The road had stopped pretending to be a road two days ago.
What remained was a wide scar of trampled earth cutting through tall grass and scattered stone, shaped not by builders, but by generations of feet, hooves, and wheels that had all chosen the same direction out of convenience, desperation, or habit. It bent around hills instead of crossing them, skirted forests rather than entering them, and followed rivers only when the rivers allowed it.
Lu Yan preferred such paths.They were honest about what they were.
The group moved in three loose columns, spaced far enough apart that a single ambush could not swallow them whole, yet close enough that shouted commands could still carry. Scouts rotated every few hours. No one complained. They had all learned, long ago, that fatigue was cheaper than funerals.
At the center, wrapped in layered cloth and tied securely to the back of a quiet, broad-shouldered man, slept the child.
He did not cry much anymore.
That alone unsettled several of them.
"Two more days," said Qiao Ren, walking beside Lu Yan, eyes scanning the hills. "If the maps aren't lying, we reach the old salt crossroads by dusk on the third."
"They always lie," Lu Yan replied. "But usually not enough to matter."
Qiao Ren snorted. "That's a comforting philosophy."
"It's a practical one."
Behind them, voices drifted through the dry air.
"—I'm telling you, we should head south after the crossroads."
"No. The southern routes are watched. Too many sect patrols."
"Patrols don't matter if you keep moving."
"They matter when you're carrying something that screams trouble."
The word something went unchallenged.
Han Shun walked several paces behind the captain, eyes constantly shifting between the road, the ridges, and the man carrying the child. He had not slept much since the last camp. When he did sleep, it was light and broken, filled with dreams that made no sense and yet refused to fade.
Dreams of crowds.Of banners.Of blood soaking into white stone.
"You're staring again," muttered Mei Lin, falling into step beside him. "You'll wear holes in him if you keep that up."
"He's too quiet," Han Shun replied.
"He's a baby."
"Exactly."
Mei Lin exhaled through her nose. "You're thinking yourself into knots."
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm thinking just enough."
She glanced at the child. His face was peaceful, almost unnervingly so, as if the rhythm of marching feet had become his cradle.
"If we wanted easy," she said, "we chose the wrong lives a long time ago."
Han Shun did not answer.
Up ahead, Lu Yan raised a fist.
The group slowed, then stopped in practiced silence. Scouts shifted position, forming a loose arc along the higher ground.
Lu Yan crouched, touching the dirt, then the broken grass.
"Fresh tracks," he said quietly. "Not ours."
"How many?" Qiao Ren asked.
"Hard to tell. They tried to hide it."
"Which means they expect to be close."
Lu Yan straightened. His expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
"Change formation," he said. "Tighten. Shields forward. No panic."
No one argued.
They had fought together too long to doubt his instincts.
As they moved, conversation faded, replaced by the subtle sounds of preparation: leather tightening, weapons shifting, controlled breathing.
Yet even now, plans continued in low murmurs.
"If we have to break through, we push left," someone whispered. "Ridge is lower."
"No. That leads into brush. Bad footing."
"Then we hold and let them come."
Lu Yan did not interrupt. He only listened, measuring not just the terrain, but the state of his people.
They were tired.But they were not afraid.
That mattered more.
-- -- --
From the Hills
They had been watching since dawn.
From the higher ridges, the road looked like a thin ribbon unspooling through the land, and the group upon it like beads sliding along a thread.
Thirty-four.Disciplined.Well-armed.
The observing group was smaller, but not by much. Veterans, too. Survivors of enough clashes to know what hesitation cost.
"They're not merchants," one of them murmured.
"No," said the man beside him. "They're worse."
"What's the call, then?"
The man did not answer immediately.
His gaze had fixed on the center of the formation.
On the bundle.
On the way several fighters unconsciously adjusted their pace to match the man carrying it.
"Do you feel it?" he asked instead.
A few shifted uncomfortably.
"Yes," another admitted. "Like the air's… thicker."
"It's nothing," someone else said. "Just coincidence."
The man shook his head. "Coincidences don't repeat this cleanly."
They had not planned to attack today.
In truth, they had not planned to attack this group at all.
But plans had a way of dissolving when something began to pull at you, quietly, persistently, until every reason not to act sounded like cowardice.
"We take the child," one said, finally voicing what several had already been thinking. "Sell him, ransom him, whatever. Then we disengage."
"And if they don't let us disengage?"
The man smiled thinly. "Then we fight."
No one said the other truth out loud:that even if there were no profit, even if there were no strategy, some of them would still want to move toward that center point on the road, as if doing otherwise would mean losing something they could not name.
"Positions," the leader said.
They scattered into the brush and broken stone, blending into the hills.
The trap began to close.
-- -- --
An Ambush
The first arrow never reached its target.
It shattered in midair, cut cleanly by a blade moving faster than most eyes could track.
"Contact!" Lu Yan shouted.
The road exploded into motion.
Shields snapped up. Spears leveled. Fighters surged into preassigned positions with the reflexes of people who had rehearsed this exact moment in their minds for years.
Arrows rained down, but few found flesh.
Then the attackers charged.
They came from both sides, using the slope to gain momentum, weapons already drawn, expressions tight with determination rather than frenzy.
This was not a band of desperate raiders.
This was a calculated strike.
Lu Yan did not waste breath on unnecessary orders.
"Hold center. Break left flank first. Do not scatter."
Steel met steel.
The sound was not cinematic.It was harsh, chaotic, brutally intimate.
