Chapter 29: The Debt

Wang Shu had known from the beginning.

The day Zhou Man came to collect medicine, the wound she'd been hiding wasn't from a blade — it was from an arrow. Not long after, word spread about the battle at Jiajin Valley: the Song family decimated, Chen Si left half-dead by a mysterious female cultivator. Wang Shu had turned the pieces over quietly in his mind and arrived at a name he didn't say aloud.

Then he'd seen her again at the Spring Breeze Hall inside Jianmen Academy. He'd watched Jin Buhuan question her, watched her lie to his face without so much as a flicker of hesitation — and he hadn't said a word. She'd come to thank him for his silence afterwards. By that point, her identity had been plain as daylight. What exactly was there left to wonder about?

When the city lockdown broke tonight, his first thought had been of her.

Had she slipped up? Had someone caught a glimpse of her face?

Now she was standing in his room, her shoulder wounded, a faint chill still radiating off her like the aftermath of a fight. The situation, he realized, was worse than he'd feared.

Her hand dropped from his throat. The grip loosened, and a faint itch crawled up into his airway. He frowned and coughed despite himself.

Zhou Man moved first — she reached out and snuffed the nearby lantern with a flick of her fingers. Then, without missing a beat, she asked, "Do you have any medicine?"

"Yes."

Wang Shu moved through the room using only the pale moonlight that bled through the window paper. He crouched over the tinderbox, coaxed a small flame to life, and lit the lamp on the table. Then he pulled open the medicine cabinet beside it.

The shelves inside were packed floor to ceiling: bottles and jars standing in neat rows, labels worn soft at the edges.

Zhou Man looked it over once. "Do you have anything fast-acting? Something that works immediately."

Ni Pusa — who had already lifted one bottle from the shelf — stopped. He turned slowly to look at her. "All medicine carries some degree of toxicity. The stronger the effect, the greater the damage."

"Then give me the strong kind," Zhou Man said. "I'll pay for it. That's not the issue."

His thin lips pressed flat. A very brief, very controlled flash of anger crossed his face — there and gone. He took a breath, made himself swallow it, and spoke with a sharpness he didn't bother disguising: "The forced cultivation pills at the Canjian Hall Sword Trial already pushed your foundation past its limits. Now you come to me injured, asking for medicine that will push it further. You want to heal, but you won't rest. Zhou Man —" He paused. "I am a physician. Not an executioner."

Silence.

Zhou Man finally looked at him — a long, direct look.

Wang Shu turned his back on her and returned his attention to the medicine cabinet, fingers moving across the shelves with practiced certainty, as if her request had not been made at all.

She found that quietly amusing.

Her eyes moved. "If you give me ordinary medicine," she said, "it might heal the wound. But if you don't give me something fast-acting, I may not survive the night."

Wang Shu's slender fingers went still against the cabinet frame.

"The city is sealed," Zhou Man continued, her gaze fixed on his back. "Even with a sword token from the Academy, I'm injured. On my right shoulder. How exactly am I supposed to get out?"

He didn't turn around. From behind, she could see it — the knuckles of the hand gripping the medicine bottle had gone white. He was enduring something, holding himself perfectly rigid, like one of those temple statues people left offerings for.

But in the end, the grip loosened.

He turned back to the cabinet, returned the first bottle to its place, paused with his hand hovering over the lower left shelf, then made a decision. He brought down a different bottle, and a small white porcelain jar from beside it, and set both on the table. "One pill from the bottle. Apply the ointment from the jar externally." He tapped the edge of the inkstone three times. "I'll get you some water."

A soft luminescence rippled outward from the inkstone and settled over the room like still water.

Zhou Man raised an eyebrow.

"Soundproofing array," Wang Shu said briefly.

Then he left without looking at her once.

Zhou Man stood there a moment, blinking. Then it dawned on her — he was angry. She let out a small, involuntary laugh.

She took her first proper look at the room.

