The name carved into the iron stake stayed with Kaifeng long after the figures had vanished.
Shén Lüyun.
The blade hadn't been meant to kill. It was a message — carved, burned, and sent from somewhere that remembered what Qingwu Sect had chosen to forget.
That evening, Kaifeng stood before the Sealed Shrine in the far north of the sect grounds. No disciples trained this far. No elders walked past. It was where moss grew over stone, and incense never lit.
The shrine had no offerings.
Only ashes.
And beneath the ash, a broken tile with a name that had once been struck from the scrolls.
Shén.
The rest was shattered.
Kaifeng knelt.
Not in grief.
But in readiness.
He pulled the rusted iron stake from his sleeve and laid it beside the name. The wind stirred — and for a moment, he heard a voice he hadn't heard in seven winters.
"You remember too slowly."
He didn't answer.
He just closed his eyes — and remembered what silence had buried.
Seven Years Ago.
The Northern Pavilion burned.
But no flames reached Kaifeng's skin.
He had been thrown clear. By her.
By Lüyun.
Her hand had pushed him into the pond before the structure collapsed. He surfaced choking, bleeding, but alive. She had stayed.
And then the roof fell.
The sect never found her body. No bones. No braid. Nothing.
They said she was dead.
Kaifeng believed them.
Until now.
Back in the present, Elder Han entered his private study with an old, faded scroll wrapped in oil cloth. The sigil on the front was not Qingwu's.
It was older. Unacknowledged.
A blade coiled like a sleeping serpent.
A whisper beneath the ink: The Silent Edge Manual.
He placed it on the table.
The emissary in storm-gray robes waited beside him.
"You knew she lived," she said.
"I suspected," Han replied.
"You trained him anyway?"
"I didn't train him," Han said.
"I just left the doors unlocked. He walked through."
That night, thunder rolled without rain.
Kaifeng stood beneath the withered cedar. Wei Qingzhao approached again — not as a rival, but as someone caught in the same storm.
"She mattered to you," Wei said.
Kaifeng didn't look at him. But he didn't deny it.
"Then why do they act like she never existed?"
Kaifeng spoke, finally.
"Because they couldn't bury her body. So they buried her name."
Wei's hand dropped to the hilt of his training blade.
"You think she's alive?"
Kaifeng's voice was flat.
"No. I think she's worse."
Far from Qingwu, across the broken coastlines of the outer prefectures, a figure walked barefoot through ash.
Hair unbound. Sleeves torn. Back scorched by old flame.
Her eyes were unreadable.
Her steps silent.
And behind her trailed a shadow of ten bodies, each with a single cut across the chest — clean, bloodless, and unhealed.
She looked up as if smelling the wind.
"They've let him remember," she whispered.
Then she smiled.
Not cruel.
Just quiet.
Like someone who had waited a long time to be heard.
End of Chapter 5