NOVEL NEXT Chapter 288: Names In The Dark
While Yaozu now hated being parted from Xinying, he knew that there was no one else that he trusted to look after her either.
Not that she had to be looked after, but he didn't trust anyone to protect her as much as himself.
But when he was forced to leave Xinying's side, Yaozu preferred to do his work when everyone else was sleeping.
Streets show their real shape in the hours before dawn—when stalls are shuttered, dogs keep guard, and coin spoke louder and more truthful than the mouths that usually carry it.
He left the Emperor's study with the paper folded once in his sleeve.
But he didn't need the piece of paper to know what he needed to do.
The names were already carved into his head like notches on a blade. Ren's warehouses. Captain Hua. The rope-sellers. Names that thought they were clever because they were common.
Common names were the easiest to miss—and the hardest to forgive. After all, most people who hate the idea that they got the wrong person… that they killed the wrong person.
But Yaozu was not like most people. It was better to kill a hundred people in order to protect Xinying and Lin Wei. If five of those people were innocent… then that wasn't all that bad.
The market lanes were half-iced, frost clinging to the ground where merchants had poured water earlier to keep rats away.
He watched as shadows stretched long from shuttered stalls. The only light came from door cracks where bakers started their fires too early or too late. Yaozu's boots barely whispered.
He passed a stall where a woman's shoes caught his eye. They were done with new leather, good stitching, but the rest of her robe was patched thin at the elbows. Shoes and robe did not belong together.
A month ago, she would've been barefoot, or at least wearing sandals that didn't keep out the cold.
"Ren's coin walks faster than horses," Yaozu murmured, brushing past. He didn't need to ask her where the money had come from. Shoes already told him what her mouth would deny.
At the corner, a butcher swept bones into a basket.
The stink of old meat clung to his hands. Yaozu noted the brightness of the butcher's teeth when he spat into the gutter—too much fat in the gums for a man who was supposed to be hungry in winter.
Coin had bought him better cuts. Coin that wasn't his.
Yaozu carried these details like stones in his sleeve. He wasn't building a wall yet—just measuring how high the rubble had piled.
The storehouse came next.
He'd left Hua there with Gaoyu because Gaoyu enjoyed watching men unmake themselves. Yaozu used to have enjoyed it too, but now he only saw it as something that kept him away from Xinying.
He didn't need to linger; he only needed to hear the shape of truth when it finally broke free.
Inside, straw muffled the air. Hua was tied to a post, sweat freezing along his hairline. Gaoyu leaned against a barrel, knife tip tracing lazy circles in the dirt.
"Anything worth carrying?" Yaozu asked.
Gaoyu smirked. "He's already admitted Ren's clerks bought the bell ropes. And that the cart passed under Hua's nose with his blessing. I'm making him count how many steps it takes from the south watch gate to the bell hut. Men get less clever when numbers remind them they can be measured."
Hua croaked out another tally, voice raw.
"Keep him breathing," Yaozu said. "Hands and tongue intact. The Empress will want his words herself."
Gaoyu clicked his tongue in mock disappointment but nodded.
Yaozu left the storehouse again, the smell of old millet following him out. He let the frost bite his face, sharpening the picture in his mind. Ren's merchants were buying silence. Hua sold the gate. Temple cords sold twice over. All threads knotted into the same rope.
He walked the length of the riverfront, where warehouses squatted like bloated oxen. The doors were locked, the guards that were supposed to be on duty were drowsy from rice wine.
Yaozu moved past them unseen, slipping close enough to catch the scuff of new wheels in frozen mud. A cart heavy enough to carry a coffin had passed here within the week. No one had bothered to cover the tracks. Coin makes men lazy.
At one corner, he paused. A boy crouched with a fishing line dipped through a crack in the ice. Too thin, too patient for the hour. Yaozu crouched beside him without a word.
"Catch anything?" he asked.
The boy flinched but didn't run. "Not yet."
"You see carts last night?"
The boy hesitated. "Two. One covered, with a mule. Went fast. One after, slower, with men walking."
"Which gate?"
"South."
Yaozu set a copper coin on the ice where the boy's line entered. "You'll catch more tomorrow."
He left without waiting for thanks. Children remember better than adults. Adults bury memory under fear.
By the time dawn began to rub its pale face against the horizon, Yaozu had the shape of the net in his head. It wasn't just Ren. It was Ren's clerks, Ren's coin, Ren's silence feeding into a captain who thought family illness made a clever alibi.
It was the small lies—the shoes, the meat, the new wheel ruts—that proved the larger truth.
He cut through the side alleys on his way back, passing laundry hung stiff with frost, stray dogs gnawing rags, a beggar woman who lowered her eyes the moment she saw his. Fear traveled faster than rumor. He liked that.
At the east wing, Shadow lifted his head. The hound's eyes gleamed red-gold in the torchlight. Yaozu slowed just enough to let the beast scent him. Shadow huffed once, then laid his head down again.
The guards bowed.
Yaozu ignored him and stepped inside. The corridor smelled faintly of honey water and warm linen.
He knew what that meant: the boy had eaten, the boy had slept, the boy was alive. That fact alone had turned Xinying from a storm into something sharper.
He paused at the threshold of the east chamber. Through the wooden screen, he heard the softest sound—a child's laugh, muffled, fragile. Not long. Just a flutter. But it was enough.
Yaozu adjusted his sleeve, paper still hidden there. His hand brushed it as if to remind himself: names have teeth. And by noon, those teeth would be set in throats.
He knocked once, then pushed the door open to deliver what his woman had been waiting for.