Don’t overthink it; I just felt you needed these, and there aren’t any snares or spring-loaded teeth hiding inside, just plain tools laid out like stones by a clear stream.

Qianchun’s body trembled like a leaf in a sudden draft, and Lingchen Yao caught the shiver the way a hunter senses a quiver in tall grass.

“Are you hurt?” His voice fell soft, like rain on paper walls, before the question cut to the bone.

Qianchun bit her lip, a petal pressed white, and gave a tiny nod, the way a shadow nods when wind brushes lantern light.

Lingchen Yao tapped his forehead like knocking on a wooden fish, then dug through the box and fished out a fresh towel, a roll of gauze, and a tin of disinfectant, sparse stock lined up like rations in winter.

His medical supplies were meager as thin soup; that was basically all of them, gathered like the last coals in a brazier.

Qianchun blinked back to herself and looked at him; her voice buzzed like a mosquito skimming a pond. “Is it really okay?”

Even with his sharp ears, the words were reeds in mist, and he still caught them and nodded, a quiet oar stroke across still water.

Before he could speak again, she scooped up the clothes he’d given and bolted out the door like a startled swallow, leaving the Eye Orb and Lingchen Yao staring wide and small like moon and firefly.

“Kid, your flirting chops are top-shelf, so why’re you still single?” the Eye Orb grumbled like a kettle, then snorted the steam away. “Ah, forget it—business first.”

It shelved the joke like a book and spun on its axis, and Lingchen Yao felt the point land like a pin on silk, so he voiced the thorn in his mind.

“The address on that paper—it’s fake, right? There’s no secret archive, only dust in a locked chest?”

Under the Eye Orb’s watch, Lingchen Yao had joined Aklatia, and the Eye Orb had sketched the scattered safehouses like stars on a night map, but that address was a blind spot, a dark well.

“Right, it’s fake; that place is just an abandoned construction site, a skeleton in sunlight,” the Eye Orb said, cool as a fan in summer. “There’s no data inside, but it’s our loyalty scale—she’s the weight, and we’re the hands.”

The plan was to seed that empty husk with research pages and a few patent crumbs, each sheet half-truth and half-lure, a koi’s back glinting above muddy water.

About twenty minutes later, Qianchun stepped out of the bathroom wearing the hoodie he’d given, steam trailing her like pale fog from a mountain spring.

He didn’t know how she’d wrapped the bandages alone, but the answer hummed like wind through bamboo—magic did the tying when hands fell short.

She looked a shade younger than Lingchen Yao, a student age like fresh green willow, yet she’d joined the underground while dew was still on her years, which meant thorns hid under her silence.

“If you’ve got trouble, say it,” he said, voice steady as a tea tray. “We don’t have much, but we’ll do what we can.”

The Eye Orb shot him a look sour as pickle brine; the kid could barely feed himself, his funds a trickle from Chen Xiaoyin like a lifeline thread.

Still, it swallowed the jab like a fish swallows bait and nodded along, ally to ally, at least until the tide turned.

“Thank you.” Qianchun turned her back and whispered, the word fluttering like a moth toward lamplight.

In the lull that followed, Lingchen Yao learned a slice of her past, caught her full name—Qin Qianchun—like a name carved faint on bamboo, and learned she had no fixed roof, just sky and corners.

The organization had spare beds like empty bunks on a night train, yet she’d been handed a dead order heavy as a millstone.

Next time she returned, she had to bring back and hand in Aklatia’s patent data, like walking into a storm with a lantern guttering.

“What kind of outfit is that?” the Eye Orb couldn’t hold the lid down; the steam blew like thunder. “Their top is Cantata Two, yet they’d throw away First Symphony; eyes on crumbs, blind to loaves, begging to starve.”

“Even Aklatia won’t dare, and won’t stomach, discarding First Symphony,” it spat, a pebble skimming black water. “Who do they think they are?”

Lingchen Yao invited Qianchun to rest there for the night, since she drifted like a stray wind, and asked the landlady for an empty room like a monk asking for one more bowl.

He’d never forget the landlady’s look, fox-curious with gossip-fire, nor her thunderclap generosity when she waved the fee away like smoke.

She took no rent and tossed him a strand of encouragement like a red thread; he knew she’d read the scene wrong, but free rent was sweet as ripe persimmon.

That night, after Qianchun fell asleep like a stone sinking into a clear well, Lingchen Yao hurried to the abandoned building and laid out the Eye Orb’s doctored pages, bait scattered like seeds before rain.

They waited for Qianchun to step into the net—no, to come gather the threads the wind had “forgotten,” words edited and edged like mirrored blades.

At dawn, he greeted her and slipped out, saying “out for a bit,” then sat at the downstairs breakfast stall, steam from buns curling like morning mist as he waited for her to set off.

Qianchun wore only a mask and no other paint; over-wrapping would draw the Order Keeper’s eye like red on snow, and today she was just a girl adrift like a leaf on a canal.

The abandoned block sat close to his rented place, a short walk like counting twenty breaths, and she found it easily, a stray cat homing on a familiar alley.

Lingchen Yao and the Eye Orb followed from afar, shadows on the wall, eyes pinned to her every move like needles on silk.

He remembered that two years back this plot had shouted “development,” foundation poured in half a month, walls rising in another half, then the place dropped like a half-folded kite.

Good thing the cranes froze when they did; otherwise, that stingy landlady would’ve raised the rent again like a tide chewing the shore.

The moment Qianchun stepped inside, unease slid under her ribs like cold water; someone’s gaze crawled on her skin, ill as rot on fruit.

Had someone beaten her here, or had Aklatia sent a shadow to weigh her heart? Whoever skulked behind, she could only grit her teeth and walk forward like a reed in wind.

