The lantern at the mouth of the alley flickered against the stone wall, casting a weak yellow light that barely reached inside of the alley. Beyond that, the dark swallowed everything. This was a darkness that people in White Gale City knew not to walk into, especially behind this particular inn.

Alpha stood against the wall, perfectly still.

He had been standing there for almost two hours now. His robes were plain, his posture careful, and his weight rested lightly on his good leg. The other one was almost healed

..almost.

It would have been fully recovered by now, since a Peak-Stage Qi Condensation Realm cultivator like him healed faster than mortals could believe.

But the damage hadn’t been to muscle or bone, it had been to his meridians, and even a minor injury there took an absurd amount of time to mend.

He didn’t resent the wound though. He had earned it, and the man who gave it to him had given him much more in return.

Alpha had grown up in the slums of a southern city, in a place where children either learned to use a knife by the age of ten or didn’t grow up at all.

He had learned and worked as a courier for one syndicate, then as a knife for another, and then eventually he had been picked up by a small assassin’s network that paid better than the rest. His Agent had told him he was good with threads.

They were dead right on that as his threads had kept him alive for almost fifteen years.

Then someone had hired the network to kill a young man and he had failed it. He had not died, which was the only surprise of his life.

He had been given a new name and a single instruction. He was to wait at this inn every first day of every week, in case his Master had need of him.

This was the third such day. Alpha didn’t expect anyone to come today either to be honest. He had told himself, somewhere around the second week, that he would keep coming for as long as it took, even if his Master never returned.

The instruction had been simple. He understood simple instructions and would carry them out.

He heard the sound only because he had spent fifteen years listening for sounds like it.

A faint shift in the air at the far end of the alley. The displacement of fabric...someone had moved without touching the ground.

Alpha pushed off the wall and his fingers flicked.

The threads left his sleeves in a wide fan, almost invisible in the lantern light, each one tipped with a fine barb. He sent them at chest height, then dropped a second layer at ankle height a heartbeat later, the way he had been trained. Anyone caught between would be cut in three places before they could react.

The figure at the end of the alley moved through the fan without slowing.

Alpha’s eyes widened. He pulled the threads back and sent them out again, this time woven with traps, knots that would tighten if pulled and small Qi-charged points that would release a cutting pulse on contact. The figure twisted through them as if it had read the pattern before it had been thrown.

The intruder closed half the alley in two steps.

Alpha fell back, sending another volley to slow them down, but the threads might as well have not existed. The figure moved with the precision that came from skills far above his own, every strike controlled, every motion measured.

But he noticed something important. The figure was holding back, it didn’t try to kill him.

’He is testing me?’

His mind went cold like it always did in a fight. He could feel the gap between them, and the gap was not survivable. Whoever this was, they were Soul Tempering at minimum. He had no chance of winning. He had no chance of escape either, since they were faster than him, but he had to try, since dying here would mean failing the instruction.

He needed to report.

He shifted his weight to break for the back of the alley.

The figure stopped.

Alpha froze as well.

A hand came up, gloved in black, and pulled the wooden mask away. Ye Jun’s face emerged from beneath it, smiling faintly in the dim lantern light.

Alpha stared for a moment, then his strength simply left him and he dropped to one knee on the wet stone, "Master."

"You’ve been waiting."

"Every first day of the week, Master. As you instructed."

"Three weeks." Ye Jun walked closer, his hand falling to his side with the mask. "I’m impressed."

"You said to wait." Alpha said quietly.

"And you waited." Ye Jun looked him over, his eyes flicking briefly to the leg Alpha was favoring. "How’s the leg?"

Alpha answered in low, respectful voice, "Almost healed, Master."

Ye Jun muttered, "Took it longer than I expected."

"The meridian damage was minor. But meridians take time."

Ye Jun nodded, accepting the answer without further comment. He had targeted the meridians precisely because of that as muscle would have healed in a few days but meridian damage forced a slow recovery and gave him time to decide whether Alpha was worth keeping.

Alpha had given him his answer by being here.

"I’ll be honest with you," Ye Jun said, leaning casually against the wall. "I have been busy in trying a major breakthrough. But I also wanted to see how dedicated you were before I gave you any real work. Three weeks of standing in a dark alley with no contact and no reward is the kind of thing that breaks most people. They would run away but you didn’t so now we can talk."

