News moved like a cold wind through the border towns: patrols rerouted, imperial messengers hastened, and officers with clipped faces rode from village to village. The slaughters had left no random trail—only staged evidence and the dead posted with the sigils Han Zhenwu wanted burning over them. Rumors and grief bent the countryside into a single sick murmur. Information brokers sniffed at the change, whispering in dark alleys; merchants shuttered their stalls for a night. To anyone paying attention, something vast and deliberate was stirring.
Han Zhenwu felt the motion of the empire's search as proof that his work had been clean. From the hilltop beside his estate he watched the imperial agents move through the town—one here, another there—each a living thermometer of suspicion. His undercovers reported back in small, careful phrases: They search the He road. They quizzed the magistrate. They smelled Xue banners. The pattern satisfied him. The He and Xue clans would choke on the traces he'd left.
He had planned the next layer long before the last embers cooled. He had a man he had fought beside and against: Xie Tianhun, the empire's iron-fisted general, known as the Fist of Glory. Zhenwu would go to Xie with accusations: blood-and-ash claims that Xue and He were dabbling in demonic arts, that their hands were stained with the recent massacres. It was a simple thing to ask a warrior to follow the scent of treachery. Zhenwu needed an ally who would bend the empire's might toward his ends—and he knew how to hand Xie the scent.
A day later, in Xie Tianhun's dim office, reports lay splayed across a table: patrol logs, the burnt remains of banners, witness statements. A messenger entered and presented a letter sealed with the Han mark. Xie took the seal in a large hand and scowled.
"The hell does this bastard want from me?" he muttered, but the mark made him read. Han Zhenwu's script was economical. The request was simple: a meeting, valuable information promised, cooperation offered for a price. Xie was skeptical—Han Zhenwu was a noble who trafficked in favors and threats in equal measure—but the general's duty was to root out threats to the empire. If the Han came bearing prey, Xie would hunt it.
He told his subordinate to send the reply: agree. The mechanics of power were crude and reliable; a hunting dog cannot resist the scent of a rabbit otherwise how will he please his master.
When the reply reached Han Zhenwu, his mouth spread into a thin, pleased line. "Now comes the fun part," he murmured to himself, already tasting the turn of events.
He had paid handsomely, and anonymously, for the attempt on his own life. He had arranged the assassins' appearance to be believable without risking his own actual death by making an anonymous request to a good organization but not good enough to actually endanger his life in his act. That act would become the pivot he needed. When Xie Tianhun arrived, witnesses would call the attempt an act of hatred—proof, in the general's eyes, of the He and Xue's treachery. The stage would be set for a public purge.
Zhenwu's plan had a darker seam: He Ruying. He intended to use the empire's fury as cover to demand vengeance—"the poisonings; the betrayal; the attempt on my life"—and to call for the He and Xue to be brought low. He would press the empire to execute justice: arrest or eliminate the two patriarchs, punish their houses, and, if needed, "hold" He Ruying for supposed involvement. In the chaos, he planned to make the child vanish—claiming a demonic sect had snatched the infant in the turmoil—and then, in private, finish what public justice would not: ensure the child could not be used against him. He imagined blaming the disappearance on demonic cultists, a believable fiction amid the recent tales of dark rites.
Every piece of the scheme was ordered: massacre staged to make Xue and He look guilty; whispered lies sewn into imperial ears; a meeting with Xie secured; a fake assassination arranged by commissioing an anonymous request to an organization that's good but not too good; a public outcry to demand imperial retribution; and finally, the disappearance of the child blamed on outside savagery. If the inheritance test failed and his son could not provide the key, Zhenwu would have his fallback—the dark ritual that needed a Han bloodline near enough to complete.
Han Zhenwu screamed for his men to halt. He lurched from the carriage and barked cold orders, forcing his body into the spectacle he had rehearsed: collapse, weakness, helplessness. His attendants moved into position like actors taking marks; the assassins—paid, masked, and bloodthirsty—poured from the tree line.
They struck hard. Rank-two cultivators among the attackers surged forward, steel and poisoned intent in their hands. Han Zhenwu took blows as if they found their mark; he stumbled, let his robes tear, let the blood and sweat paint his face. Around them the land answered the fury of combat—lightning cleaved branches, stones cracked, and earth split. In a hundred-meter radius the forest was ruined, trees toppled and scorched, the air smelling of ozone and iron.
