The woman knelt before the Suanni statue, its left paw resting protectively over a small stone cub. Her knees sank into the cold earth.
Moonlight slid over the stone guardian, catching on its worn lion body and dragon mane, turning the old statue into a faint silver silhouette.Her shoulders trembled anyway.
The Suanni loomed quietly over her…weathered by wind, softened by time. Moss clung to its short horns, and fallen leaves gathered around its base as if the seasons themselves had forgotten to move on. Its half lidded eyes held a calm, listening expression, the kind carved to watch not speak.
A shallow stone dish rested at its feet, empty and undisturbed as if every prayer once left there had faded with time.
Her voice cracked, raw from days of screaming and pleading to deaf ears.
"Please… if there is any spirit here… help me. I've lost everything. They killed my husband…executed him for a crime he never committed…"
She pressed her forehead to the cold ground, tears soaking into the earth.
"…All because of Official Han Duqing… that monster… he took our land… forged the deed… and then accused my husband of theft when we resisted."
The name left her lips like poison.
She laid a small pouch of coins in the Suanni's shallow stone dish…everything she had left. Her trembling fingers lingered on the offering, unwilling to let go.
"I have no family left. No home left. No one will listen. If any spirit can hear me… please… please help me…"
She stayed bowed for a long time before finally rising, wiping her tears with trembling fingers, and disappearing into the night.
The moment she walked away, Jin Yue stepped out from his hiding spot.
He stared at the coin pouch.Then at the Suanni…the female one, carved with its mouth slightly open in a soft exhale.A guardian of endings.A symbol of the last breath… of death itself.
She had chosen this one knowingly.
The air still held the echo of her grief, as if her sorrow had been drawn into the stone.
Executed…She's completely alone.And that official… Han Duqing… killed an innocent man just to take his land?
Jin Yue lifted the pouch gently, almost reverently, as if it carried the final plea of the dead."…An offering," he murmured.
Not a job.Not a request.A plea thrown into the darkness.
Jin Yue tied the pouch to his sash.
Alright.I'll see the truth myself.
By morning light, he was already moving through the town, following whispers and rumors until he reached the official's residence…the place where power, greed, and corruption pooled like stagnant water.