The Lotus Kennel had been silent for three nights.
For Murim, silence was never a blessing. Silence meant power broken, blood spilled, storms drowned. And when silence hung over the kennel — the gathering ground of wolves from thirteen sects — the whole of Murim leaned forward to listen.
Whispers spread faster than fire in dry fields.
"The kennel has not sent a signal."
"No wolves returned."
"Even the captains…?"
Fear quickly twisted into suspicion. If captains had died, if wolves had vanished, then someone had killed them. And in Murim, every sect knew every other sect's hand was bloody.
But one sect could not sit idle.
The Iron Banner Sect — most influential of the thirteen, feared for its discipline and numbers — had invested more wolves into the kennel than any other. Their captain had been among the fiercest, a man whose chains had once strangled three rivals in one duel. His failure to return was not just loss. It was humiliation.
So the elders of Iron Banner commanded an investigation.
* * * * * * * * *
That was how Han Ji found himself standing before the kennel gates.
The investigator adjusted the iron clasp of his robes, glancing at the five disciples behind him. Their faces were pale. None dared to look directly at the ruins. The great wooden gates of the kennel hung splintered, blackened as if burned from within. Beyond lay only stillness.
Han Ji did not enter at once. He was not a reckless wolf, but a man of patience, a cultivator whose strength lay in method, not fury. He studied the ground, the wind, the silence.
No birds perched on the walls. No insects crawled on the scorched beams. Even nature seemed to avoid the kennel.
He inhaled slowly, then frowned. "Rot," he muttered. "But not enough."
One of the disciples swallowed hard. "Sir?"
Han Ji narrowed his eyes. "If hundreds of wolves died here, the stench of rot should have carried for miles. Yet it lingers faintly. Too faint."
The disciples exchanged nervous glances.
Han Ji stepped forward at last, boots crunching on ash.
* * * * * * * * *
The courtyard greeted them with emptiness.
The ground was blackened, cracked as if from explosions, but no corpses lay sprawled across it. No shattered chains. No discarded weapons. Only faint grooves in the stone, like claw marks — or chains dragged by unseen hands.
One disciple whispered, "This… this isn't possible. My cousin fought in the kennel. Even if he fell, his body should be here. Where are they?"
Han Ji said nothing. He crouched, running his fingers along the scorched stone. The heat was gone, but the blackness ran deep, as if fire had burned into the marrow of the earth itself. He traced another patch where stone seemed melted, fused into glass.
Fire. Poison. Threads. Silence. He had heard the captains' powers often enough to recognize their traces.
But no bodies.
No proof.
No storm should erase itself so cleanly.
* * * * * * * * *
"Sir…" another disciple whispered. His voice cracked. "Do you think it was… outsiders? Another sect?"
Han Ji's gaze hardened. "If it were a rival sect, they would have left trophies. Banners. Corpses as warnings. But here—" He gestured around the barren courtyard. "—here, there is nothing. As if the kennel consumed itself."
The disciples shivered.
Han Ji straightened slowly. He could not admit it aloud, but the truth pressed at his mind: this was not battle aftermath. This was erasure. Someone had cleared the field.
* * * * * * * * *
In truth, he was right.
Before leaving, Xuan had walked the ruins with bleeding chains. He had burned corpses with Flame's embers, let Widow's poison dissolve flesh to sludge, drawn every drop of blood into his crimson links. Threads were coiled into himself, silence devoured the screams.
By dawn, there had been nothing left.
Xuan had known someone would come. And he had no desire to leave a trail.
So when Han Ji searched, he found only faint grooves in the stone — grooves that looked like chains etched in patterns. He crouched to trace them again, uneasy.
"Chains," he muttered. "But no chains struck this stone. These are not battle marks. They are… remnants."
One disciple asked nervously, "Remnants of what?"
Han Ji did not answer.
* * * * * * * * *
They pressed deeper into the kennel. Every hall was broken, every chamber burned. Yet nowhere did they find corpses. No bones. No scraps of clothing. Nothing human remained.
It was as if wolves had fought — and then dissolved.
Finally, at the heart of the courtyard, Han Ji stopped. He stared at the cracked stones where once captains had clashed. Here, even the air felt wrong — thin, hollow, carrying no echo.
The disciples clutched their blades, though no foe stood before them. Fear pressed on them like silence given weight.
One stammered, "Sir… shall we continue? Or… or return?"
Han Ji closed his eyes, drawing in the stillness. He felt no trace of Qi, no lingering resonance of Lein. It was unnatural. Even the greatest storm should leave echoes for months.
But here — nothing.
No storm. No chain. Only emptiness.
* * * * * * * * *
Han Ji opened his eyes. His voice was calm, but grim.
"We leave. There are no leads here."
The disciples sagged in relief, eager to escape the stifling air. But as they turned, Han Ji glanced back one last time at the faint grooves etched in the courtyard stone.
They twisted like links.
Chains.
Chains that did not belong to Iron Banner's captain, nor any other he knew.