At times he fell to his knees. At times he rolled and clutched a wound. At times he cried out in pain so convincing that even the most practiced eye would be fooled. The assassins pressed the advantage, thinking the prize was close to death. When Han Zhenwu judged the ruse complete, he flipped the script.
With sudden, deliberate ferocity he struck back. Lightning—borne of skill rather than sickness—shredded the attackers' formations. Where they had pushed in with murder in their eyes, they now found themselves forced to flee, scattering or falling under precise, brutal counterstrikes. What had looked like the death of a noble became the clearing of a field by a man who would not die that day.
Bloodied, bruised, and theatrically beaten, Han Zhenwu allowed a private, savage smile to curl in his mind. To him this had been theatre: a test of deception, a game to see who could act and who would be fooled. His men, who had watched their patriarch perform the part of the wounded patriarch, rushed to check him, their hands rough with concern. Touched by the display of bravery and protection they believed they'd witnessed, they busied themselves with bandages and hurried orders.
Han Zhenwu dismissed them quickly. " Let's leave," he snapped, voice hoarse.They immediately departed, murmuring obeisance and loyalty, convinced they had aided a man who'd paid the price to protect them.
---
The next scene was the imperial capital: gilded gates that glittered like a promise, walls tall and polished, streets and halls threaded with power. The city's art and architecture spoke of wealth and order. Han Zhenwu stepped through it with none of the awe the place demanded; his purpose was narrower than wonder.
At the army base, escorted past sentries, he presented the written invitation from Xie Tianhun. He was led into a substantial office, where the general sat behind a broad table. Xie looked up, blunt and unbothered.
"You look like shit," the general said.
Han Zhenwu did not answer the insult. He had no time for courtesies. "I don't have any time for that, Tianhun. I just want to get this over with," he said.
He leaned in and, with the voice of a man who had rehearsed every note, continued: "I want to make a deal involving the He and Xue clan."
"About what?" Xie asked.
Han Zhenwu did not hesitate. "For many acts that go against the empire's and sects' order, and I am giving you the chance to claim the glory—or do you think I should go seek any of the four great sects?"
Xie's expression hardened. "And why would you want to help us anyways? I've known you long enough to know that you rarely help us even for a price."
Han Zhenwu fixed him with a look. "Look at me and take a guess."
Xie studied the man: the pallor, the blood at his lips, the way his shoulders trembled. His eyes narrowed. The general's glance slid to the bruises and the ragged edge of Han Zhenwu's sleeve. The answer suggested itself: the wounds might be real, the sickness might be true. When he finally spoke, his tone bore no indulgence for theatrics.
"I guess your state has something to do with them," xie tianhun said, letting his accusation rest in the air.
"What a genius," han zhenwu muttered, tianhun ignored his words and continued, "And why would they do that to you? After all, last time I heard your son got married to the daughters of the He and Xue clans?"
Han Zhenwu's voice came low, measured. "Because they want my clan. They wanted their daughters to bear the child of my son so that when I am gone they will go after my son. Those children will be the heirs, and then those clans would take over my clan."
Xie listened, each word a possible reason to turn the empire's weight. The general found the argument reasonable; in his mind there were few obvious holes—especially with news fresh of Han Zhenwu's near–assassination on the road. The timing fit well with suspicion. Whoever plotted to silence a noble en route to meet the empire had to have reach and daring.
"And how did they manage to poison someone like you?" Xie demanded.
Han Zhenwu kept his face a mask of suffering for the moment, then spat lightly and answered with the part of the plot he wanted exposed. "By planting someone who can reach me without the need to hide themselves, someone who can be in the same house as me every day. I am sure you're smart enough to take a guess."
Xie's mind moved quickly, grinding the pieces together. "Probably one of the wives," he said bluntly. "If not both of them."
Han Zhenwu nodded, the gesture small and precise. "Well, I only know that one is a sure spy. The other didn't show any sign."
Xie then cut to business. "Alright. Give me everything you know, and I'll pay you for that information. We'll take care of them if we have enough evidence to get the public on our side and to shut the sects from interfering."
Han Zhenwu had given his cue; Xie had agreed. The wheels of empire turned, and Han Zhenwu's carefully staged wounds and accusations were now loose in the gears.