Alpha raised his head and asked, "What would you have me do, Master?"

"Stand up first."

Alpha rose. His good leg held his weight cleanly.

"I’m leaving the White Gale Pavilion soon," Ye Jun said. "I’ll be going far to the north so this is the probably the last time we’ll meet for a while. Could be months. Could be longer actually."

A flicker of disappointment passed across Alpha’s face before he could suppress it. He bowed his head slightly. "Should I continue to wait, Master?"

"No. I have work for you instead."

Ye Jun took out a storage ring from his sleeve and held it out. Alpha received it with both hands, like one would accept something fragile.

"There’s a lot in there," Ye Jun smiled. "I’ll tell you the most important pieces. A Low-Grade Earth-Rank Cultivation Manual. Several Low and Mid-Grade Yellow and Profound-Rank Cultivation Manuals beneath it. A collection of Mysterious Techniques, combat and stealth oriented. Some perception-tier methods too. Quite a lot of spirit stones and other currency."

Alpha’s head shot up in disbelief, "...A Low-Grade Earth-Rank manual?"

Ye Jun nodded, "Yup."

"Master..."

"I know what it’s worth." Ye Jun waved his hand and said.

"You can’t..." Alpha looked at the storage ring in his hands as if it might burn him, his voice had gone thin, "Master, an Earth-Rank manual...even a Low-Grade one...that’s the kind of thing entire small sects fight wars over. I can’t accept this."

Ye Jun rolled his eyes, "You can and you will. And you’ll use it the way I tell you to."

Alpha shut his mouth hearing that and his hands tightened around the ring. He had spent his entire life moving through alleys and rooftops with the small certainty that he was a knife and nothing more.

The contents of this ring were not given to knives like him. They were meant to be given to founders...to men with futures.

"I want you to build a team," Ye Jun continued. "The size isn’t important really since the skills are useful but even they’re not the main thing. The most important quality for me is loyalty. Use the manuals to train them. Use the spirit stones to recruit them. Vet every single person yourself. If I come back and find out someone in your team is a plant or has been bought, I won’t be merciful. To them or to you."

"Understood, Master." Alpha nodded without any hesitation.

"I’m going to need people I can trust in the south while I’m not here," Ye Jun said. "And when I come back, there will be real work for all of you. Not now but soon enough that you should be ready."

Alpha lowered his head, this time slowly, with the full weight of something that had shifted in him, "I will be ready."

Ye Jun reached into his sleeve again and produced a small jade slip. He explained the activation method briefly, told Alpha to send updates monthly with no detail that could be intercepted, and dropped it into Alpha’s open palm.

"Don’t waste any of this," Ye Jun said with a mile smile. "And don’t get yourself killed."

"Yes, Master."

Ye Jun put the wooden mask back, simply stepped backward into the deeper part of the alley, and then he was gone, as if he had vanished into thin air.

Alpha stayed kneeling in the alley for a long time after that. He held the storage ring in both hands and stared at the place where his Master had been standing. Then, slowly, he stood up, slipped the ring into his sleeve, and walked back toward the inn with the careful steps.

...

Ye Jun climbed the mountain path back toward the White Gale Pavilion at an unhurried pace, the night cool around him, the wooden mask now tucked away in his robe.

The sect was quiet at this hour, the residual Tribulation Qi from his Ascension long since dispersed, the disciples mostly sleeping after the chaos of the past few days or simply spending their time in seclusion. Cultivation was more important than anything, after all.

He liked it like this.

He passed through the outer terraces and was about to head toward the inner peaks when a voice called from a side path.

"Brother Ye."

Ye Jun stopped and turned as he recognized the voice.

The Third Seat of the Law Enforcement Hall stepped out from the path, robes neat, expression calm the way it always was. They weren’t friends exactly, but they had become good acquaintances over the past few months.

"Third Seat," Ye Jun said with a small nod. "It’s late for a stroll, don’t you think?"

Third seat came forward, a sigh escaping his lips, "I’ve been hoping to catch you since you came out of seclusion but you move quickly when you want to."

Ye Jun chuckled on it and asked, "What can I help you with?"

The Third Seat glanced once down the path they had come from, then back at Ye Jun.

"I found him," he said. "The one who ordered your assassination."