Fifty hours after the street confrontation with Sallow, three discreet taps echoed against the weathered planks of the rear courtyard gate.
Kaelen Vance did not rise from his wicker bench under the plum tree. He wore a faded grey cotton robe with frayed sleeves, a pair of worn straw sandals, and held a rusted tin watering can loosely in his right hand.
Beside him, the garden was a picture of serene neglect. Tall crabgrass choked the gravel path, and dandelion heads bobbed merrily in the afternoon warmth.
The three knocks sounded again, softer and more desperate this time.
Kaelen waited ten long breaths, then shuffled across the gravel with dragging heels. He slid the iron bolt back and pulled the wooden door inward by four inches.
Standing in the narrow alley were three elderly men clad in opulent silk robes.
Their garments bore the embroidered emblems of three premier cultivation clans of Red-River City: the Iron-Sword Pavilion, the Azure-Cloud Clan, and the Golden-Silt Hall. Each man carried the heavy, condensed aura of a Jade Meridian elder. Yet beneath their dignified postures, their faces were lined with exhaustion. A sickly grey pallor tinged their jawlines, the classic outward sign of black Harvest Court sediment clogging their spirit channels.
