It started with three.
Now there were seven.
By the time the leaves began to turn amber and fall from the pines, seven souls had come to the Assassin Hall not for coin or fame—but for justice. Each of them bore different faces, stories, scars. But all of them had been broken by the same beast: power without conscience.
Li Fan stood in the training yard, watching as Zhao Liang barked orders at the newest recruits. They stumbled through their forms, fists clenched too tight, steps unbalanced. But what they lacked in skill, they made up for in something rare—resolve.
They weren't cultivators. Not yet. Just farmers, servants, orphans. But they were his people now. And that meant something.
"You ever think you're building something too big?" Zhao asked one morning, wiping sweat from his brow.
"All the time," Li Fan replied.
"And?"
He looked out across the yard, where Mei Xiu was sparring with a younger girl. Her strikes were clumsy but quick—born not of training, but of instinct and desperation.
"I think it's too late to stop."
Zhao grunted. "I just hope this thing doesn't grow teeth we can't control."
By now, word of the Black Eagle had reached beyond just backwater villages. In the small towns and border markets, people whispered that a shadow moved through the land—not to conquer, but to cleanse.
Some believed he was sent by the heavens.
Others believed he was a heretic, a danger to the cultivation order.
And some, like the Sable Hand—a rival assassin guild operating out of the western river valleys—believed he was competition.
They came one night in silence. Four of them. Dressed in gray robes laced with silver, bearing obsidian masks and curved daggers. Their leader was a thin man with sunken cheeks and no scent—an assassin to the core.
Li Fan had sensed them long before they entered the compound. His cultivation had begun to seep deeper into his bones, not explosively, but steadily. The Art of Silent Reaping had taught him how to feel movement in the quiet, how to read air like scripture.
So when the first blade was thrown through the courtyard—aimed not at him, but at one of the trainees—Li Fan was already there, intercepting it mid-air with a flick of his wrist.
The clang of steel on steel rang out like a bell in the stillness.
"Four masked cowards to kill a girl in training?" he said, voice low.
The thin man tilted his head. "We're not here for the girl."
His eyes glinted behind the mask.
"You're the one they call Heiying, aren't you?"
Li Fan didn't answer.
"You're causing problems. Big ones. Our employers don't appreciate your... charity work."
Zhao Liang emerged from the side hall with two blades drawn. "He's not alone."
The masked man chuckled. "That's sweet. But it won't matter."
They attacked together—silent, practiced, deadly.
But Li Fan had learned more than just forms. He'd learned purpose.
He didn't fight for glory. He didn't fight to win.
He fought to protect.
The first assassin fell within seconds, a knee to the throat dropping him like a stone. Zhao handled another with practiced grace, breaking his opponent's wrist and driving him into a wall.
The thin man lasted longer. He moved like smoke, his blade cutting lines into the moonlight. But Li Fan didn't chase him. He led him. Redirected him. And when the masked man overreached—one heartbeat too long—Li Fan was there.
Steel whispered against flesh.
The fight ended in silence.
They buried the attackers outside the hall, unmarked.
"Who sent them?" Mei Xiu asked the next day.
Li Fan didn't look up from the grave he was covering.
"Someone who profits from pain."
She watched him a long while before speaking again. "We're not ready for war, are we?"
Li Fan paused. Then shook his head.
"No. But war is coming anyway."
Later that night, he sat alone by the small fire behind the training yard. In his hand, he held a torn strip from the assassin leader's robe—a black lotus sigil hidden in the lining. He knew the symbol.
The Sable Hand.
A guild that thrived in chaos. They weren't killers of justice, only killers for hire. To them, life was a transaction. Mercy had no market value.
He threw the cloth into the flames.
From now on, it wouldn't just be corrupt officials or wicked sect elders hunting him. It would be others like him—only without the conscience. Without a cause.
He felt the weight settle again on his shoulders. Not heavy like guilt. But solid. Inevitable.
He was building something fragile.
And fragile things attracted storms.
Three days later, a girl arrived at the gates.
She couldn't have been older than sixteen. Her clothes were torn, her hands bloodied, her left eye swollen shut.
"I came... because of the stories," she said, voice shaking. "I want to learn. I want to fight. I want to matter."
Zhao Liang was the first to speak. "You've got no cultivation. Barely any strength. This isn't a storybook."
But Li Fan looked into her eyes and saw something terrifyingly familiar—loss. Raw and bottomless.
"Let her in," he said.
Zhao hesitated. Then nodded.
"Fine. But this hall isn't a dream. It's a forge. You'll come out steel—or ashes."
The girl didn't blink. "Then burn me if you must."
In the quiet of that night, Li Fan sat on the rooftop, staring at the stars.
He didn't pray. Not anymore.
But he thought of all the names in the wooden box inside his room—names of the wicked, the corrupt, the powerful.
And he whispered them into the wind.
Not to remember them.
But to promise they wouldn't be forgotten.