Chapter 134: Debt Repaid

Lu Bao moved through the estate grounds with a mid-sized cloth bag clutched tight against his chest, his steps quick but uneven, the way a man walks when every part of him wants to be somewhere else entirely.

The morning sun caught the towering rooftops of the Lu Family estate behind him, one of the grandest properties in all of Silver Jade City, its high walls and manicured gardens a stark contrast to the tight, anxious knot sitting in his stomach.

He didn’t look back at the estate as he crossed the outer courtyard toward the gate. He didn’t dare. Looking back felt too much like hesitation, and hesitation was a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore, not after everything he’d already done to get to this exact moment.

Servants passed him along the way, bowing their heads as he went, none of them sparing a second glance at the bag he carried or the direction he walked in. That, at least, was something he’d managed to preserve through all of this.

Nobody in this household had any reason to suspect their master’s brother of anything more sinister than another quiet morning errand. He intended to keep it that way for as long as his coin purse and his nerves both allowed.

The carriage was waiting just beyond the estate’s outer wall, plain and unmarked, the kind of vehicle that drew no attention whatsoever from anyone passing by, which he suspected was precisely the point. He slowed as he approached it, his pace faltering despite himself, his grip on the bag tightening until his knuckles ached.

He’d made this same walk twice before over the past several weeks, each time to different meeting points scattered across the city, each time with his stomach twisted into the same anxious knot. He still hadn’t grown used to it. He doubted he ever would.

Steadying himself with a breath he didn’t entirely trust, Lu Bao reached for the carriage door and pulled it open.

The face that greeted him from inside was scarred badly enough that it took a conscious effort not to flinch, a jagged line running from temple to jaw on one side, another shorter mark crossing just below his left eye.

The man’s expression carried none of the polite indifference Lu Bao had grown used to from servants and merchants alike. It carried only cold, patient appraisal.

"You’re late," the scarred man said, his voice as rough as the marks on his face.

"I am not," Lu Bao said, climbing in and pulling the door shut behind him with more force than necessary, an attempt at composure that fooled neither of them. "If anything, you arrived early."

The scarred man studied him for a long moment, then let out a short, humorless huff that might have been amusement. "Early is better than late where Bloodhound is concerned. You’d do well to remember that."

Lu Bao said nothing to that, settling back against the worn cushion of the seat as the carriage lurched into motion, rolling past the outer guards stationed near the estate gate. Neither guard so much as glanced at the plain carriage as it passed, exactly as arranged.

Nobody within the Lu Family knew where their disgraced third uncle disappeared to on these quiet mornings, and Lu Bao intended to keep it that way for as long as humanly possible.

They rolled out into the wider avenues of Silver Jade City, the carriage picking up a steady, unhurried pace through streets already busy with morning traffic, carts and pedestrians weaving around each other in the practiced chaos of a city long accustomed to its own rhythm.

"You have the balance?" the scarred man asked, without preamble.

Lu Bao nodded quickly, lifting the bag slightly so the other man could see it, and hear the faint clink of coin shifting inside. "All of it. Exactly as agreed."

The scarred man reached out and took the bag without asking permission, hefting it once in his palm to gauge its weight before setting it down on the seat beside him, apparently satisfied enough by feel alone not to count it there in the carriage.

"Bloodhound will be pleased," he said. "You’ve cut it close these past few installments, but you’ve made every one of them so far. That counts for something in his eyes."

Something in Lu Bao’s chest loosened, just slightly, the first real relief he’d allowed himself to feel in days. "Then we’re settled. For this final installment, at least."

"Yeah, you’re finally done with the payments." The scarred man agreed, though there was nothing warm in the way he said it.

Lu Bao turned to look out the small window as the carriage rolled on, unwilling to let the man see how badly his hands were trembling even now, even after handing over the last of what he’d managed to gather.

In truth, the bag now resting on the seat across from him held well over a thousand gold coins, the entirety of his own personal savings scraped together over years of careful, if modest, accumulation, combined with several tens more he’d been forced to borrow quietly from distant cousins and minor relatives within the Lu Family, each loan wrapped in a story just plausible enough not to invite deeper questions.

It had taken every ounce of pride he had left to ask, and every ounce of cunning he possessed to keep any of them from guessing the real reason behind it.

