The orange pinpricks of river lanterns have not yet faded when Liu Xiyu turns into a dark alley in the southern part of the city.

Humming a rustic tune she’d just heard at the sugar-painting stall, her fingers absentmindedly rub at the tips of Yun Cangyue’s ears—unaware that the rabbit body in her arms is slowly tensing.

“This shortcut was something Uncle Chen mentioned last time.”

She kicks aside an empty wine jar blocking the way; the clatter of broken pottery echoes through the narrow alley.

“Cut through three lanes and you’re at the Liu family’s back gate—much faster than going the long way—”

“Ayue?”

Yun Cangyue suddenly wriggles free from her arms.
The silver-gray shape touches down, fur flaring as it lands, ear tips snapping upright—
fixed straight on the shadow pooling at the mouth of the alley.

Liu Xiyu freezes, then crouches instinctively to scoop the rabbit up.
“What is it—did you spot a mouse?”

Before the words even finish leaving her mouth,
five dark figures block off the mouth of the alley.

The man in front grips a jujube-wood cudgel as thick as a wrist.
The stench of rust mixed with agarwood surges forward—
the same strange odor that had surfaced twice earlier that Lantern Festival night.

“Miss Liu, you seem to be in fine spirits.”

The tip of the cudgel taps against the green bricks, the clang echoing sharply and startling the night crows from the eaves.

“After enjoying the lanterns, we’ll have to trouble you to come along with us.
There are some accounts that need settling face to face.”

Liu Xiyu pulls Yun Cangyue tight against her chest, her fingers digging into her palm as she steadies her voice.

“Sir, I believe you have the wrong person.
My father has always dealt in ready silver—never on credit.”

“Playing dumb?”

The man kicks over a bamboo basket by the roadside.
Tattered silk, stained with madder dye, spills across the ground.

“Last time the Liu household confiscated thirty-seven bolts of Moonlight Damask,
you cut off the brothers’ supply at three docks.”

“Old Chen gets to lie low and enjoy his peace—
so shouldn’t this debt be collected from the rightful party instead?”

Yun Cangyue lets out a low, warning growl from her throat—
but Liu Xiyu suddenly laughs.

“So it’s just a few bolts of cloth?
You should’ve said so earlier. I could have Father open the storerooms and reward you with another seventy bolts, how about that?”

“Consider it an advance New Year’s gift.”

“Enough of your smart mouth!”

The man swings his club in a brutal arc.
In a split second, Yun Cangyue darts up onto Liu Xiyu’s shoulder,
planting her hind legs against the back of Liu Xiyu’s head—
the pressure measured with precision,
just enough to tip her head aside and let the blow slice past.

“Ayue, are you trying to murder me?!”

She shouts even as her hand grabs a bamboo basket and hurls it at the pursuers.

Old mildew and dust burst into the air in a choking cloud. Taking advantage of the chaos, Yun Cangyue bites down on her sleeve and drags her toward a branching alley.

The dark alleys tangle like a spider’s web.
Embroidered shoes splash through standing water,
her arms clutched tight around the trembling silver-gray bundle of fur.

Footsteps behind surge and fade.
Gasping, she turns into a dead end—
only to find a handcart lying crosswise beneath the moonlight.

“Hide here!”

She flips up the oilcloth and dives inside.
The stench of rotting vegetables slams into them,
making both wrinkle their noses at once.

“Shh—”

She presses the rabbit’s head into the crook of her arm,
peering through the cloth’s seams as the pursuers rush past.

Just as she dares to breathe again,
she feels something sticky in her palm—

blood seeping into the silver fur of a hind leg,
likely grazed when it kicked the club aside moments before.

“You idiot…”

She bites her lip and tears a strip from her inner garment.
Her fingers tremble like hands pulling at a kite string—
three attempts at tying it, and still the knot won’t hold.

Yun Cangyue instead stretches out her tongue to lightly lick the back of her hand.
Moonlight reflects in her amber eyes, calm—as if to say, just a flesh wound.

A metallic scraping sound suddenly comes from outside the alley.

Her ear tips snap around.
She slams into Liu Xiyu without warning—

The jujube-wood club splits the handcart apart.
Pickle jars explode with a thunderous crash.

“—Hh!”

Liu Xiyu staggers from the shove.
Yun Cangyue is already launching straight at the man’s face.

Claws rake across his cheekbone, drawing a line of blood—
but a length of iron chain whips around her hind leg,
hurling her hard against the wall.

“Ayue!”

Amid the startled cries, Yun Cangyue twists in midair,
using the chain’s spinning momentum to drive a kick straight into the man’s throat.

A muffled grunt and the clatter of iron hit the ground at the same time.
She limps back toward Liu Xiyu,
blood-stained silver fur blooming into red plum blossoms beneath the moon.

