Chapter 10: The Road North
Dawn in the Ironwood Outpost was a sullen, grey affair, the mist clinging to the stockade like a shroud. Xiao Feng—Feng now—was at the south gate before the first guard yawned. He wore his new cloak, the hood pulled up, the cheap shortsword at his hip. His pack held meager supplies. He looked like any other low-rent blade-for-hire, just younger and quieter.
Three other mercenaries were already there, eyeing each other with professional distrust.
There was Kael, a wiry man with a long knife and the sinuous grace of a snake-charmer. His Qi was Stage Five, sharp and venom-tipped. Borus, a slab of muscle with a dented helm and a warhammer, Stage Four, his energy blunt and heavy as a falling tree. And Lin, the only woman, her face a network of fine scars, her eyes missing nothing. She held a notched spear casually, her Stage Five aura a practical, disciplined thing, honed by survival.
They looked at Feng as he approached. Kael's lips twitched in a smirk. Borus grunted. Lin just watched, her gaze lingering on his hands, his stillness.
"The feral pup," Kael said, his voice a lazy drawl. "Vex must be desperate."
Feng didn't respond. He took a position leaning against the gatepost, his senses stretching out. The client had not yet arrived.
"Heard the Dragon Sect's bounty hunters are sniffing around the western trails," Lin said quietly, her eyes on the mist. "Fifty mid-grade stones for a boy. Makes you wonder what he did."
"Makes me wonder where he is," Borus rumbled, hefting his hammer. "That's a lot of coin to pass up."
Feng kept his breathing even. They were talking about him, and they didn't know it. The description was close enough. His anomalous energy, if he let it slip, could betray him. He had to be a blank wall. A tool.
A figure emerged from the mist, walking from the direction of the Guild Hall. The client.
He was indeed too clean. His robes were simple but of fine, dark grey cloth, unmarked by mud or wear. He wore a wide-brimmed traveller's hat, shadowing his face, and carried a plain wooden staff. His Qi was meticulously suppressed, but to Feng's enhanced, anomaly-tuned senses, it felt… contained. Like water behind a dam. There was a weight to it, a patient, cool depth that suggested Foundation Establishment at least, possibly higher. And there was a faint, ceramic smell about him, like old dust and incense.
"You are the guards," the client stated. His voice was neutral, age-less. "I am Scholar Wen. Our route is north, following the old trade track to the Sentinel Stone, then east into the Marches. We move with speed and minimal contact. Your duty is to intercept physical threats. I will handle spiritual disturbances. Are the terms clear?"
They grunted assent. Feng nodded.
Scholar Wen's hidden gaze seemed to pause on Feng for a heartbeat longer than the others. Did he sense something? Or was he just assessing the youngest, quietest member?
Without another word, Wen turned and started walking north, into the mist-shrouded forest. The guards fell into formation: Borus at the front with Wen, Lin and Kael on the flanks, Feng taking the rear guard. The position of least trust. The place to watch them all.
The forest swallowed them. The Ironwood Outpost faded into the gloom behind. The only sounds were the crunch of boots on the track, the drip of moisture from leaves, and the distant calls of unseen birds.
For the first day, it was just walking. The tension was a live wire between the four mercenaries—a professional wariness. They communicated in grunts and hand signals. Feng mimicked them, his movements precise, his eyes constantly moving. He was studying them. Kael's alertness was greedy, looking for advantage. Borus's was simple vigilance. Lin's was analytical, assessing threats and resources.
Scholar Wen was an enigma. He walked with an effortless, ground-eating pace that never varied. He never seemed to tire. He rarely spoke. Sometimes, he would stop, place a hand on a tree or a mossy rock, and stand still for a full minute, as if listening. Feng felt no Qi fluctuation during these pauses, only a deep, resonant attention that made the forest itself seem to hold its breath.
On the second day, they found the first sign of the road's danger.
A merchant caravan, or what was left of it. Two carts burned to skeletons. Six bodies, picked clean by scavengers, their bones scattered. The sigil on a shattered wagon-board showed a mountain peak—a minor merchant clan from the south.
"Razor-Beak flock," Lin said, kneeling by a distinctive, three-toed talon mark scored deep into a cart's iron rim. "Big one. Dozens of them. They strip flesh fast."
"They're gone now," Kael said, poking through the ash with his knife, looking for overlooked valuables. "Moving on. We should be fine."
Borus spat. "Unless they're nesting near the track ahead."
Scholar Wen examined the scene, his face unreadable under the hat. "The disturbance is recent. The lingering fear-attraction may draw other predators. We will bypass this area. Feng." He turned his head slightly. "Take the east flank. Your senses seem… acute. Warn us of approach."
It was the first direct order, the first acknowledgment. It put Feng on the exposed edge. A test.
He nodded and moved off the track, melting into the undergrowth. His beast-sharpened senses and spatial awareness made him a perfect scout. He could feel the lingering psychic stain of the massacre—the sharp, collective terror of the Razor-Beaks, the final despair of the merchants. It was a thin, greasy tribulation in the air. The fragment noted it passively, like a scholar observing a text.
He moved silently, twenty paces ahead of the group. He heard the rustle in the canopy first. Not wind. A synchronized, leathery rustle.
He raised a closed fist—the halt signal.
The group froze.
A moment later, they saw them. Five Razor-Beaks, each the size of a large dog, with iridescent black feathers and beaks like curved daggers. They were perched in a tree ahead, staring down at the track with cold, avian intelligence. They hadn't attacked the larger, armed group yet. They were waiting. Assessing.
