Chapter 139: Night Patrol

Chenxue shifted beneath her blankets or tried to steady her breathing into something slower, more deliberate.

Her thoughts kept circling back to the same image, Lu Feng sprawled unconscious on that dirt floor, blood at the corner of his mouth, his breath carrying that faint, unsettling hitch she couldn’t quite explain away.

She tried counting her own breaths, a trick her old master had taught her long before she’d abandoned her entirely afterward.

It failed her tonight the way it occasionally did, her mind sliding sideways from the count every few breaths to return, unbidden, to the same unanswered question. What exactly happened to him in there, alone, seven times over in a single afternoon?

After the better part of an hour spent staring at the ceiling, she finally gave up on the pretense of trying.

If sleep wasn’t going to come lying still, perhaps it would come to her while moving instead. She’d always found her mind quieted more easily in motion than in stillness, a habit born from years of night watches during her time with the sect, back before everything had fallen apart.

A patrol of the estate seemed as reasonable a way as any to pass the restless hours, even if she knew perfectly well the barrier surrounding the grounds made such vigilance technically unnecessary.

She rose, dressed quickly and quietly in a simple set of dark training clothes, and slipped out of the main building into the cool night air.

The estate at night carried a different character entirely from its daytime self, quieter in a way that felt heavier rather than peaceful, shadows pooling thick beneath the eaves and along the garden paths, the distant chirp of insects the only sound breaking the stillness.

A faint mist had settled low over the training grounds, catching what little moonlight filtered down through scattered clouds overhead, and somewhere beyond the outer wall a dog barked once, briefly, before falling silent again. Ye Chenxue moved through it with the light, silent grace that had become second nature to her over years of training, barely disturbing the gravel beneath her feet as she began a slow circuit of the grounds.

She knew, of course, that the barrier Lu Feng had erected covered the entire estate, an invisible ward strong enough to shatter a Qi dissecting blade on contact, more than capable of keeping out anything short of a direct, overwhelming assault.

Logically, there was little reason to patrol at all. But logic had never been particularly effective at settling a restless mind, and some old instinct in her preferred to see the grounds with her own eyes rather than trust entirely in wards she couldn’t watch work in real time.

It was a habit carried over from a different life, one she rarely spoke of aloud. Night watches had been a formal duty within her old sect, rotated among the junior disciples regardless of rank or talent, a way of teaching patience and vigilance in equal measure.

She’d not participated in it but after watching dozens of others, she hated it. She resented the lost sleep, the tedium of pacing empty corridors they faced while everyone else rested. Now, without a sect or a hierarchy demanding it of her, she found herself doing the exact same thing entirely by choice, and something about that quiet irony almost made her smile as she walked.

The full circuit of the estate took roughly twenty minutes at an unhurried pace, weaving past the training grounds, along the outer wall, through the quiet garden paths near the kitchen, and back around toward the main gate.

It was there, on her first pass, that she found Bai Bao stationed at his post, standing at careful attention despite the late hour, his eyes methodically sweeping the darkened approach to the gate even though the barrier made such vigilance largely ceremonial at this point.

He didn’t hear her approach.

She hadn’t intended any particular stealth, simply moving the way she always did, light and almost soundless, but the effect on Bai Bao was the same regardless. He startled visibly the moment she came into view beside him, one hand instinctively dropping toward the hilt of his blade before recognition caught up with reflex and he forced himself to relax.

"Lady Ye." He caught his breath, offering her a slightly stiff bow. "My apologies. I didn’t hear you approach."

"That’s my fault, not yours," Ye Chenxue said. "I should have made more noise. I didn’t mean to startle you."

"No harm done." He straightened fully now, curiosity plain on his face despite his effort to keep his expression professionally neutral. "May I ask what brings you out here at this hour?"

"Couldn’t sleep," she said simply. "Thought a walk around the grounds might tire me out where lying still hadn’t managed it."

"Understandable," Bai Bao said, glancing briefly toward the dark shape of the estate behind him. "It’s been a long day for everyone, from what I understand. Master Lin nearly dying, then those men going after Lady Han Lin in the market. Enough to keep anyone’s mind spinning past bedtime."

"Something like that," she agreed, offering nothing further, and he seemed to sense she wasn’t looking to elaborate.

Bai Bao nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with the explanation, though his eyes tracked her curiously as she continued past him and resumed her circuit, disappearing back into the shadowed paths beyond the gatehouse.

Twenty minutes later, having completed a full loop of the estate at the same unhurried pace, she passed by the gate a second time.

Bai Bao had been expecting her this time, having presumably worked out the rhythm of her walk during the interval, and yet the sight of her still managed to catch him slightly off guard.

He turned his head at what he thought was the right moment, anticipating her approach from the same direction as before, only to find she’d already drawn nearly level with him before he registered any sound at all announcing her arrival. There simply hadn’t been any. Not the crunch of gravel, not the whisper of fabric, nothing.

