The gentle middle-aged man spoke, his voice calm as still water, yet the confidence in it rang like iron under the sun. He had reason to be sure. He might not be the storm’s eye, but he was a mountain that cast a long shadow. Among the two families’ true negotiators, he held a seat like a chess piece guarding the river.
You could say the An clan’s road ahead hung like a compass in his hand, its needle turning where his will pointed.
“My daughter, it’s rare for you to ask me for aid,” he said, mild as a spring breeze and just as cutting. “Don’t forget—asking your father isn’t free. For a failure of a father like me, the price is steep as a cliff.”
He didn’t soften the blade. An Ruyi knew it too well. He kept his word like frost that burns green leaves; if she broke a promise, the family she leaned on would turn into a knife pressed between her shoulder blades.
Because of that, she dared to seek his help, like walking back into a storm you trust more than a smiling stranger.
Right now, no outside force felt solid; only her clan was rock underfoot. In that clan, the one whose words sank like anchors was her father. With every other rope snapping in the wind, she had to take this rope.
“…I’ll pay the price,” she said, her breath thin as mist. “I’ll hand over what needs handing over…”
“No, no, no,” he chuckled, warm as tea, sly as smoke. “I just want to talk more with you. You’ve been battling out there for years, and I didn’t do a thing. It’s rare you ask me. Of course I’ll help—otherwise how can I face your mother…”
“Shut up, Father.”
His rambling felt like sand in a wound. An Ruyi’s face cooled like ice on iron. She and Changqing were dancing on a wire over a ravine; she had no mood for a father she hadn’t seen in years to fill the air with fog. She’d left the clan back then because of him.
Those years were winter in her bones, and she would never forget the cold.
She wasn’t some fragile darling or a naïve girl; she knew every wish demanded an offering. She couldn’t bear the same roof as him, so she paid the toll—she walked out and let the family’s shelter fall away like torn canvas.
Who knew the bitterness she swallowed, night after night like rainwater in an empty room?
She endured and grew thorns. She came back as a steel-willed businesswoman, a banner snapping in a hard wind. The clan backed her; new enemies gathered like crows on a branch. Intentional or not, to the clan she was useful, a blade with a handle they could hold.
Now she was willing to throw her own hard-won assets into the fire to pull a few people out of the blaze. She’d clawed her way up from a green shoot to a tree once; she could do it twice, three times. If breath stayed in her chest, the mountain would still be there to climb.
Keep the green hills, and the firewood will always come.
“Ruyi, I’m sorry. About those years…”
“Father, can we not do this now?” She watched Changqing drop two gunmen like wheat cut by a sickle. “If I walk out alive, we’ll have time to talk.”
Their lives balanced like a reed boat on rapids. She had no space for small talk; even on the call, she flicked off quick messages to the few “helpers” still within reach, like sending sparrows into the trees.
She hadn’t survived this long by clinging to one branch. She managed rival forces like a weaver setting warp and weft; without that finesse, a lone woman would’ve been picked clean to the bone by wolves.
Listening to her behind him, Changqing found ground under his feet. He snapped a gunman’s arm with a crack like breaking bamboo, then hammered a knee so it folded like wet paper. He made sure none of them could chase. As they neared the lower flights, he raised a hand, a quiet signal to slow, like a hunter lowering his breath.
He wouldn’t take her down without a firm signal. If they went straight to the lobby, they’d enter a funnel with only one way out, a throat that could be pinched shut. One team blocking the doors below, another raining down from above, and even a god with three heads and six arms would be buried under waves.
“Ruyi, never underestimate the clan’s reach,” her father said, his laugh smooth as lacquer, his tone steady as a map laid flat. “Find a place and wait five minutes. It’ll be handled. Ten minutes later, go to the fifth floor. Every room there will be safe.”
His confidence spread like a net across the sea. It was hard to believe help could arrive like lightning, but he wasn’t a man who blew smoke into mirrors.
She relayed it in a whisper, a leaf rustling in the stairwell. Both of them let out a breath, the tension slipping like a knot undone. Under Changqing’s guard, they slid into the corner of the stair landing and sat on the cold concrete like stones under shade. He shrugged off his jacket and set it on her shoulders like a quiet roof.
He’d glanced down the next flights. No enforcers, no gunmen. The stairwell was a narrow gorge; there was nowhere to hide. Aside from the landing, a head popping out would be a bird against a bare sky—impossible to miss.
“Thank your bodyguard more,” her father added, voice dry as tinder catching flame. “If not for him, it wouldn’t be this smooth. He put down plenty of gunmen. Rest easy. The hotel doesn’t have many sleepers left. Even if someone rushes, he can clean them up.”
“Good… Father, I’ll leave it to you.”
She hung up and let herself fold, her weight settling against Changqing like a tired willow leaning on a rock. For the first time, her black eyes showed a fatigue that was smoke after battle. In front of him, she could finally let the iron shell fall.
“Young Miss, get some rest.”
Changqing’s words were simple as warm water. Her perfume was a faint citrus drifting like dawn air; her body was soft as spring moss. A stray thought stirred like a monkey in the mind, but he held his will like a sword. The moment allowed no wandering.