Blood beads from her hind leg, branding the ground with broken red marks—
yet she still surges ahead to lead the way.

The silver-gray figure darts left, then right,
slipping past bamboo frames hung with torn fishing nets,
ducking into narrow lanes stacked with empty sauce jars,
forging a path through the web-like alleys by sheer will.

“South!”

Liu Xiyu whispers, gripping her blood-stained sleeve tight.

Moments ago, the chuan character Yun Cangyue traced in her palm with a claw tip
marked the direction of the Liu family dye house’s old warehouse—
sealed and abandoned since the Chen incident,
the perfect place to hide.

Footsteps of the pursuers close in,
like starving dogs on the scent.

The hoarse shout of the lead man cuts through the air,
mixed with the rasp of iron chains dragging along the ground:

“Beat that rabbit bastard half to death! Leave it breathing—so the Liu family can come collect the corpse.”

Yun Cangyue skids to a sudden halt.
Liu Xiyu nearly crashes into the burst of fluffed-up fur in front of her.

Ahead, a brick wall lies half-collapsed across the way.
Rotting cotton scraps are stuffed into the cracks—
this is the rear wall of the abandoned dye workshop.

“Through there!”

She yanks aside a shred of cloth tangled with iron caltrops. Her palm is scraped raw, blood marking it faintly—she doesn’t notice.

Instead, Yun Cangyue twists and drives into the back of her knees,
forcing her to stumble forward into the mold-rotten pile of cloth in the corner—

Clang!

The steel blade strikes the spot where they had been standing.
A scatter of sparks briefly lights the upper half of the faded merchant banner on the wall, the character “Liu” barely visible.

Yun Cangyue launches herself into the air.
Her claws rake across the knife-wielder’s eye socket.

The man howls, clutching his face,
then lashes out wildly with the blade.
The edge scrapes past her left foreleg,
shearing away a tuft of silver fur.

“Ayue!”

She snatches up an abandoned bronze scale weight from the dye workshop and smashes it forward.
The iron chain coils around the man’s ankle.

Seizing the moment, Yun Cangyue darts up the cloth-drying rack and bites through a knotted rope—
bolts of mold-spotted Moonlight Silk come cascading down,
wrapping the pursuers into indigo cocoons.

“This way!”

Liu Xiyu kicks open a rusted side door.
The stench of rotting madder rushes out to meet them.

Inside the abandoned warehouse are piles of confiscated defective fabrics;
rats scurry and skitter along the beams overhead.

Yun Cangyue suddenly bites down hard on her sleeve,
dragging her to tumble into an empty iron dye barrel.

The metal barrel’s impact rings out, drawing the pursuers in—
only for them to stumble at the threshold—
five kidnappers caught as a heap of fabric collapses,
the very “defective cloth pile” Yun Cangyue marked here half a year ago,
tangling around their legs.

“Cough… cough—”

She wipes away the indigo pigment splashed at the corner of her mouth,
feeling Yun Cangyue’s breathing in her arms grow shorter and more labored.

By the moonlight leaking through a broken window,
she sees three fresh wounds darkened with blood in the silver-gray fur—
and the left forepaw bent at an unnatural angle.

Footsteps suddenly clatter outside the dye workshop.

Yun Cangyue’s ear tips swivel sharply.
She clamps her teeth onto the hem of Liu Xiyu’s skirt and drags her toward the back exit.

They pass through dye vats thick with cobwebs.
Liu Xiyu recognizes the path—
it leads to the canal freight depot, where more than a dozen abandoned tea warehouses crouch in the night like hulking beasts.

“Warehouse Seven!”

She kicks open a half-latched camphorwood door.
The stale scent of aged pu’er tea surges out, mixed with dust.

Yun Cangyue suddenly arches her back and lets out a low growl.
Firelight flickers between the beams, reflected in her amber eyes.

Five kidnappers—
they’ve actually split into two groups, moving to encircle them!

Liu Xiyu grabs a sack of tea dust and scatters it.
The brown powder clouds the air, choking the pursuers into repeated coughs.

Enduring the pain, Yun Cangyue leaps onto the shelving,
knocking over a stacked row of zisha jars.

Amid the crash of shattering pottery,
she draws Liu Xiyu into the hidden compartment of a tea transport cart.

“It’ll be alright…”

Liu Xiyu tears strips from her underskirt and binds the broken forepaw,
her voice pressed thinner than drifting tea dust.

“I’ll buy up every sugar-painting stall in the city—
let you chew until your teeth ache…”

The footsteps outside suddenly fall silent.

“…Heh.”

“Found you.”

The instant a cold iron hook slices through the shadows of the tea warehouse,
Yun Cangyue rams her head into Liu Xiyu, knocking her aside.

