Song Yuzhi was tall and striking. Cai Zhao was slight and slender. With one hand pressed to his chest wound and the other resting on Cai Zhao's shoulder, Song Yuzhi looked less like a sect elder and more like a willow clinging to a cliff face. The senior disciples of Wu Gang's lineage were still nursing their own injuries, but that didn't stop them from circling like flies — trading looks, muffling grins, milking the spectacle of two people scandalously close for all it was worth.
Chang Ning watched them and felt a familiar disgust rise in his throat.
I hate celebrities. I hate decent people even more.
He stepped over to Cai Zhao and lowered his voice. "If you keep holding him up like that, I really might find myself a new wife."
Cai Zhao, galvanized by the threat, immediately offloaded Song Yuzhi onto the two nearest disciples. He announced loudly that he needed to check whether the master's other wounds were serious and whether anyone had thought to bring angelica red date black chicken soup to help with blood loss.
Song Yuzhi caught every word. "Is Brother Chang Shi particularly happy today?"
"I'm happy the demon thieves are dead," Chang Ning said. He thought Song Yuzhi was beautiful to look at and empty inside. Only a man with nothing between his ears would ask a question like that.
"Happy that Zhaozhao is obsessed with Lord Zhou?" Song Yuzhi's voice dropped a register. He wasn't saying it to wound. He was saying it because he could see what Chang Ning refused to name — and because the real problem wasn't Chang Ning's feelings. The real problem was that his surname wasn't Song. It was Zhou.
Chang Ning stopped smiling.
After the raid, the count came in grim and precise.
Thirty-two inner gate disciples and twenty-five inner servants dead. Eight outer gate disciples and sixteen outer servants dead. Most had been cut down while running — caught in the open, nowhere to hide. The losses were brutal.
But the picture was uneven in ways that stung differently.
Lei Xiuming and Fan Xingjia had spent the entire afternoon in the medicine hall, rigid with fear — from noon until the sun sank below the hills, stomachs growling, waiting for demon fighters who never came.
Li Wenxun and the outer gate disciples had gone from tearful gratitude when Ding Zhuo arrived to rescue them, to flat-voiced complaints that their master and nephew had worked so hard to leave without sending dinner. That shift took two hours.
As for Yin Sulian and her daughter, sheltered in Wenquan Pass — they lost nothing except that they'd fled fast enough to ruin their new gold-sprinkled skirts. Oh, and Miss Qi's maid had died. But the skirts were the part anyone kept mentioning.
In total: thirty-five demons had come over the cliff. Chang Ning and Cai Zhao killed ten. At least seventy percent of those thirty-five were masters — cultivation sitting somewhere between sect leader and strongest disciple. After cresting the cliff, more than ten had split off to attack anyone they found, scattering panic through the sect, sealing every door, pinning every disciple in place.
None of it had been the real objective.
The real objective was the Twilight Palace.
Inside Chuitianwu, Qi Yunke's family and all his disciples crowded into Song Yuzhi's room. Chang Ning stood in the corner like a shadow that hadn't decided whether to stay.
The poison on Wu Gang's blade was designed for one thing: seal the throat before the victim understood what had happened. Cai Zhao's warning had saved Qi Yunke's life by a margin that didn't bear thinking about. The blade had only caught his arm. Chang Ning sealed the nearby acupuncture points immediately after, and Qi Yunke forced most of the toxin out through internal force. What remained could be slowly expelled with rest.
Song Yuzhi's injury was the one that wouldn't be explained away.
Lei Xiuming knelt beside the couch, examined him, and shook his head. Examined him again, shook his head again. He kept going until Fan Xingjia couldn't stand it anymore.
"Master Lei. Say something. Stop performing grief and tell us."
Lei Xiuming set down Song Yuzhi's wrist. "He was struck by nether cold and his dan yuan is shattered. Even if he recovers, his cultivation will be broken."
"Nether cold?" Qi Yunke's voice cracked. "Wu Gang actually cultivated that technique?"
The room understood why he was horrified. Nether cold was a vicious art — yin energy pushed to an extreme, designed to destroy the opponent's inner core at the cost of the practitioner's own organs. Those hit by it lost all their martial strength as cold poison flooded the meridians. Those who used it were dead within a few years. Even among demons, almost no one touched it.
