It was past midnight, and the sky was still pounding the city of Wei Cheng (巍城) with an ancient fury, the torrential downpour showing no respite. The narrow alleys had been swallowed by the onslaught. Lanterns hanging from the walls thrashed in the gale, casting distorted, shivering shadows against the sodden brickwork.
A stranger clad in black, whose attire was foreign to these lands, leapt through the darkness, his face half-hidden behind a crimson cloth. He moved not like an ordinary fugitive, but with the fluid grace of a predatory leopard; with every vault over the walls, the sound of his footfall was lost in the roar of thunder. A short distance behind him ran a man in white nightclothes, his garment clinging to his body from the weight of the rain. His breath came in ragged wheezes, yet his eyes never strayed for a second from that dark figure ahead.
They broke past the city limits and vanished into the woods. Gradually, the fury of the storm weakened, the thunder retreating into distant murmurs until the rain thinned to a whisper among the leaves. A heavy, unsettling quiet settled over the forest, broken only by the steady dripping of water from the branches. In this uneasy calm, the man in white noticed something: the flicker of a yellow light near the riverbank.
He crept behind an ancient tree and peered out cautiously. In the clearing, the orange glow of a brazier beneath the canopy of a small hut overbore the darkness. What he saw turned his blood to ice. A man, half-naked, was bound to a crude wooden stake. bruises and blistered burns marked his chest; and his right forearm had been severed, the wound brutally cauterised. An old, long scar ran from his left cheek to his eyebrow, ghoulishly distorting his haggard features.
Moments later, a man filled a heavy wooden bucket from the freezing river and splashed it mercilessly over the captive. The icy shock of the water constricted the prisoner's lungs, wrenching him from unconsciousness. He let out a piercing moan and shivered violently from the stinging agony of his wounds.
At that precise moment, the door of the hut creaked open with a harsh groan. A man dressed entirely in a black robe stepped out. His sleeves were bound tightly at the wrists and forearms with cord. He wore a bamboo Douli hat, advancing with a terrifying calm and military precision. Each step upon the damp earth bore the weight of absolute authority.
He walked toward a fallen tree trunk where a blood-stained axe was embedded. In the heavy silence following the storm, his fingers coiled around the handle and wrenched it free. The screech of metal parting from wood sounded like the grinding of bone. Then, the man in the black robe stood still and slowly raised his head to fix his gaze upon the trembling victim.
The man in white watched from behind the tree. As the brim of the Douli rose and the black-clad man's gaze glinted in the light of the brazier, the hidden observer saw wild eyes that had taken root in that familiar face. The man in white's eyes widened in horror; he shivered involuntarily and whispered in utter disbelief:
"This... this is impossible!"
The axe was raised for the final blow. As the man in white's attention remained fixed on the raised weapon, a sharp coldness suddenly settled against his throat: the edge of a sword. The first stranger had circled back and taken his hunter by surprise. Without a struggle, the man in white let his weapon fall, thudding into the mud.