"You really don’t make a sound," he muttered, mostly to himself, shaking his head slightly as she offered him a small nod in passing and continued on without breaking stride.

The third loop, she decided to vary the pattern slightly, reversing direction and moving anticlockwise around the estate instead, curious whether the unfamiliar angle of approach might shake loose some fresh perspective, or simply because habit alone had started to feel a touch too predictable even for a mind trying to empty itself of thought.

The estate looked subtly different walked in reverse, familiar landmarks approaching from angles she rarely bothered to notice during the day, the kitchen’s dark windows, the low wall bordering Lu Feng’s private training area, the modest shrine Han Lin had insisted on setting up near the eastern garden not long after they’d moved in.

By the time she completed that reversed loop and arrived back at the gate, the post had changed hands. Bai Bao’s shift had apparently ended sometime during her third pass, and in his place stood Song Heng, a leaner, quieter guard who’d joined the household not long after Bai Bao, equally dedicated if considerably less talkative by nature.

"Lady Ye," Song Heng said, offering the same polite bow Bai Bao had given her earlier, though with rather less startled surprise behind it, suggesting Bai Bao had likely warned him during the shift change. "Trouble sleeping?"

"Something like that," she admitted, a faint, weary smile touching her mouth now. "Thought a walk might help settle things."

"Did it?"

She considered the question for a moment, genuinely checking in with herself rather than answering automatically, and found, somewhat to her own relief, that the restless churn behind her thoughts had finally begun to loosen its grip, the image of Lu Feng collapsed on that dirt floor no longer sitting quite so sharply at the front of her mind.

"I think it did, actually," she said.

Song Heng nodded, satisfied, and let her pass without further conversation, watching her make her way back toward the main building with the quiet, professional attentiveness that made him well suited to guard duty even if it left him little to say in casual moments.

Ye Chenxue crossed the courtyard slowly, a weak yawn finally catching up with her somewhere along the path, the first real sign of drowsiness she’d felt all evening. Whatever it was about the walking, the cool night air, the simple, repetitive motion of covering the same ground three times over from different angles, it had finally succeeded where lying still in bed had failed entirely.

By the time she reached her own door, her eyelids had grown genuinely heavy, and she suspected sleep would come easily enough now, whatever remained of the night still theirs to offer her some proper rest.

Elsewhere on the estate, in the quiet stillness of his private training building, Lu Feng stirred.

Consciousness returned to him slowly, in uneven layers, his body aching in ways that made even the simple act of opening his eyes feel like an effort worth negotiating with. He lay still for a moment, blinking up at the dark wooden beams above him, gradually piecing together where he was and how much time might have passed since the world had last gone dark around him.

It was night now. Full night, judging by the deep quiet pressing in from outside and the complete absence of daylight filtering through the training building’s windows.

He shifted slightly, and that was when he noticed the blanket draped carefully over him, thick and warm, tucked in at his sides with the sort of attentive care that spoke of someone who’d taken real time over it rather than simply throwing it across him and leaving. Beside him, within easy reach, sat a large woven basket, its contents still giving off a faint, lingering warmth despite however many hours it had likely been sitting there waiting for him to wake.

He pushed himself upright slowly, wincing at the deep ache still lingering through his muscles, and pulled the basket closer, lifting the cloth covering it to reveal rice, vegetables, and a generous portion of what looked like braised meat, along with a flask of water and a small pouch of dried fruit tucked in alongside everything else.

A tired, grateful smile spread across his face as he began to eat, slowly at first, testing whether his stomach would cooperate after everything his body had endured that afternoon, then with growing appetite as the food settled well and the warmth of it began to ease some of the day’s lingering exhaustion.

Each bite seemed to chase a little more of the fog from his mind, the rice and vegetables simple but well seasoned, the meat tender enough that he suspected Aunt Gao had spent considerable care preparing it even before anyone knew he’d need it waiting for him hours later than intended.

He didn’t need to wonder long about who’d left it for him. It could only have been Han Lin, he thought, picturing her easily, gathering food from the kitchen the moment she’d found him collapsed out here, likely fetching the blanket from her own room afterward before making the walk back out to leave everything within easy reach for whenever he finally woke.

It was exactly the sort of quiet, thorough care she always showed him, the same instinct that had her insisting on following him into exile all those months ago rather than staying behind in comfort.

He made a mental note to thank her properly in the morning, grateful, not for the first time, that whatever else had gone wrong in his life since the day he’d been cast out of his family, at least he’d had the good fortune of never once having to face any of it entirely alone.

Finishing the last of the meal, he set the empty basket aside, pulled the blanket more securely around his shoulders against the night’s lingering chill, and allowed himself, for now, simply to rest.