The first wolf landed inside Qinghe without a sound.
For one breath, no one moved.
It stood beyond the sharpened stakes, shoulders low, moss-dark fur slick with mist, green eyes burning in the torchlight. Mud slid from its paws. Its lips peeled back, revealing teeth too long for any creature that should have belonged beneath a mortal sky.
Then a child screamed.
The wolf sprang.
"North line!" Han Yue roared.
His voice struck the clearing harder than the beast's claws. Two defenders thrust their spears too late. One point scraped fur. The other missed entirely. The wolf crashed into the weaker man, knocking him backward into the mud. Before its jaws closed on his throat, Han Yue's broken axe handle slammed into its ribs.
The sound was dull and heavy.
The wolf twisted, snarled, and raked its claws across Han's arm.
Blood sprayed.
Han did not step back.
"Hold the line!"
Outside the palisade, more shapes moved.
The first attack had not been a mistake. It had been a test.
Three smaller wolves struck the western gap almost at once. One hit Mo Tieheng's disguised pit and vanished with a yelp as the branches collapsed beneath it. The second leapt over the trap but landed among angled splinters. The third darted around both, fast and low, heading straight for the cooking fire where the children huddled.
Yue Lingxi moved before anyone else saw it.
She came from the side like a shadow breaking away from the palisade. Her spear struck the wolf's flank, not deep enough to kill, but enough to turn its leap. It crashed into a support post instead of the children.
"Fire!" she shouted.
An old man near the central ring froze with a torch in hand.
Ji Yuan saw it.
The wolf saw it too.
"Gao Renjie!" Ji Yuan shouted. "Torch to Yue Lingxi!"
The old man jolted as if pulled awake. He threw the torch. Yue caught it awkwardly, drove the flame toward the beast's face, and forced it back long enough for two defenders to stab downward with sharpened poles.
The wolf shrieked.
More howls answered outside.
The palisade shook.
Something slammed into the northern posts with enough force to crack bindings. The living trunks taken from Qingmu Forest held, but the thinner stakes beside them bent inward. Mud sprayed as claws dug beneath the barrier.
"Rope!" Mo Tieheng shouted.
No one answered.
"Rope, curse your ancestors!"
A young worker stumbled toward the wrong bundle.
Ji Yuan saw Mo's trap line lying half-buried near the work stone. He saw the worker's confusion, saw the wolf near the gap gather itself to leap, saw Han Yue still locked with the first wolf inside the ring.
Too much.
Everything was happening too quickly.
The Record of Ten Thousand Eras flickered in the edge of his sight, uselessly precise.
Defensive integrity: failing.
Panic spread: rising.
Casualty risk: severe.
Ji Yuan wanted to curse it.
Instead, he ran.
He grabbed the vine rope and hurled it toward Mo. The mechanic caught it, wrapped it around his forearm, and pulled with all his strength.
A sharpened beam swung across the gap.
It struck the leaping wolf in midair.
Bone cracked. The beast tumbled into the mud inside the palisade, still alive, thrashing, trying to rise.
Wei Cang, standing near Yin Meiniang's cooking area with a water bucket in both hands, stared at it.
"Move!" Yin shouted.
Wei moved.
Not away.
He dropped the bucket, snatched a burning branch from beneath the pot, and struck the wolf across the muzzle. The flame burst against mossy fur. The beast recoiled. A defender finished it with a spear through the ribs.
Wei stood panting, eyes wide as if shocked by his own body.
Yin Meiniang grabbed him by the back of the collar and shoved him toward the children. "If you are going to be useful, be useful there!"
Near the medical stones, Li Qingluan knelt over a guard whose thigh had been torn open. Blood poured between her fingers. She reached for one of the covered bowls of diluted spring water.
"Hold him down," she ordered.
The guard thrashed, screaming.
A girl helper froze.
Ji Yuan saw that too.
He could see too much and not enough.
