On the fourth day, Lan Yue followed the boy.
She had saved him for last because he was the most careful of the three. Cui was nervous and rushed, prone to small mistakes. Peng was old and habitual, his patterns worn into grooves so deep he could not deviate from them. But the boy moved like water. He changed his timing. He varied his routes. He swept different sections of the administrative hall each day so that his proximity to Elder Zhao Chenguang's study never looked deliberate.
Someone had trained him. Not in cultivation. In disappearing.
Lan Yue respected that. It made her job harder, but she respected it.
She picked him up at the administrative hall at midday. He was sweeping the eastern corridor, his broom moving in long, even strokes, his eyes on the floor. He looked like every other junior servant in the sect. Thin. Quiet. Forgettable. The kind of face you looked at and immediately stopped seeing.
Lan Yue did not stop seeing.
