Zhao Kui counted twice.
Then a third time.
Only after that did he tie the pouch shut again and slide it back into the crate with the others.
Stone shards. Low-grade spirit dust. Two vials of cracked healing salve, diluted to the point of insult. A handful of copper coins, some stamped with seals so worn they barely passed as currency. Nothing rare. Nothing that would buy them more than a few days of medicine in a proper city.
Not enough.
He sat back on his heels and exhaled slowly through his nose, letting the numbers settle in his mind. Around him, the band moved with the quiet efficiency of people who had done this too many times to talk about it. Packs were reorganized. Damaged weapons set aside. Bloodied cloth soaked in the shallow stream and wrung out again and again, as if water alone might wash away what had happened.
Zhao Kui had joined the band years ago.
Not out of loyalty.
Not even out of desperation.
He had joined because the world outside the cities had collapsed in slow, uneven pieces, and this was what remained in the cracks.
Once, there had been roads patrolled by imperial troops. Once, villages paid taxes instead of protection money. Once, cultivators answered to sect law, and warlocks hid in cellars instead of raising shrines in the open forest.
That world had not ended in fire.
It had ended in neglect.
The capital had turned inward. The great sects had begun hoarding resources, sealing mountain gates and blaming "instability in the mandate" for why patrols stopped coming. Trade routes decayed. Cities fortified. Everything outside the walls became… negotiable.
Bandits did not appear because people were evil.
They appeared because order withdrew.
Zhao Kui had been a porter once. A legitimate one. He hauled grain and salt between towns until the roads grew unsafe and the contracts dried up. When the caravan guards fled, someone offered him a blade instead.
After that, it was only a matter of steps.
Step by step.
The band had formed the same way all the others had: fragments of survivors colliding and sticking together. Two failed mercenary companies. A handful of ex-soldiers. Cultivators too weak for sect protection, too strong to submit quietly. They had met at the edge of a burned market town, each group half-starved, each armed, each unwilling to trust but unwilling to die alone.
Lu Yan had killed the leader of the other group that day.
Not in a duel.
In an argument that turned violent when words failed.
The survivors had followed him after.
Not because he was kind.
Because he was decisive.
Zhao Kui rubbed his thumb against the pouch cord, then stood and carried the crate toward the center pile. As he did, his mind drifted—not to the fight that had just ended, but to the moment everything had shifted.
The baby.
He had not been looking for a child when he found him.
The village was already ruined. Burned in uneven patterns that suggested panic rather than planning. The kind of place cultists passed through briefly, or where bandits fought bandits and no one bothered to bury the dead.
Zhao Kui had been checking cellars for grain when he heard it.
Not a cry.
A sound smaller than that. A wet, breathy noise that did not belong in a place like this.
He remembered freezing.
Not out of fear.
Out of calculation.
Children were trouble. Babies were worse. They slowed movement, drew attention, complicated exits. Every band knew this. Every survivor learned it early.
He could have walked away.
He had taken three steps before stopping.
Not because of destiny.
Because the sound did not stop.
He had gone back, cursed himself under his breath, and pulled aside a collapsed beam.
The baby had been wrapped in cloth too thin for winter, lying in a space that smelled of smoke and old blood. Eyes open. Quiet. Watching him.
Zhao Kui had stared at him for a long time.
Not thinking of emperors.
Not thinking of fate.
Only thinking: If I leave him, he will die here.
That was all.
That had been enough.
Now, standing by the supplies, Zhao Kui felt the weight of that first choice like an old injury that never healed correctly.
"You're counting like it'll change if you look long enough."
The voice came from his right.
Qiao Ren stood there, one arm held stiffly at his side, bandages visible beneath his torn armor. His face was drawn, but his eyes were sharp.
Zhao Kui snorted softly. "Habit."
Qiao Ren lowered himself onto a rock with a grunt that he tried—and failed—to suppress. The movement pulled at his wound, and for a moment his breathing hitched.
Zhao Kui watched that. He didn't comment.
"You always do this?" Qiao Ren asked. "Take inventory twice?"
"Three times," Zhao Kui corrected. "First is panic. Second is denial. Third is reality."
Qiao Ren huffed. After a moment, he said, "We don't have enough."
"No."
"For medicine. Or gear."
"No."
Qiao Ren looked down at his hands. Big hands. Scarred hands. Hands that had broken skulls and lifted bodies and now—without ceremony—had become a cradle.
"We need a city," he said.
"A real one," Zhao Kui agreed. "Mid-tier at least. Apothecaries. Cultivation halls. Places that don't ask where the blood came from as long as the coin is clean."
"And to get there," Qiao Ren said slowly, "we need more coin."
Zhao Kui met his eyes.
Neither of them said the word raid.
They did not have to.
Silence stretched between them, not uncomfortable, just heavy.
"I never wanted this," Zhao Kui said suddenly.
Qiao Ren glanced at him.
"The baby," Zhao Kui clarified. "I didn't want… this."
Qiao Ren nodded. "Me neither."
Another pause.
"But you didn't put him back," Qiao Ren said.
Zhao Kui's jaw tightened. "Neither did you."
That landed harder than either of them expected.
Qiao Ren looked away first. "I told myself it was practical. Strong back. Steady gait. Less chance he'd get dropped."
"And now?" Zhao Kui asked.
Qiao Ren was quiet for a long time.
"Now," he said finally, "I turn my body when blades come in. I take hits I wouldn't have before. I plan exits around how fast I can move with him."
He swallowed. "That wasn't a decision. It just… happened."
Zhao Kui nodded slowly. "That's the worst kind."
They sat with that for a while.
Around them, the band continued to prepare. No one looked at them strangely. Conversations like this happened everywhere now—quiet, half-spoken, unfinished.
