The road bent south after the river, narrowing into a corridor of broken stone and dry grass where carts no longer passed. Lu Yan chose it anyway. Fewer eyes, fewer merchants, fewer patrols. Also fewer chances to buy medicine, food, or information — but he had weighed that already, and the scale had tipped toward silence.
They walked in staggered lines, not tight, not loose. Habit, carved by years of raids and retreats.
Qiao Ren remained in the rear, the child bound against his back with a wide cloth strap taken from a torn banner. Each step pulled at the muscles in his shoulders and the deep bruise along his ribs, where a blade had slipped past his guard the day before. He did not complain. He rarely did.
But pain had a way of speaking even when men stayed quiet.
Ahead, Han Shun turned slightly in the saddle and called back, "How long before we reach the city?"
"By dusk, if no delays," Lu Yan replied. "Earlier if Ren doesn't collapse on the road."
Qiao Ren snorted. "If I collapse, it'll be forward. I don't fall backward."
A few chuckles passed through the line. Thin, tired, but real.
The child stirred against his back, small fingers clutching at the cloth near his shoulder. Qiao Ren shifted instinctively, tightening the strap, adjusting the weight so the movement would not wake him.
He noticed what he was doing only after it was done.
For years, his hands had been tools. Grip, strike, lift, throw. Even when he ate, it was with the same blunt economy. Now they were steady in a different way, careful in a way that did not belong to the battlefield.
He told himself it was practical. A crying child slowed the group. Drew attention. Cost time.
Still, he did not remember the last time he had adjusted anything so gently.
They halted briefly at midday near a patch of low trees, sparse shade over dry soil. Water skins were passed. Dried meat divided. Portions were measured as always — and yet, somehow, the smallest bundle ended in Qiao Ren's hand.
He frowned at it, then glanced at Han Shun, who was already chewing.
"What?" Han Shun said. "You're carrying more weight."
Qiao Ren hesitated, then tore the strip in half. He ate one part, slipped the other into the fold of cloth near the child's mouth, where it could soften with saliva if he woke.
Lu Yan watched from a distance, eyes unreadable.
The route had been chosen to avoid trouble, but trouble had a habit of finding them anyway. The wind shifted in the afternoon, carrying dust and the faint smell of metal from far ahead — not fresh blood, not battle, but movement. People. Armed.
Lu Yan raised a fist. The group slowed, then stopped.
Scouts were sent forward, two at a time, moving through shallow dips in the land. When they returned, their expressions were tight.
"Another band," one said. "Not small. Thirty or more. They're circling the road."
Lu Yan exhaled slowly. "Then they saw us."
Han Shun spat into the dirt. "Or they saw what we're carrying."
No one asked how he knew.
Silence followed, not from fear, but from calculation.
"We can break through," one of the women said, adjusting the grip on her spear. "Their formation is wide."
"And risk the rear?" Lu Yan asked.
All eyes shifted, briefly, toward Qiao Ren.
He felt it, like pressure in the air.
"I can keep moving," he said. "I won't slow you."
Lu Yan studied him. The bruise beneath his torn armor was dark and spreading. His breath was steady, but not deep.
"We change formation," Lu Yan said. "Shield line tightens around the rear. Archers stay high. No pursuit. We cut through and leave."
No one objected.
Not because it was the best plan.
Because it was the only one that kept the child out of the first clash.
They moved.
-- -- --
In another place...
They had been watching since dawn.
Not because they planned to ambush travelers — that had not been the original intent. They were supposed to intercept a merchant convoy two valleys east, light guards, decent cargo.
But then they saw the group.
Too organized for villagers. Too heavily armed for traders. And at the center of the rear formation, a large man carrying something small, wrapped close to his body.
At first, they thought it was loot.
Then one of them, a thin cultivator with eyes sharpened by years of sensing flows in the air, frowned.
"There's something wrong with that," he murmured.
"What do you mean, wrong?" the leader asked.
The man swallowed. "The qi around them… bends. It's not strong. It's… pulled."
Pulled toward the rear.
Toward the child.
The leader had laughed at first. Superstition was cheap. Fear was cheaper.
But then he had watched.
