Chapter 131: The Ledger First

The ride back from Lin Laifu’s estate felt entirely different from the one that had carried them there. Old Ma drove at an easy, unhurried pace now, no longer straining to listen for danger in every creak of the wheels, and Bai Bao had finally allowed himself to slouch against the carriage wall instead of sitting rigid with his hand on his blade.

Lu Feng, for his part, stared out the small window at the canal sliding past in the dark and let himself feel, just for a moment, something close to relief.

It didn’t last long.

They were perhaps halfway back to the main avenue, the canal path narrowing between two rows of shuttered shopfronts, when Lu Feng felt it. There was a presence. A distant but deliberate one, matching their pace from somewhere behind and slightly to the left, keeping just far enough back to stay out of easy sight. He didn’t turn to look.

He’d learned, over the past several months, that the moment you let someone know you’d noticed them, you lost whatever advantage that knowledge gave you.

He glanced instead toward Bai Bao, whose posture hadn’t changed at all, and toward Old Ma’s silhouette up on the driver’s bench, equally unaware. Neither of them had caught it. Lu Feng wasn’t entirely surprised. Whoever was following them was being careful, deliberate, staying just at the edge of what an ordinary person’s senses could catch.

He weighed his options in the space of a few heartbeats. He could have Bai Bao circle back and confront whoever it was directly, force a fight in a narrow alley where numbers wouldn’t matter as much as skill. He could order Old Ma to pick up the pace and try to outrun them, though a carriage rarely outran a determined pursuer on foot for long. Or he could simply let it happen, let this unknown watcher trail them all the way home and see exactly what they did with that information.

There was also the question of what kind of watcher this actually was. A trained cultivator would have carried some trace of qi about them, some faint hum beneath the surface that Lu Feng had grown accustomed to sensing even at a distance, the same way he’d sensed nothing at all from the four thugs who’d gone after Han Lin.

This presence felt different again. Quieter. Harder to pin down, as though whoever it belonged to had trained specifically in the art of not being noticed rather than in outright combat. That alone told him something useful. Iron Fang wasn’t relying solely on muscle anymore. They had people who specialized in watching, and watching well.

He chose the third option.

It wasn’t recklessness. If anything, it was the opposite. A single stalker trailing a carriage at a respectful distance, making no move to attack, was far more useful left alone than confronted. Confronting them risked revealing exactly how much Lu Feng had already noticed, how sharp his senses had become, information he had no intention of handing over for free.

Better to let them believe their little shadow game was working. Better to see where they went, who they reported to, what they did next.

So he sat back against the cushions, said nothing, and let the presence trail them the rest of the way home.

It peeled off just before they reached the outer wall of his own estate, slipping away into a side alley with the same careful, unhurried patience it had followed them with the entire ride. Lu Feng noted the exact spot where it vanished, filed it away alongside everything else he’d catalogued that evening, and said nothing to Bai Bao or Old Ma about any of it. There would be time to deal with that particular thread later. Tonight had already been long enough.

The estate gate swung open at their approach, the guards there sharper and more alert than the ones they’d left behind at Lin Laifu’s, and Lu Feng felt some of the tension in his shoulders finally ease as the familiar walls closed around them. Bai Bao carried the chest of gold in himself, refusing to let anyone else handle it, and Old Ma led the horses off toward the stables with the quiet satisfaction of a man glad to finally be done for the night.

Lu Feng found Ye Chenxue exactly where he expected her to be, still in the training hall despite the late hour, moving through a slow, deliberate form beneath a single hanging lantern. Sweat had darkened the collar of her training robe, and a faint mist of qi still clung to her movements even as she wound the form down toward stillness, the air around her carrying that particular charged quiet that always settled after she’d been at this a while. She stopped the moment he stepped through the doorway, her sharp eyes taking in his face before he’d said a single word.

"Something happened," she said. Not a question.

"A great deal happened." Lu Feng crossed the room and lowered himself onto one of the low benches along the wall, suddenly aware of just how tired he actually was. "Lin Laifu was poisoned. Two nights ago, at a private celebration in his own home. A stranger posing as hired staff served him wine personally, and by morning he could barely stand."

Ye Chenxue’s expression didn’t change much, but something in her stance sharpened, the same way it had in the alley earlier that day. "Is he alive?"

"Barely, when I got there. I used the Heaven and Earth Mending Pill on him." Lu Feng rubbed a hand across his face. "It worked. He’s weak, but he’ll recover fully given time."

"That leaves you with only the one pill you used on me, and whatever else remains from that batch."

"I know." Lu Feng exhaled slowly. "It was worth it."

Ye Chenxue lowered herself onto the bench across from him, folding her hands in her lap, waiting for him to continue rather than pressing further. It was one of the things he’d come to rely on in her, that patience, the way she never demanded more than he was ready to give in a given moment.

