Shen Lu finished the last anti-miasma pellet with hands that no longer felt like his.
They were his, technically. The fingers were long, the joints slightly scarred, the nails kept short in a way that suggested habit rather than neatness. Alchemist hands. Hands that had crushed herbs into medicine, and—if Yuan's memories were to be believed—hands that had crushed other people's pride just as easily.
But the way they moved tonight, steady and careful by firelight, felt like borrowed choreography. Shen Lu watched his own knuckles flex and wondered how many times these hands had done something cruel without the mind flinching.
He set the pellet down with the others, aligned them into a neat row, and then sat back until his spine touched cold stone. The fire crackled softly. Smoke curled into the night. Somewhere above the ledge, wind combed through twisted pine branches and made a sound like distant whispering.
The camp was quiet. Not peaceful-quiet. The other disciples slept the way soldiers slept—lightly, with a part of their awareness still hooked to their surroundings. Shen Lu could hear the shallow shifts of their breathing, the occasional rustle of cloth, the faint click of metal as someone adjusted a weapon in their sleep.
Outside the perimeter talismans, the mountain night listened.
Helian Feng had taken first watch. He stood near the edge of camp where the ledge fell away into blackness, posture straight, sword at his side, gaze fixed outward as if he could see through fog and rock and distance by force of will. The firelight didn't reach him well; it made him look like a silhouette carved from darkness. Only the faintest glint on the sword's guard suggested he was not a statue.
Shen Lu tried not to watch him.
He watched him anyway.
In the book, Helian Feng had always been described in absolutes: righteous, cold, merciless, destined. As if the author had taken one emotion—justice—and used it to paint an entire man. Shen Lu had accepted that at the time because fiction loved simplicity.
Now, seeing Helian Feng in the real world, Shen Lu couldn't deny the truth of the coldness, but he could see the shape of the effort under it. Helian Feng wasn't naturally calm. Helian Feng chose calm the way someone chose to hold a blade steady. It was discipline made visible.
Shen Lu turned his gaze back to the fire and rubbed his thumb across his fingertips, trying to wipe away the lingering herb scent. The smell was bitter and sharp, grounding. It reminded him, faintly, of his old life—of the pharmacy shelves and the clean bite of alcohol wipes and the way modern medicine always pretended it was above superstition.
Here, medicine was intimate with superstition. Pills were made of beasts and moonlight and intent. A person's hatred could alter a cure's flavor. A vow could make a poison last longer.
Shen Lu exhaled and almost laughed, not because it was funny but because his mind needed somewhere to put the pressure.
Yuan shifted beneath his collar, a quiet coil tightening like a cold rope.
"You're tired," Yuan said inside his mind, voice lazy and sharp.
Shen Lu didn't look up. He thought back, dry as ash, "Astute."
Yuan's amusement flickered. "You're pretending you can earn forgiveness with pellets."
Shen Lu's jaw tightened. "I'm earning time."
"Same thing to you?" Yuan asked.
Shen Lu stared into the fire. "No."
Yuan's tongue flicked against Shen Lu's skin, a faint prickling sensation that made Shen Lu resist the urge to flinch. Yuan liked to remind him that he was there.
Yuan continued, "The sword boy will kill you if you slip. The elders will kill you if you're useless. The other disciples will kill you if they get the chance."
Shen Lu's humor edged itself into his thoughts again, thin and tired. "That's the warmest welcome I've ever received."
Yuan's reply was a soft, delighted hiss that might have been laughter.
Shen Lu let the sarcasm die in his throat and looked down at the medicine packets again. He had made enough for the team. He had done it without shortcuts. He had done it because being useful was the only currency he could spend right now.
But usefulness did not erase the weight Helian Feng had dropped earlier.
You destroyed the only thing my mother left behind.
Shen Lu's chest tightened—not only from the wound, but from the way the words pressed into him. He had not destroyed it with his own will. But he wore the body that had done it. And Helian Feng did not care about will. Helian Feng cared about consequences.
Shen Lu understood that more than he wanted to.
A light crunch of gravel sounded behind him.
Shen Lu's spine stiffened automatically.
He didn't reach for a weapon. He couldn't. His whip was sealed back at the sect. His hands were empty. And reaching would only make him look guilty.
