The servant quarters were always quiet past midnight, but tonight the silence felt unnatural—like a beast had drawn in a long breath and was waiting to exhale.
Inside a dim room behind cracked wooden walls, Mei Yao held a candle in one hand and a jade scroll in the other. Her black eyes scanned every character, every ink stroke, as if they held the key to everything she'd been denied since birth.
"This is madness," she whispered. "Why would a servant like him have access to such a thing?"
The scroll was forbidden—an ancient transcription of illusion techniques derived from a vanished sect. She had only glanced at it while sweeping Lin Wuxie's room earlier that day. He had left it deliberately half-exposed, not hidden, as if daring someone to read it.
She didn't know why she'd returned to copy it. Maybe it was the same reason she cleaned the library three times more than required. Or why she always listened twice as much as she spoke.
Maybe it was because she had no cultivation, no bloodline, no teacher, and no choice.
"To be born invisible is one thing. To remain that way… is cowardice," she muttered, repeating her mother's last words.
She rolled the scroll up and tucked it into her sleeve. The floorboard beneath her shifted.
"Find what you're looking for?"
The voice came from behind—calm, unhurried, and close.
Mei Yao spun around, heart hammering.
Lin Wuxie was sitting cross-legged in the dark, just beyond the flickering light of her candle. No sound had marked his arrival. No breath, no footfall.
He might as well have risen from the shadows.
"You were… You were here the whole time?"
He tilted his head. "I was never here. And yet, I never left."
She stared. The answer made no sense—and yet something inside her refused to reject it.
"You planted the scroll," she said. "Why?"
"To see if you'd take it," he replied, gazing at her with eyes that were too calm. "To see if you're still willing to reach beyond the role they've written for you."
Mei Yao's voice tightened. "If you want someone desperate enough to be your pawn—"
"I don't need pawns," he interrupted. "I need mirrors."
"Mirrors?"
Wuxie rose from the ground with a fluid motion, his presence sharpening for a heartbeat. For that moment, he didn't feel like a boy. He felt like a thing wrapped in skin, too quiet, too exact.
Then it faded, and he was just a thin-faced servant again.
He walked toward her and gently placed a small jade token in her palm.
"Come to the chamber beneath the Hall of Withered Flames tomorrow at dusk," he said. "Bring no one. Speak of this to no one."
She hesitated. "And if I don't?"
"Then you're just another servant girl," he said, stepping past her. "And I'll forget you ever existed."
He left no echo as he disappeared into the hallway.
She stood still for a long time, hand closed around the token, as if it might vanish the moment she let it go.
Meanwhile, across the sect compound, a different ripple stirred.
Outer Disciple Yang Lin lay unconscious beside the sparring platform, surrounded by stunned onlookers. His sword was broken. His pride, shattered.
They whispered of a duel gone wrong. Of a nobody from the servant ranks—someone with no presence, no history—who had mirrored Yang Lin's sword form after a single clash.
"Who was it?" someone asked.
"No one's sure," said another. "He wore a tattered mask. His aura... was blurred. Like looking through water."
Atop a jade platform overlooking the training grounds, Elder Sun Zhen, master of discipline, watched the scene with narrowed eyes.
"An imitator," he murmured. "No... a thief."
He traced the air with a finger, scrying for the disciple's energy trail. But what he saw was confusion. Dozens of spiritual echoes overlapped, cancelling one another.
A deliberate technique.
"There's a fox among the sheep," he muttered. "And foxes love masks."
The next morning, the sect continued its journey.
Sparring matches resumed. Lessons continued. Spirit beasts were fed. Sects didn't stop for whispers.
But within the cracks of daily life, small changes began to emerge.
A servant girl—Mei Yao—was seen training alone behind the herb garden, her movements slow but precise. Her posture didn't match her status.
And as for Lin Wuxie?
No one seemed to know what chores he'd been assigned. Or if he was even still part of the servant registry.
Oddly enough... no one thought to ask.