Then the other phone rang—trill—cutting their quiet like a pebble on calm water.
They traded a glance, sharp as knife and sheath. A call now, on her spare phone—odd as thunder from a clear sky. Was the An clan already moving like storm riders? Had those fair-weather allies flipped faces in a blink?
That chance was thin as ice. Even Ruyi didn’t believe it.
She trusted her own clan’s hands more than fickle banners. The An clan cast a wide net over many waters; those turncoat families couldn’t match it. And this soon? No. Not with her father, a man who settled accounts after the harvest, never missing a stalk. Once the clan moved, not a whisper would leak; after, he’d skin their hides layer by layer.
So who was calling?
“It can’t be Young Master Li calling to beg, right?” Changqing grinned, a dry leaf in the wind.
He was joking, and they both knew it. Once Ruyi called her father, the matter left her fingers like a kite on a stronger string. A few more hired knives couldn’t dam a flood. At this point, personal strength was a mantis bracing a chariot.
Ruyi smiled, weary as dusk. She eased Changqing aside, rose, and took the phone. Unknown number blinked like a masked face. She smoothed her voice, tired silk over steel, and tapped accept.
“Hello?”
“An Ruyi… you’re hard to kill, aren’t you?”
The young voice on the line carried a curl of mockery, a blade wrapped in velvet. It wasn’t strange to her; it was a stain she’d scrubbed before. Her lips hooked, a thorn under a petal. She lifted her voice and let it cut.
“Same to you, Young Master Li. Watch your own men. One of them might be aching to stick a knife in your back.”
The words hit home like a hammer on a bruise. She was still breathing, and that mocked his “talented” hounds and their master. He’d sent a string of killers; they’d failed and fallen like broken arrows. Calling now was like offering his cheek for a slap.
Changqing couldn’t help a smile, warm as a small fire. Hearing his boss swing back, his chest loosened. He checked the stairs above and below—no quiet feet, no shadowed shapes. His shoulders dropped a notch, a bow unstrung.
Still, the man wasn’t simple. A call at this hour wouldn’t just be a face put out for punishment. Maybe he’d sent a new blade to make a last stand. Ruyi had just reached for the clan; panic could make a cornered beast bite. The thought tugged him toward the floor above—Luo Huo was still up there. Those two short killers hadn’t come down. Maybe Luo Huo had cut them off, or maybe he’d pinned them. He chose to believe in his senior like a lantern held high.
“An Ruyi, everything’s as you wished,” Young Master Li panted, his breath ragged as wind through broken shutters. Noise churned behind him like a market in a storm. “Your bodyguard’s pretty capable, huh? A sniper couldn’t take you. Those two little freaks couldn’t take you. I sent a stack of thugs and gunmen, and you still won’t die. Quite the skill.”
The rasp in his throat made Ruyi frown, a cloud gathering between her brows. All she had left was Changqing at her side like a lone spear. The old partners were reeds in a flood.
“Heh. What’s the point of this now?” She let a chill laugh fall like sleet. “Shouldn’t you be calling the Li clan for help instead of wasting breath on me? Need me to connect you?”
She was needling him, pulling threads while he bled. If she could pry out an extra scrap of information before he went under, she would. He’d cost her dearly—money, men, time—she meant to skin him for it. She wasn’t cruel for sport, but she wasn’t kind to enemies. She wouldn’t hand out chances like sweets.
He suddenly gave a strangled laugh, wild as a fox at the cliff’s edge. He coughed twice, heavy as stones, then spoke.
“Put me on speaker. Let your bodyguard listen.”
“Why should I? I don’t take cues from a loser waving from the bottom of a pit.”
A cold ripple ran through her, a hawk’s shadow over the grass. She wasn’t afraid Changqing would be swayed; if he were the type to turn, she’d have died a dozen times already. But a man on the brink did mad things. Her hunches landed like arrows; she raised a hand to Changqing and tapped speaker.
“Go on, Young Master Li,” she said, voice flat as a blade. “I’m listening.”
When Young Master Li singled him out to take the call, surprise rippled through Changqing like a pebble hitting still water. He drifted to An Ruyi’s side, eyes sweeping the stair’s top and bottom like a hunter watching both mouths of a ravine. A bad premonition slid cold along his spine; was it his pushback days ago that lit this man’s lantern on him?
“Cocky, aren’t you.”
“A mere brute—think you’re faster than a bullet?”
“Lowborn—mind your tone; don’t splash mud when you speak to me.”
“I don’t know why you insist on that kind of talk, Young Master Li.”
“Your mind’s sharp enough to cut bamboo; why copy those cardboard TV villains?”
“That’s just dumb, isn’t it, Young Master Li—like swinging a sword at fog.”
“I don’t take you for a fool—drop the idea of turning me; that net won’t catch this fish.”
At “lowborn,” Changqing’s face closed like a storm shutter. The mess they were in was stamped with Young Master Li’s seal; expecting him to show a pleasant face was like asking winter to bloom.