Instead, he turned his head slowly.
Helian Feng had left the edge of camp and approached the fire in near silence. He moved like someone trained to be quiet without trying. His eyes were on Shen Lu, and in the dim firelight they looked even colder, almost colorless.
He stopped just outside the ring of warmth, posture straight. His presence made the air feel tighter, as if the fire itself recognized a storm nearby.
Shen Lu kept his expression neutral.
Helian Feng's gaze flicked to the neat rows of pellets and paste, then returned to Shen Lu's face. "You finished."
It wasn't a compliment. It was a checkmark.
Shen Lu nodded once. "Yes."
Helian Feng's eyes narrowed. "No missing ingredients."
Shen Lu's mouth twitched. "I'm touched you think I have self-control."
The words slipped out without permission, dry humor leaking through exhaustion.
Helian Feng's gaze sharpened. "Don't."
Shen Lu's mouth closed.
Helian Feng stepped closer, reaching down to pick up one of the anti-miasma packets. He didn't take it from Shen Lu's hand. He never took anything from Shen Lu's hand. He examined the packet like he expected it to bite.
Shen Lu watched, face calm, while irritation clawed at the inside of his ribs. In another life, he would have told Helian Feng that suspicion was reasonable but constant suspicion was exhausting. In this life, he couldn't afford speeches.
Helian Feng opened the packet, sniffed the pellet, and then—without looking at Shen Lu—asked, "Why didn't you poison them?"
Shen Lu stared at him. "Because I'm tired."
Helian Feng's gaze snapped to him.
Shen Lu added, because the truth felt too bare without a shield, "And because it would make the mission inconvenient."
Helian Feng's eyes narrowed further, as if analyzing the tone for hidden meaning. "You speak like you're bargaining."
Shen Lu's humor curved thinly. "Isn't everyone?"
Helian Feng didn't answer. He placed the packet back down and straightened. His posture remained perfect. His hands remained still. Only his eyes moved, tracking Shen Lu the way someone tracked a wild animal they intended to either tame or kill.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The fire popped, sending a small spray of sparks upward. One spark drifted toward Helian Feng's sleeve and died before it touched him.
Helian Feng finally spoke again, voice lower. "You didn't argue today."
Shen Lu blinked once. "I argued yesterday."
Helian Feng's eyes cut. "And you regret it."
Shen Lu's mouth twitched. He couldn't help it. "I regret many things."
Helian Feng's gaze held him. "Name one."
The question was quiet. It didn't sound like a trap. It sounded like Helian Feng wanted to hear Shen Lu say something so he could decide whether to despise it.
Shen Lu's chest tightened around a breath.
He thought of the pendant. He thought of Helian Feng's missing mother. He thought of the outer disciple who had died.
He chose the truth that would hurt most and still be safe.
"I regret," Shen Lu said slowly, "that I can't undo what I did to your token."
The word token felt small compared to what Helian Feng had described, but Shen Lu didn't dare dress it up with sentiment. Sentiment from Shen Lu would sound like mockery.
Helian Feng's jaw tightened.
His eyes went colder, not because the regret was offensive, but because hearing it threatened to blur the clean lines Helian Feng had drawn around Shen Lu.
"Don't say it like that," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu frowned slightly. "Like what."
"Like you mean it," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu almost laughed again. The absurdity of being punished for sincerity. "You'd prefer I don't?"
Helian Feng's gaze sharpened. "I prefer you stop pretending you can be someone else."
Shen Lu's humor died.
He held Helian Feng's eyes and said quietly, "I am someone else."
The words hung between them like a blade balanced on a fingertip.
Helian Feng stilled.
Shen Lu realized the mistake immediately. He had said it too directly. Too plainly. The kind of statement that invited questions Shen Lu could not answer.
Helian Feng took one slow step closer.
Shen Lu's muscles tensed despite himself, because every instinct in this body remembered Helian Feng as danger.
Helian Feng's voice was low. "What did you just say."
Shen Lu forced calm into his lungs. "I said I'm trying."
Helian Feng's eyes narrowed. "That's not what you said."
Shen Lu's pulse hammered.
This was the moment where a wrong answer could tip the world into the discipline yard. Helian Feng didn't need evidence if he believed Shen Lu was playing games.