Some walls stood half-built, teeth of brick in a jaw of light, and sunlight slanted in like swords, stripping the gloom to ribbons.

Last night’s hard rain had left puddles like cloud-mirrors on the floor, and the morning sun lifted them into steam like spirits leaving bowls.

The pages weren’t obvious, hidden like fish under ripples; finding them would take time counted in breaths and blinks.

She circled the building, mapping escape lines like chalk on stone, then began to gather the papers with a careful net.

Most pages were water-bleached and colorless, fire-scorched and eaten hollow, wind-gnawed and time-wrinkled like old bark, yet between the lines the truth gleamed like a thin vein of silver.

With fear and hope braided like black and white threads, she stuffed the papers into her small bag and climbed toward the second floor, feet light as fern.

Right then, a bright arrow scraped her cheek like a cold fingernail and buried itself into a soft patch of wall, a snake’s head in clay.

She knew that arrow—the fletching, the smell of oil; it was her comrade’s work—no, her former comrade’s—and the killing look had her name like frost on glass.

She had been waiting there half an hour, coiled like a viper, just to strike when Qianchun’s hands were full of treasure and her back open to night.

Sharp arrows bit the air, and the whoosh screeched like a hawk; Qianchun rolled forward-right, smooth as a bead on string, and hit the stairs to the third floor.

She flicked a throwing knife from her bag, steel flashing like a fish breaking water, and let the words fall like wind bells. “Ancient wind, show your strength once more…”

Her Mana was tied to air, to currents like river veins; she could feel moves through drafts and nudge objects along the flow like leaves on eddies.

Bandages, light as husk, she could dance freely within five meters; knives were stubborn birds, at the edge of her reach, the limit line in dusk.

Invisible air wrapped the knife like clear silk and drove it straight at the place the arrow had flown from, a thread back to the spindle.

A figure jumped in along the outer wall like a lizard and slipped inside; the knife struck cement’s flank, then dropped from the third floor, a silver tear falling.

It speared into the wet soil behind Lingchen Yao, standing upright like a reed; he eased it free like pulling a thorn and felt its hungry edge.

The blade shone clean, no mud clinging, sharp as winter’s first ice, and he knew it as Qianchun’s; last night she’d held this edge against his breath.

“Close one,” he whispered, a dry laugh rattling like pebbles. “One step more outside and I’d be incense smoke.”

If she’d drawn steel, storms were already breaking; that meant trouble bit her heel, so he slipped up to the third floor like a shadow up a stair.

He arrived just in time to see Qianchun locked with another girl, bodies twined like vines, rolling and striking in a thorn patch.

Her back was wounded, a red seam like a cracked lacquer, yet in close quarters she pressed the bow-girl down a notch, weight like a tide.

Lingchen Yao kept his hands still, moon behind a cloud; unless she faltered, he wouldn’t interfere—this was her trial stone.

“What are you doing, Yao Ting!” Qianchun’s voice cut like a whistle, and the name landed like a thrown chopstick.

Yao Ting ditched her nocked arrow and bowed wordless into an elbow that smashed Qianchun’s wound like a hammer finding clay, forcing a gasp like steam.

Seizing the beat, Yao Ting broke from the clinch like a fish snapping the net and fell back to her bow’s embrace.

“I’m the boss’s eyes on you,” she said, voice thin as wire. “You’ve been failing, and the boss smells betrayal like smoke.”

“Coiling snake of thunder, become a sharp arrow,” she chanted, breath lifting like prayer flags. “Pierce the foe before me and carry me victory like a banner.”

She seized the bow; a gray Magic Stone sat in its heart like a cold moon, and as she sang, golden lightning bled from it and wrapped the metal tip like living ivy.

The arrow swaddled in lightning sliced through the air-shield around Qianchun like a blade through silk, grazed her arm, and Blood surged out like a spring breaking rock.

The jumping arcs gnawed the wound like ants of fire, and numbness flooded her limbs like winter river water, fixing her in place like a pinned butterfly.

“I didn’t betray the group; I’m retrieving data for us,” she lied with a calm face and a pounding heart, words woven like reed mats. “Why rob me—why kill under the same banner?”

She twisted and fought the numb like trying to wade syrup, and only tilted a fraction, while arcs rode her Blood like wild eels through reed beds.

Magic kept the damage shy of death like a hand on a sleeve, but she knew the next arrow would drive true and rest in her heart like a nail in wood.

The bow drew full, curve like a cold new moon, and blue-gold arcs ticked along the shaft like insects; Yao Ting’s face smoothed to stone.

“I’ll tell you plain,” she said, voice low as a cellar. “Qianchun, I hate your kind like grit in my teeth.”

“You can do everything; you always haul the fattest meat,” she hissed, eyes like broken glass. “I barely keep my bowl half-full.”

“You dazzled the old boss and ate the light like a peony, but the new boss doesn’t know your scent,” she went on, Mana gathering in her hand like stormwater.

Her right hand tightened; she poured all her Mana into the arrow until the air around it popped like frying oil, and golden arcs leapt from the Magic Stone to coil her forearm like bracelets of fire.

“As long as you fail again and again, the new boss will drop you like a cracked bowl,” she snarled. “This time you must fail; without you, I get the sun.”

“I won’t live like a sewer rat, gnawing at damp bread and hunting corners for sleep,” she spat. “I’ll eat warm and sleep warm, like a cat on a stove.”

“So die,” she said, and the word thudded like a door. “I’ll bring the data back and report you like this: Qianchun tried to flee with the intel; I found her and put her down.”

“This place is perfect,” her smile cut thin as a blade. “No one will find you; it’s a grave sewn to your size.”

She let go, and the arrow, wrapped in thunderlight like a dragonfly in gold thread, flew straight for Qianchun’s heart.