"Wu Gang had no intention of surviving," Cai Zhao said, almost to himself.
When Song Yuzhi was examined, his meridians were hollow — no qi, no trace. His dan yuan was like a cracked bowl. Water poured in, water poured out.
"Those three junior brothers are going to lose all their martial arts?" Dai Fengchi blurted.
Lei Xiuming's glare was sharp enough to cut. "Discount, not complete waste. Did you hear a single word I said?"
Dai Fengchi stepped back.
"Fortunately, the palm was partially blocked, and Cai Zhao's flying knife landed in time — it broke Wu Gang's momentum when he struck. Song Yuzhi didn't lose everything."
Yin Sulian leaned forward. "When he recovers — how much strength will remain?"
"Twenty to thirty percent at minimum. Forty to fifty at most." Lei Xiuming's face was unreadable. "It's hard to say."
The room shifted. Regret. Sorrow. Disappointment. Anxiety. Something else — something quieter and less noble — moved behind a few pairs of eyes before they looked away. Every gaze landed on Song Yuzhi for one moment or another.
He had been the sect's golden son since childhood. He had never been looked at like this before — like a problem to be managed — and he felt the cold of it settle in his chest.
"Uncle Lei, can't Third Senior Brother recover fully?" Qi Lingbo twisted her handkerchief, voice high and tight.
"If he had rare medicines, and if a master of the Sect Leader's caliber personally worked on his meridians, he might recover to sixty or seventy percent."
Silence. The pitying kind.
"Wait." Yin Sulian's voice cut through it. "I remember — my brother-in-law had a cousin. Song Shiye. He suffered from something similar and recovered later. Yunke, do you remember?"
Song Yuzhi's eyes sharpened.
Qi Yunke thought for a moment. "Yes, there was something like that. But..." He looked around the room. "Not long after his recovery, he was qi-deviated."
Song Yuzhi's voice was very steady. "Was it the recovery technique that caused the qi deviation, or was it a cultivation accident afterward?"
Qi Yunke looked uncomfortable. "Your father never explained it in detail. I genuinely don't know."
"Then that's simple." Lei Xiuming clapped once. "We summon Yuzhi's father to the sect and ask him directly."
The heaviness lifted slightly. People offered comfort in small doses, then filtered out one by one.
Yin Sulian left looking dazed, still working something out in her head. Qi Lingbo wept openly, pear blossoms in a storm, insisting she would stay and nurse Song Yuzhi herself until Dai Fengchi dragged her away with coaxing and persistence. Qi Yunke rested one hand on Song Yuzhi's shoulder for a long moment, sighed once, deeply, and let Fan Xingjia lead him out. Song Yuzhi had entered the sect at seven years old and become his most dedicated student. If that cultivation was truly lost, so was everything Qi Yunke had poured into him.
Cai Zhao had only known Song Yuzhi for ten days. It didn't make it easier to watch.
Chang Ning was the only one who left without ceremony. He stepped through the gate of Chuitianwu and said, clearly and calmly, "Qingque Sect is about to change its sky."
"Close your mouth and put those words back where they came from." Cai Zhao grabbed his sleeve before he could continue and pulled him directly toward Qingjingzhai at a pace that didn't invite argument.
Door shut. Room checked. No one nearby.
Cai Zhao turned on him.
"Do you understand how serious today's situation is? Everyone in that room saw it. Every single one of them. They're well-bred people, so they swallowed it and said nothing. But you — you opened your mouth right there in the corridor. As if you had no filter between your brain and your face!"
Chang Ning straightened his sleeves with great dignity and sat at the table. "Since even Lady Cai could read the room, I would love to hear your analysis in full."
Cai Zhao sat across from him. "If Third Senior Brother can't recover, the lineage changes hands. It's a pity — he has good character and real depth of cultivation. What a disaster to waste it all on this."
Chang Ning dropped the elegance. He stood up. "Song Yuzhi is unlucky twice over. He may lose the position of sect leader and his fiancée. Does the Cai family have thoughts about filling that vacancy?"
"Say something useful or I'm leaving." Cai Zhao's voice went flat.
"I haven't even addressed two straight days of soup delivery to Song Yuzhi's bedside, and somehow I'm the one being walked out on?"
Cai Zhao stood and turned. Chang Ning grabbed her sleeve and held it. "No. I'm not finished."
