By day, a canal town looks like old cloth laid out in the sun—people streaming past, hawkers crying their wares.But once dusk falls, the cloth is rolled up, and what shows are the hidden seams:
who is watching you, who is avoiding you, who is waiting for you to slip.
The tax shed by the docks hung a sign that read CHECKING BANDITS, but the Han-clothed soldiers beneath it had boots too clean and stances too crisp. Qin Zhao started to lower his head and hurry past. Xu Jinghong slowed—by half a step.
She didn't study faces first. She studied boots.She didn't study men first. She studied the shadows at the junctions.
Only then did she guide Qin Zhao along the very edge of the crowd.
A hand shot out to stop them. "Where are you headed?"
Xu Jinghong answered evenly. "Delivering medicine."
The man's gaze hooked Qin Zhao like a barb. "And you?"
Xu Jinghong's tone didn't change. "My cousin. Mute."
The man frowned—as if annoyance were safer than suspicion—and waved them through. Only after two steps did Qin Zhao dare breathe again.
Low, he asked, "How did you know to look at boots?"
Xu Jinghong didn't turn. "Faces can lie. Boots can't."
—The chronicler's judgment:The Grand Canal is a grain road—and the bloodstream of men's hearts. When a vessel clogs, what turns cold first isn't the head. It's the feet.
I. The Third-Watch Lamp: Rules First, Then the Unusual
They turned into a back street and stopped before an unremarkable inn.
A single oil lamp hung by the door. The shade was yellowed, the wick thin—yet the flame burned unnaturally steady.
Xu Jinghong paused outside the threshold and watched the lamp for a single breath.
"This is the Third-Watch Lamp?" Qin Zhao asked.
"The Third-Watch Lamp isn't a place," Xu Jinghong said. "It's a rule."
She knocked: light, heavy, light.From inside came the reply: heavy, light.
The countersign matched. A waiter slipped them through to the rear courtyard.
The courtyard was too clean—so clean even fallen leaves looked hand-picked away.
More unnatural still: the room was lit, and beneath the light sat a laid table.
Two meat dishes, two vegetables, a jar of wine, a plate of peanuts—set like a welcome. Almost like a reunion.
Xu Jinghong entered and sat first.
She picked up one peanut, bit down slowly, and only then lifted her eyes to the man waiting there.
He wore a long robe of blue cloth and smiled in a way that was… correct. Too correct, as if rehearsed.
He rose and cupped his hands. "Miss Xu. Hard road."
Xu Jinghong didn't return the salute. "You know me?"
"In Guiyi, who doesn't know Xu Jinghong?" he said, smiling.
He slid a waist-tally toward her. The copper was worn smooth at the edges; a shallow wave pattern had been engraved into it.
"The sea people asked me to pass a message," he said. "Did you bring the item?"
Xu Jinghong didn't touch the tally. She nudged the peanuts with her chopsticks instead.
"How do the sea people address Guiyi?" she asked.
The answer came too quickly. "Sea brothers."
Xu Jinghong's chopsticks paused for half a beat. "That sounds like something an outsider learned to say."
His smile didn't move. "Times are tight. Rules need flexibility."
Xu Jinghong looked up. "Rules can bend. Lives don't get handed over lightly."
She lifted the wave-etched tally and turned it. Qin Zhao saw it then: the wave pattern ran the wrong way.
Xu Jinghong set it back down.
"Who gave you that?" she asked.
The man was opening his mouth when Xu Jinghong pushed a cup toward him.
"If it's a welcome, drink first."
He took the cup.
Xu Jinghong asked, mild as ever, "What do they call me inside Guiyi?"
"Jinghong," he said.
Xu Jinghong nodded once. "Wrong."
The air tightened.
"Those on the inside call me Hong," she said. "Jinghong is what outsiders call me."
In the man's eyes, something cold flashed through at last.
II. The Table Doesn't Flip—What Flips Is Underneath It
The man snapped his fingers. Outside, footsteps rose at once—light, dense, disciplined. Torchlight swayed behind the window paper, like the room being ringed.
Qin Zhao's hand drifted toward his sleeve.
Xu Jinghong pressed down on his wrist: don't.
She looked at the man. "So the rebel-hunters have reached a canal town. Diligent."
He smiled. "If the realm is to have rules, someone has to use you to set them."
Xu Jinghong suddenly called toward the front: "Innkeeper! Waiters—get to the back. Now!"
A panicked answer, scrambling feet.
Only then did Qin Zhao understand: she wasn't saving herself first. She was pulling ordinary people out of the frame—so this courtyard wouldn't become a slaughterhouse.
The man gave a thin laugh. "How kind of you."
Xu Jinghong answered, "Not kind. I just find you filthy."
She sat again and poured herself wine. "What is it you want?"
"What you brought."
Xu Jinghong took a sip. "I can give it to you."
Qin Zhao's heart lurched. Xu Jinghong's knee bumped his—small, sharp: listen.
Xu Jinghong continued, "But you let me step into the courtyard."
The man narrowed his eyes. "You're buying time."
Xu Jinghong nodded. "Yes. I am."
