Old Yu's little courtyard wasn't large, but it pinned Yueyao to the city like a nail.
One room. One narrow bed. One door she could bar from the inside.
For the first time since waking in this world, she had a space that was hers—if only by contract.
But streets never softened just because someone found a place to sleep.
They only cared about one thing:
Who could stay upright when the crowd surged.
At dawn, cartwheels and hawkers' voices rolled through the lanes. Steam rose from breakfast stalls, pushing the rain-cold back for a while. Yet beneath the heat and noise, another kind of order moved—footsteps that marched in rhythm, short commands, checkpoint men who didn't bargain like common guards, but watched like soldiers.
Because this wasn't an ordinary city.
This was the royal capital.
And the capital's rules weren't written on walls.
They were written into bones.
—
Mu Yunxi came from the eastern end of the street without a single obvious mark on him.
His robe was plain, the color kept low. His cuffs were tied tight, like a traveler who didn't want trouble. Yet the moment he stepped into the crowd, the sound around him shifted—as if an invisible hand pressed it down.
Not silence.
Yielding.
Not respect, exactly.
Instinct.
Like animals sensing a stronger predator and swallowing their teeth.
Two attendants followed him. They didn't walk fast, but every step landed on the same beat. No blades hung at their waists. Only a small black token, half-hidden beneath their sleeves, etched with a pattern that most eyes avoided without knowing why.
Those who truly understood would look away immediately.
It wasn't the guild.
It wasn't the magistrate's yamen.
It was the palace.
Mu Yunxi's gaze stayed steady as it swept stalls, corners, shadows under eaves—as if reading a map no one else could see. He didn't ask directions.
He was the direction.
On the edge of the street, people whispered—quickly, nervously.
"The patrols have been tight lately."
"How could they not be? All four princes are in the city."
"Even the one who came back from the neighboring kingdom…"
"Quiet. That one was a hostage."
"He's only been back a short time. The King allows him to stand here?"
"Allow or not doesn't matter. What matters is—he's back."
The whispers scattered like wind, as if they'd never existed.
Mu Yunxi didn't slow.
He stopped before a shabby little storefront. The signboard was crooked, the paint worn. It looked like a place that should have died years ago.
Yet two men guarded the door.
Their faces didn't have street-oil. Their eyes weren't greedy. Their gaze was too clean—clean in the way only obedience could be.
Mu Yunxi raised a hand and knocked.
Knock.
Knock.
Two taps.
Not urgent. Not heavy.
Like knocking on a door that had learned to open for him.
It opened at once.
The man inside froze when he saw him, then started to bow too deeply. "Your—"
Mu Yunxi lifted one finger.
A quiet command.
"Don't," he said, barely above a breath. "Too many ears outside."
The man swallowed his words and corrected himself. "Young Master Mu."
Mu Yunxi gave a small nod, as if accepting the mask.
He stepped in. His attendants remained outside.
There were no customers. Only a faint smell of ink. Paintings hung on the wall—not landscapes, but precise line drawings of weapons and their inner structures. Behind the counter sat bamboo slips and ledgers, their corners too neat, too deliberate.
Mu Yunxi stopped at the counter and spoke without preface.
"I want a list."
The man's hands tightened. "What kind of list?"
"From the pawnshop," Mu Yunxi said evenly. "In the last three months—who entered the back rooms, who pressed red prints, and who never came out again."
The man's breath hitched.
"Young Master Mu… that list—"
Mu Yunxi lifted his eyes.
The look wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.
It was ice-water poured straight down a spine.
"I don't repeat myself," he said.
The man lowered his head and began flipping through records, fingers shaking despite his speed.
"And one more thing," Mu Yunxi added. "Watch a name."
The man paused. "Which name?"
Mu Yunxi was silent for half a breath, as if weighing whether a single word might summon a blade.
Then he said it softly.
"Yueyao."
The man snapped his head up.
"Yueyao?" he nearly blurted. "But that one—she's supposed to be—"
Mu Yunxi tapped the counter once.
A clean sound.
A warning.
The man swallowed the rest of the sentence, throat bobbing. "Yes. Understood."
Mu Yunxi didn't explain.
He took the rolled list and slid it into his sleeve, like coiling a snake back into its basket.
When he stepped outside, his gaze lifted briefly toward the street mouth.
It was a short glance.
Short enough that passersby would assume it was nothing.
But he saw it—
A narrow lane. An unremarkable wooden door. The kind of door people instinctively slowed past. Behind it, a small courtyard. Inside it, a woman who had just begun to stretch a hand out of a pawnshop's cage.
He didn't walk over.
He only paused—barely.
His fingers tightened once, silent.
As if a long-absent pain had flickered in his palm.
Then he turned away and left, pace steady, windlike.
An attendant fell into step beside him and asked softly, "Young Master Mu… back to the palace?"
Mu Yunxi's lips curved into the faintest shape of an answer—almost a smile, almost cold.
"Not yet," he said. "First, I'm seeing someone."
"Who?"
Mu Yunxi didn't reply.
Because even he wasn't willing to speak that name out loud.
—
Elsewhere on the same street, Yueyao spread papers across a low table in the little courtyard.
She didn't know a man had passed by—an echo of a lover's shadow skimming the edge of her fate.
She didn't know his alias was Mu Yunxi.
And she didn't know his true name was locked deep in the palace—
Mu Yanchen.