The rain outside the window was a wall.
When he shoved the window open, the wet air rushed in first—cold as the flat of a blade dragged across the back of the neck. Below the sill ran a narrow eave-walkway. At its far end was a low courtyard wall, and beyond that, the bamboo slope by the mountain road.
Lu Hui leaned out for one look. His voice went thin. "That's… that's high. If we fall, we're dead, right?"
He pulled his bamboo hat lower. "If we don't jump, we're dead."
Lu Hui swallowed, clutching the jade pendant—the piece was thin, yet it felt like holding iron. His fingers shook anyway, and he gripped it tighter.
Inside the room, the black-cloaked figure had already steadied their breath; the two behind them had stopped swinging wildly. These weren't amateurs.
The black cloak leaned against the doorframe, their voice calm in that offended way. "You think a window will save you? You think we can't follow?"
He didn't look back. Only said to Lu Hui, "Jump."
Lu Hui's face went ghost-white. "Y-you first—"
"You first," he cut in. "I'm behind you."
It wasn't fair. It didn't even sound like logic.
It sounded like an order.
Lu Hui froze—like he'd suddenly realized the truth: this man wasn't trying to show off. He was simply used to staying last.
Lu Hui grit his teeth and climbed out.
Rain slapped his face. He nearly lost his grip on the frame and pitched forward. The instant his foot touched the eave's old boards, the wood groaned—an aching creak like bones soaked too long in water.
"Don't step the middle," he warned softly. "Step the beam."
Lu Hui scrambled sideways in a panic. His soles slid; he almost flattened himself to the boards. He looked like a drenched cat kicked out of a burrow—but he didn't fall.
Behind them, the black cloak moved.
Fast—not toward the window, but toward the table.
They didn't want blood. They wanted the severed tassel and the jade carved with STOP.
Their fingers had barely touched the tabletop when the charcoal brazier cracked—pop!—and sparks burst out, not upward, but sideways.
As if someone had stuffed a gust of wind into the coals.
The black cloak hissed; the back of their hand blistered. Their motion stuttered for half a beat.
Half a beat was enough.
He vaulted out the window as the two blades behind him arrived.
Cold light flashed in the rain-night, left and right, snapping shut like shears.
He didn't turn to block.
His hand slid from his sleeve and pressed forward between the blades—simple as straightening a thread.
CLANG—
The two weapons slammed into each other. Sparks sprayed. The men holding them jolted; their wrists went numb, their tiger-mouths split, and their killing force was yanked off-course. In that instant, fear flickered in their eyes—not fear of pain, but fear of the impossible:
They had cut the right man.
And still—somehow—they had missed.
The black cloak barked, "Don't force it! He's using—"
They didn't finish.
Because they watched him hook the sill with two fingers and drop as lightly as a leaf carried by wind, landing on the eave-walkway.
When he landed, the boards didn't even creak.
In the rain, it felt as though only a faint breath existed.
"Move," he said.
Lu Hui scrambled toward the far end—half crawling, half running. The walkway was slick. He stepped wrong, and his foot slid out from under him.
The moment he pitched over, only one thought filled his skull:
I'm dead.
But he didn't hit the ground.
Because someone yanked him back by the collar—like grabbing a chick before it toppled into water.
"Don't look back," he said into Lu Hui's ear. "Looking back slows you down."
Lu Hui forced his head around anyway, eyes red. "They—"
"I know."
He shoved Lu Hui forward, hard, like pushing a plank into a river. "Over the wall."
The wall wasn't tall, but rain had made it a slick curse. Lu Hui clawed at the stones, fingers skidding, breath turning into a half-sob.
Then—
a dull crash behind them.
The window was smashed open.
The black cloak stood in the jagged frame, their cloak spread like a piece of night. They lifted a hand. A cold flash shot from their sleeve.
Not a needle.
A hooked line.
The hook whistled through rain, barbed and hungry, straight for Lu Hui's back. Lu Hui didn't even register it—only felt the chill of death at his spine.
He raised his hand.
