Shou An left the inn without sound.
Yuwen slept deeply, the lamp already burned down to a red wick. Shou An did not look back. He bound his hair, covered his face, and drew black cloth over his shoulders until his outline dissolved into the night. By the time he stepped beyond the last lantern of the road, he was no longer a man only a moving shadow.
The forest swallowed him.
Beyond the trees lay a place unmarked on any map, where abandoned people gathered not by choice but by necessity. More than twenty lived there now, men and women erased by records and forgotten by the court. Their refuge was a broad, weather-darkened mansion known as Beiyu Menchants, a name borrowed from a trade house that no longer existed.
Two guards stood at the outer gate.
Shou An did not draw a blade. He moved when the wind moved, stepped when their eyes shifted, and passed between them like smoke slipping through a crack. By the time one guard frowned at the cold on his neck, the shadow was already gone.
Inside, the halls were quiet.
He crossed the courtyard and entered QiZhi Hall, where a single lamp still burned. A middle aged man sat beneath it, reading bamboo-bound scripts, his back straight despite the hour. Lu Wen turned a page then paused.
Footsteps.
His hand closed around the sword beside him.
"Who's there?" His voice was steady, but his eyes were sharp.
Shou An stepped into the lamplight.
Steel rang as Lu Wen rose, blade half drawn but Shou An raised one hand, palm open, calm as still water. With the other, he placed a folded letter on the table between them.
"No names," Shou An said quietly. "Read."
Lu Wen hesitated, then opened the letter.
Inside was no report, no seal only a short poem, written in an ordinary hand:
"Fields sleep beneath borrowed names, River south hides what cities seek. Oxen plow where shadows rest, Before dawn, move east of the old bridge. They count Suzhou's streets in error, Zhao's roof shelters roots unaware."
Lu Wen's gaze tightened as he read again. Slowly, he lowered his sword.
"Jiangnan," he said under his breath. "Farmers. The Zhao household… and they don't know."
Shou An said nothing.
Lu Wen looked up sharply. "Even our outer spies....."
"Know nothing," Shou An finished. "That is why you must move first."
From within his sleeve, Shou An produced a small object wrapped in cloth. He set it down and unfolded it once.
Bronze caught the light.
An imperial token worn, unmistakable, long thought lost.
Lu Wen's breath stilled.
"We searched three years," he said hoarsely.
"You searched where everyone looks," Shou An replied. "This was kept where no one remembers to fear."
Silence filled Qi Zhi Hall.
Lu Wen bowed, deep and wordless.
When he straightened, the shadow was already gone.
Lu Wen did not waste time.
The letter was burned after it was memorized, the ashes crushed beneath his heel. He stepped out of Qi Zhi Hall and rang the small bronze bell hung beneath the eaves once, twice, then once again. It was not loud, but it carried.
Figures emerged from the surrounding rooms and corridors. Men are cloaked and alert, their lives already half packed by habit. They needed no explanation. A single sentence from Lu Wen was enough.
"Pack only what you can carry," he said. "We leave before dawn."
Bundles were tied, weapons wrapped in cloth, lamps extinguished one by one. The Beiyu Merchants mansion, which had sheltered them for years, emptied itself quietly, as if exhaling its last breath.
Lu Wen counted them once. Twenty-one.
"Three groups," he ordered. "Seven each. Separate routes. We meet beyond the east waterway."
No one argued.
They departed in intervals, slipping into the trees and narrow paths like scattered threads pulled from the same cloth. By the time the final group vanished, the mansion stood dark and hollow, already returning to the forest.
From the shadows beyond the outer wall, Shou An watched.
He did not move, did not follow. He simply counted their steps until the night swallowed them whole. Only when the last sound faded did he turn away.
The forest closed behind him.
The inn was quiet when Shou An returned.
He slipped through the back entrance, removed his mask, and loosened the black cloth from his shoulders. Yuwen slept on the bed, her breathing even, face turned toward the wall. She did not stir.
Shou An lay down on the floor, a short distance away, using his cloak as a pillow. He faced the door, as always.
By morning, it would be as if he had never left at all.