"I think it’s the same group that came after Han Lin today," he said. "Iron Fang. The timing is too precise to be coincidence. Two people close to me, attacked within hours of each other, in ways specific enough that neither attack could have been thrown together carelessly."

"You think they know exactly who matters to you."

"I think they’ve known for a while," Lu Feng said. "Which means this isn’t going to stop with a poisoned cup of wine and four hired thugs in an alley. That was them testing the waters. Finding out how we’d respond, how deep our defenses actually run."

"And how did we respond?"

"You beat four grown men without so much as drawing on your cultivation," Lu Feng said, a faint, tired smile touching his mouth despite everything. "And I saved Lin Laifu’s life with a pill they probably assumed didn’t exist outside of legend. I imagine that’s given them quite a bit to think about tonight."

Ye Chenxue’s mouth curved, just slightly, at that. "Good."

"There’s something else," Lu Feng said, his tone shifting, more serious now. "On the way back, someone followed the carriage. Kept their distance, careful about it. Neither Bai Bao nor Old Ma noticed."

Her eyes narrowed. "But you did."

"I did. I let them follow. Didn’t confront them, didn’t try to lose them. I wanted to see what they’d do, and I didn’t want to show my hand yet." He met her gaze steadily. "They peeled off near our outer wall. I marked the spot. We can look into it properly tomorrow."

"You should have told me sooner," Ye Chenxue said, though there was no real reproach in it, only the flat concern she rarely bothered to disguise around him.

"I’m telling you now."

She studied him for a long moment, the lantern light casting soft shadows across her face, before she finally spoke again. "So Iron Fang is escalating. Poison, kidnapping attempts, and now surveillance close enough to follow you home unnoticed by two trained men." Her jaw tightened. "This isn’t going to end with us simply reacting to whatever they throw at us next."

"No," Lu Feng agreed. "It isn’t. I already told Lin Laifu the same thing. I want to build something that ends this properly. Catches them all at once, before they get another chance at Han Lin, or you, or anyone else in this household."

"And?"

"And before I do that, I want to grow stronger first." He said it plainly, without embarrassment, the way he’d learned to say most things around her. "What I have now got Lin Laifu through one poisoning and got you through four thugs in an alley. It won’t be enough against whatever Iron Fang actually is behind all this hired muscle and quiet poison. I felt it, fighting the Primal Chaos Bead. There’s a difference between surviving something and actually being strong enough to end it on my own terms."

He paused, turning the thought over once more before he continued. "I don’t want to build a plan around hoping I’m strong enough when the moment actually comes. I want to already know I am, before I ever put anyone else at risk executing it. Han Lin, you, Lin Laifu, everyone in this household. If I move too early and I’m wrong about my own strength, it isn’t just my life on the line."

Ye Chenxue considered that for a moment, then nodded slowly. "A reasonable instinct. Rushing into a plan against an enemy you don’t fully understand, with power you haven’t finished growing into, is how people end up losing far more than a business partner."

"That’s what I thought too." Lu Feng leaned back against the wall, some of the day’s exhaustion finally settling fully into his bones. "So for now, we watch. We gather what information we can about who’s actually behind Iron Fang’s interest in us. And I focus on pushing my own cultivation forward, so that when I do move against them, it’s from a position where I can’t lose."

"How long do you intend to wait?"

"Not long. Weeks, not months. Just enough time to close the gap between what I can do now and what I’ll need to be able to do." He glanced toward her, something steadier in his expression now than there had been all evening. "Will you help me with that?"

"You didn’t need to ask," Ye Chenxue said simply, rising from the bench and extending a hand to help him up as well. "Rest tonight. We’ll start tomorrow."

Lu Feng took her hand and let himself be pulled to his feet, the weight of the evening’s gold, its poison, and its quiet unseen watcher all still sitting heavily behind his eyes even as he finally allowed himself to imagine what came next.

As they walked together toward the main house, the training hall’s lantern guttering behind them, Ye Chenxue glanced sideways at him once, her expression unreadable in the dark.

"You never told me what you’ll do about the ledger," she said. "The one Han Lin found back before we had this estate secured. Or the men who came asking about it that first week."

Lu Feng paused mid-step, surprised she’d brought it up now of all times. "I haven’t forgotten it. I just haven’t had the time to look at it properly. Between the pills, Su Rong’s patronage, and now this, it’s been sitting locked away longer than it should have."

"Perhaps that’s where we start," Ye Chenxue said. "Before you go chasing strength for its own sake, know what you’re actually preparing to fight. The ledger might tell us exactly why Iron Fang wants this land, and this household, badly enough to poison a merchant and stalk a carriage through half the district."

Lu Feng considered that for a long moment, then allowed himself a small, tired nod. "Tomorrow, then. The ledger first, training after."

"Tomorrow," she agreed, and together they crossed the last stretch of courtyard toward the house, the night finally quiet around them for the first time since the afternoon’s chaos had begun.