Wei Shao raised his sword high above Bai's neck, the blade catching lantern light in a cold gleam, the edge sharp enough to separate head from body in a single stroke.
The crowd watched in morbid silence, anticipation heavy in the night air.
Lu Shin stood to the side, wine cup still in hand, his smile satisfied and cruel.
The execution was about to begin—
And then, from the line of kneeling assassins, came a sound that shattered the moment's gravity completely.
Laughter.
Quiet at first, barely audible, just a soft chuckle that could have been mistaken for a cough or dying breath.
But it grew.
Louder. Harsher. Carrying a manic edge that spoke of something broken inside, something that had finally snapped under pressure and released whatever darkness it had been containing.
Zhung's head tilted back, his bruised face turned toward the night sky, blood dripping from his split lip and running down his chin. His dark eyes—usually so empty, so cold, so devoid of emotion—now blazed with something terrible and wild.
He laughed like a man who'd just understood the punchline to a joke that no one else could see, like someone who'd realized the fundamental absurdity of existence and found it hilarious rather than tragic.
The sound echoed through the courtyard, disturbing in its intensity, wrong in its context.
Hu's head snapped toward him, confusion and alarm warring in his expression. The driver's masked face turned, body language suggesting equal bewilderment at this sudden break in their companion's usual cold composure.
Wei Shao's sword paused mid-descent, the security chief's professional instincts recognizing that something had changed, something was wrong, though he couldn't immediately identify what.
"Stop," Wei Shao commanded, his voice sharp with authority. His blade remained raised but motionless, no longer descending toward Bai's neck. His cold eyes fixed on Zhung with analytical intensity. "Why are you laughing? You're about to die. All of you are about to die. What could possibly be amusing about your situation?"
Zhung's laughter cut off abruptly, as if someone had closed a door on the sound. His head lowered, his gaze focusing on Wei Shao with such intense, burning clarity that several guards actually took involuntary steps backward.
When he spoke, his voice was completely different from the manic laughter—cold, detached, empty of all warmth or humanity. The voice of someone who'd crossed a line that separated the living from the dead and no longer cared which side he occupied.
"I just remembered something important," Zhung said softly, each word precise and deliberate. "Something I'd almost forgotten in all the chaos and failure and capture."
He paused, his bloodied mouth twisting into something that might have been a smile if it had contained even a trace of joy instead of pure malice.
"I'm the backup plan."
Wei Shao's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What are you—"
"Bai was supposed to kill Lu Shin with his technique," Zhung continued, his voice never rising above that cold, conversational tone. "Quiet. Clean. Death that looks like natural causes. That was the primary plan. Professional. Elegant."
His dark eyes shifted to Lu Shin, who was still standing with wine cup in hand, his expression shifting from triumph to confusion to the first hints of alarm.
"But Bai failed," Zhung said, and now there was definitely a smile on his face—broken and terrible, showing too many teeth stained with his own blood. "Wei Shao stopped him. The plan collapsed. Everything went wrong."
He chuckled—a sound like breaking glass, sharp and wrong.
"Which means the backup plan activates. And the backup plan is simple, so beautifully simple." His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow carried clearly across the silent courtyard. "Whatever it takes. However messy it needs to be. Whatever the cost in innocent lives or collateral damage or my own survival..."
His eyes locked onto Lu Shin with predatory focus.
"I must kill the target."
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The words hung in the air, ominous but unclear in their implications. What could a captured assassin, bound and kneeling and about to be executed, possibly do to threaten anyone?
Then Lu Shin coughed.
A wet, choking sound that seemed to come from deep in his chest.
His hand flew to his mouth, and when he pulled it away, his palm was painted crimson with blood that had come from his lungs rather than any external wound.
His eyes went wide with shock and incomprehension, looking down at his blood-covered hand as if it belonged to someone else.
Then he coughed again, more violently this time, spraying blood across the front of his expensive robes in a pattern that looked almost decorative in the lantern light.
His eyes were changing—the whites turning red as blood vessels burst, giving him the appearance of something demonic rather than human.
"What—" Lu Shin tried to speak, but more blood came instead of words, pouring from his mouth in quantities that suggested massive internal hemorrhaging.
Around the courtyard, the celebration transformed into horror show.
