My body, when I finally willed it to move, felt clumsy and distant as my hand closed around the hilt of my sword. The polished metal, which had felt like an extension of my will only hours before, now seemed like a foolish affectation, a child's toy. I sheathed it with a quiet click and melted back into the woods, every shifting shadow a potential hiding place for the masked Steward. The night was no longer a simple absence of light; it was a living, breathing entity, and I was certain he was still out there, a part of its stillness, watching to ensure I obeyed.

  Back at the camp, I added a few logs to the fire, the crackle of the flames a feeble protest against the profound chill that had settled deep in my marrow. Xiao Qi murmured in his sleep, his face peaceful in the flickering light, blissfully unaware of how close we had just come to ruin. He was a citizen of this world. I was not.

  Sleep was an impossibility. I sat and watched the embers glow, my thoughts churning. The word echoed in my mind, dredged up from the novels and dramas of my past life: Diǎnxué, the art of striking pressure points. A fantasy, a fiction I had consumed for entertainment, had just been demonstrated on me with terrifying, paralyzing reality.

  I had been confident, even arrogant, in the superiority of my modern knowledge. My plans, my strategies, my very understanding of combat, all of it was built on a foundation of physics that was, I now realized, terrifyingly incomplete. What defense is there when an opponent can simply negate your strength with a touch? What strategy accounts for a man who can move like a whisper and stop a steel blade with two fingers?

  The most unsettling question, however, was the one that threatened the very bedrock of my sanity. Was this the historical Tang Dynasty I had so obsessively studied? Or was it a world that merely wore its skin, a place where the fantastical narratives of the martial world, the Jiānghú, were the truth? A world where my knowledge of history could prove just as useless as my fighting skills.

  Driven by a desperate, clawing need to understand, I sat cross-legged before the fire, just as I had read in countless stories. I closed my eyes, shut out the world, and tried to look inward. I searched for that wellspring of energy, that inner sea of qi that masters were said to cultivate. I focused, trying to draw it up from my center, to channel it, to feel even the faintest warmth or flicker of power in my palms.

  There was nothing.

  The harder I concentrated, the more I became aware only of the mundane reality of my own body: the steady beat of my heart, the rush of air in my lungs, the dull ache in my shoulder where the Steward had struck me. The power that man wielded was a locked room, and I didn't even know how to find the door, let alone the key. The failed attempt left me feeling hollowed out, more of an alien in this world than ever before.

  The first pale rays of dawn finally cut through the trees, ending the long night without offering any peace. The world awoke, and the day's journey had to begin.

  I greeted Xiao Qi with a calm nod when he woke. I spoke evenly, moved with purpose, and packed our camp with practiced efficiency. To the boy, I was the same steady, capable master. Inside, I was a different man. My shoulders were tight, a knot of constant tension beneath the silk of my robes, and my eyes scanned the horizon with a new, predatory vigilance. Every fellow traveler on the road was now assessed not for their business, but for the way they walked, the way their hands rested near a potential weapon. The memory of the Steward's impossible speed was a cold weight in my gut.

  The journey continued for several days. The landscape gradually changed, the flat, open farmlands giving way to rolling hills and denser forests. On the sixth day since leaving Chang'an, we encountered a slow-moving flow of people. They were not on the main road but were trudging through the dusty fields beside it, as if they were not worthy of walking on the emperor's path. It was a mass of dozens of families, men, women, and children, carrying what little they owned in bundles on their backs. A collective aura of hunger and exhaustion hung over them like a shroud. They were refugees.

  As our well-stocked cart approached, their eyes lingered on our healthy mule and the canvas cover that promised resources. Just as we drew level, an elderly man coughed, a deep, rattling sound, and then his legs gave out. He collapsed into a heap in the dusty grass. A few yards away, a toddler began to wail in a thin, piercing cry of hunger and fear.

  Many of them were now staring openly at me. I saw the desperation, but on the faces of a few of the younger, harder-looking men, I also saw something else: a cold appraisal. They were not bandits yet, but the line was thin.

  Xiao Qi looked from the crying child to me, his pity he struggled to hide from his face. The road ahead was clear, but the silent appeal of the suffering crowd was a roadblock of a different kind. A thought popped unbidden into my mind. If it had been my fiancée next to me instead of Xiao Qi, perhaps we'd been on one of our weekend road trips… what would I have done?

