Chapter 25:The Hunter and the Hunted

The next morning arrived with the particular quality of light that belongs only to the hours between darkness and true dawn—when the stars still clung to the western horizon but the eastern sky had already begun its slow transformation from black to deep blue to the palest gold.

Ye Guanda was helped from his bed with the careful ministrations of someone handling something both precious and broken. Servants dressed him in two layers of clothing—an acknowledgment that fever burned within him even as the morning air outside carried winter's persistent chill—and then transferred him with elaborate caution into the waiting carriage.

As the vehicle began its journey, jolting over the uneven cobblestones with the characteristic roughness of city streets at dawn, Ye Guanda opened his eyes within the thick fog of drowsiness that had claimed him. The pain that had been mercifully numbed by his high fever during the night's darkest hours gradually returned with the cruel precision of morning light exposing what darkness had hidden. A gnawing, persistent ache began to throb at the site where his right arm had been severed—the phantom pain of something lost mixing with the very real agony of the wound itself.

Ye Guanda reached out with his remaining hand and picked up a jug of strong liquor that had been placed within easy reach on the carriage's low table. He gulped down several desperate mouthfuls, the alcohol burning down his throat like fire, then leaned back heavily against the carriage wall. Cold sweat broke out across his skin despite the fever's heat. His mouth fell slightly open as he struggled to regulate his breathing, and his vision blurred at the edges, the world reducing itself to indistinct shapes and swimming colors.

The old scholar seated beside him—Doctor Zhou, though Ye Guanda didn't know him by that name—straightened his wide sleeves with the fastidious care of someone who took personal appearance seriously regardless of circumstance. He shifted his position to create some distance from his suffering patient, clearly uncomfortable with the proximity to such visible distress. Then he reached forward and opened a crack in the window, pressing his face close to the gap to draw in fresh air that hadn't been contaminated by the smell of blood, fever sweat, and strong alcohol.

Suddenly, his pupils contracted with sharp alarm. Without warning or explanation, he slapped his drowsy disciple down with enough force to ensure compliance, shoving the young man aside roughly. Then, with the surprising nimbleness of someone far more spry than his elderly appearance suggested, he slid down himself, flattening his body against the carriage floor just as an object whistled through the space where his head had been mere moments before.

A bamboo hat—the broad-brimmed kind worn by travelers against sun and rain—flew through the window opening with deadly accuracy. A notch had been cut into its edge by a blade, transforming an ordinary item into something that could slice through flesh. The hat grazed Ye Guanda's face, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage, and embedded itself deeply in the wooden plank behind him with a solid thunk that spoke of considerable force behind the throw.

Amidst the boy's exclamation of shock—a yelp of pure surprise—the carriage screeched to an abrupt halt as the driver pulled desperately on the reins. The sudden stop nearly threw Ye Guanda forward onto the floor. He gripped the low table with his remaining hand, steadying himself through pure instinct, then stepped forward on shaking legs and lifted the curtain that separated the carriage's interior from the street outside.

Song Huiya stood in the middle of the street, positioned sideways in a stance that somehow managed to be both casual and threatening simultaneously. Her sword rested easily in her hand, held with the particular confidence of someone who had wielded such weapons since childhood.

The mist that had covered the city during the night's darkest hours was dissipating now, burned away by the approaching sun. Pale shadows cast by pavilions, by dewdrops hanging from eaves, by pedestrians who had stopped to observe the confrontation—all of these stood silently in the morning light, shimmering with the vibrant, almost painful clarity that belonged to dawn. Everything seemed simultaneously more real and less substantial than it had any right to be.

The dawn light streamed down across Song Huiya's face like flowing water, like clouds moving across the sky in accelerated time. Fallen leaves caught by a sudden gust of wind billowed around her, and her robes moved in that same fierce current, creating the impression of someone standing at the center of forces larger than herself.

Ye Guanda's vision blurred further—whether from fever, pain, alcohol, or the sheer impossibility of what he was witnessing, he couldn't have said. His eyes brimmed with involuntary tears that had nothing to do with emotion and everything to do with physical distress. But through that distortion, he seemed to see someone who shone as brightly as the sun itself. Her pupils caught and reflected the golden light of dawn, and she exuded a quality he had no words for—something noble and refined, transcendent and beautiful in ways that had nothing to do with conventional attractiveness and everything to do with absolute certainty of purpose.