It was small. Cramped, even. Medical texts had colonized every flat surface — shelves, table, and a fair portion of the floor. The only clear space was the table by the window, which stood next to the medicine cabinet. Against the east wall sat a narrow bed, barely wide enough for one person, its blankets folded into crisp squares. The whole room smelled of herbs and something bitter underneath.

An open medical text lay on the table beside the bottle and jar Wang Shu had left out.

Zhou Man picked up both containers. The jar held a colorless, odorless ointment. The bottle held pills of a faint reddish hue. She shook one into her palm and swallowed it.

It dissolved on her tongue before she'd even quite registered it — and then a warmth flared through her limbs, rapid and sure, converging at her injured shoulder in a tingling pressure that felt, unmistakably, like something beginning to mend.

She exhaled slowly, setting the bottle back down. "A proper student of the Medicine King," she murmured to herself. "Nothing much to look at, but always the right thing on hand."

She shrugged half her robe off to check the wound herself.

Wang Shu returned carrying a copper basin of hot water, two clean cloths draped over the rim. He pushed the door open — and stopped.

Zhou Man was seated at his desk, her back to the door.

Her dark robes, stiff with old bloodstains, had been pushed off her right shoulder. The wound beneath was deep and merciless — a narrow channel cut through pale skin almost to the bone, the kind of wound that made the breath catch. As the blood-crusted fabric peeled away from it, Zhou Man's jaw tightened and a cold sweat rose across her skin. She cursed Jin Buhuan silently. She should have taken half his skull off back in that mortuary. It would have been easier on everyone.

She heard the door and turned to look. The clay Buddha hadn't moved.

"You're a doctor," she said flatly. "This sort of thing shouldn't give you pause. Set it down — I can manage it myself."

Of course it wouldn't give a physician pause. That much was obvious.

What Wang Shu hadn't been prepared for was how deep the wound actually was.

The edges of it told a clear story — the weapon had been thin, sharp, no wider than an inch. Not a knife. Not a sword. Something rhomboid, like a throwing weapon. And the wound breathed cold, exhaling a faint frost-white shimmer that set off something in the back of his mind.

A magical artifact. Almost certainly.

He stood a moment longer, then stepped forward, set the basin down, and held out a dampened cloth, wrung nearly dry.

Zhou Man took it and pressed it to the wound, enduring the sting without expression as she worked the blood away.

Wang Shu kept his eyes strictly forward. "I'll be in the outer room," he said. "Call if you need anything."

He was nearly to the door when Zhou Man glanced down at her sleeve.

The old robe had been mended — Zhao Nishang's careful work, silver-black thread sewn in neat little stitches along the cuff. But the fight with Jin Buhuan had torn it open again, and the embroidery had frayed apart at the seam.

Her brow drew in slightly.

"Mud Bodhisattva." She spoke before she'd quite decided to. "Do you have something clean I could change into?"

Wang Shu looked at her. A brief pause. "I'll find something."

He went out and closed the door behind him.

Zhou Man cleaned the wound, then applied both medicines — the internal warmth of the pill still radiating through her chest, the cool ointment settling the shoulder. Together they worked fast. The wound was nearly closed by the time she lowered her arm.

The medicine, however, was strong.

Fatigue hit her like a slow wave. Her head swam. She endured it, finally tipping back in the chair and closing her eyes.

A quarter hour passed. Maybe more.

When Wang Shu returned, he knocked first this time. Waited for her "come in" before entering. He laid the folded dress on the table and stepped back.

Zhou Man opened her eyes.

And went still.

The dress was light purple — a soft, hazy shade — with plum blossoms embroidered along the hem in a deeper violet, overlaid with a thin drift of gauze. It was genuinely lovely.

Which was exactly the problem.

She couldn't stop herself from sliding a sideways look at Ni Pusa. She hadn't imagined this plain, severe-looking man would have anything like this in his possession.

Wang Shu caught her expression and hesitated. "You don't like it?"

Not knowing whose dress this was, Zhou Man couldn't explain herself. She recovered quickly. "No, no — it's beautiful. Really."

Zhao Nishang, she thought privately. Truly one of a kind. When we get back to the Academy, I'll have to take her training seriously.