That unseen "line" appeared again—not light, not wind, but direction. The hook jerked sideways in midair, forced off by half a foot. The barb scraped Lu Hui's shoulder and bit into an old roof tile on the wall.
CRACK!
Tile shattered. The hook slipped free.
For the first time, anger leaked into the black cloak's voice. "What the hell are you?"
He answered flatly. "Passing through."
The black cloak sneered. "People 'passing through' don't carry STOP."
He didn't answer. He yanked Lu Hui off the wall's edge and vaulted over himself. Mud splashed his hem, soaking it dark—and still he didn't look the least bit rattled.
On the other side lay the bamboo slope. Below it ran the mountain road, washed gray-black by rain, mud mixing with stones. In the fog ahead, torchlight bobbed—searchers moving like a slow pack of ghosts.
Lu Hui wheezed like a broken bellows. "There's… there's so many…"
"Then don't walk," he said.
Lu Hui blinked. "If we don't walk, how—"
He kicked a bamboo basket at the slope's edge.
Inside was a horse.
Not lying down by choice—trapped in netting, its head hooded so it wouldn't scream.
Lu Hui's jaw dropped. "You— you set this up—?"
"Not me." His voice didn't change. "Someone prepared it."
"Who?"
"The one who called you here," he said, crisp as a verdict. "They want you alive when you leave Rain Post."
Lu Hui's face drained even more. "Then… then why won't they just meet me?"
He tore the hood off the horse's head. It let out a sharp whinny—immediately swallowed by the rain. Its eyes rolled with terror.
He laid a palm on its neck and pressed gently, like holding down water about to spill.
The horse… actually quieted.
"Because they're hiding too," he said. "From something worse than the black cloak."
He shoved Lu Hui up into the saddle. Lu Hui clung to the jade, arms and legs not sure where to go. "I can't ride!"
"You can," he said. "You're just scared."
Then he swung up behind him. Lu Hui went rigid as wood, back pressed to his chest. He could hear the heartbeat through rain and cloth—steady, not rushed, like a bell in a storm.
"Hold on," he said.
Lu Hui grabbed the reins—panicked—then realized that was wrong and switched to grabbing his coat instead.
He didn't scold. He actually let out a short laugh. "Wrong grip's still better than no grip."
The horse lunged into the rain.
They burst from the bamboo just as torches flared behind them. The black cloak stood on the slope, rain pinning the cloak tight like a black shell. They lifted a hand—one short signal.
Torchlight scattered at once, fanning out like a thrown net.
"They're circling!" Lu Hui's voice shook. "There's people ahead too!"
Sure enough, three shadows formed in the fog at the road's bend. Torches in hand. Blades glinting.
They stood apart—but they sealed the path.
Lu Hui's throat broke. "We're done…"
He only snapped the reins. The horse veered off the main road—onto a narrow side path. Beside it ran a ditch, water swollen and fast, twisting like a black snake.
At the fork stood a stake with a broken sign nailed to it.
Two characters:
STOP HERE.
Lu Hui stared. "Stop here? That… that's—"
"Yes," he said quietly. "That's STOP."
He drove the horse straight into it.
The blockers hadn't expected it. Someone cursed—"Damn it!"—and sprinted after them, blade slashing. Steel skimmed the horse's tail, kicking up a spray of water.
The side path narrowed, tilted, and began to slide into the mountain's belly. Fog thickened. The rain sounded hollow now—as if it no longer hit the earth, but fell into a deep well.
Lu Hui's teeth chattered. "Where does this road go?"
His eyes stayed locked ahead, nails driven into the dark. "To a door that should never be opened."
"A door?"
"STOP isn't telling you to stop," he said. "It's telling everyone else to."
Right as the words left his mouth, the horse's front hooves dropped—
emptiness.
Ahead wasn't road.
It was a cliff.
Below wasn't a ravine, but a bridge half-hidden by rain fog. Old. Half-rotted. The deck was gone, leaving only a few exposed beams. Torn cloth strips hung from them like dead men's sleeves.