The old scholar had already removed his own straw hat—the one that had nearly decapitated him moments before—and was now slapping his thigh with theatrical outrage while cursing with creative fluency. "How utterly despicable! She even attacks weak old men like me who pose absolutely no threat to anyone!"

Ye Guanda snapped out of his dazed observation, shaking his head to clear it of whatever strange thoughts had been forming. The movement made the world spin unpleasantly.

Song Huiya smiled with faint amusement, and her voice carried clearly across the distance between them. "I never said you could leave."

The old scholar cursed again with even greater enthusiasm, his voice rising to carry to anyone within earshot. "Shameless! This is like beating a dog behind closed doors!"

Ye Guanda's mind was too chaotic, too flooded with competing sensations and half-formed thoughts, to parse whether the old scholar was cursing him or Song Huiya with that particular metaphor. He didn't have time to work it out. Instead, he shouted at the coachman with desperate urgency, "Retreat! Quickly! Turn this carriage around now!"

He let the heavy curtain fall back into place, cutting off his view of Song Huiya's amused expression, and grabbed the wine jug from the low table. He drank the remaining contents in one continuous gulp, the alcohol sloshing and burning.

The pungent smell of the strong wine briefly cleared his hazy mind, cutting through the fog with sharp, chemical efficiency. But the effect lasted only moments. The subtle, sweet aroma rising from the golden incense burner positioned inside the carriage—something he hadn't paid attention to before but which had been burning steadily since they'd loaded him into the vehicle—quickly made him weak and disoriented again. His limbs felt heavy, his thoughts slow and sticky. He muttered to himself with the particular self-pity of someone who genuinely believed themselves a victim. "Why does she have to kill me specifically? Why does she have to make things so difficult for me personally? Without me maintaining order, everyone in Duanyan City will die! Doesn't she understand that?"

The old scholar, who understood far more than Ye Guanda gave him credit for, offered words of comfort with practiced smoothness. "Don't panic, young master. We still have backup plans in place. This situation isn't as desperate as it appears."

Ye Guanda couldn't help but look back through a gap in the curtain, his paranoia demanding confirmation. Seeing that Song Huiya was standing perfectly still in the street rather than chasing after their retreating carriage, he felt marginally relieved. Perhaps she'd made her point. Perhaps this had been a warning rather than a genuine murder attempt.

Two identical carriages—prepared specifically for this contingency—met at a predetermined intersection. One turned sharply into a narrow side road, while the other continued at increased speed toward another of the city's gates. The deception was simple but potentially effective: Song Huiya would have to choose which vehicle to follow, giving the other a chance to escape.

As Ye Guanda lay half-dozing with his eyes closed, trying to find some position that minimized the throbbing agony in his arm, the carriage lurched violently once more. The sudden movement threw him completely to the floor, where he landed hard on his wounded side.

He clutched at the bleeding wound instinctively, his remaining hand coming away wet and warm. He winced with pain that transcended description and released a roar of pure frustration and agony. The coachman, hearing the commotion, lifted the curtain with trembling hands. His lips shook as he tried to form words, and finally he simply pointed wordlessly in a particular direction, unable to articulate what he'd seen.

Ye Guanda struggled to his feet, propping himself up awkwardly with his remaining hand, half-lying against the carriage's interior in a thoroughly disheveled state. He glanced outside in the direction the coachman had indicated, searching for the source of alarm. His eyes scanned the street, the buildings, the scattered pedestrians for a long time without finding any obvious cause. Just as he was about to erupt in rage at being disturbed for no apparent reason, Song Huiya appeared in his field of vision like a persistent ghost manifesting exactly where she shouldn't be able to reach.

She stood casually, a long sword slung over her shoulder with the ease of someone carrying an umbrella rather than a weapon. She smiled at him with the familiar, almost friendly expression of someone greeting an old acquaintance rather than someone she'd been methodically tormenting. The normalcy of that smile somehow made it more unnerving than any expression of rage or hatred could have been.

"Song Huiya!" The name emerged from Ye Guanda's throat as something between a curse and a prayer.

