Chapter 30: Sword Bone

Citong did not turn back.

She listened to Jin Buhuan's account of everything that had happened inside Xiaojian Ancient City, and when he finished, she issued her instructions quietly and without ceremony: Jin Buhuan was to take Chen Si's body to the Academy and report to the young master and young lady. She herself would continue on into the city. Then she was gone.

Zhou Man and Kong Wulu watched all of this from the dark.

After the two had disappeared down their separate roads, Kong Wulu exhaled slowly. "Chen Si and Jin Buhuan were close. If Chen Si suspected the young lady's sword bones, do you think Jin Buhuan knows anything?"

"Unlikely." Zhou Man's expression didn't shift. "Chen Si was a Song family retainer who grew up alongside the Song siblings. That's a different kind of closeness. Jin Buhuan came up through Nipan Street — he probably only fell in with the Song family after entering the Academy. His status is lower, and he's an outsider besides. If I were Chen Si and I was sitting on sensitive information, I wouldn't bother sharing it with him."

Kong Wulu followed the logic and found it sound, but the unease didn't quite leave him.

"In any case," Zhou Man said, "Jin Buhuan is a minor concern. What worries me more is how much the Song family already knows."

Kong Wulu's frown deepened.

Zhou Man kept her expression carefully neutral — the look of someone raising a cautious, well-meaning concern — and said: "Chen Si is gone now, but to be thorough, shouldn't someone investigate the Song family directly? Just in case they..."

"Of course we must investigate," Kong Wulu said, already thinking ahead.

How could they possibly let it rest without looking into it?

He paused, studying her. Something had been sitting at the back of his mind, and now it surfaced. "I'll be honest — I expected, given that Elder Wei lent out the sword bone the way he did, that Miss Zhou might feel a certain... dissatisfaction toward the Wang family. I didn't expect you to come to Ruoyu Hall tonight to warn us."

Zhou Man smiled. "Steward Kong, you don't need to tell yourself this was for the Wang family's benefit. The matter of the sword bone concerns me directly. Naturally I take it seriously."

Calm words. But the undercurrent of them was unmistakable.

Kong Wulu felt, oddly, as if a weight had been lifted. There it is. Zhou Man still resented Wang Shi — that was reasonable, that was human. If she'd shown nothing but goodwill, he'd have been genuinely alarmed. With the resentment there, plainly visible, the night's events had a shape that made sense.

It had simply moved quickly. But danger that announced itself in advance wasn't really danger.

He straightened. "Please be assured, Miss Zhou — setting aside any question of favors owed, your sword bone alone is reason enough for us to investigate this thoroughly. We will not let this become a threat to you."

"Then I'll leave it in your capable hands," Zhou Man said, without particular warmth.

To herself, she thought: Go ahead and dig. The three great families are wound around each other like roots. The moment the Wang family starts pulling at the Song family's secrets, there will be friction. There always is. I'm not worried about the two of them staying civil.

Kong Wulu had no idea what was moving through her mind. He had no idea, either, that she had orchestrated the entire night's chain of events — the route, the timing, the framing — all of it arranged precisely so that the Wang family's hands, not hers, would deal with whatever threat Jin Buhuan posed. He was already planning how to approach the investigation of Song family affairs.

Zhou Man stripped off the night-travel robe and handed it back. "Now that this is settled, I'll head back."

Kong Wulu blinked. "To Xiaojian Ancient City?"

"The Academy has a three-day break. I have things to take care of in the city."

"Ah." He hesitated, then: "Chen Si's death is still murky. Lady Citong has already entered the city, and the Song family will be turning over every stone. And that female cultivator who killed him — to act like that in the middle of a siege and lockdown takes either desperation or very powerful backing. The city won't be calm for the next few days. Please be careful, Miss Zhou. If you need anything, Ruoyu Hall will be there."

Zhou Man nodded her farewell and walked back toward the city.

Getting out had been the hard part. Getting back in was simple.

---

It was past midnight. Dawn was not far off.

On Muddy Street, the earliest risers were already lighting their lamps and starting their fires, the quiet industry of people who had nowhere to be but work.

In the back room of the Sick Plum Pavilion, Wang Shu sat unmoving before his lamp.

His medical book lay open. His brush was inked. He had not written a single word. His thoughts were elsewhere, scattered and ungoverned, and he couldn't seem to gather them.

A shadow moved past the window.

He looked up sharply, tracking it until it reached the half-open door. The door creaked softly, and then opened.

Zhou Man stood in the dark of the corridor, dressed in the light purple dress, the coolness of the night mist still clinging to her. Her eyes, calm and unhurried, settled on him.

Wang Shu set down his brush without thinking.

Zhou Man made an indistinct sound — almost a laugh — and tossed something across the room.

He caught it. Looked down.

The Tian Yuan Pill. Still in its small box. Untouched.

Zhou Man walked past him to the table, found the teapot, poured herself a cup, and said without ceremony: "No need. Returning it to its owner."

He looked at her. "You didn't kill anyone?"

She took a sip of water. "Didn't manage to."

Wang Shu's mouth, which had been pressed tight, shifted. A smile tried to surface. He pushed it down. It came back. "So Jin Buhuan is also alright?"

"He's got nine lives, apparently," Zhou Man said, with a dismissive click of her tongue. "What could possibly happen to him?"

That man probably has no idea, she thought, that he narrowly escaped an ambush outside the city tonight and is currently on his way to the Academy to deliver bad news.