"Let go. I'm furious." She pulled. He held. The sleeve, caught between two people with genuine martial arts training who were both too irritated to be careful, gave way at the elbow with a sharp tearing sound.
Cai Zhao stumbled back and found her balance. Her temper had fully arrived. "You haven't even been recovered a full month. Less than a month. And you're already here biting the hand that fed you soup." She swung a palm at him with real intention behind it.
Chang Ning dodged. Cai Zhao launched a kick. He caught her calf with one palm and laughed. "If you can't argue, you fight. That's consistent, at least."
Cai Zhao slapped the table. The teapot launched off the surface. She swept it with her palm and it became a projectile.
Chang Ning batted it aside as a reflex — and realized a half-second too late that it was full. The ceramic broke on contact with the palm wind, and tea sprayed directly across half his face.
Cai Zhao laughed.
Chang Ning, expression dark, crossed the room and the two of them collapsed into close-quarters fighting — elbows, palms, footwork, no weapons, nothing held back except the moves that would actually hurt someone.
Twelve exchanges in, Cai Zhao's elbow caught him square in the chest. He stumbled back three steps. "I was showing mercy," he said, breathless and furious. "Don't waste it."
"Thank your ancestors for that mercy," she snapped.
Girls. Decent enough martial arts that you can't actually use the finishing moves on them, which means you just have to absorb the elbows.
The door opened.
Both of them stopped and looked.
Ding Zhuo stood in the doorway, a medicine tray balanced in one hand, his expression the temperature of a mountain in winter.
"Master Lei asked me to bring wound salve." He took in the room — the broken teapot, the scattered ceramic, the torn sleeve, two people with disheveled hair standing six feet apart breathing hard. His face said everything without moving a single muscle.
Cai Zhao recovered fastest. She stepped forward to take the tray and tried to reconstruct normal social function. "Fourth Senior Brother! Please come in, please sit, please have some tea — ah."
She looked at the floor. There was no tea. There was a teapot in pieces.
"I'll have someone bring a fresh pot."
"I don't drink tea." Ding Zhuo's voice was as cold as his face. "Anyone who seriously practices martial arts should cut out life's small indulgences. Clean water is sufficient. My junior sister has extraordinary potential. It would be a shame to dull it with comfort."
Cai Zhao thought: If cutting out good food was enough to achieve enlightenment, she'd have been a Buddha years ago.
Chang Ning very carefully did not laugh.
Cai Zhao tried a different approach. "The major business of today is finished. If Fourth Senior Brother still wants to arrange our duel — I'm fully available."
Ding Zhuo looked at her left arm. "Were you injured today?"
"Me? No, not at all. Lucky enough that nothing broke the skin."
"I was." He said it like a sentence passed from a bench.
Cai Zhao's smile stopped.
Chang Ning pressed his lips together and stared at the ceiling.
She noticed then — the bandages wrapped around Ding Zhuo's left arm and neck. "I thought the outer gate was secure."
"The outer gate was secure. The path to it was not. Two demon fighters, on the road. I was careless. Flesh wounds." He paused. "Which means the duel cannot happen."
"It won't affect—"
"It will affect everything." His brows drew together like a vice closing. "A martial competition demands that both parties bring their full ability — nothing less. To fight injured is a humiliation to the art itself. If I win while wounded, people will say you conceded. If I lose, people will say you refused to fight a cripple. That is not a duel. That is theater."
Cai Zhao's head felt like it had expanded three sizes. "So what does Senior Brother propose?"
"Six or seven days. When I have recovered, I will deliver a formal letter of challenge." He had clearly spent time thinking about this. He had learned his lesson about informal arrangements.
She agreed. Thoroughly. Without condition.
Before leaving, Ding Zhuo cast one final look at the destruction across the floor. "Six or seven days, I trust my junior sister will also rest and recover and exercise some restraint over her temper. I would hate for her to arrive to our duel already injured." He paused. "Unless, of course, she doesn't think I'm worth fighting properly."
He left.
Chang Ning laughed. Openly, helplessly, without any attempt to suppress it.
Cai Zhao stared at the door.
A maid appeared shortly after — she must have heard the noise — and brought a fresh pot of tea. On her way out, she surveyed the wreckage with eyes that condemned without saying a word.
The door closed again.
