The warmth curling beneath his navel turned without warning.
Pain tore through Li Yan’s core like the pill had ignited rather than settled, a white-hot line splitting outward from his dantian through every meridian at once. His vision washed pale at the edges, then blinding, as though someone had driven a blade of pure light straight through his center.
A scream clawed up his throat. He bit down on his lip hard enough to taste blood a second time that day, forcing the sound back into silence. He forced his spine to stay rigid against the mattress rather than thrash and bring the whole inn running.
"Master." Xiaoxiao’s voice cut through the haze, sharper now, stripped of its earlier lightness. "Hold on. This will pass. This is the consequence you have to bear since you are beginning your cultivation at a later stage in life."
Li Yan could not answer.
His fingers clawed into the bedsheet, knuckles white, breath reduced to short, ragged pulls through his nose. The pain crawled up his spine, branched through his limbs, and settled behind his eyes like something trying to claw its way out through his skull.
Darkness swallowed the pain whole.
Outside the window, a shadow shifted against the tiled eaves.
It had been watching for some time, patient, unmoving, until the sounds from within the room fell silent and did not resume.
The window slid open without a sound.
A figure dropped into the room, landing without so much as a whisper of displaced air, and crossed to the bed in three unhurried strides. Li Yan lay senseless atop the sheets, lips split faintly at the corner where he had bitten through the skin, sweat beading along his brow.
The figure studied him for a long moment, then bent and gathered him up, one arm beneath his knees, the other cradling his shoulders, as easily as lifting something far lighter than a grown man.
The window slid shut, and the room stood empty.
Xiaoxiao sighed within the space, a long, put-upon sound.
Her master, who had died and lied his way through it without flinching, had not so much as stirred while a stranger carried him out through the window.
Still, curiosity won out over exasperation.
Whoever had taken him clearly wanted him alive, unharmed even, given the care in that lift, which left only the question of what, precisely, such a man intended to do with him now that he had him.
Li Yan woke hours later, or so it felt, though he had no true way to measure the gap.
His eyes flew open. The unfamiliar softness beneath him registered before anything else did, a mattress far too fine for the thin, lumpy thing the innkeeper had given him, sheets that smelled of cedar rather than damp wood.
Alarm shot through him. He sat up too fast, head spinning, hands already searching for a weapon that was not there.
"Xiaoxiao." His voice came out rough. "Where am I?"
"You are not at the inn, Master." Xiaoxiao did not hedge. "While you lay unconscious from the pill’s effects, someone entered your room through the window and carried you off. I could not stop him, nor could I wake you. He was careful with you, gentle even, but he took you all the same."
Li Yan’s jaw tightened. Someone. He did not need much imagination to guess who.
"What did he want?"
"That, Master, I could not say. He said nothing while he carried you. His intentions remain a mystery even to me."
Whoever had done this, and he had a fair guess who, clearly believed himself entitled to kidnap a stranger he had taken a liking to.
He swung his legs off the bed and rose, testing his balance before crossing the room in search of any exit that did not require confronting whoever waited beyond the door. A window sat shuttered near the far wall. He moved toward it first, calculating the drop, the noise it might cost him, whether his legs would hold his weight on landing.
He gave up on the idea and turned to the door.
He had barely reached the door when it swung open from the other side.
"I see you are awake." Hu Bai leaned against the frame, arms crossed, an expression far too pleased with itself for Li Yan’s taste. "Were you thinking of escaping? That breaks my heart, little rabbit."
Li Yan stared at him, flat and unimpressed.
"Disgusting."
"That hurts, little rabbit." Hu Bai pressed a hand to his own chest, feigning a wound far deeper than words alone should have caused. "I happened to glance out my window and saw a figure lurking near your inn, watching your room with clear ill intent. I acted purely out of concern. I carried you to safety with my own hands, tucked you into the finest bed in the house, and this is the thanks I receive."
"No one asked you to act out of concern." Li Yan folded his arms, unmoved by the performance. "No one asked you to act at all."
"And yet, had I not, where would you be now? At the mercy of whoever was watching you, rather than safely here, under my protection." Hu Bai spread his hands, the picture of a man wrongly accused. "I would think a little gratitude was owed, at the very least."
"You entered a room uninvited and carried me off without my consent." Li Yan’s voice stayed level, cold. "If that is protection, I would rather take my chances with whatever danger you claim to have seen."
Something flickered across Hu Bai’s face at that, brief and almost wounded in a way that did not look entirely performed, gone before Li Yan could be certain he had seen it at all.
"You truly are as sharp-tongued as you are beautiful." Hu Bai recovered his easy smile a beat later, leaning further into the doorframe. "Most men in your position would at least pretend to be grateful."
"I am not...most men." Li Yan stepped forward, forcing Hu Bai to either move or block the doorway outright. "I have no intention of pretending for your benefit."