The guards who'd been drinking began coughing in unison, a chorus of wet, desperate sounds as poison that had been waiting in their systems suddenly activated. Blood sprayed from mouths and noses. Eyes turned bloodshot as vessels ruptured throughout their bodies.
The actors who'd performed so convincingly as merchants and officials were dying even more spectacularly, their theatrical training making their death throes almost performative—clutching their throats, falling to their knees, convulsing as the poison destroyed them from within.
Servants who'd partaken of the expensive wine were collapsing, their bodies seizing, blood pooling beneath them as internal organs failed catastrophically.
Within seconds, the courtyard had transformed from execution ground to charnel house, dozens of people dying simultaneously, their screams and choking sounds creating a symphony of agony that echoed through the night.
Only Wei Shao remained standing and unaffected, his earlier abstinence from the wine now revealed as life-saving prudence.
His face showed shock—genuine emotion breaking through professional control for the first time—as he watched his guards, his lord, everyone who'd been celebrating die in front of him.
"The wine," he breathed, understanding flooding through him. "You poisoned the wine. But how? You were captured, you never went near the—"
"Not during the banquet," Zhung interrupted, his voice carrying clearly despite the background chorus of dying screams. "This morning. While you were all preparing for tonight's elaborate trap. While Bai and Hu and the driver were conducting their final observations of the manor."
His smile widened, terrible and triumphant.
"I went alone to the merchant quarter. To Master Chen's wine shop—the finest wine maker in three provinces, as Lu Shin so proudly announced. The man who ages his vintages for twenty years in special cellars, whose wine costs more than most people earn in a month."
Wei Shao's hand went to his sword, but he was already too late, already watching his world collapse around him.
"Master Chen was there early, preparing the special order Lu Shin had commissioned for tonight's celebration," Zhung continued with cold satisfaction. "Selecting his best bottles. Packing them carefully for delivery. So focused on his prestigious customer that he didn't notice one sixteen-year-old boy entering his shop until it was far too late."
His dark eyes gleamed with malicious satisfaction.
"I forced him at knifepoint to open every bottle destined for the Lu manor. Made him add the poison—measured carefully, distributed evenly, mixed thoroughly so it would be completely undetectable by taste or smell. The poison is slow-acting, you see. Requires about an hour after consumption to reach sufficient concentration in the bloodstream for the fatal reaction."
Zhung's voice dropped to something even colder.
"Master Chen begged, of course. Pleaded for his life. Promised he wouldn't tell anyone, wouldn't warn Lu Shin, would keep silent about the whole thing if I just let him live."
A pause, heavy with implication.
"I killed him anyway. Slit his throat right there in his shop, among all those expensive bottles and fancy barrels. Couldn't risk him warning anyone, couldn't trust his promises, couldn't leave any witnesses who might compromise the plan."
His smile showed too many teeth.
"Then I left a letter in the shop. A simple delivery note explaining that Master Chen had urgent family business in the southern province and had arranged for the Lu manor's wine order to be left at the shop entrance for pickup. The servants who came for the delivery found the bottles exactly where I'd positioned them, took them back to the manor without question, and never thought to check inside the shop where Master Chen's corpse was slowly cooling in a pool of his own blood."
Wei Shao's expression showed horror and grudging respect warring with fury. "You murdered an innocent man. A craftsman who had nothing to do with—"
"There are no innocents," Zhung interrupted flatly. "Master Chen chose to supply wine to Lu Shin. Chose to participate in tonight's celebration. Chose to be part of the system that required his death for my mission to succeed. Those choices have consequences."
He chuckled again, that broken-glass sound.
"And even if he had been truly innocent—some random person with no connection to anything—I would have killed him anyway. Because completing the mission matters more than individual lives. Because my survival required Lu Shin's death. Because this world is cruel and indifferent and mercy is a luxury that gets assassins killed."
Lu Shin collapsed to his knees, still coughing blood, his eyes rolling back in his head as the poison ravaged his internal organs. His expensive wine cup fell from nerveless fingers, shattering on the stone courtyard, the remaining liquid—his death, unknowingly consumed—spreading in a dark puddle.
