Near Qiuya City, the slopes of Heishui Mountain lay like ink-brushed waves, and a small stockade blazed with lantern light and bright ribbons, as if a wedding fire were about to bloom. From any angle it looked ordinary, a mud-and-wood nest on a quiet ridge, yet in the shadowed corners, dark sentries perched like owls, a sign that this hive held more than bees.

Inside a room, a man with a skull tattoo on his arm dragged his fingers across the face of a bound woman, his touch a greasy smear over porcelain. Shame flared hot in her chest, anger snapped cold at her teeth, and her huff was a pebble against a cliff, which only made him grin wider.

“Heh. Miss Daphne, after tonight we’re family,” Ovison chuckled, his voice like oil on water. “With the City Lord as my father-in-law, who in the bandit packs around Qiuya dares bully me?”

At ten, Ovison bowed to a bandit chieftain, a sapling under a winter mentor. Five years of hard tempering, and at fifteen he stepped onto the road, a young blade flashing at dusk.

He carried a sky-sized ambition, imagining himself a king of thieves, his name riding the wind like banners. He dreamed of a lifetime of treasure buried under one lonely hill, a map left like a falling star, and a final breath that told the world where his hoard slept, so whoever found it would crown themselves the next king of thieves.

It was a bright picture hung against storm clouds, and reality slapped like cold rain: even bandits had to play connections in this lawless thicket.

Look at the Thunderclap Gang next door; their boss fed a Qiuya official a river of gold every year. Look at the Shadow Gang to the east; their leader’s sister’s friend’s aunt’s husband was said to be the City Lord’s housekeeper—webs inside webs, like spiders nesting in silk.

Now look at the Heishui Bandit Gang, Ovison’s brood—no ties, no strings, just bare branches in a frost. Every haul they made, they’d bleed twenty percent to Thunderclap, twenty to Shadow, twenty to the so-called Good-Man Gang. Carved slice by slice, the bone left in his hand was only one-tenth, a gnawed scrap after a day of hunting.

A dozen years on the road didn’t grind down his dream. For a dozen years he kept asking, like a moth circling a lamp, how to become the legend the valleys would echo.

And then, a few days back, the key clinked in his mind like a coin—connections.

Yes. The Heishui Gang had none.

Other gangs had roots in the city. They knew when fat sheep would pass, which path the wool would take, the way river stones remember currents. The Heishui lot stumbled blind, faces smeared in darkness, hands groping for luck.

Sometimes what looked like a fat sheep turned out to be a tiger in fog, claws behind soft silhouettes.

Ovison had had enough. Frustration seethed like boiling tar. If they had no ties, he’d hammer one into being.

Two days ago, he spotted a group dressed in fine cloth, fabric that shone like river silk. Rich sheep, almost bleating on the road. He moved like a hawk and took them. They were refined enough to bring servants, but foolish enough to bring no guards, so he snatched them with ease, like plucking fruit at arm’s reach. At the head stood a man and a woman—shameless lovers, scented and smooth.

The well-dressed man kept a smug smile, a “you can’t touch me” mask that made Ovison’s teeth itch. He kept soothing the woman at his side, offering his shoulder like a willow branch for her to lean on.

Watching that shine in front of him, Ovison felt his eyes burn, as if someone had thrown flash powder in a cave. Damn it, his robbery had turned into their romantic stage? He snarled and beat the man until the silk wrinkled and the bones rang. Baron, no baron—first a beating, then talk.

Only after the beating did he learn the truth. The pair were highborn: the man was Clark, son of the Heishui City Lord, an Imperial baron; the woman was Daphne, youngest daughter of the Qiuya City Lord.

Qiuya and Heishui were courting an alliance, so they let Daphne and Clark meet and grow feelings, two swallows in spring. Because it was a “date,” neither side sent guards, only quick-handed servants. In these parts, who would dare refuse face to a City Lord’s daughter or a City Lord’s son?

Unluckily for them, Ovison was one of the few who didn’t care about face. He was a man who aimed for a thief’s crown; how could he bow to City Lords like grass bending to wind?

Truth was, once he took them, there was no path back down the mountain. Let them go today, and tomorrow an army would come like a flood.