Lu Hui nearly died on the spot. "The bridge—! It's broken!"
"It isn't," he said. "It just looks broken."
He checked the horse—didn't let it charge. Instead he guided it onto the outermost beam.
The moment hoof met wood, the beam answered with a dull thoom—like striking hollow timber.
Lu Hui shut his eyes and screamed, "It's going to collapse! It's going to—"
"Open your eyes," he said beside his ear, calm as a winter lake.
"I can't—"
"Open them."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to.
Lu Hui forced his eyes open.
And saw it.
Along the edge of the beam, in the rain fog, floated a thread—so fine it was almost nothing.
Not rope. Not net.
More like rain itself… pinned in place.
A hair-thin line, steady as iron.
The horse stepped onto it.
And the bridge didn't break.
Lu Hui's voice fell apart. "Wh—what is that?"
"A road," he said, "that other people can't see."
Lu Hui stared at him, dawning horror and awe mixing in his eyes. "So… you're the Unseen Sword?"
He didn't deny it.
He didn't admit it.
Only said softly, "Don't name me. Names bring trouble."
Behind them, the pursuers reached the cliff. Torches swayed like a cluster of demon eyes.
"He's on the bridge!"
"But the bridge is broken—how the hell did he cross?!"
The black cloak arrived last. They didn't leap after.
They crouched, reached down, and touched the wet mud at the edge.
There were hoofprints.
And—
a shallow scratch.
Like a blade-tip had drawn it.
Only finer than any blade.
The black cloak lifted their head. Rain slid off their chin. They smiled—lightly, and cold enough to make bones ache.
"Not a sword," they murmured. "It's STOP… cutting a path."
They rose and ordered the others, "Don't chase the bridge. Go around."
"Around where?"
The black cloak looked into the fog, voice rising from somewhere deep as a well. "Around to Rain Post's back mountain—"
Their pause was a knife.
"—to the Stop Gate."
The words changed faces. Several men went stiff.
"Stop Gate? That place is—"
"Shut up," the black cloak snapped. "Tonight, we get the jade."
In the rain fog across the bridge, Lu Hui was still shaking in the saddle. He looked back; the torchlight had been swallowed by half the mist, monsters parked at the world's edge.
He swallowed. "That 'Stop Gate'… what is it?"
He stayed quiet for a moment, as if weighing whether the truth was worth saying.
In the end he gave only one sentence.
"A place you were never supposed to know."
"But I'm already dragged into it!" Lu Hui almost cried. "I was just delivering a message!"
"That's why you need to stay alive," he said. "So you'll have the chance to regret it later."
The horse finally reached the far side.
There stood a stone stele, rain-washed pale, its carved characters still deep.
Three words:
STELE OF STOP-SWORD
Lu Hui's throat tightened. "Stop… sword…"
He stared at it. For the first time, something in his expression hardened—just a little. "So this is where Volume One starts."
Lu Hui blinked. "Volume One?"
He lifted a hand and touched the carved SWORD—right beside it.
"Look."
Lu Hui leaned closer and saw a crack—fine as a hairline—split along the edge of the character, like something had pushed from inside. In the crack clung a black filament—hair, or iron dust.
Lu Hui asked carefully, "What is that?"
He drew his finger back. Black stained his fingertip.
He sniffed it. His gaze sank.
"Blood," he said. "Old blood."
Lu Hui almost slid off the horse. "How the hell is there blood on a stone?!"
He looked into the deeper fog ahead.
The fog seemed to breathe—slow rises and falls—like something enormous hiding inside the mountain.
"Because someone stopped here," he said. "And someone else…"
He paused, the words cutting themselves.
"…couldn't."
From far inside the mist came a faint bell note.
ting.
Like the eave-chime from the inn in Chapter One.
But this time, it wasn't from the inn.
It was from the mountain.
Lu Hui's teeth rattled. "Someone's coming?"
His hand tightened on the reins. His voice dropped low, as if afraid to wake what slept.
"Not someone," he said.
"Not human."