The Xue Clan compound had never felt so quiet.
Patriarch Xue Kuangdao stood at the window of his private study, watching the empty courtyards below. No warriors trained in the practice yards. No servants hurried between buildings. Even the torches seemed to burn lower, as if the compound itself knew that something fundamental had changed.
Three days of war. Three days of watching his carefully laid plans crumble against strength that shouldn't have existed.
"The mercenary company has formally withdrawn." Elder Xue Taiming's voice carried the weight of a death sentence. "Jin Bao sent word this morning. They're citing 'misrepresentation of opposition strength' as grounds to void the contract."
Kuangdao didn't turn from the window. "And our deposits?"
"Non-refundable. They've already left the city."
Of course they had. Mercenaries were practical creatures. They'd seen Wang Feng reveal his true cultivation, seen the Patriarch Wang's advancement, watched their lead cultivator go down in less than a minute. No amount of spirit stones was worth dying for a contract that had been built on faulty intelligence.
How did we miss this? The question had been gnawing at him since the second day of fighting. Liu Mingde watched them for a decade. How did we not know they were hiding this kind of strength?
But Liu Mingde was dead. Killed by his own mark, they'd learned. Whatever intelligence network he'd built had died with him, leaving the Xue Clan blind at precisely the wrong moment.
"Grandfather." Xue Feng's voice cut through his brooding. His grandson stood near the door, flanked by two elders Kuangdao didn't immediately recognize. The boy looked haggard, shadows under his eyes that hadn't been there a week ago. "The council is assembled."
Kuangdao finally turned from the window. His study felt smaller than it had before the war, the walls pressing in with the weight of decisions that couldn't be unmade. On the desk behind him, scrolls containing financial reports painted a picture of ruin. The mercenary contracts. The bribes to city officials. The weapons and pills purchased for a war they were now losing.
Three hundred percent of their annual income, spent on a campaign that had shattered against hidden strength.
"Then let us see what options remain."
The council chamber was half-empty.
Kuangdao noted the missing faces as he took his seat at the head of the table. Elder Xue Yanwei, who had led the assault on the eastern compound. Elder Xue Changming, who had coordinated with the mercenaries. Elder Xue Bolin, who had fallen in the second day's fighting when Wang Feng revealed his true power.
Dead. All of them. Along with seventeen foundation establishment cultivators and countless disciples.
The survivors sat in bitter silence, their expressions ranging from fury to despair. Some had bandages visible beneath their robes. Others simply looked hollow, like men who had seen their world collapse and hadn't yet processed what it meant.
"The City Lord's ceasefire binds our hands," Kuangdao began. "We cannot attack. We cannot advance. We are frozen in place while the Wang Clan consolidates their gains."
"Then we use the time to rebuild," Elder Xue Taiming said. "Recall our people from the outer territories. Consolidate our defenses. Wait for opportunity."
"Wait?" Xue Feng's voice cracked with barely contained rage. "Wait for what? For the Wang Clan to grow even stronger? For them to turn the City Lord's investigation against us?"
"The boy has a point." Elder Xue Huanwen leaned forward, his scarred face twisting. "We have proof that Wang Rui was feeding them information. Evidence of their counterintelligence operation. If the investigation proceeds, it won't go our way."
"So we provide our own evidence." Kuangdao's voice was flat. "We have resources. Contacts in the city administration. We can muddy the waters enough to delay any findings."
"Delay." Xue Feng practically spat the word. "That's all we've done for years. Delay, scheme, wait for the right moment. And now look at us. Broken. Bleeding. Trapped."
"Then what would you have us do?" Kuangdao asked, and there was an edge in his voice that made several elders flinch. "Throw ourselves against the Wang Clan's enhanced cultivators? Attack the Dao Clan and bring their sword masters into direct conflict? Perhaps challenge the City Lord himself?"
Xue Feng didn't flinch. "I would have us find new allies."
Silence fell over the chamber.
"The mercenaries have fled," Elder Taiming said slowly. "The Crimson Bastion's investment has proven insufficient. What allies do you imagine are available?"
"There are... others." Xue Feng's voice dropped, taking on a careful quality. "Forces that operate beyond the normal bounds. People who have approached us before, when we had nothing to offer them."
Kuangdao felt ice settle in his chest. He knew what his grandson was suggesting. He'd known since the first day of fighting went wrong, had felt the thought lurking in the back of his mind like a serpent waiting to strike.
"You speak of demonic cultivators."
The words fell into the silence like stones into still water.
"I speak of survival." Xue Feng met his grandfather's eyes without flinching. "They approached us two years ago. Offered an alliance. We refused because we thought we didn't need them." He gestured at the half-empty table, at the wounded elders and the spaces where the dead should have been sitting. "Do we still think that?"
"Demonic cultivators are..." Elder Taiming trailed off, searching for words.