Cai Zhao sank into a chair. "Two days of bad luck and I have no one to blame but myself."
Chang Ning, now apparently in an excellent mood, poured her tea with his own hands and set it in front of her. "Zhaozhao. Everyone actually respects you here. You're not a child anymore. A little magnanimity wouldn't hurt."
Cai Zhao touched her ear. "I know. I was wrong from the beginning."
He smiled at her with the particular warmth of someone who had been worrying about her all day and didn't intend to say so. "There it is. That's what I like to see."
When the noise settled and the tea was warm, the real conversation began.
"Doesn't today feel wrong to you?" Chang Ning lifted the glazed candlestick and carried it to the center of the table, his wide robe moving softly. The candle threw his shadow long and clean across the side wall.
Cai Zhao watched it. "What do you mean, wrong."
"What was the purpose of this raid?" He set the candlestick down. "Were the demons really here to avenge the Wu brothers? Since when do demons make themselves good men?"
"To kill my master," Cai Zhao said, snapping back to attention. "The Wu brothers wanted to kill him too, so they could share the effort."
"Then why did they also target Song Yuzhi?"
"That was the Wu brothers' own initiative. The demons probably didn't plan that part."
"Wu Gang cultivated the nether cold technique. The demons invested heavily in him, and the whole operation was meticulously planned. Song Yuzhi is impressive, yes — but he's not the problem. He's not the head of any sect. If you're spending that much effort, why not simply assassinate one of the Six Sect leaders? The effect would be far greater."
Cai Zhao rubbed her forehead. "You're saying the demons had no real reason to target Third Senior Brother. Fine. Get to the point."
"The strangest part isn't who they targeted." Chang Ning sat down. "It's the mismatch between the sophistication of the operation and the simplicity of the stated goal."
"Imagine spending a small fortune — multiple lives, enormous coordination, traveling thousands of miles — to purchase a fine piece of silk for clothing. The silk is beautiful. But it's still just silk. Was that expenditure proportionate?"
"Every element of today had to land precisely. Luo Yuanrong's disruption at the festival. The Wu brothers positioned and ready. Demons scaling the cliff on two fronts. The soldiers creating enough chaos to paralyze the entire sect while the real team pushed straight for the Twilight Palace. One element off — one timing mistake — and there aren't enough people on that cliff to generate the required chaos. The whole thing falls apart."
"All of that — just to assassinate Sect Leader Qi? Then why not do it three days ago when he was alone in the mountains? That would have been far simpler. Instead they force their way through ten thousand defenses, fight into the palace, take heavy casualties, and then send someone to kill him? That's not a plan. That's a plan with something else underneath it."
"Thirty-five masters. That kind of resource, with that kind of precision — you could quietly remove the leader of any one of the six Beichen sects. Why this?"
Cai Zhao closed her eyes and replayed the afternoon — Wu Gang's dagger behind Qi Yunke's back, his brother's palm driving into Song Yuzhi's chest, four gray-robed men behind the pavilion cutting off everyone who passed.
"You're right." She opened her eyes. "The whole thing was premeditated down to the seating arrangement. Assassinating the master and taking down Third Senior Brother — neither of those was improvised. It was all laid in advance."
"What does that suggest to you."
"Something Wu Gang said before he died." She turned it over carefully. "Lord Yin made enemies. More than one or two of them. Someone with a grudge used this to settle a score."
Chang Ning nodded slowly. "Possible. But then why leave Lady Sulian and her daughter alive? They carry Yin bloodlines too."
"Because they're powerless without the master and Third Senior Brother to protect them. Whoever planned this knew that. Leave the weak ones — let them suffer slowly. That's more a demon's method than a clean execution."
"It's speculation either way," Cai Zhao admitted. She poured herself a full cup of tea. "We're too far from the center of it. But as the saying goes — follow the benefit. Whoever gains the most from today is your most likely suspect."
Chang Ning smiled. "Then the mastermind is you, Zhaozhao."
Cai Zhao nearly sprayed tea across the table. She coughed. "Don't. Don't say that."
He came around the table and patted her back, unhurried. "If Song Yuzhi can't recover, Sect Leader Qi needs a new candidate for the position. Who steps forward? Dai Fengchi, most naturally."