Wang Shu's frown deepened slightly, and he opened his mouth —

A knock came from outside the clinic, sharp and impatient. "Mud Buddha! Mud Buddha!"

Jin Buhuan's voice.

Zhou Man's pupils tightened. She stayed where she was and turned her gaze to Wang Shu.

He looked genuinely surprised. He held her gaze for a moment, seemed to make a decision, and said quietly, "Stay in here. You don't need to come out. I'll handle it."

The front hall was separated from the back by only a single wall. After Wang Shu stepped through, Zhou Man could hear everything.

The door opened. Wang Shu's voice, carefully neutral: "What happened to you..."

Jin Buhuan's breath was slightly ragged. "Don't ask. I'm out of wound medicine. Give me some."

A silence. The sound of a cabinet opening.

"I've added a mild anesthetic to the mixture," Wang Shu said. "It will ease the pain somewhat. The wound on your neck—"

"It won't kill me. Not yet." Jin Buhuan's voice was flat and controlled, the voice of a man pushing something aside to deal with later. "There's trouble on Mud Plate Street tonight. For the next few days, don't leave unless you have to. Stay inside."

His footsteps faded. The outer door opened and closed.

Zhou Man, still in the back room, curled her lips in quiet satisfaction.

Wang Shu shut the clinic, turned off the lights, and came back through the corridor.

Zhou Man had changed into the purple dress.

The gauze overlay softened the sharp edge she usually carried — the natural chill of her manner diffused somehow into something more composed, even graceful. Standing in the lamp's amber light, she almost looked like someone entirely different.

On the table in front of her lay her old robe.

She was touching the torn sleeve with two fingers — the sleeve Zhao Nishang had mended, the one Jin Buhuan's eight-petal lotus sword had undone. She traced the line of silver-black embroidery and found only a broken thread.

Wang Shu came in, saw her quiet expression, and thought of the wound around Jin Buhuan's throat. He had his suspicions. He didn't know where to begin.

Zhou Man folded the robe and tucked it away. "Thank you for the dress. I'll return it. I have to go."

Wang Shu's composure finally gave. His voice came out cooler than he intended. "Going out to kill someone again?"

Zhou Man looked up at him sharply.

"Your wound has closed," he said, "but the blood and energy you've lost don't come back in an hour. If it comes to a fight — how many moves do you actually have in you?"

He couldn't quite conceal it by the end. The anger was there.

A conscientious physician, furious at a patient who wouldn't listen.

Zhou Man registered his temper and paid it no particular attention.

The night's situation was delicate. During their fight in the mortuary, she'd passed through a shaft of light at exactly the wrong moment — just long enough to show half her face. Jin Buhuan might not have gotten a clear look in that fraction of a second, but he'd clearly found her familiar. Why else would he have asked who she was? And Jin Buhuan was not a man who left things unverified.

She had chosen not to kill him tonight for two reasons: their conflict hadn't yet reached that point, and she wasn't confident she could end it cleanly given how many tricks he had tucked away.

But not killing him in the moment was not the same as letting him go.

From the very beginning, Zhou Man had never planned to.

She could be overcautious sometimes, she knew that. But caution, more often than not, was what kept her alive.

None of what the Mud Bodhisattva said moved her. "Stick to your medicine," she said coolly. "The rest is not your concern."

Wang Shu turned to leave.

He made it two steps.

Then he stopped — because despite everything, he couldn't quite bring himself to leave it at that. He reached into his sleeve and produced a small box, no wider than a palm, and set it on the table with more force than he intended. He looked at her. "Jin Buhuan is not a bad man. His life hasn't been easy. I only hope the person you're planning to kill tonight isn't him."

He left. The door closed behind him.

Not quite a slam. The sound was soft. But the feeling behind it was not.

Zhou Man stared at the closed door for a long moment.

Then she picked up the box.

Inside was a single pill — thumb-sized, deep purple, with a scent that reached her before she'd fully opened the lid. And on its surface: three faint white markings, clean as brushstrokes.

Pill patterns.

Among cultivators, pill patterns appeared only on the finest-grade medicine. One pattern was rare. Three was something else entirely.