But as she thought it, she found herself glancing at Wang Shu.

His face had fully given him away. The relief was all the way up in his eyes — his brows had lifted slightly, some long-held tension finally releasing, giving him a brightness that sat oddly against his usual composure. He looked, unexpectedly, like someone who had just stepped into sunlight.

He really did wear everything on his face.

"Strange that someone like you can keep anything secret," Zhou Man said, with a thoughtful look at him.

She meant it genuinely. Setting aside earlier incidents — tonight, she had come to him with a wound she hadn't explained, and a reasonable person would assume it came from Chen Si's people. But Jin Buhuan had also shown up at his clinic, and Wang Shu had gone out, clearly seen the wound at his throat, come back — and rather than naming what he'd plainly understood, had simply said: I hope the person you're going to kill isn't him.

He'd seen it. Both of them, what they'd done to each other. And he'd said nothing to either of them.

He didn't hide his feelings. But he buried other people's business where no one could reach it.

Wang Shu understood what she was pointing at. He was still too relieved to want to dissect it much. "I'm just a doctor," he said. "I see patients and prescribe medicine. Everything else is not my business."

Zhou Man turned the words over quietly and smiled to herself.

Wang Shu stood, closed the medical book, and set it aside. Then he said: "It's getting late. You should rest before dawn."

Zhou Man looked at him.

He caught himself and clarified, gesturing toward the narrow bed against the wall. "Before you came back, I changed the pillows and blankets. The city is locked down — finding accommodation at this hour would be difficult, and even with the fast-acting medicine, you should rest. The room is small, and I'm afraid the bed isn't very comfortable, it might not suit you—"

He stopped himself. Something in his expression shifted, as if he'd only just noticed how the room must look to someone else — the stacked medical texts, the narrow bed, the general austerity of everything — and felt the awkwardness of it belatedly.

His voice dropped off at the end of the sentence.

Zhou Man looked at him for a long moment.

In her past life, she had slept through nights in ruined temples and hidden in ditches with blood on her hands. After she had inherited the Martial Emperor's lineage and rebuilt the Jade Emperor Peak Dojo, she had still not cared much for comfort. Cultivation was the only thing that mattered. She had never heard anyone worry that she might be inconvenienced by a hard mattress.

A strange feeling moved through her.

First the purple dress, she thought, studying him. Now the bed. She almost wanted to ask: in the imagination of this clay Buddha, what delicate thing did he take her for?

She looked at him with something close to amusement. "If I sleep in your room, where will you sleep?"

"The outer hall. I only need a short rest — the clinic opens early."

Zhou Man considered this. The clinic would need to open. The logic held.

"Then I'll trouble you," she said, without further deliberation.

Wang Shu showed her what she'd need in the room, told her she could find him in the front hall if she needed anything after waking, reminded her — seriously, as if it required emphasis — not to attempt any cultivation tonight. Then he took his medical book and left.

Zhou Man walked the room slowly, then sat on the edge of the narrow bed. She reached down and lifted the edge of the bedding to check underneath.

Three layers.

The clay Buddha, apparently concerned that the bed board would be too hard and that one set of blankets wouldn't be enough, had folded two extra layers beneath before she arrived.

She pressed her fingers in. They sank.

She sat with this discovery for a moment. The Sword Master's old catchphrase rose up in her mind and she murmured it almost involuntarily: "What is this..."

This clay Buddha was, genuinely, a little unbelievable.

Zhou Man lay back on the bed fully clothed, still speechless.

She had assumed she wouldn't be able to sleep. Too much had happened; she was in someone else's room, someone else's bed. But this small, crowded space — stuffed with medical books, smelling of bitter herbs and something underneath that was almost green, like dried mountain plants — gave her a feeling she hadn't expected. Contained. Safe in the way that small places sometimes are.

She was asleep before she'd noticed herself growing drowsy.

---

She slept until midday.

A bar of winter sunlight had crept through the white window paper and found the edge of her closed eyelids. Zhou Man frowned, surfaced slowly, and opened her eyes.

The room was undisturbed. Quiet.

She sat up and tapped the edge of the inkstone three times. The soundproofing array dissolved, and the sounds of Nipan Street rushed in all at once — the street vendor calls, the shuffle of foot traffic, and, closer, the voice of an apprentice dispensing medicine somewhere in the front hall.

Zhou Man opened the door.

A young apprentice came around the corner of the corridor, carrying a bowl of brewed medicine. He looked up automatically when he heard the door — and stopped breathing.

A woman had just walked out of Doctor Wang's room.

He stood with the medicine bowl in both hands, mouth open, eyes wide, completely incapable of speech or movement.

Zhou Man noticed him after a beat. She looked at him more carefully — she'd seen him before. The young apprentice from Chunfeng Hall, the one who'd handed needles and scattered medicine the day Ni Pusa treated Zhao the tailor.

From the front hall, Wang Shu called out: "Kong Zui, is the medicine ready?"

Kong Zui did not answer. He continued to stare at Zhou Man.

No response came. Wang Shu came to the back himself.

He saw Zhou Man standing at the open doorway, already awake, looking directly at Kong Zui. He stopped.

Kong Zui was young. And he had, very clearly, formed an impression.

Zhou Man remained entirely unruffled. She turned to Ni Pusa with a look of mild, polite interest. "Shall I explain it to him?"