and the alley fell quiet.
Li Yan lay exactly where they had thrown him, half-hidden among broken crates and rotting grains, blood drying dark on his lips and robes. To any passerby he would have looked like one more discarded thing the great houses had finished with.
He did not move.
Not while the sound of the Li carriage still echoed faintly in the distance.
Not while a servant somewhere inside the Wei walls laughed, a dog barked, and the ordinary noise of the estate settled back into place.
Only when the last of those sounds had thinned into true, heavy stillness did the faintest shift occur in the shadows around his sleeve—so small it might have been a trick of the light.
Li Yan’s spirit snapped back into his body with the force of a rubber band pulled too tight and released. His eyes cracked open to the same filthy alley, the same reek of rotting garbage and stagnant water.
"Ah, welcome back!" The voice in his head had changed. Gone was the ancient, solemn weight from that morning. Now it carried a lightness bordering on delight. "You performed beautifully. Truly. I have not witnessed a mortal fake his own death with such conviction in several centuries. The timing of the second cough, superb, my master. Simply superb."