Watched the way men shifted positions to block lines of sight. Watched how even when they drank, when they rested, their bodies angled subtly, unconsciously, toward that one point.
It was not discipline.
It was instinct.
And instinct, he had learned, was rarely wrong when it came to valuable things.
"We take the child," he said finally. "Rest scatter if needed."
Some of them hesitated.
"He's just a baby," one muttered.
The leader's gaze hardened. "And yet thirty grown men are moving like a wall around him. You think that happens by chance?"
No one answered.
When they descended from the hills, blades drawn, they told themselves it was strategy.
But beneath that, quieter and more dangerous, was something else.
The thought that if they took that child, something important would become theirs.
They did not know what.
Only that the idea of walking away felt… wrong.
Steel met steel with a sound like tearing cloth.
Lu Yan's blade cut down the first attacker before the man could finish his leap. The shield line locked, overlapping arcs of metal, while spears stabbed through the gaps. Archers loosed from behind, arrows cutting into the charge.
It was not clean. It was never clean.
Qiao Ren felt the impact through the formation, shockwaves traveling through bodies, through bone. He tightened his stance, feet digging into the dirt, shoulders braced.
A man broke through on the right, blade flashing low.
Qiao Ren shifted, twisting his torso, taking the cut across his side instead of letting it reach the cloth at his back.
Pain flared, sharp and wet.
He did not shout.
He struck.
His fist connected with the man's throat, cracking cartilage, then followed with a downward smash that drove the body into the ground.
Another came. Then another.
His breathing grew ragged. The bruise along his ribs screamed with every movement.
And yet, when he felt his strength begin to dip, something strange happened.
It did not surge.
It steadied.
Like a hand placed against his back, not pushing, not lifting — only preventing him from falling forward into exhaustion.
He did not think of it as destiny.
He thought, simply, not yet.
The child slept.
Lu Yan saw Qiao Ren stagger, just once, and adjusted the line without a word, sliding another shield into place, forcing attackers to redirect.
They broke through within minutes.
Not without blood.
But alive.
The rival band did not pursue. Some lay dead. Others watched them retreat, breathing hard, eyes following the rear of the formation long after the blades were out of reach.
They did not stop until the land flattened and the road widened, signaling the outskirts of settled territory.
Only then did Lu Yan give the order to rest.
Qiao Ren sat heavily against a stone, hands shaking now that the fight was done. Han Shun knelt beside him, tearing open his armor to check the wound.
"You're bleeding more than you should," Han Shun said quietly.
Qiao Ren glanced down. The cut along his side was deep, edges dark.
"It'll close," he said.
Han Shun didn't answer immediately. He reached into his pouch, pulled out a small vial — the last of their healing powder — and poured it over the wound.
"We'll get more in the city," he said.
Qiao Ren frowned. "That was for emergencies."
Han Shun met his eyes. "This is one."
The child stirred, finally waking, small face scrunching in confusion.
Qiao Ren froze.
Then, awkwardly, he reached back, adjusting the cloth again, murmuring low, rough words that had never before been meant for comfort.
"It's nothing," he muttered. "Just noise. Go back to sleep."
The child did.
Qiao Ren stared at the ground after that, jaw clenched.
He remembered the first time Lu Yan had ordered him to carry the child.
He had refused.
Not angrily. Just… with distance. He was not gentle. Not careful. Not suited.
But then the child had been passed to someone else — and cried. Sharp, thin, frightened.
And something in Qiao Ren had tightened.
Not pity.
Recognition.
He had carried wounded comrades like that before.
Had held them close so they would not bleed out before help arrived.
He had taken the child back without a word.
And now, apparently, he did not give him up.
Lu Yan watched all this in silence.
When they finally rose and continued toward the city, his voice was low.
"We sell quickly. Buy medicine, food, arrows. No drinking. No gambling. No delays."
Someone muttered agreement.
Han Shun added, "And we keep moving after. South. Away from the main roads."
Lu Yan nodded.
No one asked why.
Because no one truly believed anymore that this was just another job.
They had begun protecting him because it was right.
Somewhere along the road, without noticing, they had crossed into something else.
Protecting him because stopping now felt impossible.
Because the road they were laying no longer belonged to any one of them.
And because, in ways none of them yet understood, it was already leaning toward a throne.