Forty-one men. That was the number that haunted him most nights, more than the debt itself, more than the fear of what Bloodhound might do if he failed to pay it. Forty-one men from Bloodhound’s own ranks, sent out on his word, acting on information he himself had provided about Lu Feng’s supposed weakness, his supposed helplessness, a mad boy exiled from his own family with nothing but a maid and empty pockets to his name.

He could still remember the confidence he’d felt handing over that information, the smug satisfaction of finally ridding the family of an embarrassment he’d never wanted around in the first place. He’d painted Lu Feng as pathetic, harmless, an easy mark for men who dealt in far more dangerous work than chasing down one disgraced nephew on a lonely road. It had seemed, at the time, like the simplest solution to a problem that had bothered him for years.

Lu Bao had been wrong. Catastrophically, fatally wrong. Whatever Lu Feng had actually become it whoever had helped him out somewhere along that road to Crimson Vale, it seemed his young nephew was nothing like the broken, powerless nephew Lu Bao had described with such confidence.

Forty-one men had paid for that miscalculation with their lives, and Bloodhound had made it exceedingly clear, through channels Lu Bao still didn’t fully understand the reach of, that someone was going to answer for that loss.

Gold, it turned out, was the price of that answer. A steep one, but far preferable to whatever alternative Bloodhound might have chosen instead.

Hearing the scarred man’s words just now, that small, grudging acknowledgment that he’d made every payment so far, Lu Bao allowed himself to believe, just for this one carriage ride, that his approach might actually work. That enough gold, delivered faithfully and on time, might be enough to close this particular Chapter of his life without costing him anything more than his savings and his pride.

The carriage continued on, the city rolling past the window in slow, familiar shapes. Lu Bao watched it without really seeing it at first, his thoughts still tangled in gold coins and dead men, until gradually, almost against his will, the sights outside began to pull his attention away from the weight in his chest.

He’d grown up in this city. Every street they passed carried some fragment of memory buried beneath years of neglect, a teahouse where he’d once celebrated his coming of age ceremony as a much younger, much less compromised man, a market square where he’d haggled over silk as a boy trailing behind his own father, a temple whose bells he could still recognize by sound alone even now, muffled through the carriage walls.

Silver Jade City had shaped nearly everything about who he’d become, for better and for considerably worse, and there was something almost unbearably strange about riding through its streets now, carrying the weight of a debt built from other men’s deaths, watching the ordinary life of the city continue on entirely unaware.

The scarred man said nothing further for the rest of the ride, apparently content to let silence fill the carriage now that business had concluded, and Lu Bao found himself grateful for it despite everything. Conversation with a man like this felt dangerous in ways silence didn’t. Better to simply watch the city pass and let his own thoughts wander somewhere quieter than Bloodhound’s ledger.

The ride stretched on far longer than Lu Bao had expected, over an hour by his own rough estimate, the busy central avenues gradually giving way to quieter, narrower roads, and then to something quieter still. The crowds thinned. The buildings grew sparser, older, less maintained, until eventually there were no buildings at all, only open stretches of land bordered by low stone walls and the occasional weathered farmhouse standing alone against the horizon.

Lu Bao had rarely ventured this far from the city’s central districts in his entire life, and something about the emptiness unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.

Out here, far from guards and witnesses and the comfortable structure of the Lu Family name, he was entirely at the mercy of whoever waited at the end of this road. He found himself glancing at the scarred man beside him, wondering, not for the first time, whether this quiet farmland had been chosen specifically because it offered nowhere to run and no one to hear anything that might happen out here.

The carriage began to slow.

Ahead, rising out of the quiet farmland like something out of place, stood a tall iron gate set into a low stone wall that stretched out of sight in both directions, guarding what appeared to be a vast expanse of cultivated fields beyond it.

Rows of crops swayed gently in the morning breeze past the gate, ordinary and peaceful in a way that felt almost mocking given the tension coiled tight in Lu Bao’s chest. Whatever business Bloodhound conducted here, it was clearly meant to look like nothing at all to anyone passing by on the road.

Lu Bao leaned toward the window, studying the gate with a growing unease he couldn’t quite name, some instinct deep in his chest warning him that whatever waited on the other side of it was going to matter far more than a simple exchange of coin ever could.

The carriage rolled to a slow, deliberate stop directly in front of the gate, the horses’ hooves falling silent against the packed dirt road, and for a long, heavy moment neither Lu Bao nor the scarred man said anything at all.