My dao to eternity

Li Fan didn't sleep that night, though he made himself lie down for the appearance of it, staring at the courtyard's dark ceiling beams while his mind worked through the same handful of facts from every angle he could find. A trained blade. A sealed poison meant as a second certainty behind the first. No token, no mark, no word spoken that told him anything beyond confirmation that the man had known exactly who he'd come to kill.

He rose before dawn, the same hour he always rose, and carried the small clay jar holding the poison vial and the recovered blade down into the chamber beneath the training room, setting both on the workbench beside his herb texts where the morning's thin lamplight could reach them properly.

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