Morning light filtered through the Ning estate like nothing had happened.
And yet, everything felt different.
Jiang Ning walked the inner corridors at an unhurried pace, his footsteps soft against stone still faintly darkened by scorch marks that no amount of scrubbing had quite lifted yet. Servants knelt with brushes and cloths, working blackened residue out of the grain of the walls, their motions careful and quiet, the kind of quiet that came from not wanting to be noticed rather than from having nothing to say. Others replaced shattered panels and splintered wood, hammers muffled with cloth so the sound wouldn't carry too far through the halls. Guards rotated in tighter patterns than usual, eyes sharp, hands never straying far from their weapons even as they exchanged brief nods with each other in passing.
No one panicked.
That, more than anything, unsettled him.