Zhou Man's eyes went still.

She looked at the inside of the box lid. Tiny characters, almost too small to read: Tian Yuan.

The Tian Yuan Pill — Master Yi Ming's singular creation.

In her previous life, she had received three of them as a gift before the Feng Chan ceremony. The pill couldn't resurrect the dead, but it came close: even the most catastrophic injuries would recover to eighty percent with a single pill. Cultivators throughout the world had killed for these. Many had died trying to obtain one.

"Mud Bodhisattva..."

The feeling that moved through her was complicated and didn't have a clean name. She turned it over for exactly one moment — and then she closed the box, slipped it into her sleeve, and walked out the door.

---

Mud Plate Street lay dark and quiet under the lockdown. The mortal residents, frightened by the sound of cultivators fighting, had shuttered themselves in for the night. She passed almost no one.

It wasn't until Cloud Comes Street that she heard two or three cultivators talking in low voices — something had apparently happened at the Mud Plate Street mortuary.

They didn't spare her a glance as she walked by.

---

Ruoyu Hall still had a light on when she arrived. The door stood half-open. Someone was seated at the lamp inside.

Zhou Man stepped up and knocked.

A cultivator turned with a frown. "Who are you looking for?"

Kong Wulu, seated with his side to the door, looked up — and went rigid. "Miss Zhou! What brings you here at this hour?"

"I have something to discuss."

Kong Wulu remembered Wei Xuan's standing instructions clearly. He didn't waste a second — he had someone close the door, changed the tea, poured her a cup, and leaned forward. "What is it?"

"The incident at the Mud Plate Street mortuary tonight," Zhou Man said, "is somewhat connected to me."

Kong Wulu's eyes went wide. He stared at her.

Zhou Man smiled — briefly, lightly — and shifted course. "Don't worry. I have nothing to do with the female cultivator they're searching for."

Kong Wulu clutched his chest. "Please don't do that to me. Really. I nearly — that female cultivator practices archery, her cultivation is something else entirely, she was utterly ruthless in the battle at Jiajin Valley. She's nothing like you." He steadied himself. "But if the mortuary is connected to you, then—"

Zhou Man placed the real thing on the table between them: "Chen Si seems to know I have sword bones."

Kong Wulu was out of his chair before she'd finished the sentence. "That's impossible. I sealed that information myself the moment it was confirmed. Every person who knew swore an oath. There is no way it leaked." He was pacing now, voice tight. "He's a Song family retainer. How could he possibly—"

"I don't know either." Zhou Man's tone remained even. "But a little over an hour ago he tested me. Twice. I've gone over it carefully, and I can't say with certainty whether I gave myself away or not. I thought it best to come and tell you directly, Steward Kong, rather than leave it to chance."

Kong Wulu's expression had settled into something hard and deliberate. He turned to the man beside him. "What's the current situation at the mortuary?"

"Something happened with Chen Si, but Jin Buhuan has sealed the area. No clear information yet."

"So we don't know if he's alive or dead."

Zhou Man said, almost as an afterthought, "If he's dead, then there's nothing to worry about."

Kong Wulu turned back and looked at her very carefully.

Zhou Man held his gaze without expression.

He weighed it — weighed all of it, the things she'd said and the things she hadn't — and arrived, in the end, at the only calculation that mattered: where Wei Xuan was concerned, even the smallest uncertainty had to be removed.

He stopped asking questions. "Miss Zhou is right. Dead or alive, Chen Si cannot be allowed to walk out of this. With an incident this size, Jin Buhuan will have to escort him back to Jianmen Academy to report to the Song siblings personally. If Chen Si still lives, he goes with him. Tonight is the only window." He turned. "Ten men. And bring good bows."

The cultivator beside him accepted the order, then hesitated. "Bows?"

"If Chen Si dies by arrow," Kong Wulu said, calm and entirely matter-of-fact, "it was obviously the work of that mysterious female cultivator. Nothing whatsoever to do with the Wang family."