"Dangerous. Unpredictable. Corrosive to everything they touch." Kuangdao finished the thought. "They don't form alliances. They form parasitic relationships. They take what they want and leave ruin behind them."
"And our current situation is so much better?" Xue Feng's laugh was bitter. "We've lost a third of our combat strength. Our treasury is nearly depleted. The Wang Clan has revealed power we didn't know they possessed, and the Dao Clan's sword masters stand ready to finish us if we show weakness."
"The boy speaks sense." Elder Huanwen's voice was heavy. "I don't like it any more than you do, Patriarch. But we're not choosing between good and bad options. We're choosing between bad and worse."
"If we bring demonic cultivators into Redstone City..." Kuangdao shook his head slowly. "If it's discovered... the other clans, the City Lord, the regional powers. We would be branded traitors. Destroyed not just as a clan, but erased from history."
"Only if we lose." Xue Feng leaned forward, intensity burning in his eyes. "If we win, we write the history. The Wang Clan used hidden strength to break the balance of power. We used whatever means necessary to defend ourselves. By the time anyone learns the truth, we'll be too powerful for it to matter."
Kuangdao looked at his grandson and saw something he recognized. The hunger. The willingness to do whatever it took. The absolute refusal to accept defeat.
He'd been that young once. That certain.
"How would you even contact them?"
The question hung in the air. Xue Feng's expression shifted, just slightly. Something like triumph flickered in his eyes before he controlled it.
"I kept the communication jade they left. Just in case."
Of course you did. Kuangdao wanted to be angry. Wanted to rage at his grandson for keeping such a dangerous secret. But anger required energy he no longer had.
"And what would we offer them? What could possibly interest forces that powerful in a conflict this small?"
"Redstone City sits at the edge of the Blackwood." Xue Feng's voice took on the quality of someone who had thought about this for a long time. "The beast tide pushed valuable creatures and resources to the surface. There are things in that forest that haven't been seen in centuries. And after the tide's devastation, the territory is there for the taking."
"We would be selling access to our own lands."
"We would be surviving." Xue Feng's voice hardened. "Grandfather, I have walked through this compound today. I have counted the empty beds in the disciples' quarters. I have seen the wounded who will never fight again. If we do nothing, the Wang Clan will destroy us. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not next month. But eventually, inevitably, they will come for us. And we will have nothing left to fight with."
Kuangdao closed his eyes.
He thought of his father, who had built the Xue Clan from a minor family into the second power of Redstone City. He thought of his own decades of work, expanding their influence, cementing their position. He thought of his grandson and great-grandchildren, the future he'd been building for.
All of it, threatened by one clan's hidden strength.
"How long would it take to make contact?"
Wang Ben watched the Xue compound from his position on the wall, the System cataloging every detail his enhanced eyes could capture.
[OBSERVATION: Xue Clan compound - fifth consecutive hour of monitoring]
[Personnel movement: Minimal visible activity]
[Messenger departures: 7 confirmed since midnight]
[Pattern analysis: Departure intervals irregular. Directions vary. Consistent with distributed communication network rather than single destination.]
The ceasefire had changed everything and nothing. The fighting had stopped, but the war continued in different forms. He could see it in the careful movements of the few Xue cultivators who ventured outside, in the way torches were positioned to create blind spots rather than illuminate, in the steady trickle of messengers slipping out through different gates.
They were planning something. He could feel it in his bones, in the instincts that weren't quite his own.
"You're still here."
Wang Ben didn't turn at Zhou Wei's voice. The team leader climbed the last steps to join him, moving with the careful pace of someone who hadn't slept properly in days.
"Couldn't leave. Something's wrong."
"Something's been wrong since the war started." Zhou Wei settled against the parapet beside him. "The Grand Elder asked about your reports. Said your observations about the messenger patterns were... concerning."
"They're reaching out to someone." Wang Ben's voice was flat, certain. "Not the mercenaries. They already fled. Not the City Lord. He's made his position clear. Someone else."
"Who?"
"I don't know." And that uncertainty gnawed at him. The watchers Shen Ruoxi had warned him about. The forces beyond the mercenaries. Something was moving in the shadows, and he couldn't quite see its shape.
[Analysis: Insufficient data for threat assessment]
[Recommendation: Continue observation. Report anomalies immediately.]
"The Grand Elder wants you at the morning briefing," Zhou Wei said. "Whatever you're seeing, he wants to hear it directly."
"I'll be there."
But Wang Ben didn't move from his position. Instead, he watched another messenger slip through the compound's eastern gate, vanishing into the pre-dawn darkness. Heading not toward the city center, but toward the northern road.
Toward the Blackwood.
What are you doing, Xue Clan? he thought. What could be worth reaching into that darkness?
He didn't have an answer. But somewhere deep in his borrowed memories, something stirred. A warning from a universe that no longer existed.
Some bargains should never be made.
The Dao Clan compound felt emptier than Dao Zhen remembered.
