The walk back from the cavern was a blur of pain and grey edges. Li Fan didn't remember the corridors, the stairs. He only remembered the cold stone floor of his room meeting his knees, then his side as he collapsed, curling around the deep, hollow ache in his core. The Seal's price was a debt collected in full.
He woke to the smell of bitter herbs and warm broth. Xiao Lan was there, kneeling beside him, a bowl in her hands. Her face was tight with worry.
"You're burning up," she whispered. "And cold as stone. What did they have you do?"
"My job," Li Fan croaked. He tried to sit up. The room spun. He let her help him, leaning against the wall. He sipped the broth. It was simple, salty. It tasted like life. "Thank you."
She shook her head, bundling a thin blanket around his shoulders. "They're saying in the kitchens that you made the western node… quieter. But that Elder Liu stabilized three nexuses in the time it took you to do one."
"He's had centuries of practice," Li Fan said, the words tasting like ash. He looked at his hands, still trembling slightly. The feverish chill was deep in his bones. "I don't have centuries. I have hours."
The weight of it, the sheer impossibility, pressed down on him in the quiet room. The political facade he'd maintained cracked. "I'm in over my head, Xiao Lan. I'm trying to plug a dam with my fingers while the man who blew the hole is politely handing me more water."
He hadn't meant to say it. The admission slipped out, born of exhaustion and pain.
Xiao Lan didn't offer empty comfort. She didn't flinch. She just sat back on her heels, her eyes old in her young face. "There was a minister, before you. Minister Guo. He was from a minor cultivation family. He thought the rules applied to everyone. He started asking questions about material requisitions. About the Vein Guard's patrol schedules." She picked at a thread on her sleeve. "He was very confident. He said he would bring 'clarity' to the court."
She looked up, meeting his eyes. "He fell from the Scripture Tower. They said he was studying late, lost his balance." She let the silence hang. The message was clear, honed, and deadly: Direct confrontation is a path that ends at the bottom of a tower.
Li Fan held her gaze. The fear didn't leave, but it crystallized into something harder. "Then I won't confront him."
After she left, promising to check on him later, he turned his focus inward. He needed a shield, not a sword. He concentrated on the System.
The blue screen materialized. His Favor Points, accumulated from the hairpin adjustment and the strategic insight, still sat at 15. The store had refreshed. The basic health pill was there. The memory enhancement. And something new, glowing with a faint, urgent light.
[Arrow of Misdirection (15 FP): Single use. Once activated, the next clearly hostile action targeting the user will be subtly redirected to a random, non-user target within a 10-pace radius. Duration: 1 hour post-activation.]
It was expensive. It would wipe him out. But it was a shield. An indirect, lateral solution—exactly what Xiao Lan's story advised.
He didn't hesitate. "Purchase."
[15 Favor Points Deducted.]
[Favor Points: 0]
[Item: Arrow of Misdirection – Activated.]
A sensation, like a cool breath, passed over his sternum. A tiny, spectral arrow, visible only for a second, shimmered into existence over his heart and sank inward, leaving no mark. He felt no different. Just a faint, lingering coolness under his ribs.
He waited. The fever made time slippery. He must have dozed.
The attack came not with a shout, but with a whisper of shattered night.
The sound was a crisp snap of breaking lattice, followed by the hiss of something cutting air. Li Fan's eyes flew open. An arrow, black-fletched and gleaming with a cruel, dark light, exploded through his window. It wasn't aimed at his bed. It was aimed at his throat where he sat slumped against the wall.
Time didn't slow. It simply delivered the fact: death was here.
He had no time to move. No time to scream.
The arrow, a hand's breadth from his neck, twitched.
It was the barest flicker, a miniscule deviation in its path, as if repelled by an invisible, gentle hand. It hissed past his ear, so close he felt the wind of its passage, and buried itself with a solid thunk into the wooden wall beside the small hearth.
A soft squeak of alarm followed.
A small mouse, scavenging for crumbs in the shadows, froze for an instant, then scuttled away, unharmed. The arrow vibrated in the wood, its malicious glow fading. The killing intent that had saturated the air dissipated, confused, redirected into empty space.
Li Fan didn't breathe. He stared at the black shaft quivering beside where a mouse had been. The cool spot over his heart faded.
The Arrow of Misdirection was spent.
Outside, in the dark, there was no sound of a fleeing assassin. Just the normal sigh of the mountain wind.
He sat in the dark, the fever forgotten, the hollow ache replaced by a new, ice-cold clarity. The attempts had escalated. No more subtle cave-ins or professional neglect. This was a direct, deniable kill-shot.
Elder Liu was done playing. The deadline wasn't just for the vein. It was for Li Fan's life.
And he had just spent his only guaranteed shield.