Li Fan stopped looking for powerful allies. Power in the Amber Palace was already claimed, hoarded, or indebted. Instead, he began to map the landscape of the slighted.
There was Alchemist Ming, a thin, anxious woman in the subsidiary gardens, whose requests for quality Frost-Dew fungus were perpetually "lost" by the quartermaster—a man known to be cousin to one of Liu's retainers. Li Fan didn't offer her spirit stones. He spent an afternoon in a damp, forgotten corner of the library archives and found an old botanical scroll. He "gifted" her the information that Frost-Dew could be substituted, with a slight refining adjustment, with common Silvercap mushrooms exposed to moonlight on a specific type of slate—slate that was plentiful near the abandoned watchtower. He presented it as something he'd stumbled upon and thought might be useful. Her eyes, hollow with frustration, filled with a desperate, grateful light. She didn't thank him with words. A week later, a small, perfectly crafted clarity pill, far above his mortal grade, appeared on his windowsill.
There was Scribe Gao, a man with ink-stained fingers and a permanent stoop, who had been demoted to copying livestock records after a "critical error" in a land deed for a merchant allied with the Liu faction. Li Fan reviewed the publicly posted original deed and the "corrected" version. The "error" was a single, deliberate character swap that benefited the merchant enormously. Li Fan didn't accuse anyone. He went to the public archives, found the original, unaltered surveyor's report, and had a clean copy made. He "gifted" it anonymously to the office of the Minister of Records, with a note suggesting a review for "procedural clarity." The error was quietly fixed. Scribe Gao was not restored to his old post, but the cloud over him lifted. He began taking his breaks where Li Fan often walked. He never spoke directly of Liu, but he mentioned things. "The east wing archives are so busy lately," he muttered one day, watching a group of Liu's disciples come and go. "Funny, for a section that deals with closed historical cases."
And there was Guard Deng, a young man whose father had publicly disagreed with a land appropriation by Elder Liu's nephew two years ago. Since then, Deng had been assigned to the night watch on the most remote, spirit-beast-infested section of the outer wall. Li Fan mentioned Deng's family name and his father's honest reputation in passing to Captain Ma, framing it as an observation about how the dynasty should value loyal lineages. The next week, Deng was rotated to a day post at the lesser-used western gate. The gratitude in the young man's eyes was fierce and wordless. He began saluting Li Fan with a peculiar, sharp precision whenever they crossed paths. One evening, as Li Fan passed his post, Deng stared straight ahead and said, under his breath, "The old stone bell tower. They think no one goes there after the bats wake. They're wrong."
These were not alliances of oaths or grand designs. They were connections of shared, quiet bruises. Li Fan gave them no orders. He asked for no secrets. He simply repaired small, deliberate injustices, and in return, they gave him pieces of a hidden world.
The information began to coalesce. From Alchemist Ming, he heard of a large requisition for "high-purity earth-aligned crystal dust" signed by Elder Liu's office for "emergency vein stabilization." From Scribe Gao's muttered clues about the east wing, he cross-referenced logistics scrolls. The shipment had been received, logged with a flourish. But the corresponding entry in the vault inventory ledger was never made. The crystals had vanished between the gate and the treasury.
From Guard Deng's tip about the bell tower, Li Fan began discreet observations. He saw junior members of Liu's faction arriving at twilight, carrying unmarked boxes.
He had it now. The method (siphon arrays), the motive (political consolidation), the opportunity (control of logistics), and the location of their operations (the bell tower). He even had the murder weapon for his own attempted murder (the poisoned incense, now a latent scandal in the infirmary).
He sat in his room, the fragile web of trust and information shimmering in his mind. These people—the alchemist, the scribe, the guard—they weren't tools. They were people he had helped, and who were now, willingly, helping him. The moral calculus was murky. Was his kindness just a smarter form of manipulation?
It didn't matter. The weight was real. Their safety was now tangled with his. If he fell, their small redemptions would be noticed, and they would be crushed.
He was no longer just fighting for his own life. He was the nerve center of a silent, scattered rebellion of the inconvenienced, the overlooked, and the quietly vengeful. It was the most powerful and most terrifying position he had ever been in.
The alliance was weak. But it was his. And it knew where the crystals had gone.