She admitted it so openly it put a crack in his certainty.
He lifted a hand. "Bring them out. No tricks."
The courtyard gate opened. Han-clothed soldiers formed a circle.
Xu Jinghong walked to the center and drew a thin hairpin from her bun—steel, fine as a needle.
She drove it into the ground. "It's buried under this courtyard. If you want it—dig."
The man sneered. "Do you think I'm a fool?"
Xu Jinghong looked at him. "You're not a fool. But you're in a hurry."
She stepped back half a pace and flashed Qin Zhao a hand sign: go.
Qin Zhao didn't lead. He executed. He turned and slipped through the side door into the back alley.
Two steps—then from between the bricks came a soft pfft as a pale thread of smoke rose.
Not thick. Not dramatic. Just strange: it frayed into a thin haze when it caught the torchlight—exactly enough to blur sight.
"Smoke!""Don't breathe it!""After him—!"
Once the line broke, the eyes broke with it.
Xu Jinghong didn't run too fast. She ran at exactly the speed that stayed visible—dragging torches and attention after her. She even looked back and shouted, laughing hard and sharp:
"Dig, then! Dig up your ancestors while you're at it!"
III. The Wharf: The Real Transfer
The back alley spilled onto the wharf.
Night water lay black. Boat silhouettes crouched low.
Qin Zhao was about to leap onto a small craft when a shout cracked behind him:
"Stop!"
His foot stalled. Cold washed through him. Too late.
The water stirred. A bamboo pole extended from the dark and tapped the gunwale—knock, knock.
From under the canopy came a hoarse whisper: "Get in."
Qin Zhao dove beneath the canopy. The smell of salt sacks hit him—sharp, briny. Someone pressed a wet cloth over his mouth.
"Don't breathe."
Torchlight swept the water. A voice barked, "Search the boats!"
Inside, the man under the canopy moved without hurry. He set down an old copper plate, its edge blackened, a single character stamped on it:
Tide (潮).
The Han-clothed soldier paused. "Which line are you?"
"Salt runners," the man answered.
The soldier's jaw tightened. "Salt runners still get searched."
The man lifted his head. His gaze was like sea wind striking rock—hard, cold, impatient.
He flicked a small pouch of silver onto the shore. "Search, then get lost. Don't delay me before the tide turns."
The pouch landed with a dull thud.
The soldier stared at the Tide plate, then at the silver, and finally waved them off.
"Go!"
The bamboo pole pushed. The boat slid from shore.
Only then did Qin Zhao dare breathe—only to realize his chest went hollow.
The oil-paper packet was gone.
He jerked up. "The item—"
"Don't grope for it," the man said, flat. "If it's not on you, it's a living road."
Qin Zhao froze. "You took it?"
The man tipped his chin toward a bamboo tube tucked in the corner of the hold.
"Already moved on. The canal line doesn't run on one person."
Qin Zhao's throat tightened.
So the whole "it's buried under the courtyard" was never meant for rebel-hunters to dig. It was meant to give Guiyi's network the breath it needed to switch hands.
IV. A Real Ally: One Sentence, and the World Widens
The boat ran on. The shore torches shrank behind them.
Then a footfall touched the canopy—so light it might have been a leaf. Someone boarded without a sound.
The man with the Tide plate pressed Qin Zhao down. "Don't move. Ours."
The newcomer slid inside and said nothing of names. He simply placed a true wave-etched waist-tally on the plank.
This one was right—the waves running the proper direction, the wear authentic.
He glanced once at Qin Zhao. "So this is Twenty-Seven?"
The Tide-man nodded.
The newcomer's first words weren't praise, and they weren't questions. They were cold and final.
"Your life isn't worth much. Don't rush to use it as currency."
Qin Zhao's face heated; no rebuttal came.
The newcomer turned—not to the packet, not to the list—but to the real weight.
"Where's Xu Jinghong?" he asked. "If she doesn't walk out, I might as well not have come."
The sentence hit like a hammer to the chest: the sea people's first concern wasn't the message.
It was Xu Jinghong.
Not long after, the canopy lifted.
Xu Jinghong returned.
Dust on her hat. One hem soaked dark. Her breathing steady.
She sat, took the cup of wine left untouched, and drained it in one swallow.
Then she looked at Qin Zhao.
"Learn anything?"
"A little," Qin Zhao rasped.
Xu Jinghong gave a short sound. "A little isn't enough. You're still too clean."
She lowered her voice and dropped something colder still:
"The rebel-hunter back there—he knew your code name."
Qin Zhao's stomach sank. "He overheard?"
Xu Jinghong shook her head. "Not overheard."
Her fingertip tapped the plank, once, twice—each tap a nail.
"Someone handed 'Twenty-Seven' to him."
Silence flooded the canopy.
The sea man looked at Xu Jinghong once. His voice went colder than hers.
"There's a hand in the Guiyi line reaching closer than we thought."
Xu Jinghong's face didn't change. She pressed the Gui coin into her palm as if pressing down a flame.
"Close or not—" she said, quiet as steel,"if a hand reaches in—""we cut it off."
(End of this chapter)