He walked through corridors he'd known since childhood, past training halls where he'd learned his first sword forms, through courtyards where generations of Dao cultivators had honed their skills. The familiar paths felt different now. Heavier. As if the stones themselves knew that something fundamental had changed.
His grandmother was furious.
Dao Zhen had seen Dao Lingwei's face when she returned from the City Lord's summons. Had seen the cold fury burning behind her eyes, the way her hand kept drifting to her sword hilt as if aching for an enemy to strike. His grandmother, the woman who had taught him that a blade was more than a weapon, the Grand Elder who had led their clan's forces through three days of fighting... forced into a ceasefire before she could see victory.
They'd been winning. And now they were stopped.
But that wasn't why he was here.
The door to his father's quarters stood closed, guarded by two elders who nodded recognition as he approached. They didn't try to stop him. They never did, not anymore.
"How is he?"
Elder Dao Weichen's face told him everything. "The physicians are with him now. It's... not a good day."
Dao Zhen pushed through the door before the elder could say anything more.
The room smelled of medicine and incense, a cloying sweetness that couldn't quite mask the underlying scent of sickness. Heavy curtains blocked most of the light, leaving the space in perpetual twilight. And there, on the bed that seemed far too large for the figure it held, lay his father.
Patriarch Dao Jianfeng had always been a powerful man. Sword-straight posture. Eyes like sharpened steel. A presence that filled any room he entered.
The figure in the bed was a shadow of that man.
"Father."
Dao Jianfeng's eyes opened slowly. It took a moment for recognition to spark in them, another moment for a tired smile to cross his gaunt features.
"Zhen'er. You should be resting."
"I couldn't sleep." Dao Zhen moved to the bedside, settling into the chair that had become his usual position over the past months. "How are you feeling?"
"Like a man who tried to break through when he wasn't ready." His father's voice was weak, but the familiar sardonic edge remained. "The physicians say I've stabilized. They always say I've stabilized."
Dao Zhen looked at his father, really looked. Saw the tremor in hands that had once been rock-steady. The pallor that no amount of rest could cure. The way his father's qi flickered and stuttered, visible even to someone who wasn't trying to sense it.
"How bad is it really?"
The silence stretched between them. Father and son, both knowing the answer, neither wanting to speak it aloud.
"The breakthrough damaged my meridians beyond repair," Dao Jianfeng said finally. "My cultivation is... unstable. The physicians estimate I have perhaps two months. Perhaps three, if I avoid any exertion."
Two months. Three at most.
Dao Zhen felt the words hit him like a physical blow. He'd known his father was ill. Known the breakthrough had failed. But he'd told himself there was time. Told himself the physicians would find a solution. Told himself...
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you would have done something foolish." His father's smile held an echo of its former sharpness. "Challenged the Xue Clan alone. Tried to find some miracle cure. Refused to let me make the decisions that needed to be made."
"The alliance with Wang Clan."
"I knew I was dying when I proposed it." Dao Jianfeng's eyes met his son's. "The Dao Clan needs protection. The Wang Clan needed allies. It was a practical arrangement between desperate parties."
"And you didn't think I deserved to know?"
"I thought you deserved a few more months of believing your father was immortal." The words were gentle, almost kind. "Every child loses that belief eventually. I wanted to give you as long as possible."
Dao Zhen felt something crack in his chest. Not his heart. Something deeper than that. The last illusion of childhood, perhaps. The belief that the people we love will always be there.
"What happens now?"
"Now?" His father's hand, trembling but determined, reached out to clasp his son's. "Now you prepare. For leadership. For responsibility. For the weight of every life in this clan resting on your shoulders."
"I'm not ready."
"No one ever is." Dao Jianfeng's grip tightened, showing a flash of the strength that still remained. "But you will be. You have your grandmother's fire. Your mother's wisdom. And you have something I never did at your age."
"What?"
"Allies who will stand with you." His father's eyes seemed to look past him, into some future only he could see. "The Wang boy. Wang Ben. Your grandmother says he's unusual. That there's something about him she can't quite understand."
"He's... strange." Dao Zhen struggled to find words for it. "He fights like he's been doing it for decades. Thinks like a strategist twice his age. But he's also just a fifteen-year-old boy who doesn't know how to take a compliment."
"Keep him close. Whatever happens next, keep him close." His father's voice was fading, exhaustion pulling him back toward sleep. "The Dao Clan will need friends in the days to come. Real friends. Not allies of convenience."
"Father..."
But Dao Jianfeng's eyes had already closed, his breathing evening out into the rhythm of sleep. Dao Zhen sat in the twilight, holding his father's hand, and tried to imagine a world where that grip no longer existed.
Two months. Maybe three.
Somewhere outside, the ceasefire held. The war continued in shadows. And forces beyond their understanding moved toward Redstone City, drawn by desperation and old bargains.
Dao Zhen didn't know any of that. All he knew was that time was running out, and nothing would ever be the same.
END OF CHAPTER 45