His nerves, already stretched to their breaking point by pain and fear and the disorienting effects of whatever substance was burning in the incense burner, snapped completely. The alcohol coursing through his system intensified every sensation rather than dulling them. Every pulse of pain from his severed arm fueled his hatred for Song Huiya to new, dizzying peaks that felt almost like euphoria in their intensity.

He frantically tried to rush out of the carriage, consumed by the desperate, irrational desire to take her down with him even if it meant his own death. But the young man seated opposite—the old scholar's perpetually confused disciple—held him back with surprising strength.

The old scholar himself flicked his long sleeves with practiced theatrical flair and urged the coachman onward. "Go, go! If we can't afford to offend her, can't we at least avoid her? Can Song Huiya's two legs possibly outrun four horse legs? Let her chase after us if she wants. She'll tire eventually."

The carriage wheeled around in a tight turn and resumed its flight.

Ye Guanda's emotions gradually calmed to something approaching rationality, though the baseline had shifted considerably from what any reasonable person would recognize as calm. The young man helped him sit upright again, arranging him as comfortably as circumstances allowed. But Ye Guanda seemed to be suffering delusions born from the extended torment. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt Song Huiya's presence behind him—a ghostly sensation of being watched, of having her standing just outside his peripheral vision. The paranoia made him frequently lift the curtain to look, confirming and re-confirming that she wasn't somehow inside the carriage with them.

In his increasingly disoriented state, he even began seeing resemblances to Song Huiya in the most absurd places. Several times he found himself staring at the old scholar seated opposite him, convinced for disjointed moments that the elderly physician bore some inexplicable similarity to his tormentor. The thought was utterly absurd—they looked nothing alike, shared no features—yet the conviction kept returning.

Ye Guanda rubbed his eyes vigorously, trying to clear whatever fog had settled over his perception. He asked the old scholar to prescribe additional medicine, something to counteract whatever was happening to his mind.

"Young master, you just consumed a considerable amount of strong wine." The old scholar's words seemed to echo and multiply in Ye Guanda's ears, each syllable reverberating like sound in a vast empty hall. "How can you take medicine so casually when you're intoxicated? The combination could be dangerous. Just bear with the discomfort for now."

"Fine! Fine!" Ye Guanda immediately waved him off, shouting with more force than necessary. "Just shut up! Stop talking!"

The carriage continued its desperate circuit through Duanyan City, moving between several different gates in an increasingly frantic pattern, trying repeatedly to find an exit that Song Huiya hadn't somehow anticipated and blocked. But still they couldn't escape the city's boundaries. The coachman, terrified of disturbing his increasingly unstable passenger, tried to remain silent. But each time Song Huiya's figure appeared in his line of sight—materializing as if from nowhere, always ahead of them no matter which direction they turned—his fear proved too overwhelming. He couldn't help but cry out, a short, sharp sound of pure terror.

Hearing that distinctive cry repeated again and again, Ye Guanda's carefully maintained composure—already damaged beyond recognition—collapsed entirely. He leaned out of the carriage window, his face contorted with rage and desperation, and roared with everything he had left. "Song Huiya, I'll kill you sooner or later! You hear me? You'll die a horrible death! The world will destroy you!"

He didn't actually see Song Huiya in that moment—she had apparently moved on to position herself at yet another location—but his shouting did successfully attract the attention of numerous passersby. Ordinary citizens stopped their morning routines to stare at the spectacle of a wealthy man screaming threats from a moving carriage.

The more Ye Guanda thought about his situation, the more frustrated and humiliated he became. Sitting inside the carriage as it rolled aimlessly through streets he knew intimately, he raged with the particular fury of someone whose self-image has been fundamentally shattered. "My Duanyan Sect has tens of thousands of disciples and relatives throughout the region! We have spies everywhere—in the government offices, in the guard stations, in every position of minor authority. Yet now she's crushed us all single-handedly? One woman has brought an entire organization to its knees? It's utterly ridiculous! It's impossible!"

The old scholar watched this display from his corner of the carriage, maintaining his expression of calm detachment. Privately, he hoped that Ye Guanda would be unable to bear the accumulated humiliation and would finally jump from the carriage to fight Song Huiya in direct combat—a confrontation that would end quickly and decisively in Song Huiya's favor. Unfortunately, this particular young master, though outwardly bold and given to unrestrained displays of bravado, was actually as fundamentally cowardly as a turtle hiding in its shell. He endured everything with remarkable patience when it came to actually risking his own life, no matter how loudly he shouted about revenge and death.