"Perfect timing," Zhung observed with detached appreciation. "You all drank Master Chen's finest vintage. Celebrated with wine that cost a fortune and carried death in every sip. And now you're dying exactly when Lu Shin thought he'd won. When he thought he was safe. When he commanded our execution."
He smiled at the dying viscount.
"Almost poetic, really."
Then his body moved.
Every muscle in his arms tensed simultaneously, body-tempered strength enhanced by the last reserves of demonic blood in his depleted Aperture, all of it focused on a single purpose—breaking the ropes that bound his wrists.
The rope was good quality, professionally tied by experienced guards, designed to hold even cultivators if properly secured.
But Zhung had been subtly working it loose during the entire walk to the courtyard, during the positioning for execution, during Wei Shao's raised sword and Lu Shin's final commands. Small movements, barely perceptible, gradually creating slack that now combined with explosive strength.
The rope snapped with a sound like a whip crack.
His hands were free.
Wei Shao reacted instantly, his warrior instincts overriding his shock, his sword already moving in a horizontal slash that would open Zhung's throat—
But Zhung was faster, adrenaline and desperation and the last dregs of his cultivation providing speed that surprised even himself.
He surged upward from his kneeling position, his right fist driving forward with every ounce of strength his body could generate, aimed not at Wei Shao's sword but at the security chief's center mass.
The punch connected with devastating force—body-tempered muscle enhanced by technique, driven by desperation, landing perfectly on Wei Shao's solar plexus.
The impact lifted Wei Shao off his feet and sent him flying backward, his sword falling from his hand as the air was driven from his lungs, his body crashing into a decorative stone sculpture with bone-breaking force.
He crumpled to the ground, conscious but winded, struggling to breathe, temporarily incapacitated.
Zhung didn't pause to confirm the result. His attention had already shifted to Lu Shin, kneeling and dying but not yet dead, still conscious enough to understand what was happening.
Zhung walked toward him with steady steps, his bound ankles forcing him to shuffle awkwardly, but his expression showing absolute determination.
Lu Shin looked up as Zhung approached, blood still streaming from his mouth, his bloodshot eyes wide with terror and disbelief and the dawning understanding that his elaborate trap had become his execution ground.
"You..." Lu Shin tried to speak, tried to form words through the blood filling his mouth. "You sacrificed... everyone... even innocents..."
Zhung's foot lashed out, catching Lu Shin in the face with brutal force, snapping the young viscount's head back and sending him sprawling onto his back.
"They weren't innocent," Zhung said coldly, standing over Lu Shin's prone form. "They were actors. Performers hired to create your elaborate deception. Participants in your trap who helped capture us."
He crouched down, bringing his face close to Lu Shin's, his dark empty eyes meeting the dying man's terrified, bloodshot gaze.
"And Master Chen wasn't innocent either. He was your wine supplier. Your craftsman. Someone who profited from your success and contributed to your celebration."
His voice dropped to a whisper.
"But even if they had all been truly innocent—random people with no connection to you or this mission—I would have poisoned them anyway. Because this world doesn't reward mercy. Because hesitation gets assassins killed. Because I chose survival over morality a long time ago."
Lu Shin's mouth moved, trying to form more words, but only blood came out.
Zhung reached down to his ankle where guards had missed a small blade hidden in his boot during their search—a backup weapon, tiny but sharp enough to cut rope and flesh.
He pulled it free and began cutting the ropes binding his ankles with quick, efficient movements.
Once his legs were free, he turned his attention to his companions.
Bai was barely conscious, slumped forward, his breathing so shallow it was almost imperceptible. Zhung cut his bonds quickly, knowing the white-haired assassin couldn't help himself even with hands free.
Hu had been watching everything with expression cycling between horror and grim satisfaction. When Zhung cut his ropes, he immediately moved to grab Bai, lifting the injured man with surprising gentleness despite his own exhaustion.
"Can you carry him?" Zhung asked flatly.
"Yes," Hu replied, his voice rough but certain. "I can carry him all the way to hell if that's where we're going."
The driver's bonds were cut last, and the masked man rose smoothly despite his injuries, his body language suggesting readiness to fight or flee as circumstances demanded.
Around them, the courtyard was a scene from nightmares. Dozens of bodies lay dying or dead, blood pooling on expensive stone, the sounds of agony gradually fading to wet gurgling and then silence as the poison completed its work.