The wolves did not attack the strongest section. They did not even attack the weakest section alone. They struck wherever fear opened space. A dropped torch. A frozen helper. A defender looking at blood instead of the gap. A child screaming. Panic made holes no palisade could close.
His grip tightened around the cracked seal.
Names.
Functions.
The thought came like a blade from darkness.
Not courage. Not speeches. Names.
Ji Yuan climbed onto a stump near the central fire.
His body protested. His fever pulsed behind his eyes. The seal in his hand was cold, then warm, then painfully heavy.
He shouted.
"Han Yue, northern line!"
Han, blood running down his arm, drove his shoulder into the first wolf and forced it back toward the stakes.
"Yue Lingxi, western gap!"
Yue pivoted, spear flashing, already moving.
"Mo Tieheng, trap line two!"
Mo spat mud and dragged another weighted stake into place.
"Li Qingluan, bleeding first!"
Li poured the diluted spring water over the guard's wound. Silver threads flashed. The bleeding slowed—not stopped, but slowed enough for cloth to matter.
"Yin Meiniang, fire to the center!"
"Already doing it, blind lord!" she shouted, but her voice no longer shook.
"Qin Moxuan, retreat path!"
Qin seized two elderly men by their sleeves and pointed them toward the central line. "Children behind the stones! Wounded who can crawl, east side! No one blocks the clinic path!"
"Luo Qingshu, names of the fallen!"
The teacher, pale and trembling near the fire, clutched his charcoal and began repeating names aloud as if writing them into the air before they could vanish.
"Gao Renjie, torches!"
The old man lifted another flame.
"Wei Cang, children!"
Wei stepped between the huddled children and the western gap, burning branch in hand.
The chaos did not disappear.
But it bent.
Voices began answering.
"North line!"
"Western gap!"
"Clinic path clear!"
"Fire here!"
"Children behind me!"
The cracked seal burned in Ji Yuan's palm.
A pressure rose from beneath his feet.
It was not like Li Qingluan's green healing light. It was not gentle, not clean, not like spring water or leaves. It was heavy. Human. Muddy. Filled with terror, grief, hunger, stubbornness, and the desperate refusal of one hundred people to become scattered meat beneath alien trees.
Gold light, dull and deep, spread from the seal into Ji Yuan's veins.
His knees almost buckled.
Outside the palisade, the howls changed.
Lower.
Deeper.
The wolves felt it.
For a heartbeat, Qinghe held.
Then the northern stakes exploded inward.
A wolf larger than the others forced its way through, not the Alpha, but strong enough to scatter two defenders. It ignored Han Yue. Ignored the torches. Its green eyes fixed on the children behind the central fire.
Wei Cang raised his burning branch.
His hands shook.
The wolf leapt.
Ji Yuan moved before thought.
He dropped from the stump and placed himself between the beast and the children.
There was no technique in it. No wisdom. No strategy. Only a body arriving where a body was needed.
The wolf's jaws opened.
The seal in Ji Yuan's hand flared.
The heavy golden Qi surged up from the mud, through the graves, through the fire, through the names being shouted, through the hands gripping spears, through every terrified breath that had not yet surrendered.
It struck the wolf in midair.
Not as a blade.
As a command.
Stop.
The beast slammed into an invisible weight and was thrown sideways, crashing into the mud with a stunned snarl.
Ji Yuan staggered.
Pain tore through his meridians as if hot wires had been pulled through flesh that did not yet possess channels to hold them. He coughed blood onto the seal.
The golden light vanished.
The wolf scrambled up, shaking its head. It was not dead. Not even badly wounded.
But it had stopped.
For one breath, all Qinghe saw it.
Their lord, weak and bleeding, standing where the children would have died.
Then from beyond the palisade came a howl so deep the torches trembled.
The attacking wolves retreated at once.
Green eyes withdrew into the forest.
Silence fell.
Yue Lingxi turned slowly toward the trees.
Han Yue lifted his bloodied axe handle.
Ji Yuan tasted blood and rain.
Beyond the broken northern stakes, something vast moved between the trunks.
The Qingmu Alpha had arrived.