Hanxi couldn't sleep. The events of the day played over and over in his mind—the bandits, the fight, the cold satisfaction of taking down enemies. The way it had felt so right, so natural.
He sat by the stream, watching moonlight dance on the water, when he heard soft footsteps behind him.
"Can't sleep either?" Yue Lian's voice.
She sat down beside him without waiting for an invitation, her elegant robes somehow remaining pristine despite the travel. Up close, in the moonlight, Hanxi could see details he'd missed before—the intelligence in her eyes, the subtle tension in her shoulders, the way she observed everything while pretending to notice nothing.
"After a day like today? No," Hanxi admitted.
They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the stream.
"I need to tell you something," Yue Lian said finally. "And I need you to listen without interrupting, because if I stop talking I might lose my nerve."
Hanxi nodded.
"I'm not naive," she said. "I know everyone thinks I am. The silly merchant princess who makes inappropriate comments and doesn't understand how dangerous the world is. But it's an act. A carefully constructed persona that keeps me safe."
She picked up a pebble and tossed it into the stream. "When I was fourteen, I was one of the most promising young cultivators in the Yue Clan. My meridians were wide, my talent was excellent, everyone said I'd reach Foundation Establishment before twenty. I was going to be proof that merchant clans could produce warriors as strong as any noble house."
Her voice went cold. "Then my cousin—the son of my father's rival branch—hired an assassin to cripple my cultivation. They used a poison that burned through my meridians, leaving scar tissue that blocks qi flow. I can still sense qi, actually better than most cultivators can. But I can't cultivate. I can't advance. I'm stuck at Qi Condensation second level forever."
Hanxi started to speak, but she held up a hand.
"The clan covered it up. Said I'd had an 'unfortunate cultivation accident.' My cousin expressed his deep sympathy. My father knew the truth but couldn't prove it, and accusing a clan member without proof would have started a civil war. So he did the only thing he could—he made me seem useless. Harmless. Not worth killing a second time."
She looked at Hanxi then, and her eyes were hard. "I became the naive girl who says awkward things and doesn't understand cultivation. The embarrassing daughter that Father has to protect because she can't protect herself. And it worked. My cousin stopped seeing me as a threat. The rival branch stopped paying attention to me."
"But you're not harmless," Hanxi said.
"No. I'm not." She smiled, and it was nothing like her usual bright expression. This smile had teeth. "I've spent three years learning everything I can about cultivation, about politics, about how to survive in a world where power is everything and I have none. I've made myself useful in other ways—learning to read people, to negotiate, to understand qi signatures even if I can't use them."
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you're like me." Yue Lian turned to face him fully. "You spent seven years as the weakest disciple, being underestimated, being beaten down. But you never quit. And now you have power—strange, frightening power that you don't fully understand. Power that makes you dangerous."
She leaned closer. "I chose you specifically, Hanxi. Not because you saved me from a spirit beast—though that was convenient timing. I chose you because I saw your qi signature that day in the forest. I saw the gold and silver fighting each other. I saw something that shouldn't exist."
Hanxi's blood ran cold. "You knew from the beginning."
"I suspected. Today confirmed it." She gestured back toward the camp. "You have dual-path cultivation. Solar and lunar, somehow existing in the same body. Do you have any idea how valuable that makes you? How many sects would kill to study you? How many cultivators would murder you just to steal your secrets?"
"Then why bring me to the capital? That makes me more visible, not less."
"Because hiding in a third-rate mountain sect wasn't going to work forever. Elder Cloudwhisker already suspects. Other sects will hear about your breakthrough eventually. The Dusk Codex are already hunting you." Yue Lian's expression was intense. "You need allies, Hanxi. Real allies. People with resources, information, connections. My father can provide those things."
"In exchange for what?"
"Protection. My rival cousin is in the capital. He's still planning to remove me permanently—I have people who keep me informed. But if I have a powerful cultivator as my bodyguard, someone unpredictable and dangerous, he'll hesitate. And in that hesitation, I can plan my revenge."
She said the last part with such cold certainty that Hanxi barely recognized her as the cheerful girl who'd made innuendos about his "capabilities."
"You want to kill your cousin," he said.
"I want justice. If that requires his death, so be it." Her eyes glinted. "But I need to become powerful enough that his death can't be traced back to me. I need time, resources, and protection while I arrange everything. That's where you come in."
"I'm not an assassin."