So he decided to make it irreversible, to turn the wheel until the rut held. If Daphne became his woman, and if she didn’t want to be a joke in noble salons, she’d keep her silence.

He even drafted the story in his head, ink drying as he grinned: the City Lord’s daughter met danger in the wild, a brave soul named Ovison saved her, and she fell for the courage that blazed like a torch. Once the deed was done, if Daphne wanted the noble circle to forget, she’d have to act out his play with him.

As for that thing named Clark, Ovison tossed him into a cell and threw in a few queers like wolves with the lamb. For now, Clark drifted from Ovison’s mind like mist. Ovison’s head was full of the sweet night ahead and the gilded road beyond.

Forgotten Clark was screaming in the cell, cries braided with pain and a sick sort of thrill, like broken glass glittering under moonlight. The two bandits guarding the door swallowed hard, faces bleaching like paper. Horrifying—no typo—horrifying in a way that made their stomachs crawl. Both rubbed their own backsides, and every scream made their nerves clench like a frost on chrysanthemums.

“Hahaha! The Heishui City Lord’s son, tender as milk. What’s the difference between him and a woman?” one brute cackled, voice dripping like grease.

“Out of the way, Hei. It’s my turn. I haven’t touched a man in months. Damn, Boss Ovison’s rules are too tight,” another growled, hunger like a dog’s pant in summer.

“Right? I remember a pretty little boy—good enough to eat. I planned to find his house and pay a visit at night, but Boss sniffed it out. Depressing. Still, Boss just gifted us a meat toy. Mmm—so touched. Boss didn’t forget us!” the third chimed, their laughter a filthy echo in a well.

The three talked inside about things better left to rot, while the two guards outside looked like corpses propped in armor. They met eyes, then retched in perfect sync, bile splashing like sour rain.

No wonder the Heishui Gang sat at the bottom. With underlings like this, what hope could sprout? Any talent probably fled at the first stink wafting from those three.

Back in the room, Ovison rubbed Daphne’s face again, his hand a dirty brush on fine jade, and satisfaction curled at the corners of his mouth like smoke.

“Nice. Very nice. That face, that skin—no wonder you’re a City Lord’s daughter. Kept like silk. A woman like you barely matches me, the future king of thieves,” Ovison said, sinking deeper into his own painted world, already hearing crowds chant his name like drums.

Watching the self-obsessed bandit chief tangle himself in his web, Daphne felt a pit open in her chest, black and bottomless. Was her first time going to be handed to a man drunk on his own reflection? Where was the white-horse prince? Where was the beautiful, fated meeting? Shouldn’t Clark break out like a storm, crush these bandits like reeds, and carry her back to Qiuya, moonlight on steel?

The script should be that, shouldn’t it?

“I won’t. I won’t yield,” she said, her resolve like a blade drawn from ice. “Touch me, and I’ll bite my tongue and die right here.”

Ovison’s laugh was a knife scratching metal. “Die? If you insist, then tomorrow your naked body will hang from Qiuya’s city wall, a spectacle for the passing crowds—a wind-battered flag. Not just you; your father, your house, your name will rot in the sun. You’ll be a ‘celebrity’ for ten long years.”

Despair rushed her like cold river water, no breath, no sky. Death was simple—a single thought opens a hundred doors. But after death? As the bandit chief warned, stripped of everything, hung on the wall like butchered meat?

“Not only that,” he crooned, voice crawling like ants. “I’ll bring my brothers to leave marks all over your corpse. When you hang, every passerby will know how many men climbed you.”

Daphne’s face drained to chalk, her body trembling like a leaf in winter wind. Her will fell away, puppet strings cut, and she sagged, letting Ovison arrange her like a doll. Nobles prized reputation like jade; five years under his mentor weren’t wasted—Ovison had learned the theories, sharpened them to hooks. Even his old chief had said Ovison could do great things, a tool fit for forging iron.

If not for the lack of connections, would he be this shabby, this mud-splashed?

Genius only needs a fulcrum, and he’ll pry the sun. If Ovison could anchor himself to the City Lord, his dream of a thief’s crown would be a road laid in stone, not a cloud.

“Bandit world, here comes me, Ovison—the King of Thieves!” he roared in his heart, and then he lunged at Daphne like a wolf breaking from brush.