Zhou Man glanced at this Steward Kong from the corner of her eye. Resourceful, quick, and completely ruthless. He'd mapped the framing in under a minute.

The cultivator understood and moved to gather the men.

"I'll come with you," Zhou Man said.

Kong Wulu's frown was immediate. "For something like this, I'm not sure it's appropriate for you to—"

"If Chen Si isn't dead yet," Zhou Man said, "I may be able to get something out of him first."

If Chen Si knew about her sword bones, the question wasn't just how — it was who else knew. That answer mattered. She needed it.

Beyond that, if Ruoyu Hall's fighters couldn't protect her inside a city this small, what exactly were they good for later?

Kong Wulu thought it over briefly. "Alright."

Twelve cultivators — all Golden Core stage, composed and without ceremony — were assembled in short order.

Killing inside city limits would draw too much attention. It wasn't an option.

Kong Wulu led them out of Xiaojian Ancient City without issue. The Song family had sealed the city, but they weren't foolish enough to stop Wang family cultivators from leaving, and they certainly hadn't imagined that the very woman they were hunting was walking among them.

As Kong Wulu strolled past the city gate, he made a quiet, contemptuous remark: "Locking down an entire city over a jar of jade marrow — has the Song family really fallen this far?"

The Song cultivator guarding the gate flushed with suppressed fury and said nothing.

Kong Wulu led his people out and positioned them on the only road between Xiaojian Ancient City and Jianmen Academy. Travel robes for night ambush had already been distributed. Kong Wulu handed one to Zhou Man, who pulled it over the purple dress and disappeared into it completely. Then they waited, silent and still, in the dark.

Twelve Golden Core cultivators striking at once could kill a Nascent Soul cultivator before he had time to react.

Zhou Man settled in and found herself quietly pleased.

This was what she had intended all along. Whatever the outcome, the Wang family would be the hand that struck. The Wang family would carry the weight of it. She had simply arranged the room and stepped aside.

---

Nearly half an hour passed before movement came from the direction of Xiaojian Ancient City.

It was Jin Buhuan. The wound at his throat was spectacular — a livid, bloodless slash that would have killed most men. He had a large group at his back, but Chen Si was not among them. In his arms, he carried a coffin.

At the same moment, a figure came down the road from the direction of Jianmen Academy.

Kong Wulu's hand went up. He held everyone in place.

Zhou Man recognized her: Citong, one of Song Lanzhen's personal attendants.

Citong stopped when she saw Jin Buhuan. Her eyes moved to the coffin. Her expression changed completely.

She crossed to it in an instant, opened it, and looked inside. Her face went still and dark.

Jin Buhuan said, "I was on my way to the Academy to report when Lady Citong appeared..."

Citong had been sent by Song Lanzhen to intercept Chen Si before he caused further trouble with his lockdown. She hadn't expected to meet his body on the road instead.

She closed the lid slowly, and asked only one question: "Who did this?"

"The female cultivator from Jiajin Valley. She'd already succeeded by the time I arrived. There was nothing to be done."

Citong looked at the wound on his neck. "You fought with her?"

"I couldn't match her. Her bowstring nearly took my head. I couldn't hurt her, and I couldn't stop her."

Citong was quiet for a long time. "Do you know who she is? What she looks like?"

Jin Buhuan shook his head. "She wore a veil. Full coverage. I saw nothing."

Zhou Man, lying still in the shadows, had raised an eyebrow the moment she heard couldn't hurt her in the slightest. When she heard saw nothing, something in her chest loosened — and then tightened again for an entirely different reason.

Kong Wulu hadn't anticipated this. He'd expected Chen Si to still be breathing when they arrived. He looked at Citong and Jin Buhuan — both standing at the road, unguarded, well within range — and turned a questioning look to Zhou Man. Both of them?

Zhou Man's eyes moved across the scene. A quiet, careful calculation.

Then she gave the faintest shake of her head.

Jin Buhuan had seen nothing. He'd said nothing. He was, for reasons of his own, keeping his mouth shut. There was no profit in killing a man who was already being useful.

She let the silence hold, and let them walk away.