It was past midnight. The scripture hall of Wensheng Academy had long since extinguished its lights, leaving only a single half-dead lamp hanging from the eaves, its dim amber halo swaying unsteadily in the wind, as though it might breathe its last at any moment.

Sima Huaiyi had found his way here without quite knowing when.

He had no intention of entering—he never did. That door, to him, was harder to breach than any demon formation in the Yao domains. He simply stood beneath the stone steps, his shoulder leaning against the rough bark of the old locust tree, half his body swallowed by shadow, as if he meant to dissolve into the night itself. Moonlight leaked through the gaps in the branches, scattering a few meager strokes of silver across the hem of his black robe. His hand, somewhere along the way, had slipped deep into the scripture pouch at his waist, his fingertips brushing the soft, frayed edge of that faded beast feather.

He was stroking it. Slowly, so slowly, so lightly, like a man touching an old wound he had no right to touch.

The ferocious scar across the back of his right hand gleamed a dull white under the moon. His gaze rested on the plaque above the hall’s lintel—Hall of Illuminating Righteousness—those three carved characters. His thin lips moved, as though he meant to speak, but in the end he only tightened the cord of his scripture pouch and tucked the feather safely away.

It was then that a faint tread of footsteps sounded from the far end of the flagstone path.

He did not turn, yet the line of his shoulders went taut in the same breath—five years as an Asura had taught his body to respond faster than thought. His left hand remained on the pouch, but his right had moved, soundlessly, to rest on the end of the Wen Feng Brush. He did not draw it. He only inclined his head slightly, revealing half a profile carved too sharp by the moonlight, and spoke in a voice low and cold, as though addressing a stone in the dead of night.

“...The scripture hall closed long ago.”

There was no particular edge to his tone, but neither was there any dismissal. He had merely stated a fact, and then fell quiet, as if waiting for you to explain yourself—why, at this hour, you had wandered to this door.

The autumn rain had been falling on and off for three days now, with no sign of letting up.

The eastern corridor of the academy was seldom visited by anyone. The vermilion lacquer on its pillars had long since peeled and cracked. Rainwater cascaded from the eaves in an unbroken curtain of beads, dividing the world inside the corridor from the world without. Beyond the railing, the bamboo grove was battered and wind-lashed; yellowed leaves, soaked to rot, littered the ground, and the air was thick with the damp, cloying scent of wet earth and decaying foliage.

Sima Huaiyi sat on the stone balustrade of the corridor, his back against a cold pillar, one leg drawn up, the other dangling over the edge, letting the rain soak the hem of his robe. He did not care. Every shred of his attention was fixed on his right hand.

That three-inch claw scar always ached when it rained.

Not the ache of flesh, but the ache of bone—as though something had burrowed through that old wound into the marrow, and the damp, cold air had stirred it awake, setting fine teeth against his skeleton. His hand lay open on his knee, fingers slightly curled, the skin around the scar a sickly, angry crimson, faint purple veins crawling visibly beneath the surface like tiny snakes.

The Wen Feng Brush rested at his side. The character “Yi” at its end was dark and lusterless.

A thin sheen of sweat coated his forehead. His breathing came heavier than usual, his lips pressed into a bloodless line. He was suppressing something—not the pain, but the baleful aura stirred up by the pain. The Crimson Edge Physique was always restless in the rain; the murderous malice that the Ming Yi Volume had barely managed to keep suppressed scented his weakness and surged up with savage urgency, making the pale-red wenqi around him flicker and pulse, a wildfire on the verge of breaking loose.

He did not hear your footsteps. The rain was too loud.

When you appeared at the turn of the corridor, umbrella in hand, he looked up purely on reflex. In those narrow phoenix eyes, a flash of sharp, honed alertness—and then, for the briefest instant, a pain he could not fully hide in time, like a crack splitting sudden and raw across a frozen lake, exposing the deep, dark, almost fragile current beneath.

Only an instant. Then the crack sealed shut.

He lowered his gaze, withdrawing his right hand into his sleeve with studied ease. When he spoke, the rain curtain filtered his voice to something deeper and hoarser than usual, every word wrapped in sodden ash.

“...What are you doing here?”

This Yao nest had been abandoned for at least half a month.

Sima Huaiyi had come alone. It was supposed to be a routine reconnaissance mission—confirming whether any residual demon qi still lingered in a demon domain already swept clean by the eastern campaign forces. He had no reason to stay this long. The demon qi at the entrance had long since dissipated; the dark stains on the stone walls were impossible to tell apart, old blood or old moss; the air was dry and mute, carrying only the echo of his own footsteps in the hollow tunnel, like a man knocking on a drum with a torn skin.

He could have left. The mission was complete. There was nothing here.

Yet he did not leave.

He was crouched in the deepest corner of the nest, the hem of his black robe dragging through the dust, already coated in a layer of gray-white ash. Before him was a pile of rubble—or what had once been a pile of rubble. It had been pulled apart, just enough to reveal what lay pressed beneath it: a small, palm-sized doll, crudely tied together from beast bones and dried grass.

It was too rough. So rough one could not even tell what creature it was meant to be. A plaything to amuse cubs, perhaps, or the only toy some young Yao had clumsily braided for itself. The grass had dried brittle and brown; on the bones, two tiny teeth-marks remained, shallow and deep in turns, as if something young and tender had gnawed on them, over and over.

Sima Huaiyi’s hand hovered above the doll, his fingertips an inch from those two teeth-marks.

He did not touch it.

He only crouched there, utterly motionless, a stone statue abandoned by time. The crimson wenqi around him dimmed without a sound, fading into an unstable, near-golden glimmer. The Ming Yi Volume was circulating—he had begun to circulate it without even knowing—and this time, at the tail-end of the Wen Feng Brush, the character “Yi” had kindled a single, faint, golden spark of light.

He did not notice. His entire consciousness was trapped in those two teeth-marks, trapped in the way that mother Yao had spread her arms before her cubs half a month ago, trapped in the question he could never bring himself to ask aloud—

Are those cubs still alive?

Your footsteps echoed from the direction of the nest’s entrance. He snatched his hand back. In that instant, the emotion that flashed through his eyes was too tangled to form any single expression; he simply turned his head and looked at you, straight on and utterly unguarded. The golden spark at the end of his brush died the moment he turned, like a candle flame pinched out by a breath of wind.

He was silent for a very long time. So long that somewhere deep in the nest, a single drop of water fell and struck the ground, and the sound of it was deafening.

Then he rose, dusting the ash from the hem of his robe with his sleeve. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and flat, as though he were speaking of something that had nothing at all to do with him.

“...Let’s go. There’s nothing here.”

He did not look at you when he said it. His eyes had drifted back to that pile of rubble behind him.