The Fan’s Secret

Li Huowang’s body was submerged in the freezing, bone-chilling pool, but his heart was even colder. He was in extreme danger.

The fan contained the secret of the Siming—and simply looking at it was enough to court disaster.

The moment Li Huowang realized that the white object in front of him was Zhuge Yuan’s folding fan, he immediately shut his eyes. But he had already glimpsed a line of words on the fan, dissolving into the water.

Great Siming. No going, no coming. When a Siming bares itself, the weight descends; it is thus.

“Great Siming? What is that? No—forget it! Forget it!” Li Huowang clenched his fists, screaming in his mind.

He pulled long needles from his torture kit and shoved them one by one under his fingernails. The pain was sharp and intimate—ten fingers connected to the heart. The agony drove out every other thought.

Struggling, he crawled back out of the water, panting raggedly in the cave.

He took a deep breath, then raised his head to look at Zhuge Yuan. “Brother Zhuge, I just saw a line of words on your fan.”

Zhuge Yuan’s eyes went wide. “Truly?!” Then a shocked look crossed his face. “That shouldn’t be possible. If you had truly seen it, you would have inherited their karma. Why is there no change in your body at all?”

“None?” A spark of hope lit in Li Huowang’s chest. “Maybe… maybe it’s because I didn’t fully understand it? Your writing is so classical—I couldn’t really make sense of it.”

Hearing this, the tension melted from Zhuge Yuan’s face. He let out a long breath and relaxed into a smile. “No harm done. I had been planning to urge you, Brother Li, to read more of the sages’ texts. But it seems this… this… ahem has actually helped you instead. If you cannot comprehend it, the karma cannot latch on.”

Li Huowang’s heart finally settled. He was grateful that he barely understood classical Chinese.

But once the relief passed, his mind caught on those three opening characters: Great Siming. Even if he hadn’t understood the rest, he knew a name—or a title—when he saw one.

“Great Siming? Wait—Siming? With a great in front of it. Is this Great Siming even more powerful than Simings like Bashe?”

“If the Siming are already this terrifying… what kind of being is the Great Siming?” Li Huowang tried to picture it, but he couldn’t. Truth be told, without merging his five senses, he couldn’t even visualize Bashe—let alone something called the Great Siming.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he felt he had accidentally touched on something enormous.

“Great Siming. No going, no coming?” Li Huowang was about to chew on the next phrase when his instincts screamed at him. “No! Don’t think about it! I barely dodged disaster—I’m not about to walk right into it!”

He dug his fingernails into the needles still lodged there and yanked them out. The searing pain immediately redirected his attention.

Biting through the hurt, Li Huowang said to Zhuge Yuan, “Looks like for the rest of my life, I’d better stay as far away from classical texts as I can.”

“Brother Li, what do you mean by ‘classical texts’?”

Li Huowang shook his head and didn’t explain further. He led Li Sui back into the water.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. After confirming that the fan was completely gone, he swam toward the surface.

After considerable effort, Li Huowang climbed out of the sinkhole. He was about to raise his spine-blade and return to Great Liang when—

“Dad, look. What’s that?”

Following Li Sui’s pointing finger, Li Huowang turned to see three wisps of black smoke rising slowly from the far horizon.

He had no idea what it was. But Qiu Chibao, clutching her baby, knew. Her eyes filled with terror. “Smoke signals. War again. Please, head of the house, don’t go. War kills people. I’m scared.”

Li Huowang glanced once more at the half-mad woman, then said nothing. He raised the spine-blade and swung it.

It was several days later when a travel-worn Li Huowang returned to the capital.

The journey had been exhausting, but he felt it was worth it. Compared to the man who had once been at everyone’s mercy, he now had a new card to play against the Dice.

He pressed his hand against the gate of his courtyard—and found it unlatched. His heart lurched. Burglars?

With a creak, he pushed the door open and led his horse inside. Sitting in the main hall, waiting for him, was an unexpected face: the Knife-Pawnbroker, Hong Da.

Li Huowang’s expression hardened. His hand closed around the spine-blade at his back. Hong Da showing up in his home unannounced—he didn’t need to guess what that meant.

He had been so careful, yet they had still found him.

But Li Huowang knew he couldn’t fight here. Not in the capital. Not without a complete break with the Supervisory Heavenly Office.

“No—this is different from the other times. There’s no debt between us I can’t repay. There’s still room.”

In a flash, a plan came together. He forced a smile onto his face and strode forward with clasped hands.

“Hong Da! It’s been a while! I thought you’d already left Great Liang.”

“The Supervisory Heavenly Office needs to talk to you about something,” Hong Da said, rising to return the greeting.

Li Huowang raised an eyebrow in apparent surprise. “Is this about the Prince of Benevolence? Don’t tell me he escaped even with the Office on his tail?”

Hong Da gave a wry shake of his head. “No. The Prince of Benevolence is already dead. It’s about you stealing the Void Sword from the Buddha-Jade Furnace.”

The moment he said it, the courtyard went dark. The same people who had cornered him before now blocked the gate behind him. Thumb-sized Buddhas crawled out of every crack in the hall, surrounding Li Huowang from all sides.

The previous owner of the spine-blade—that woman—glared at him with venom in her eyes, her black-nailed finger pointed straight at him.

“You filthy thief! You think some cheap trick could fool us?! I checked—not even the Director of the Observatory could resurrect a Xinpan!”

Even as Hong Da revealed the rows of blades concealed beneath his clothes, Li Huowang’s face showed not a trace of panic. Instead, he pressed the attack with rare aggression.

“Save your excuses. I work for His Highness now. If you move against me here… are you taking orders from someone who wants to weaken his faction?”

“Don’t you dare sling mud at us!” The woman was practically spitting with rage. “You stole my weapon without cause, and you think you’re in the right?!”

Li Huowang glanced to his left, pulled a long bench over, and sat down with deliberate composure. “I don’t know anything about slinging mud. I only know that if you kill me, it benefits one of the other contenders for the throne. Come on, then—whose orders are you following?”