Only Wei Shao remained alive and mobile among Lu Shin's forces, still struggling to regain his breath, still too injured from Zhung's devastating punch to immediately pursue.
But guards would be coming. From other parts of the manor, from barracks, from wherever Wei Shao had positioned reserves. The alarm would spread. The hunt would begin.
They had minutes at most before escape became impossible.
Zhung turned back to Lu Shin one final time, looking down at the young viscount who'd orchestrated such an elaborate trap and come so close to perfect victory.
Lu Shin's eyes were glazing over, life fading rapidly as the poison destroyed him from within. But he was still conscious, still aware, still able to understand.
"You were brilliant," Zhung said quietly, and meant it. "Your trap was perfect. Your planning was exceptional. You thought of everything, prepared for every contingency, created a situation where we couldn't possibly win."
He crouched down again, his small blade moving to Lu Shin's throat.
"But you made one mistake. One critical error in all your perfect planning."
Lu Shin's dying eyes focused on Zhung's face, questioning, desperate to understand what he'd missed.
Zhung's smile was terrible to see—empty and cold and carrying no warmth whatsoever.
"You assumed that assassins have limits to what we're willing to sacrifice. That there's a line we won't cross even to complete our missions. That we value innocent lives or feel guilt about collateral damage."
His blade pressed against Lu Shin's throat, drawing a thin line of blood that was almost invisible among all the other crimson staining the young viscount.
"You were wrong."
But before Zhung could complete the killing stroke, an arrow hissed through the air and punched into his left shoulder with meaty impact.
Pain exploded through his upper body, white-hot and blinding. The blade fell from nerveless fingers as his arm went limp.
He looked up to see guards rushing into the courtyard from a side entrance—reinforcements Wei Shao must have stationed elsewhere, now responding to the chaos. One of them had a bow, already nocking another arrow.
"MOVE!" Hu roared, already running toward the manor wall with Bai slung over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
The driver was sprinting toward the ornamental gate they'd nearly reached during their first escape attempt, his daggers somehow back in his hands, ready to cut down anyone who blocked their path.
Zhung grabbed his fallen blade with his right hand—his left arm useless now, the arrow still protruding from his shoulder—and ran.
Not toward Lu Shin to finish what he'd started. Not to confirm the kill or ensure the mission's completion.
Just running for the wall, for escape, for survival, because staying meant death and running meant possible life.
Another arrow whistled past his head, close enough that he felt the wind of its passage.
Guards were shouting behind him, boots pounding on stone, weapons being drawn.
Wei Shao's voice cut through the chaos, raw with fury and pain: "STOP THEM! KILL THEM! DON'T LET THEM ESCAPE!"
But the guards were too slow, too shocked by the courtyard full of corpses, too disorganized by the sudden reversal of what should have been simple execution.
Hu reached the wall first, somehow still carrying Bai while scaling the eight-foot barrier with cultivator agility. He dropped over the other side with a crash that suggested painful landing but continued movement.
The driver went over next, his smaller frame making the climb easier, disappearing into darkness beyond the wall.
Zhung reached the base and jumped, his right hand catching the top of the wall, his wounded left shoulder screaming in agony as he tried to pull himself up with only one functional arm.
An arrow struck the wall inches from his hand, stone chips flying from the impact.
He gritted his teeth and heaved, body-tempered strength barely sufficient to drag himself over the barrier one-handed, feeling the arrow in his shoulder grinding against bone and tissue, blood running down his back in hot streams.
He fell over the other side, landed hard on packed earth, felt something in his ankle twist but not break.
Then he was up again, running despite the pain, running because stopping meant capture and capture meant torture and execution, running because his companions were already vanishing into the darkness ahead and being left behind meant death.
Behind them, the Lu manor blazed with lantern light, alarm bells beginning to ring, Wei Shao's voice shouting orders to organize pursuit.
But ahead was darkness and forest and the slim possibility of escape.
The four assassins ran into the night, leaving behind a courtyard full of corpses, a dying viscount, and the ruins of what should have been their execution.
---
In the courtyard, Wei Shao finally managed to stand, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his chest aching from Zhung's devastating punch.
He looked around at the carnage—dozens of bodies, all dead or dying from poison, all people he'd failed to protect despite his paranoid thoroughness.
