My dao to eternity

Old Mu didn't sleep that night either, once he'd seen the state Li Fan came home in. He said little while cleaning and stitching the wounds himself, hands steadier than they'd been in months, some old, buried competence surfacing under the plain necessity of the work. Only once it was finished did he speak.

"You're done hiding this from the sect," he said. "Four bodies in a street is not a thing that stays quiet, whatever you intend. Better they hear it from you, on your own terms, than from a watch patrol's report shaped by whoever the Jiang family gets to first."

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