  "Hide three days of provisions and water," I whispered to Xiao Qi.

  Taking a deep breath, I stepped towards the mass of people. I consciously squared my shoulders, adopting an air of confident authority as I walked towards the small, desperate huddle. My mind took a quick count: roughly forty people. A dangerously large number.

  I reached the family surrounding the collapsed man. His breathing was shallow and rapid, his skin pale and clammy. At least this wasn't plague; it was most likely starvation.

  "What is the matter with him?" I asked despite knowing the answer, my voice tactically calm.

  A young man, his son, looked up at me, his voice hoarse. "Please, my father….he is just weary. He has not eaten in two days. Most of us haven't." His gaze flickered from his father to my well-fed face, then to the resource-laden cart. The eyes of all forty refugees were fixed on me, waiting.

  I projected my voice, clear and firm. "Xiao Qi! Unload the provisions!"

  A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. "What is your story here?" I asked them, pretending not to notice their stares. "Where are you all headed? I can spare some provisions, but you must help me ration them."

  The young man, who introduced himself as Chenguang, explained their plight. They were tenant farmers from Shijia Village, half a day's journey north. The local lord, Baron Shi, and the County Magistrate, known only as Magistrate Wu, had conspired to invent a "drought tax" in silver, a currency they knew the farmers did not have. When they couldn't pay, their leases were voided, and they were driven from their homes.

  I looked at the starving faces. A sudden, heavy meal would sicken them. "We will cook," I declared. "It will be slow, but it will be hot."

  Under my direction, a small, organized camp kitchen sprang into existence. We cooked a thin congee, a rice porridge that drifted its life-affirming scent through the air. "You haven't eaten in quite some time, you shouldn't eat a lot all at once, it could make you sick," I explained, choosing to leave out the part where refeeding syndrome could kill you.

  The children and elderly were served first. The collapsed old man was propped against a tree, his daughter in law carefully feeding him. Fortunately there was no chaos, only the quiet, orderly sounds of people sharing in a moment of profound relief.

  I sat with Chenguang by a fire. "Tell me more about this Baron Shi, and this drought tax," I prompted.

  The story poured out of him, a tale of calculated greed and corruption. Then he lowered his voice. "There is a rumor, master. Magistrate Wu is fond of his wine. He has been heard to boast that he has a 'powerful ally' within the Ministry of Revenue in Chang'an."

  The rumor landed like a drop of poison. The Ministry of Revenue—a different, and often rival, branch of the government from Lord Feng's own Ministry of Rites—a thread that might lead all the way back to the capital's political games.

  I weighed the lives of these forty people against the unknown dangers of attempting some sort of operation. I sighed, the calculation was cold and grim.

  I looked at Chenguang, my expression one of sincere regret. I said softly. "There is not much a humble scholar such as I could do. Those are powers beyond my ability to control. I hope your people find a better land to settle."

  The spark of desperate hope died in Chenguang's eyes. His shoulders, which had squared with purpose, slumped back into their familiar, weary posture. "I... I understand," he said, his voice heavy with a sorrow that seemed to age him. "You have already done more for us than we could have ever asked."

  The next morning, we left them behind. I gave them what I could spare, what was left of my water rice and dried goods. Hopefully it would be enough to get them wherever they needed to go. Their silent, sad faces were a heavy weight in my memory as we traveled onward. The road to Yingchuan stretched before me, suddenly feeling much longer and more depressing.

  That night, as we made camp, the full weight of my charity became a practical and pressing concern. I took a full inventory. Xiao Qi had reserved a small bag of rice, enough for perhaps four days of thin congee. We had a few strips of spiced jerky, two jars of pickled vegetables, and a handful of dried persimmons. We had been on the road for a little more than a week and had at least another two weeks to go.

  The conclusion was unavoidable: we no longer had enough provisions to reach our destination.

  I consulted the map. The next town of any size was Shanzhou, two days away. The very town the bailiff had warned me about, headquartered by the greedy Magistrate Wu, a man known for extorting travelers with a "road tax."

  The choice was clear. I would have to walk knowingly into the spider's web, into a town run by a corrupt official, and attempt to resupply.