Shen Lu swallowed, then used his dry humor like a rope.
"If you want poetic phrasing," Shen Lu said, "I can offer it. I'm trying very hard not to die."
One of the sleeping disciples shifted, making a small sound. Helian Feng's gaze flicked toward the others, then returned to Shen Lu, expression controlled again.
Helian Feng exhaled once through his nose, as if forcing something down.
"Good," Helian Feng said, and the word sounded like a sentence. "Try harder."
Shen Lu nodded.
Helian Feng turned away as if the conversation was finished.
But then he stopped, back still to Shen Lu, and spoke again—quietly, like he was speaking to the night rather than to a person.
"You destroyed the only thing my mother left behind."
Shen Lu's throat tightened.
Helian Feng continued, voice flat. "You didn't steal spirit stones. You didn't break a sword. You destroyed something that could not be replaced."
The repetition wasn't for Shen Lu's benefit. It was for Helian Feng's. A mantra that kept his hatred clean. A line that kept his righteousness anchored to something undeniable.
Shen Lu's fingers curled against the rock.
He knew he should stay silent. Silence was safer.
Instead, he heard himself ask, softly, "What was it."
Helian Feng didn't move.
Shen Lu added, because the words once started couldn't be swallowed back, "Tell me."
The fire crackled. Wind shifted. The mountain night listened.
For a long moment, Helian Feng said nothing.
Then, with a control that sounded like a man forcing his voice through ice, he answered.
"It was a pendant," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu held his breath.
Helian Feng's voice remained flat, but the flatness was strained. "Small. Worn. Not valuable."
He paused, and Shen Lu felt the weight behind the pause.
"My mother tied it to my wrist when I was a child," Helian Feng said. "She said it was protection. She said it would keep me safe when she wasn't there."
Shen Lu's chest tightened.
Helian Feng's jaw clenched. "Then she disappeared."
The sentence fell like a stone dropped into deep water.
Shen Lu didn't ask how. He didn't ask why. He didn't ask what rumors the sect told. He didn't ask whether Helian Feng had searched.
The answers were written all over Helian Feng's posture: the searching had never stopped. It had simply become quieter, sharper, and more lethal.
Helian Feng continued, voice still controlled. "No grave. No body. No explanation. People said she offended someone. People said she ascended and never returned. People said she ran."
His hand tightened at his side. Shen Lu noticed then that Helian Feng's fingers were curled slightly, as if around something invisible.
"I kept the pendant," Helian Feng said, "because it was proof she existed."
Shen Lu swallowed hard.
Helian Feng finally turned his head slightly, enough that Shen Lu saw his profile. The firelight painted the edge of his cheekbone, the line of his mouth set hard.
"It was proof she did not abandon me without leaving something," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu stared at him, throat tight.
Helian Feng's gaze snapped back fully, eyes cold again, and the crack in his voice sealed shut.
"You destroyed it," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu felt the words hit him like a physical blow, even though he had known them already.
He didn't say I'm sorry this time. Helian Feng had already cut that path off.
Instead, Shen Lu asked the question he couldn't stop himself from asking.
"Why did I do it," Shen Lu said quietly, meaning the original Shen Lu even as the pronoun stuck like a hook. "Why that."
Helian Feng's expression turned sharp with contempt. "Because you wanted to see me break."
Shen Lu's fingers tightened.
Helian Feng continued, voice low and cold, as if each word was something he had sharpened carefully over years. "Because you thought it was amusing to crush something I couldn't replace. Because you wanted the sect to laugh. Because you wanted me to kneel."
Shen Lu's stomach turned. He could almost see the scene. The yard. The crowd. The pendant between fingers. The moment it broke. The sound.
He could almost hear Helian Feng's breath hitch.
Shen Lu's voice came out rougher than he wanted. "And the sect laughed."
Helian Feng's mouth tightened. "Yes."
Shen Lu stared at the fire and felt his dry humor try to crawl up like a defense, then die. There was no cleverness that could soften this. No joke that wouldn't sound like cruelty wearing a different mask.
Helian Feng's voice dropped. "Do you know what it's like to hold something small like that and pretend it's a person."
Shen Lu's throat burned.