Scholar Wen made a subtle gesture with his staff. A ripple of calm, heavy energy washed out, not an attack, but a suggestion—nothing to see here, move along. It was a powerful mental nudge, woven with Earth-aligned stability.
The lead Razor-Beak cocked its head, confused. The compulsion warred with its hunger.
Kael saw his chance. "Coin for the feathers," he hissed, and before anyone could stop him, he flicked his wrist. Three needle-thin daggers, glowing with venomous green Qi, shot towards the perched birds.
He hit one. It shrieked, a sound that tore at the ears, and tumbled from the branch. The spell of Wen's compulsion shattered.
The flock erupted from the trees in a storm of shrieks and slashing talons.
Chaos.
Borus bellowed, swinging his hammer in a wide arc, crushing one bird from the air in a burst of feathers and bone. Lin's spear became a blur, piercing and deflecting with economical precision.
Kael danced back, throwing more daggers, but two Razor-Beaks flanked him, their attacks frenzied.
Feng was on the edge. One bird broke from the main assault, diving straight for him, its beak aimed at his eyes. He didn't draw his sword. He waited. As the talons reached for him, he sidestepped with his unnatural fluidity and grabbed the bird's passing leg.
The contact was instant. He felt its fierce, simple mind—a tornado of hunger, sky-freedom, and pack-loyalty. Its life-tribulation was speed, predation, flock-tactics. As its talons scratched his arm, he didn't just absorb the minor injury. He inverted the flow.
He used the point of contact to siphon not just the physical energy of its attack, but a sliver of its essential nature. The bird's shriek cut off as it went limp in his grasp, not dead, but spiritually drained, its will to fight extinguished. He dropped it, and it lay on the ground, wings twitching weakly.
He turned. Kael was in trouble, one bird latched onto his shoulder, its beak stabbing at his neck. Lin was too far. Borus was busy.
Feng moved. He didn't run. He flowed. He closed the distance in three silent strides and plunged his shortsword not into the bird, but into the joint where its wing met its body on the one attacking Kael. It was a precise, crippling strike. The bird shrieked and released.
Kael gasped, shoving the bird off and stabbing it. He shot Feng a look—not gratitude, but shocked reassessment. That hadn't been a wild slash. It was surgical.
Scholar Wen had not moved from the center. His staff was planted on the ground. A dome of faint, shimmering energy surrounded him, deflecting the few birds that came near. He was observing. His hidden gaze was fixed on Feng.
The fight ended as quickly as it began. The remaining Razor-Beaks, seeing two dead and one mysteriously broken, broke off, shrieking in frustration, and vanished into the forest.
Silence returned, heavy with panting breaths and the coppery smell of blood.
Borus wiped gore from his hammer. Lin checked Kael's shoulder wound—deep, but not fatal. Kael himself was staring at Feng, his earlier smirk gone.
"You move like you're not all there, kid," Kael said, his voice tight with pain and something else. "Where'd you learn to kill like that?"
Feng just wiped his blade clean on the moss and sheathed it. He looked at the Razor-Beak he'd drained. It was dead now, its eyes vacant. He'd taken its predatory instinct. He could feel it, a new, sharp layer to his reflexes.
"Enough," Scholar Wen's voice cut through. "Kael, your greed nearly doomed us. Your share is docked one stone. Feng, your compensation is increased by one. We move. Now."
It was a clear verdict. Feng had gained a sliver of standing. Kael had lost face and coin.
As they trudged on, leaving the carnage behind, Feng felt Wen's attention on him like a physical weight. The scholar fell back briefly, walking beside him for a few paces.
"That was not a martial technique," Wen said softly, so only Feng could hear. "That was a principle. A hungry one."
Feng kept his eyes forward, his heart a drum. He said nothing.
"The Verdant Dragon Sect hunts a hungry principle," Wen continued, his tone conversational. "They scour the woods for a shadow that consumes. It would be a profound irony if that shadow were walking right beside me, would it not?"
Feng stopped walking. He turned his head slowly, meeting the shadow beneath Wen's hat. His hand didn't go to his sword. He let the cold, devouring void in his dantian rise to the surface of his eyes.
Wen held his gaze for a long moment. Then, he gave the faintest nod, as if confirming something to himself.
"I am not a bounty hunter, Feng," Wen said, his voice dropping even lower. "I am an archaeologist of forgotten truths. And you… you are a very interesting truth. Keep your hunger reined in. For now."
He walked ahead, rejoining Borus at the front.
Feng stood for a second, the forest sounds rushing back in. The scholar knew. Or suspected. And he wasn't turning him in. Why?
ANALYSIS: CLIENT 'WEN'. MOTIVES: UNKNOWN. THREAT LEVEL: VARIABLE. OBSERVATION: INTERESTED IN HOST'S NATURE, NOT HOST'S BOUNTY.
It was a new kind of danger. Not a blade in the dark, but a scalpel in the light. A scholar who saw him as a specimen.
He fell back into his rear guard position. Kael shot him a venomous look. Lin watched him with new, thoughtful intensity. Borus was oblivious.
The road north stretched ahead, longer and more treacherous than ever. He was among wolves, with a snake in their midst, and now a scholar who looked at him like a puzzle to be solved.
And his hunger, having tasted the swiftness of the Razor-Beak, quietly wondered what other principles the road—and his companions—might have to offer.