The world had taught them that reflection was dangerous.
"You ever think about walking away?" Qiao Ren asked.
Zhao Kui did not answer immediately.
"Yes," he said. "Every day."
"And?"
Zhao Kui looked toward where Lu Yan stood speaking with Mu Renkai and Lian Qiu, maps spread over a stone.
"I don't get far in my head," he said. "Something always pulls me back. A need. A problem. A reason."
Qiao Ren did not say me too.
He did not need to.
When Lu Yan called for the senior members, both men stood.
The plan was simple.
There was a village ahead. Small. Poorly defended. Far enough from the main routes that no garrison would respond quickly. Close enough to provide grain, coin, and—most importantly—bodies that could be sold or ransomed along the way to the city.
No one dressed it up as necessity.
No one pretended innocence.
They needed supplies.
They needed money.
They needed time.
And if that meant returning to old habits, then so be it.
The baby slept through the discussion, chest rising and falling against Qiao Ren's back.
Zhao Kui watched him once, just once, before turning away.
The road ahead led to a city.
But first, it led through blood.
And this time, no one pretended otherwise.
-- -- --
The raid ended the way most of them did.
Not in glory.
In exhaustion.
The screaming stopped first.
Somewhere between the second house set ablaze and the collapse of the granary roof, voices gave out—not because mercy had been granted, but because throats could no longer produce sound. Smoke rolled low through the narrow paths of the village, stinging eyes and lungs alike, turning familiar faces into silhouettes that stumbled and fell.
Fire spread unevenly.
Not as a weapon, but as a consequence.
A torch dropped here. A lantern overturned there. Straw roofs caught fast, and soon the night glowed orange in places it should not have.
Men died badly.
Some rushed forward with farming tools raised, courage fueled by panic rather than skill. They were cut down quickly, almost efficiently, their deaths barely slowing the advance. Others tried to shield doorways, standing between steel and their families. Those deaths took longer.
Women screamed names into the smoke.
Children cried until someone silenced them—sometimes with a hand, sometimes with something heavier.
Zhao Kui did not enjoy this part.
He never had.
But he did not look away either.
He moved with practiced detachment, binding wrists, checking necks for spiritual aptitude, separating those who resisted from those who froze. He told himself he was being methodical. That it was better this way. That hesitation only made things worse.
Qiao Ren stayed near the rear of the formation, as ordered, the infant strapped tight against his back beneath layers of cloth and armor. He did not advance into houses. He did not strike unless someone broke through the perimeter.
When one man did—wild-eyed, bleeding, rushing forward without a plan—Qiao Ren stopped him with a single blow that crushed bone and breath alike.
The body fell at his feet.
The baby stirred once.
Qiao Ren adjusted the strap and kept moving.
Mothers were pulled away from children.
Not all of them.
Some clung hard enough that separating them cost time, and time cost lives. Those cases were resolved quickly, one way or another.
Marriages ended in the space between heartbeats.
Fathers died holding doors shut.
There was no speech. No announcement of terms. The village had been chosen precisely because it could not resist meaningfully.
When it was over, the band did not linger.
They never did.
They gathered prisoners in the square—those young enough, strong enough, or spiritually promising enough to be worth transporting. The rest were left with what remained of their homes and their dead.
The smell followed them when they left.
Smoke clung to cloth and hair. Blood dried dark and sticky at the edges of armor.
No one spoke as they moved away from the ruin.
Not because they were ashamed.
But because there was nothing left to say.
-- -- --
They did not approach the city immediately.
That would have been careless.
Instead, the band split along lines long established by experience. Small groups took different routes, each carrying part of the human cargo, each knowing exactly where to go.
Some headed toward trading outposts that sat just beyond the city's jurisdiction—places where law thinned, and coin spoke louder than doctrine. Others veered toward remote sect enclaves that preferred their transactions quiet and deniable.
Human lives were currency here.
Zhao Kui oversaw one such exchange himself.
The buyers were representatives, not masters—men and women dressed too plainly for their wealth, eyes sharp, voices polite. They inspected prisoners the way one might inspect livestock, checking teeth, muscle, signs of spiritual resonance.
"This one," a man said, tapping the shoulder of a trembling boy, "has potential. Weak foundation, but intact channels."
"He'll fetch more inside the city," Zhao Kui replied calmly.
The man smiled thinly. "Inside the city comes with questions."
Zhao Kui met his gaze. "So does insulting my price."
Coin changed hands.
Elsewhere, Mu Renkai negotiated with a minor sect whose cultivation halls had long since abandoned recruitment in favor of acquisition. They did not ask where the captives came from. They only asked how many could survive the journey back.
Families were not sold together.
That was never how it worked.
Lian Qiu watched one exchange from a distance, the mark beneath his sleeve warm—not hot, not painful, but aware.
Movement, the presence murmured.Leverage. Continuation.
Lian did not answer.
He did not need to.
By the time the band regrouped, their packs were heavier with coin, spirit shards, and sealed writs that could be redeemed deeper inside the city. The human cargo was gone, scattered into other hands, other fates.
Qiao Ren said nothing when he noticed the absence.
He already knew.
Lu Yan gathered them before dusk.
"No fires tonight," he said. "We move early. The city's a half-day out."
No cheers followed.
Just nods.
As they took the road again, the silhouette of the medium city rose slowly on the horizon—walls intact, towers manned, banners visible even at a distance. Order, of a sort.
Zhao Kui walked near the front this time.
He did not look back at the smoke.
He had learned long ago that looking back only invited ghosts.
Ahead lay medicine, equipment, and answers they might not want.
Behind them lay a village that would never recover.
And strapped against Qiao Ren's back, the infant slept on, unaware that his road had just been paved with another layer of blood.
The city gates loomed closer.
And with them, consequences.