The rusted hook tip scrapes across her back,
tearing loose a spray of silver-gray fur.

Blood beads spatter onto the stacked Pu’er tea bricks,
congealing into dark red amber beneath the moonlight.

“Loyal little beast.”

The gang leader plants his boot on Yun Cangyue’s injured right hind leg.
The dull crunch as the sole grinds over the fractured bone makes Liu Xiyu’s pupils contract.

“If Miss Liu doesn’t want to watch it turned into rabbit stew,
you’d best come along quietly with us.”

Her fingers dig into her palm,
the balsam-dyed nail snapping off halfway.

Staring at Yun Cangyue’s ear tips twitching in pain,
she suddenly snatches up a tea awl at hand and presses it to her own throat.

“Let it go.
Otherwise, you’ll be collecting my corpse to settle your debts.”

The man snorts and lifts his foot.

“So the pampered young lady playing at drama—”

Before his words finish, Yun Cangyue bursts up and bites at his ankle.

Bloodied fangs pierce through the leather.
As he recoils in pain, she kicks off the stacked tea bricks, vaults onto a crossbeam,
and clamps her teeth around a hanging hemp rope—whipping it toward Liu Xiyu.

Liu Xiyu catches the hemp rope and loops it around a support pillar of the shelving,
then lifts her foot and kicks at the stacked purple clay jars.

The pottery shatters with a heavy crash, forcing the pursuers back as shards spray outward.

Seizing the moment, Yun Cangyue springs down from the beam. Silver fur streaked with blood traces an arc beneath the moonlight, striking precisely into the hollow of the leader’s knee.

Crack!

Amid the sharp sound of bone slipping out of place,
the man collapses to his knees.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Liu Xiyu rushes toward the ventilation opening—
only to have her path blocked by two kidnappers.

She snatches up a bamboo tube filled with tea needles and flings it backhanded. Iron needles, fine as cowhair, prick into the pursuers, driving them steadily backward.

“Ayue—this way!”

She yanks open the iron mesh over the vent, but Yun Cangyue suddenly darts toward the tea-brick wall on the opposite side.

Her claw tips hook into a specific gap between the bricks. Blocks long hollowed out by tea worms collapse with a clatter, revealing a hidden cavity— the compartment left behind from when the Inspection Office seized smuggled goods.

Understanding at once, Liu Xiyu ducks inside, only to see Yun Cangyue turn back to draw the pursuers away.

The small space is thick with the scent of aged tea. Through the gaps, she catches sight of the silver-gray figure weaving between the shelves, each evasive movement scattering drops of blood.

“Enough!”

Her eyes red, she shoves the hidden panel open and snatches up a packet of saltpeter, hurling it at the torches.

In the instant a blinding white flash erupts, she runs toward the blood-darkened figure.

Liu Xiyu’s fingers sink into Yun Cangyue’s fur.
The moldy dust of the tea warehouse, mixed with the scent of blood, drills into her nostrils.

She tears away the softest inner layer of her underskirt
and wraps the rabbit into a cocoon.

As the cloth winds across the wounds,
Yun Cangyue’s claw tips hook onto her wrist bone,
the touch as light as spring snow falling on honeysuckle vines.

“Shh…”

Her nose brushes against those ear tips, lit through by the light.
The breath squeezed from her throat is finer than tea dregs,
yet her fingertips tie a tight knot, clean and swift.

Yun Cangyue twists her head to bite at the knot.
The broken claw scrapes fine threads up from the fabric—
and suddenly Liu Xiyu buries her entire face into her embrace—

Warm breath, mixed with tears that have not yet fallen,
burns against Yun Cangyue’s body, leaving her frozen stiff.

Footsteps draw closer.

Liu Xiyu pulls back sharply
and stuffs her—cloth and rabbit together—into the hidden compartment.

A rotting camphorwood board scrapes past her ears.
In the instant wood splinters fall before her eyes,
she understands what Liu Xiyu intends to do.

Yun Cangyue’s fangs pierce through the retreating sleeve.

The sound of tearing cloth is covered by the sound of a closing door.
All she tastes is the salt-and-iron taste of blood
and a faint, lingering trace of honeysuckle—
the scent Liu Xiyu wore in her hair that morning.

Before darkness swallows her sight,
she sees those jade-green eyes reflecting firelight,
the corners of her lips still holding the same sly smile
she wears when coaxing her to take medicine—

silently saying—

“Live.”

After the kidnappers’ curses fade into the distance,
Yun Cangyue falls out from the other side of the hidden compartment.

The surrounding scent of tea, mixed with the smell of blood from her body,
drills into her nostrils.

Staring at the blood-stained cloth between her claws,
she limps and charges into the night.

Each step is like stepping on a knife’s tip.

Her broken claw drags a winding line of blood
across the bluestone slabs.