The corridor outside Uncle Zhang's room felt heavier than the rest of the brothel.
Lantern light quivered against the walls, bending around shadows that clung too tightly to the corners. The air smelled of spilled wine and something sour beneath it… like greed rotting in place.
Jin Yue stood at the threshold.
Uncle Zhang's laughter vibrated through the open doorway...loud, coarse, disgustingly pleased with himself. Silver coins clinked like tiny bells of triumph, each one a stolen life, a stolen home, a stolen future.
A man like this did not deserve mercy.
Not a drop.
Jin Yue's hand closed around the fishing line.
His breath slipped from him in a steady exhale, his body sinking into that quiet, disciplined stillness that had once kept him alive under far crueler masters.
Then he moved.
A bare whisper of motion, softer than a turning page.
The window slid open just enough for his silhouette to slip through the space between curtain and frame. Uncle Zhang didn't notice the draft. He didn't notice the shifting lantern flame. He didn't notice the shadow stalking him.
He was too busy counting.
"…Seven hundred… eight hundred… ah, that's enough to buy another girl..."
The fishing line wrapped around his throat mid-sentence.
Zhang's voice died in an ugly choke, the sound swallowed instantly by the crackle of the candle and the muffled celebrations in the hall downstairs.
His fat hands clawed at his throat, fingers slipping on the thin, invisible wire. His eyes bulged, mouth opening wide like a fish pulled onto dry land. Wind Pulse wouldn't have saved him even if he had it...but he didn't. He was a parasite, not a fighter.
His chair toppled backward in a clatter. Coins scattered across the floor like spilled stars. One rolled to Jin Yue's foot and stopped there, trembling.
The man convulsed once.
Twice.
His face darkened to a mottled purple, veins bulging grotesquely along his forehead. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes as his legs kicked weakly, pathetically.
Jin Yue's expression never changed.
He tightened the line deliberately.
Uncle Zhang could not scream.
Could not beg.
Could not curse.
He simply died...
small, pitiful, gasping for a final scrap of breath he had stolen from so many others.
When the last tremor left his body, Jin Yue released the line.
Zhang collapsed over his own silver, coins chiming under his weight.
A fitting grave.
Jin Yue watched for a moment, not out of cruelty, but out of certainty.
He needed to know it was done.
Only then did he whisper the words that now existed like a quiet executioner's creed:
"Moon above, river below.
You fall between."
With that, judgment was sealed.
Jin Yue crouched and swept the scattered ledgers across the floor into his sleeve...records of illegal loans, trafficking routes, receipts from brothel owners across the region. Evidence woven into darkness.
He didn't need praise.
He didn't need witnesses.
But the truth mattered.
And someday, someone would need to see it.
He turned from the corpse.
Now...Shen Ling.
…
The second-floor corridor seemed colder now. Silence wrapped around him like a veil, the kind that muffled even the sound of his own breath. The brothel below erupted in drunken roars again...rounds of gambling and flirtation swelling like waves against the wooden beams.
Good.
Noise hid steps.
He reached Shen Ling's door.
The lock clicked quietly under the pressure of his fishing rod...gentle, precise, controlled.
He eased the door open.
The room was dim, lit only by a dying lantern flickering unevenly, its flame weak and exhausted. The air smelled of dampness, fever, and stale incense. Somewhere in that murk of shadows lay the thin figure of a girl curled beneath a fraying blanket.
Shen Ling.
Her cheeks were flushed with heat.
Her skin glistened with sweat.
Her breathing was ragged, shallow… too fast.
Her wrists were swollen where rope had dug in.
Her lips were cracked.
Her eyelids trembled as though she was trapped inside a nightmare she could not escape.
Jin Yue knelt beside her, his movements slow and deliberate...as if approaching a frightened deer.
He didn't touch her.
He didn't speak her name.
He simply watched her breathing for a long, quiet moment.
Alive.
Barely.
She stirred.
Her eyes opened a sliver, unfocused and glassy, trying to find meaning in the silhouette leaning over her.
"D… don't hurt me…" she whispered, voice breaking around the words.
Jin Yue's hand paused in mid-air.
He did not reassure her with touch.
He did not offer words that she might cling to or remember.
Instead, he uncorked a small waterskin and placed it near her hand.
He fixed her blanket...pulling it gently over her shoulders so fever would not worsen.
He checked her pulse, feather-light.
Then, in a voice so faint it could have been the wind:
"You're safe now."
Not saved.
Not rescued.
But safe long enough for real help to arrive.
Her hand lifted weakly as if trying to hold onto him...seeking warmth, comfort, maybe the presence of someone who felt gentler than the monsters she'd faced.
Jin Yue withdrew instantly.
She must not remember him.
Not his voice.
Not his silhouette.
Not anything.
He turned silently toward the door.
Tonight he had been death.
He could not also be a guardian.
He stepped out and closed the door softly behind him.
He did not lock it.
He simply wedged the broken latch so it would hold long enough to protect her from wandering drunkards.
By sunrise, someone would find her.
Someone with a name.
Someone whose life was not shaped by shadows and fishing line.
Jin Yue did not look back.
…
He descended the stairs.
Dawn crept into the brothel slowly...through paper windows, between cracks in the wooden walls, down from the sky that had shifted from ink-black to pale blue. Morning birds chirped faintly in the distance, a discordant contrast to the snoring gamblers passed out under tables.
Courtesans slept where they had collapsed.
Perfume mixed with stale wine.
The brothel was at its weakest.
Jin Yue glided through it like a ghost made of breath and silk.
No one noticed him.
No one questioned the veiled figure slipping toward the back exit.
Until...
"…Wait."
Jin Yue froze.
A young man stood at the far end of the hall.
His robe was slightly loosened, hair tousled, eyes still sharp despite exhaustion.
He was handsome...delicate-featured, with eyes soft as morning fog.
Beside him sat his companion, posture casual but gaze alert...the kind of man who saw everything while pretending to see nothing.
The young master's eyes locked onto Jin Yue's veiled figure.
A crease formed between his brows.
"…You're leaving?"
Jin Yue lowered his head, letting his posture shrink into meekness, into silence, into the shape of a mute brothel girl trying not to be noticed.
The young man took a step toward him...
Reflex.
Instinct.
Something he didn't understand.
Jin Yue pivoted away before their eyes could meet, skirt swaying softly, veil concealing everything. He walked quickly but not suspiciously, his movements smooth enough to seem unthreatening.
The lantern light brushed his cheek.
The veil swayed.
A pale sliver of skin glimmered beneath cloth.
Not enough for a face.
Just enough to haunt a memory.
The young man's breath caught.
His hand rose, fingers curling as if to call out...
...but he hesitated.
His hand fell.
"…Strange girl," he whispered, voice soft as the fading night.
"Why do I feel like I've seen you… somewhere else?"
His companion let out a tired sigh.
"You're overtired. Don't start imagining romances in a place like this."
But the young master didn't look away.
He kept staring at the empty doorway long after Jin Yue slipped into the first breath of dawn.
There was something about her...
No.
Something about him.
The way he moved...quiet but dangerous.
The way he breathed...measured, steady.
The way he vanished...like mist out of reach.
Something lodged deep inside the young man's chest.
A curiosity he could not name.
An unease he could not shake.
A pull he did not understand.
And Jin Yue?
He walked into the morning without ever looking back.
The moon ghost was already fading into daylight.