The Golden Lute Pavilion did not wake gently.
It exploded.
A woman's scream burst through the wooden corridors at dawn...so sharp and sudden it cut straight through the last threads of sleep. Silk screens rattled. Lanterns swayed. A startled courtesan knocked over her cosmetics tray, bottles rolling across the floor with soft clinks like panicked insects.
Then came another scream.
Then another.
Within minutes, the entire brothel dissolved into chaos...doors slammed open, half-dressed attendants ran stumbling from room to room, their hairpins falling behind them like scattered arrows. Perfume bottles shattered beneath their feet. Someone knocked over a serving tray. Someone else fainted.
"Dead...! They're dead!"
"Guard Liu...his neck...his neck...!"
"Somebody fetch the city patrol! Hurry...!"
The young master...who had barely slept an hour...jerked upright, heart slamming against his ribs. His companion reacted instantly, already on his feet, hand gripping the concealed knife hidden inside his sleeve.
"What was that?" the young master asked, breath unsteady.
"Trouble," the companion muttered. "Stay behind me."
But the young master didn't listen; he was already moving.
They reached the corridor just as a terrified attendant barreled into them. Her eyes were red and puffy, her voice shaking.
"What happened?" he demanded, steadying her with both hands.
"S-sir, the guards...the second-floor guards..." Her breath hitched, the words choking. "...they're dead! Strangled! No noise, no fight...just… dead!"
The young master exchanged a sharp glance with his companion.
So fast.
So silent.
So precise.
That alone made his pulse spike.
They pushed through the spreading panic...with the ease of men accustomed to walking toward danger, not away from it...and arrived at the second-floor landing where two bodies lay.
The first corpse was slumped against the wall, head twisted at an unnatural angle. His eyes stared wide open, frozen in the moment of his last, terrified breath. The bruises across his throat were razor-thin, almost too clean.
The second guard lay inside the storage closet. Someone had discovered him while rushing for broom supplies; the woman who found him was still sobbing into another girl's arms.
The young master crouched down, inspecting the bruised line.
"This wasn't rope," he murmured. "And there are no nail marks on his skin. He couldn't even claw at it."
"Something thin," the companion said. "Precise."
Their expressions darkened in unison.
"Let's see Zhang."
They moved through the hall while chaos swelled around them...girls crying, patrons shouting, someone retching violently in a corner. Every passing moment tangled the brothel deeper in fear.
Inside Uncle Zhang's private room, the stench of wine and greed still lingered.
Silver coins were spilled across the table and floor, glittering like fallen stars. Zhang himself was sprawled across the table in a grotesque heap, mouth open, eyes bulging. The same thin, unmistakable line cut across his throat.
Death had not softened him. If anything, it revealed how petty and small he'd always been.
The young master's jaw tightened.
"Three men," he murmured.
"Killed without sound. Without warning. Without a single witness."
His fingers hovered above one of the scattered coins...stained faintly red at the edge.
"And all by the same hand."
The companion lowered his voice.
"Master Jun Kai," he said quietly...the name breaking the air for the first time, almost swallowed by the tension. "I think… the one we're hunting may not be the traffickers at all."
Jun Kai's brows drew together sharply.
"We came here to investigate Zhang's ring," he said. "And tonight… someone else investigated first."
The companion nodded grimly.
"We checked the second floor, sir. Shen Ling...she's alive. Fevered, beaten, but alive."
Jun Kai's breath tightened.
"She was treated," the companion continued. "Someone gave her water. Covered her in a blanket. Protected her wounds."
Jun Kai's eyes snapped toward him.
"Protected?"
The companion nodded again. "Gently, too. Whoever killed those three… didn't hurt her at all."
A strange, almost contradictory picture formed in Jun Kai's mind.
A killer who used surgical precision.
A stranger who showed compassion.
A ghost who saved rather than stole.
Downstairs, panic began to take shape as rumors.
"I saw a figure in lilac!" a courtesan cried, clutching her robe.
"No, white...like moonlight!" someone else insisted.
"It floated past me...silent...silent!"
"The Moon Ghost! It's the Moon Ghost!"
"Moon Ghost?" a drunken gambler echoed, eyes wide. "A spirit that kills wicked men by night... my grandmother told me..."
Another swore they saw a veil.
Someone else swore the figure vanished into the air.
Someone insisted it had no feet.
Another whispered it had eyes like cold silver.
Rumors spiraled like a wildfire in dry grass.
Jun Kai listened, expression darkening with every exaggerated tale.
Moon Ghost.
Silent killer.
Merciful shadow.
A myth born in minutes.
But Jun Kai remembered the veiled figure walking through the brothel before dawn.
How she...no, he...moved.
How her steps barely touched the floor.
How she avoided his gaze.
How she vanished the moment he reached out.
"…No," Jun Kai said quietly.
"That wasn't a ghost."
His companion looked at him sharply.
"Sir?"
Jun Kai's gaze drifted toward the back exit...now glowing with the pale blue of early morning.
A strange, soft sadness flickered in his eyes.
"It was someone real."
The companion took a slow breath.
"…Should we give chase?"
Jun Kai didn't answer at first.
He replayed everything in his mind...the veiled girl who never spoke, the trembling hands that didn't truly tremble, the steps too controlled to belong to someone helpless.
Finally, he shook his head.
"No chase."
"Sir?"
Jun Kai's grip tightened around his sleeve.
"He...or she...did what we've been trying to do for months. Zhang's ring is destroyed. The victims will live."
The companion bowed his head a fraction.
"And the city patrol?"
"They'll get the bodies," Jun Kai said. "And Shen Ling."
He exhaled slowly, gaze fixed where Jin Yue had vanished only hours before.
"But the Moon Ghost…
We won't find them unless they want to be found."
Behind him, the brothel continued spiraling into fear...screams, sobbing, frantic footsteps...but Jun Kai heard none of it.
Because the one person he wanted to question…
had disappeared with the night.
And the dawn felt strangely hollow without them.