Then he ran to Lu Shin's side, dropping to his knees beside his employer, his lord, the young genius whose life he'd been tasked with protecting.
Lu Shin was still breathing, barely, blood still trickling from his mouth with each shallow breath. His bloodshot eyes found Wei Shao's face, desperate and pleading.
"Hold on," Wei Shao commanded, his voice rough with emotion he normally never showed. "Stay with me. The poison—I can slow it. I can—"
His hands moved with practiced precision, finding specific acupoints on Lu Shin's body, pressing with exact pressure and timing. Ancient techniques meant to disrupt energy flow, to slow the spread of toxins through meridians and bloodstream, to buy time for antidotes or treatment.
It wouldn't cure the poison. The damage was too extensive, the toxin too well-designed. But it might weaken its effects enough to extend Lu Shin's life from minutes to hours, from hours to possibly days if they could find the right physician or alchemist.
Wei Shao's fingers pressed acupoints along Lu Shin's neck, his wrists, his chest, his abdomen—each point corresponding to specific organs being destroyed by the poison, each pressure temporarily restricting blood flow and slowing the toxic spread.
Lu Shin's convulsions eased slightly. His breathing became fractionally less labored. The blood flow from his mouth reduced from torrent to trickle.
Not healed. Not saved. But not dying quite as quickly.
"Guards!" Wei Shao shouted without taking his focus from the acupoint manipulation. "Get a physician! Get Master Yao from the medical quarter! Tell him it's poison, fast-acting, affects lungs and liver primarily! Move!"
Guards who'd arrived too late to stop the assassins' escape now rushed to obey, several running toward the manor's exit to fetch medical help.
Wei Shao continued working, his fingers moving from point to point with desperate precision, fighting against time and toxin with the only tools available.
Around them, the courtyard was silent except for Wei Shao's labored breathing and Lu Shin's wet, struggling gasps.
Everyone else who'd drunk the wine was dead.
Guards. Actors. Servants. Dozens of people who'd celebrated victory and drunk expensive wine and died for the crime of participating in Lu Shin's elaborate trap.
All dead. All casualties of an assassination that had seemed to fail but had actually succeeded through methods none of them had anticipated.
*The young one,* Wei Shao thought, his mind replaying the confrontation even as his hands continued their medical work. *The one with empty eyes. He planned this from the beginning. Before we even set the trap. Before the banquet started. He went to Master Chen's shop and murdered an innocent craftsman just to poison wine that might not even be consumed if the primary assassination succeeded.*
*That's not just professional work. That's thinking multiple steps ahead. That's preparing contingencies for contingencies. That's the willingness to kill anyone—targets, innocents, witnesses, anyone who stands between him and mission completion.*
*What kind of person becomes that at sixteen years old? What creates someone so completely empty of mercy or hesitation or basic humanity?*
Lu Shin's hand weakly grasped Wei Shao's arm, his bloodshot eyes focusing with great effort on his security chief's face.
His mouth moved, trying to form words through the blood and pain.
Wei Shao leaned close, listening.
"Did... they... escape?" Lu Shin whispered, each word clearly agonizing.
Wei Shao hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, my lord. I failed to stop them. They're gone into the forest."
Something that might have been a smile flickered across Lu Shin's dying face.
"Good," he whispered. "Want... rematch... someday..."
Then his eyes closed, his breathing becoming so shallow it was almost imperceptible, and Wei Shao didn't know if his lord had lost consciousness or was simply conserving strength.
But he continued working the acupoints, continued fighting against the poison's effects, continued trying to save the brilliant young man who'd built such an elaborate trap and come so close to perfect victory.
The night air carried the smell of blood and death.
Alarm bells continued ringing.
And somewhere in the darkness beyond the manor walls, four assassins ran for their lives, leaving behind a mission that had failed and succeeded simultaneously, that had cost dozens of lives and accomplished its objective through methods no one had predicted.
The Broken Path continued forward, painted in blood and poison and the corpse of an innocent wine maker whose only crime was being in the wrong place when a sixteen-year-old assassin needed wine poisoned.
And behind them, in a courtyard full of corpses, Lu Shin fought for each breath while Wei Shao fought to keep him alive long enough to matter.
---
**End of Chapter 27**