Xu Wen left with a final, grim nod, and the heavy door of the Heart of the Peaks quarters sealed behind him. Lin Tian stood in the center of the room, the echo of the name 'Silent Wind' hanging in the air like a poison mist.
An assassin. A specialist. The threat was a different kind of cold, one that seeped into the bones rather than the skin. Political games he could navigate, duels he could win. A knife from the shadows, from someone who treated murder as a profession, was a variable he hadn't fully accounted for.
He needed to move, to think. Sitting still in his gilded cage felt like waiting for the blade to fall. The system interface hovered in his mind, stable and silent, no new missions yet. He needed a pretext, a reason to be somewhere less predictable than his new, heavily monitored quarters.