When the carriage stopped yet again—blocked or redirected, it hardly mattered anymore—Ye Guanda apparently reached some internal decision. Perhaps finally distrusting even the old scholar's evident expertise, he abandoned the vehicle entirely and prepared to continue alone on foot.

A trusted guard immediately came forward to assist him, supporting his weight as they moved through narrow alleyways that twisted and turned with the organic chaos of a city that had grown over centuries without planning. They wound their way through passages barely wide enough for two people to pass, through sections of the city that few outsiders knew existed, until they finally reached a hidden cave entrance—an old smuggler's route, perhaps, or an escape tunnel built generations ago for exactly this kind of emergency.

Ye Guanda looked through the verdant mountain scenery visible through the narrow opening at the tunnel's far end and felt hope surge through him for the first time since waking. He hurried toward it as quickly as his injuries and disorientation allowed. Once he pushed through the exit and found himself outside the city wall with no one in sight, a triumphant smile finally spread across his face. He'd done it. Against all odds, he had escaped Song Huiya's net.

He stumbled forward into the open air, his legs unsteady but carrying him away from Duanyan City's confines. Thinking he had genuinely escaped, that Song Huiya's omniscience had finally failed her, he laughed loudly—twice, the sound echoing off the mountainside. He waved his remaining arm back toward the tunnel entrance, expecting his guard to follow and share in this moment of victory. But when no one came, when the expected assistance failed to materialize, his excitement began to cool.

Turning around with growing apprehension, he saw that the guard who had accompanied him through the alleyways and tunnels was already lying on the ground—unconscious or dead, impossible to tell from this distance. And Song Huiya remained exactly as she had been all morning: calm and composed, utterly unruffled by the chase she'd led him on. She leaned casually against the tunnel's stone wall, arms crossed, apparently enjoying his predicament with the leisurely appreciation of someone watching entertainment designed specifically for their amusement.

Song Huiya asked with a smile that reached her eyes and made them crinkle slightly at the corners—genuine amusement rather than malice, which somehow made it worse. "How does it feel to have your life and death completely in someone else's hands?"

Ye Guanda went instantly from ecstatic joy to utter, crushing despair—the emotional whiplash so extreme it was almost physically painful. He pointed at her with his remaining hand, his lips moving as though he wanted to spit out some curse, some final condemnation. But the accumulated stress proved too much. Blood rushed to his head, flooding his brain with pressure that made his vision blur and darken at the edges. His legs gave out beneath him, and he collapsed onto the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Song Huiya, momentarily concerned that she was about to be branded as someone who had literally scared a man to death—which would be embarrassing in its own way—stepped forward and kicked him experimentally with the tip of her shoe. She confirmed that he was still breathing, still possessed of a pulse, merely unconscious rather than dead.

Satisfied that she hadn't actually killed him yet, she let out a mocking laugh that echoed across the mountainside.

Thoughts:

Song Huiya's methodical pursuit becomes a masterclass in psychological torment: she doesn't simply chase him but appears repeatedly at impossible locations, blocking every escape route while allowing him to believe momentarily in his chances. The old scholar's presence adds dark comedy—his theatrical complaints about Song Huiya while secretly admiring her tactics reveal the complicated relationship between public performance and private truth that characterizes this world. Ye Guanda's deteriorating mental state throughout the chapter maps his journey from arrogant authority figure to broken man: his paranoia intensifies, he begins hallucinating Song Huiya's presence everywhere, and his repeated claims about the Duanyan Sect's power ring increasingly hollow as one woman systematically dismantles everything he built. 

The incense burner detail suggests external manipulation of his perceptions, but his genuine terror needs no chemical enhancement—Song Huiya has succeeded in making him feel exactly what his victims felt: helpless, hunted, and at the mercy of someone who holds absolute power over their continued existence. The final confrontation outside the city walls completes the reversal: Ye Guanda experiences the precise emotional trajectory his victims endured—brief hope followed by crushing despair. Song Huiya's question "How does it feel?" isn't rhetorical but educational, forcing him to understand through direct experience what he inflicted on others. Her concern about "scaring him to death" adds darkly comic relief while emphasizing that she wants him alive to face justice, not simply dead.