He answered honestly, because lying would insult Helian Feng's pain.
"No," Shen Lu said.
Helian Feng's eyes narrowed. "Then don't pretend you can make it right."
Shen Lu nodded once.
His humor returned in a thin thread, not to mock but to keep himself from cracking.
"So," Shen Lu said quietly, "I should stop trying."
Helian Feng's gaze sharpened. "You should stop acting like you can pay back what can't be paid."
Shen Lu swallowed. "Then what am I supposed to do."
Helian Feng stared at him for a long moment.
Then, unexpectedly, Helian Feng answered.
"Live," Helian Feng said.
The word hit Shen Lu like a slap.
Helian Feng's voice was cold. "Live long enough to suffer the consequences. That is the only repayment you can offer."
Shen Lu almost laughed, because the sentence was so perfectly righteous sect cruelty dressed up as virtue.
He didn't laugh.
He nodded once, slow. "Understood."
Helian Feng's gaze held him, as if testing whether Shen Lu would argue. When Shen Lu didn't, Helian Feng's expression tightened slightly—as if the lack of argument made Helian Feng uneasy.
Helian Feng turned away again.
But he didn't walk back to his watch post immediately. He stood with his back to Shen Lu and spoke as if spitting a vow into the wind.
"My mother is alive," Helian Feng said.
Shen Lu froze.
Helian Feng's voice remained flat, but there was steel under it. "She isn't in this lower world anymore."
Shen Lu's breath caught.
Helian Feng continued, as if saying it aloud made it truer. "I can feel it. The bloodline does not end in fog."
Shen Lu didn't know whether that was literal cultivation intuition or simply the stubborn refusal of a son who could not accept emptiness. Either way, it was a belief that had shaped Helian Feng like a blade shaped by repeated grinding.
"When I reach the higher realms," Helian Feng said, "I will find her."
Shen Lu's chest tightened again, not from pain this time but from the shape of the story stretching ahead. Four worlds. Hundreds of chapters. A missing mother thread waiting like a hook in the upper arcs.
Helian Feng turned his head slightly, and his voice sharpened again.
"That pendant was the only proof I had of her in this world," he said. "You destroyed it."
Shen Lu's fingers curled into his palm.
He forced his voice steady. "If I could undo it, I would."
Helian Feng's gaze cut him. "You can't."
Shen Lu nodded. "I know."
Helian Feng stared at him for one last beat, then walked away, returning to the edge of camp where the darkness began.
Shen Lu remained by the fire, staring at the pellets lined up neatly like small, useless attempts at order.
Yuan shifted under his collar, amused in a way that made Shen Lu want to shake him.
"He spoke too much," Yuan said in Shen Lu's mind, voice delighted.
Shen Lu thought back, dry and hollow, "Yes. It must have been exhausting for him."
Yuan's amusement sharpened. "He let you see something."
Shen Lu stared at the coals. "He let me hear hatred with reasons."
Yuan made a satisfied sound. "Reasons are hooks. Hooks catch."
Shen Lu didn't answer.
He looked down at his hands again. Alchemist hands. Villain hands.
He thought of the outer disciple's death, waiting to be confirmed by the Discipline Hall once they returned. He thought of Elder Liu's calm face and the way usefulness had replaced justice in his mouth. He thought of the jade vial back in his room, tracking mark hidden in its clean seals.
He thought of Helian Feng's mother, missing beyond the lower realm, and the pendant that had been proof.
Then, for the first time since waking in this world, Shen Lu felt a clear, sharp understanding settle in his chest.
He could not apologize his way out.
He could not behave politely and expect the sect to forget.
He could not be "good" enough to erase the villain name.
If he wanted to survive long enough to reach the higher realms—long enough to even have the chance to change anything—he would need to do something that forced Helian Feng to doubt his own certainty.
Not with words.
With actions.
Shen Lu almost laughed at the thought, dry and bitter. Doubt the righteous executioner.
What a ridiculous cultivation goal.
Above the camp, distant thunder rolled once over the mountains, low and heavy. The sound traveled through the valley like a warning.
At the edge of the firelight, Helian Feng stood perfectly still, upright as judgment.
Shen Lu stared at his back and thought, not entirely joking, that if heaven really listened, it had a cruel sense of humor.