The warehouse was quiet, but the air inside was anything but calm.
Scrolls covered the table. Numbers, names, false shipment orders, debt-tracking ledgers—Lianhua's work. Precise, ambitious, and growing more complicated by the hour. She circled one line of figures in red and moved to rewrite the supply route for the third time.
Feiyan's voice cut through the stillness. "This won't work."
Lianhua didn't look up. "Which part?"
Feiyan leaned on the opposite end of the table, her wrapped arm still stiff against her chest. "The part where you think Li Jun won't notice a tea courier business rerouting his private shipments. You're gambling with timing like it's coin."
"I'm not gambling," Lianhua said coolly. "I'm calculating."
"From behind a desk," Feiyan snapped. "You can write a hundred ledgers, but if you've never seen how fast Li Jun buries threats, you're not planning—you're dreaming."
Lianhua finally lifted her eyes. "You think I don't know what he's capable of?"
"I think you think you're smarter than him."
Shuye stood awkwardly near the back wall, arms half-raised. "Let's—uh—maybe take a breath—"
"No," Feiyan said sharply. "This is serious. We're making real moves now. We need plans that won't collapse the moment he pushes back."
"And you propose what?" Lianhua asked. "Another ambush? Another half-dead escape?"
Feiyan flinched.
Ziyan stepped between them. "Enough."
The word landed like steel. Ziyan rarely raised her voice. She didn't need to.
Feiyan took a slow breath, stepping back. Lianhua's jaw tightened, but she sat down, brush still in hand.
Ziyan looked between them. "We all want the same thing. To bring him down. But we won't do it if we tear each other apart before he even notices us."
Shuye cleared his throat. "Pretty sure he already has."
They found out later that afternoon.
One of their early allies, a courier named Jin who had agreed to help them test fake trade licenses, failed to report in.
At first, Ziyan thought nothing of it.
By sunset, she heard the truth.
Jin's body was found face-down in the river, hands still bound behind his back. No bruises. No wounds.
But his tongue had been cut out.
The warehouse shifted after that.
Silence returned—but not the productive kind.
Feiyan cleaned her sword three times in one day, even though she wasn't ready to fight again. Shuye stopped practicing staff forms and began checking windows twice an hour.
Ziyan sat with the ledger, Lianhua beside her. Together, they went over every name, every favor, every movement they had made in the last ten days.
Lianhua's hands didn't shake. But her voice had a new edge when she spoke.
"He's warning us."
Ziyan nodded. "He wants us to stop."
Feiyan leaned against the beam by the door, voice dry. "And will we?"
Ziyan turned to her. "Not now."
That night, they moved their base.
The warehouse was too exposed. Too predictable.
Lianhua found a bathhouse three streets over, long abandoned after a water shortage. The upper floors were intact, and the basement still had access to a dry canal line. They moved quietly, packing scrolls and supplies under cover of night.
They didn't speak of Jin. But his absence hung in the air like incense smoke.
The following morning, Lianhua laid out a revised plan: shorter delivery paths, rotating pick-up points, use of street peddlers instead of permanent runners.
Feiyan scanned the parchment without sitting down.
"This still won't stop him."
Lianhua didn't rise to the bait. "It will slow him."
"We're not looking to survive. We're trying to strike back."
"And to do that," Lianhua said without pause, "we need more than anger. We need endurance."
Feiyan looked ready to speak again, but Ziyan stepped in.
"Feiyan, I need you to trust me."
Feiyan's gaze softened. "I trust you."
Ziyan glanced to Lianhua. "Then trust my choice."
For a moment, no one spoke.
Feiyan finally exhaled and nodded, stepping away.
That evening, Lianhua approached Ziyan privately as she sat in the bathhouse's empty pool, reviewing old trade permits.
"You're the only one who believes in me," Lianhua said quietly.
Ziyan looked up. "I see what you can be."
Lianhua's expression was unreadable. "Why?"
"Because I know what it feels like to be useful but unwanted."
She offered a wry smile. "Feiyan will come around. You scare her."
Lianhua arched a brow. "I scare a swordswoman?"
Ziyan tilted her head. "She fights with steel. You fight with systems. She can't parry numbers."
That earned the faintest of smiles.
"Do you want me in this?" Lianhua asked, serious now. "All the way?"
Ziyan didn't hesitate.
"Yes."
Lianhua studied her.
Then nodded once.
Two nights later, the first of Li Jun's real strikes came.
Not violence.
A message.
Delivered on red paper, sealed with black wax.
Ziyan opened it alone.
The parchment was blank—except for a name written in brush strokes too fine to be random.
Shuye.
And beneath it:
"Sometimes it only takes one thread to unravel everything."
They burned the letter. But its threat remained.
Lianhua tripled the security protocols.
Feiyan began carrying a blade in her sling arm.
Ziyan kept her thoughts to herself—but her mark had flared when she read that name.
Not in fear.
In warning.
Li Jun had seen the thread.
Now they had to make sure he pulled the wrong one