Xu Qian walked until the light failed him.
He did not walk quickly. Speed burned poison faster through the blood. He kept his pace even, counted his breaths, and let the world narrow to the next stretch of ground, the next rock, the next tree that might hide a silhouette.
The pain in his shoulder had settled into something dense and wrong, a weight tied beneath the skin. The suppression pill still held, but not cleanly. Every few steps his fingers tingled, then went briefly numb, then returned with a dull ache that made him want to flex his hand just to prove it was still his.
He resisted the urge.
Behind him, the driver shouted once, then again. Xu Qian gave no answer.
He reached the next bend in the road before stopping. From there he could see back far enough to know if pursuit followed, close enough that the driver could still stumble toward him if he chose to.
Xu Qian turned and waited.
The driver half-fell, half-walked into view, one hand clutched to his ribs, face gray. He looked at the bodies first, then at Xu Qian, and then away again, as if the order mattered.
"They killed the guards," the driver said, stating it like a report, not grief.
"Yes," Xu Qian said.
"You fought," the driver said after a moment.
"Yes."
The driver swallowed. "I didn't know."
Xu Qian believed him.
Not because the man looked honest. Because men who knew beforehand stayed quiet and waited for permission. They didn't groan when they thought they were dying.
"Check the wheel," Xu Qian said.
The driver blinked. "What."
"The wheel," Xu Qian repeated. "If it can be braced, we move. If it can't, we don't."
The driver nodded too quickly and hobbled back to the carriage.
Xu Qian leaned his shoulder against a tree and closed his eyes for three breaths. When he opened them again, the world tilted slightly before settling. The poison was winning ground, but slowly. Professional work, measured, not rushed. Whoever sent the assassins had expected him to die here, not limp away.
That mattered.
The driver came back shaking his head. "Split clean. No brace. Axle's cracked too."
Xu Qian nodded once. He had expected that.
"Take what you can carry," Xu Qian said. "Food. Water. Blankets. Leave the rest."
"What about the bodies," the driver asked.
Xu Qian looked back toward the road. Toward the dark shapes that had already begun to lose their human outlines.
"What about them," he said.
The driver swallowed again and went to work.
They did not bury the dead. Instead Xu Qian dragged the guards off the road and into the brush, laying them flat, straightening limbs where he could manage it. He took the escort seals from their belts and pocketed them. Those would need explaining later.
The assassins were left where they fell.
Not out of spite.
Out of message.
By the time the driver returned with supplies strapped clumsily across his shoulders, the poison had begun to pulse. Heat surged, then ebbed, then surged again, each wave stealing a little more strength. Xu Qian adjusted the binding on his shoulder and retied it tighter than comfort allowed.
"Walk," he said.
The silence between the trees was not empty. It was filled with the small, terrifying sounds of a forest that had tasted blood and wanted more. Xu Qian focused on the rhythm of his own boots against the packed earth. Step. Drag. Adjust. Step.
The poison was not merely pain. Pain was simple; pain was a signal. This was a siege. He could feel the toxin seeking the junctions of his muscles, trying to unspool the tension that held his frame upright. It felt like thick sludge being poured into a clear stream, gumming up the channels, demanding a tax on every motion. If he stopped to rest, the sludge would settle and harden. If he walked too fast, the heat would pump it deeper into his marrow.
He had to exist in the narrow margin between freezing and burning.
He looked at Wang De. The driver was not managing. Wang De was consuming himself with panic, wasting energy on erratic breathing and constant, jerking glances over his shoulder. The man was burning oil he didn't have. Xu Qian noted it, cataloged it, and said nothing. Teaching a man to breathe while he was convinced he was dying was a waste of breath.
They moved east under stars that looked indifferent enough to be honest.
Conversation died until dawn.
The waystation they reached was not marked on any official road chart. That alone told Xu Qian what kind of place it was. Two buildings, one stable, a well that smelled faintly of iron. The signboard claimed food and rest and did not promise either.
The room was small, the walls thin enough to let in the draft. Xu Qian sat at the table and performed an inventory of his own condition. He stripped the binding from his shoulder. The skin around the wound had turned a bruised, angry violet, radiating heat that he could feel against his cheek without touching it.
He pressed his thumb into the muscle. The flesh didn't spring back immediately. It held the indentation like wet clay. The blood was stagnant, trapped beneath the skin.
He re-wrapped it, tighter this time. The pain was a necessary anchor. It kept his mind from drifting into the gray fog of the suppressor pill. He checked his sword next. He wiped the blade with a rag, inspecting the edge for nicks. Steel did not poison. Steel did not panic. Steel simply was. He envied it.
The man at the door took one look at Xu Qian's arm and asked no questions.
"Copper for a room," he said. "Silver for a healer."
Xu Qian handed over the silver and didn't bargain.
The healer was old, stooped, and smelled of smoke and bitter roots. She unwrapped Xu Qian's shoulder slowly, eyes sharp despite the rest of her.
"Dart," she said. "Coated."
"Yes."
"You swallowed something already," she said.
"Yes."
She grunted. "That's why you're not dead."
She ground leaves into a paste that stung worse than the poison when she pressed it into the wound. Xu Qian's face remained still.
"This won't cure it," she said, eyes on her work. "It will keep you walking."
"For how long."
She considered. "Two days. Three if you rest and don't fight."
Xu Qian nodded. Three days was enough.
"Who sent them," the driver blurted from the corner.
The healer shot him a look sharp enough to cut. "Not my concern."
"It is mine," the driver said, voice cracking. "They used my road."
Xu Qian spoke before the argument could grow. "No one sent them."
Both looked at him.
"They were paid," Xu Qian continued. "That's not the same thing."
The healer snorted. "True enough."
She bound the wound cleanly and stepped back. "You owe me nothing more," she said. "But don't die in my room. Bad for business."
Later, alone in the narrow room, Xu Qian laid the token out on the table.
Bronze. Stamped. Ordinary.
The thing men had died for.
He studied it briefly, then wrapped it again and tied it back against his skin. The assassins had aimed to kill, not capture. The poison had been measured, not experimental. They had known the road well enough to force a stop but not well enough to ensure silence afterward.
That meant intermediaries. That meant distance.
That meant family.
Xu Qian closed his eyes and refused to let the thought finish itself.
Naming a truth before it was useful was the same as handing it a weapon.
By midday the poison had settled into a steady burn. He could move. He could think. He couldn't afford delay.
At the edge of the waystation grounds, the driver hesitated.
"You can come with me," Xu Qian said. "Or you can turn back."
The driver shook his head. "No road back that won't ask questions."
Xu Qian nodded. That was answer enough.
They set out again, slower now, quieter, each step measured.
The sect lay ahead. Protection lay ahead. Oversight lay ahead.
So did judgment.
Xu Qian walked toward it anyway.
Because whatever waited behind him would not stop simply because he wished it would.
And because now, finally, the road had made its meaning clear.
Reaching the sect was not safety.
It was merely the price of continuing.