"I'm not asking you to be. I'm asking you to be exactly what we told everyone you are—my bodyguard. Protect me, help me navigate the capital's cultivation scene, and in return, I'll help you understand your condition. I have access to merchant networks that trade in forbidden knowledge. Cultivation manuals that were banned centuries ago. Information about the Dusk Codex, about dual-path cultivation, about things the sects don't want anyone to know."
She pulled out a small jade slip from her robes. "Like this. It took me two years and most of my personal fortune to acquire. It's a fragment—just a fragment—of something called the Twilight Codex. Not the corrupted version the Dusk Codex uses. The original. The one that was banned and supposedly destroyed three hundred years ago."
Hanxi's heart hammered. "How did you—"
"The merchant underground has its uses. This fragment won't teach you the cultivation method—that information is lost. But it contains historical records. Names. Locations. Including a reference to someone called the Third Moon, who was the last known master of the Twilight Dao." She pressed the jade slip into his hand. "She's alive, Hanxi. Or at least, she was fifty years ago. And she's in hiding somewhere near the capital."
Hanxi stared at the jade slip, his mind reeling. This was too much, too fast. But it was also exactly what he needed.
"Why?" he asked. "Why go through all this trouble for me?"
Yue Lian's expression softened slightly. "Because I know what it's like to have power stolen from you. To be helpless. To be underestimated." She stood up, brushing off her robes. "And because I believe in collecting useful people. You're going to be very useful, Wāng Hanxi. Either you'll become powerful enough to protect me while I destroy my enemies... or you'll die trying, and I'll find someone else."
She started walking back to camp, then paused. "Oh, and for what it's worth? I genuinely do think you're interesting. The naive act isn't entirely an act. I really do say inappropriate things without meaning to. That part of my personality is real. I just also happen to be plotting murder while I do it."
She disappeared into the darkness, leaving Hanxi sitting by the stream with a jade slip full of forbidden knowledge and the certainty that his life had just gotten exponentially more complicated.
He held the jade slip up to the moonlight, and information flooded into his mind—fragmentary, incomplete, but enough to confirm everything.
The Twilight Dao was real. The Third Moon was real. And somewhere in the capital, the last master of a forbidden cultivation path was waiting.
Third trial approaches, the wolf's voice whispered. Sacrifice comes in many forms, moon-child. What are you willing to give up to become what you must be?
Your humanity? Your morality? Your soul?
Or something more precious?
Hanxi didn't have an answer. But he knew one thing with absolute certainty: by the time he reached the capital, he would be a very different person than the one who'd left the Sunlight Phoenix Sect.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen.
Far from the caravan camp, in a cave system hidden deep in the Whispering Shadow Forest, three figures knelt before an altar carved from black stone.
The altar held a single object: a human skull, its eye sockets filled with crystals that glowed with sickly purple light.
"The moon-child moves toward the capital," the first figure said. She wore robes of midnight blue, her face hidden behind a silver mask. "Our scouts confirm his qi signature—perfect dual-path cultivation. Natural, not forced. He's exactly what we need."
"The ritual requires him alive," the second figure added. This one was male, his mask bronze, his voice raspy. "The Third Moon will surely sense our approach if we try to take him in the capital."
"Then we don't take him in the capital." The third figure stood, towering over the others. His mask was red, carved with symbols that seemed to writhe in the dim light. "We let the Third Moon find him first. Let her begin his training. Let her make him stronger."
"That's risky," Silver Mask said. "If he completes the Twilight Dao training—"
"He won't. No one has in three centuries." Red Mask's voice was confident. "The Twilight Dao requires perfect balance—perfect fusion of opposing forces. Even the most talented cultivators fail. They either tip too far solar and burn themselves out, or too far lunar and lose their humanity."
"And when he fails?" Bronze Mask asked.
"Then he'll be desperate. Broken. Looking for any solution to save himself from the imbalance tearing him apart." Red Mask placed his hand on the skull, and the purple light intensified. "That's when we offer him salvation. The Dusk Codex. The path of forced balance through absorption."
"Will he accept?"
"They always do. Desperation makes people foolish." Red Mask's voice grew cold. "And once he's ours, we perform the Crimson Moon Ritual. His natural dual-path cultivation will stabilize the technique, perfecting what we've been trying to achieve for a century. No more corruption. No more madness. Just pure, controlled twilight power."
Silver Mask bowed. "And if he refuses?"
"Then we kill him and harvest his cultivation base anyway. Either way, the Dusk Codex gets what it needs." Red Mask gestured to the shadows, where more figures stirred. "Send word to our agents in the capital. Watch the moon-child. Record his training. Learn from his mistakes. And when the time comes..."
The purple light pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
"We strike."