Swords glanced off shields, slid along armor, bit into shoulders and thighs. Spears drove forward in short, lethal thrusts. Blades flashed, tangled, disengaged, struck again.
Han Shun barely registered when the first enemy lunged at him.
His body moved before thought.
Parry. Step. Counter.
The man fell with a cry that cut off too quickly.
Another came.
Then another.
Around him, the group moved like parts of a single organism, covering gaps, rotating injured fighters out of the front line, pressing where the enemy faltered.
They were better trained.
More experienced.
They had survived worse.
The left flank collapsed first.
Lu Yan personally drove into the breach, his presence turning hesitation into panic. The attackers there broke, trying to retreat uphill, only to be cut down or forced to scatter into the rocks.
But the right side held.
And at the center, near the child, the fighting grew desperate.
A blade slipped through a guard and cut deep into Qiao Ren's side.
He grunted, stumbling, but did not fall.
Two enemies broke through the line, sprinting straight for the man carrying the child.
Han Shun saw it.
Something inside him snapped tight and hard.
He intercepted the first, crashing into him shoulder-first, both tumbling into the dirt. The second reached the carrier, swinging wildly.
A spear took him through the chest before the blade could land.
Blood sprayed across the cloth wrapped around the child.
The baby stirred.
Then, finally, he cried.
Not loudly.Not desperately.
But enough.
Enough to slice through the chaos like a knife.
For just a heartbeat, everyone heard it.
Then the fighting surged again, fiercer, more reckless, as if both sides had suddenly lost the ability to retreat.
The attackers realized they would not take the center.
And they realized, too, that staying meant dying.
Their leader signaled withdrawal.
What remained of their force disengaged, dragging wounded, retreating into the hills they had come from.
Lu Yan did not order pursuit.
He stood where he was, chest rising and falling, eyes sweeping the field.
"Report," he said.
"Three lightly wounded."
"Two serious," someone added.
Qiao Ren sat heavily on a rock, blood seeping through his fingers. "I'm still standing, if that counts for morale."
Lu Yan moved to him immediately. "You shouldn't be."
"I didn't plan on sitting in the middle of a fight."
Medics were already at work.
The dead were counted.
Two from Lu Yan's group did not rise.
The attackers had lost more.
But that was not comfort.
It was arithmetic.
-- -- --
They moved off the road before nightfall, setting camp in a shallow basin shielded by stone outcroppings.
Fires were kept low.
Wounds were cleaned, stitched, bound.
Qiao Ren lay on his side, jaw clenched as Mei Lin finished tightening the bandage around his ribs.
"If it scars, I'm blaming you," he muttered.
"You're blaming me either way," she replied.
Han Shun sat near the child, who had long since stopped crying.
The blood had been washed from the cloth.
But he could not forget how close the blade had come.
Lu Yan joined him quietly.
"They were after him," Han Shun said.
"Yes."
"Not our supplies. Not our weapons."
"Yes."
"They didn't even try to flank wide."
Lu Yan nodded. "They moved like men who had already chosen the target before they chose the fight."
Han Shun swallowed. "This is going to keep happening, isn't it?"
Lu Yan did not answer immediately.
Instead, he looked around the camp.
At the wounded.At the two empty places by the fire.At the men and women who were already planning tomorrow's march despite everything.
"We could turn back," Han Shun said. "Leave him somewhere safe."
Lu Yan finally looked at him then.
"Safe does not exist," he said. "Only quieter."
Han Shun closed his eyes.
Lu Yan continued, more softly, "They didn't attack because they knew he was important. They attacked because they felt that he was."
"That's worse."
"Yes."
Silence settled between them.
Not comfortable.
But steady.
"We still go to the crossroads?" Han Shun asked.
Lu Yan exhaled. "Yes. But we change route after. No major roads. No towns. We stay moving."
"And if that isn't enough?"
Lu Yan's gaze drifted to the child again.
"Then we do what we have always done," he said. "We survive, and we deal with what follows."
Elsewhere
The retreat was messy.
Not a rout, but not clean either.
They regrouped deeper in the hills, counting losses, binding wounds, arguing in sharp, bitter tones.
"We should have pulled back earlier."
"We almost had them."
"We were never taking that center."
Their leader listened without interrupting.
Finally, he raised a hand.
"They were better," he said. "That's all. Experience, cohesion, discipline."
"Then why attack at all?" someone snapped. "We gained nothing."
The man looked toward the road, now far below and empty.
"Because not attacking felt worse."
No one had an answer to that.
They had felt it too.
The pull.
The certainty that if they did not act, something important would slip past them, and they would spend the rest of their lives wondering why they had hesitated.
"We won't pursue," he continued. "Not now."
"Then what?"
The man hesitated.
Then said, "We remember them. And if fate is as persistent as it feels, we will cross paths again."
No one argued.
Some agreements did not need enthusiasm.
Only resignation.
-- -- --
That night, as the camp settled into uneasy sleep, Han Shun remained awake.
He watched the child breathe.
Slow.Even.
He wondered, not for the first time, how something so small could already be bending the actions of armed men, of seasoned fighters, of entire groups who had no reason to care.
He wondered how far that bending would go.
And how much it would cost before it was done.
The child slept on, unaware that, once again, others had bled so that he would not have to.
Unaware that the road ahead was already narrowing, shaped not by kings or prophecy, but by a thousand small decisions, each made by people who told themselves they had chosen freely.
And perhaps they had.
But freedom did not make the outcome lighter.
It only made it harder to escape.