The dawn after the bloodshed came quietly, as if the sky itself mourned.
Li Fan stood by the creek behind his childhood home, his hands submerged in the freezing water. Blood still clung stubbornly beneath his fingernails, no matter how long he scrubbed. His face was calm, but his heart beat unevenly—like a drum out of sync with the world.
He had killed before. On paper.Each forged decree, each silent signature, had buried someone quietly beneath bureaucracy.
But this was different. This was steel in flesh. This was life ending because he chose to end it.
The water rippled with each breath he took.
Behind him, the old healer, Granny Shui, approached with cautious steps. "You came back late," she said gently. "They say you saved the entire village."
Li Fan didn't answer.
She set a bundle of herbs on a flat rock nearby. "We owe you a debt, Fan'er. But that's dangerous work. Killing brings more trouble than it solves."
He looked over his shoulder. "What would you have done? Let them take that girl?"
Granny Shui didn't flinch, but her old eyes filled with quiet sorrow. "No. I would've done the same. But I would've known the price."
He said nothing. The cold wind did the speaking for him.
After she left, he sat by the creek, staring at his reflection. For a long time, he didn't move. Then slowly, he took off the pendant and studied it.
The jade glowed faintly, as if alive. When he focused, he could feel its presence in his veins now—dormant, but waiting. It hadn't granted him cultivation in the traditional sense. He felt no qi, no meridian flow, no golden cores or spirit roots.
But he had something else: instinct, clarity, and silence.
With a deep breath, he stood.
He walked back toward the village square, where the bodies of the bandits still lay. The villagers had dragged them into a pile but didn't dare burn them. No one knew if they were affiliated with a greater sect, or who might come asking.
Li Fan crouched beside the corpses. He didn't feel pride. Only resolve.
They would come eventually. Bandits, sect members, inspectors, maybe even executioners. That was the world now. One righteous act led to three accusations. Truth had no place in a land ruled by fear and cultivation power.
But he would not run.
He returned home, fetched a brush and parchment, and began to write.
By afternoon, a simple wooden board stood outside the village hall, nailed into the ground with iron stakes.
On it was painted a single phrase:
"The Hall of Silent Judgement Accepts No Coin. Only Names."
And below that, another line in finer script:
"We do not kill for wealth, nor fame. Only for justice. If your plea is true, your enemy shall fall."
Villagers whispered. Some were confused. Others afraid.
But one man, a farmer missing two fingers, wept when he read it. His daughter had been taken last winter by a Crimson Flame disciple. No one had listened. Not the sect, not the local magistrate, not the empire.
Now he left a name on the board: Wu Yanshi.
That night, Li Fan climbed the hills east of Qinghe. He wore a black scarf over his mouth and tied his old city robe tight against the wind. He moved without a sound—his steps lighter than fallen leaves, his breath hidden in the mist.
Wu Yanshi was a minor disciple in the Crimson Flame Pavilion, stationed in a border outpost with three others. They extorted villages under the pretense of "spiritual protection." Li Fan had seen his type a hundred times in the capital—power without consequence.
But tonight, there would be consequence.
He reached the outpost by midnight. A crooked watchtower rose above a stone courtyard, flickering with lanternlight. Two guards dozed beneath it, wine flasks dangling from loose fingers.
Li Fan drew a rusted blade from his waist. Not spirit-forged. Just iron. Just sharp.
He circled to the back, scaling a wall with surprising ease. His body moved as though guided by unseen strings. The pendant pulsed once against his chest—dark light humming quietly.
The first guard died without a sound. A knife between the ribs, angled up.
The second woke just in time to see his own throat open.
Li Fan entered the main hall.
Wu Yanshi sat at a low table, barefoot, laughing at a scroll of crude paintings. He looked up as the door creaked—lazy, unafraid.
Until he saw the figure in black.
"Who the hell—"
Li Fan was already moving.
The distance closed in a breath. Wu scrambled for a talisman, but Li Fan's foot snapped his wrist aside. The scroll burst into flames. He struck again, blade piercing the man's shoulder, pinning him to the wood.
Wu screamed.
"Do you remember her?" Li Fan asked, voice low.
"What—what are you talking about?!"
"The girl from Baoshui Village. Twelve winters. You dragged her from her father's arms."
Wu's face paled. "I don't—I didn't—!"
"You did."
Li Fan twisted the blade.
"I—she was a peasant! I'm a disciple of the Pavilion! You have no right—"
Li Fan leaned close.
"I don't need the right."
The blade slipped into his heart.
Li Fan returned to Qinghe before dawn. He cleaned the blood, burned the scarf, and stood once more before the board.
One name had been crossed out.
He picked up the brush and wrote something new beneath it.
"One for the innocent. One for the forgotten. One for balance."
And for the first time in years, he allowed himself a moment of peace.
Not because he was safe.
But because justice, for once, had spoken louder than power.