Han Ji's stomach tightened. He would not tell his disciples, not yet. But he would write it in his report:
The kennel is silent. The captains are gone. The wolves vanished. No traces remain.
Only… the faint mark of chains, where no chains should be.
And that silence was more frightening than any corpse-strewn battlefield could have been.
* * * * * * * * *
The gates of the Iron Banner Sect loomed tall and unyielding, banners of black and red snapping in the mountain wind. Within its stone halls, discipline was law: every disciple walked in rows, every step measured, every breath in unison.
But on this day, order trembled.
Han Ji knelt in the Hall of Judgment, his forehead pressed against cold stone. Before him sat three elders, their robes heavy with iron-stitched seams. Their gazes cut sharper than blades, weighing every word that fell from his lips.
Behind them, the Iron Banner's great drum was silent. That drum beat only when wolves were called to war. Today, even its silence was thunder.
Han Ji bowed deeper.
"Elders. I have walked the kennel. I have seen with my own eyes. And I return to report: there are no survivors."
The eldest of the three — Elder Zhang, whose voice had ordered battles for forty years — leaned forward. "No survivors?"
"None."
"No corpses?"
"None."
The hall stirred. Even the guards shifted uneasily.
Han Ji kept his voice steady. "The kennel is empty. The walls are blackened, the stones cracked. Traces of fire, of poison, of threads… but not a single body remained. It was as though the battlefield devoured itself."
* * * * * * * * *
Elder Zhang's jaw tightened. "And the captains?"
"Gone."
The word fell like a hammer.
The elders sat in silence. In the distance, wind howled against the banners.
Finally, Elder Zhang said coldly, "Who has done this?"
Han Ji lowered his head further. "That is what I cannot say, elder. There were no signs of intrusion. No banners, no discarded blades, no footprints. It was too… clean. Deliberately clean. If it was an enemy sect, they erased their trail completely. Or—"
He hesitated.
"Or what?" Elder Zhang's voice cut like iron.
Han Ji swallowed. "Or the kennel devoured itself. Wolves tearing wolves, storms drowning storms. Until nothing remained."
* * * * * * * * *
Murmurs rippled through the hall.
Another elder, sharp-eyed and narrow-faced, hissed, "Impossible. The kennel may be cruel, but captains do not fall so easily. Thirteen captains slaughtered with no trace? No. This reeks of an outside hand."
But Elder Zhang did not dismiss Han Ji's words. "You say there were no traces. Yet you saw something, did you not? Speak."
Han Ji hesitated, then said carefully, "At the heart of the courtyard, I found faint grooves. They were like chains pressed into the stone. But they did not belong to our captain. Nor to any captain I know."
The hall grew colder.
Chains.
Chains where no chains should be.
* * * * * * * * *
Elder Zhang slammed his staff against the floor. "Summon the council. If the kennel is gone, the balance of thirteen sects has broken. There will be accusations. There will be war."
Han Ji bowed low. His duty was complete. But as he retreated from the hall, one thought gnawed at him.
Chains where no chains should be.
He had not told the elders how deep those grooves felt. As though they had not been carved by steel or storm — but grown into the stone itself.
* * * * * * * * *
The news spread faster than Han Ji's steps down the mountain.
The kennel is gone.
The captains are dead.
There are no corpses.
Every tavern in Murim hissed with rumor. Merchants whispered of sects sharpening blades. Wandering cultivators boasted that they had foreseen it, though none had dared approach the kennel themselves. Farmers at the edge of rivers spoke of screams that carried through the night, of smoke that stained the moon.
But the most chilling whisper of all was simple:
The battlefield left no bodies.
Sect after sect stirred.
The Red Spear Hall accused the Silent Reed Sect.
The Bone Lantern Monks accused the Iron Banner Sect.
The Iron Banner accused everyone in turn.
And yet, beneath the noise, one question repeated in every shadow:
If the kennel devoured itself, what survived it?
* * * * * * * * *
In a mountain temple, a scholar of the Silent Reed Sect closed his scroll and muttered, "Storms do not erase storms. Someone is hiding in that silence."
In the marshes of the Bone Lantern Monks, their Abbot struck the ground with his staff. "No corpses, no banners — it is a ghost's work. A ghost with chains."
In the Iron Banner's war halls, younger captains whispered fearfully, "What enemy leaves nothing behind but silence? What kind of wolf was born in the kennel?"
* * * * * * * * *
But far from their halls of noise and accusation, in the wild outskirts, Lin Xuan sat cross-legged by a stream.
His wolves tended their wounds in silence. Wei Lan sharpened knives with a grin, Qiao Han meditated with bandaged arms, Shen Yu scratched circles into dirt while mumbling madness.
And Xuan bled into the water, chains slithering crimson from his veins. They hissed with poison, pulsed with faint embers of fire, whispered with threads, and flickered with silence.
He smiled faintly, hearing the distant clamour of Murim in his mind.
"They search for leads. They will find nothing."
His chains rattled.
"Because I erased them."