"But Ding Zhuo—"
"You don't understand." He shook his head, but not unkindly. "I know you find Dai Fengchi irritating and can't keep pace with him, and I know that bothers you — but he wasn't always this way. Song Yuzhi was a prodigy. One day of his training equaled ten of anyone else's. Dai Fengchi was older, started earlier, worked harder — and within a few years, Song Yuzhi had left him entirely behind. That broke something in Dai Fengchi. He stopped chasing."
"Ding Zhuo is different. His natural talent is roughly equal to Dai Fengchi's. Everything he has, he earned by grinding. When his rival was Song Yuzhi, Dai Fengchi accepted defeat. But if his rival is Ding Zhuo?" He raised an eyebrow. "Dai Fengchi will not roll over. And with Lady Sulian and the full weight of the Yin family behind him — it's not a clean succession at all."
Cai Zhao processed this with the expression of someone learning that the rules of a game they've been playing are completely different from what they assumed. "I thought... whoever was the most capable disciple simply became the sect leader."
"Did you think it was easy for Sect Leader Qi to become the chosen heir? He had to defeat Qiu Renjie in a match before Yin Dai would give up his most beloved disciple. And only when every one of Yin Dai's seven personal disciples proved they couldn't beat Qi Yunke in a fight did Yin Dai accept the outcome — and even then, he changed his daughter's engagement in protest."
Cai Zhao was quiet for a moment. "So what does any of this have to do with me?"
"If Ding Zhuo inherits the position, you're fine. But if Dai Fengchi takes it?" Chang Ning tilted his head.
She hit the table. "Then I'll be the one to take it myself. I've been lazy since my aunt died — I know that. But if I grit my teeth and go back to serious training, pressing Second Senior Brother into the floor is no great difficulty. I would rather do that than watch this position go to someone who doesn't deserve it."
Chang Ning laughed softly. "So the sect leadership falls to you in the end regardless."
She caught herself. "I didn't assassinate anyone. I didn't collude with demons."
"Of course you didn't. I know that." A quiet exhale. "I'm still just wondering what exactly the demons intended — forcing their way into a defended sect, targeting the sect leader and Song Yuzhi both, all while taking these losses. It doesn't compute."
A moment of quiet.
"Actually," Cai Zhao said, "you were right today."
Chang Ning looked up. "What?"
"You were right. I haven't told you that yet."
He waited.
"Third Senior Brother misjudged the situation from the start. When the alert sounded, he assumed a massive force would be pressing the cliff — hard to approach, easy to hold. So he spread the defense wide to cover every point. Protected more ground with fewer people at each."
She paused. "But the demon fighters didn't care about the ground. They went straight for the Twilight Palace. The broad defense Third Senior Brother arranged actually thinned the protection where it mattered most and gave the Wu brothers exactly the gap they needed. And me — I was just as wrong. I thought I was being clever. If I'd gone with Third Senior Brother to the palace, I would have walked straight into the Wu brothers."
She looked at him in the low candlelight, his features softened by the halo, the calm in him solid and unshifting. "You saw something was wrong from the beginning. You insisted on finding out what was underneath the surface invasion before committing to any plan. Like you said — some people die, but you eliminate the hidden danger early."
"Is Zhaozhao blaming me for treating lives like arithmetic?" he asked, gently.
She shook her head. "My aunt used to say that anyone who accomplishes something great often has to be a little cold about it. You're probably that kind of person."
She said it plainly, without judgment, without wishing he were otherwise. There was something settled in her face — a clarity that came after accepting a hard truth rather than fighting it.
This is who she is, she seemed to have decided. Soft-hearted. Unsuited to certain things. Fine.
Chang Ning pressed a hand over his chest, very quietly. That warmth again. He didn't know what to do with it.
Then the smell of food drifted in from outside.
Cai Zhao's entire face transformed. She looked like someone who had just remembered that life was worth living.
Chang Ning watched her and laughed before he could stop himself. "Praise heaven — the thieves missed the kitchen. We can finally eat."
"Whatever the demons are calculating," Cai Zhao said cheerfully, standing up, "the food comes first. We're not the only players in this. If they move again, we'll find out their intention soon enough."
She didn't know it yet, but she was right about the second part.
The next morning, before she had even fully opened her eyes, Fan Xingjia came to the door with urgent news.
After the festival, several groups of departing guests had been ambushed and killed by demons on the road out.