Night deepened over the courtyard as the first guard rotation marched into the bunkhouse.
Twenty-five armored mercenaries unclasped their iron breastplates and collapsed onto the straw pallets.
Above them on the ramparts, twenty-five fresh archers took their posts behind the crenellations.
Their steel arbalests rested on the stone ledges, oiled and cocked.
Kaelen walked slowly up the porch steps, holding his steaming clay cup of roasted barley tea.
He climbed into his hemp hammock, settled his back against the rope, and propped his feet across the four chests of spirit stones.
The steady hum of spiritual energy warmed the soles of his feet.
Four days down.
Four days of pure, undisturbed nothingness.
If only every noble feud could be resolved by lying horizontally.
Beside his elbow, Book 2 of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride lay open to the climax.
The bandit king had just infiltrated the imperial fortress disguised as a wine merchant, carrying a poisoned dagger in his boot.
Kaelen turned the page with a faint flick of his wrist.
The hours ticked past like gentle rain on the eaves.
Night turned to dawn on Day 5.
The morning sun crept across the courtyard stones, warming the drying racks where bundles of bitter-root hung from hemp twine.
Old Barnaby sat by the outdoor hearth, chopping firewood with his left arm.
Every twenty minutes, the old alchemist glanced up at the parapets, watching the sentries pace their twelve-hour rounds.
“They look sharp,” Barnaby muttered, tossing a split log onto the woodpile. “No slackers on the walls today.”
“Sera threatened to deduct three copper bits from anyone who yawns,” Mina said from the porch bench.
She was carefully pressing dried mint leaves between two wooden planks to make tea sachets.
“A sensible woman,” Barnaby agreed. “Fear of poverty is the greatest martial discipline known to man.”
Barnaby walked over to the porch, leaning against the timber pillar while watching Kaelen sip his tea.
“Cassian has been swinging a wooden sword in his courtyard since the third watch,” Barnaby said, shaking his head. “His frostbitten shins are bound in linen, but he still insists on training eighteen hours a day to seek revenge.”
“That is why his poisoned meridians are brittle,” Kaelen said in a sleepy drawl. “A man who trains on frostbitten legs only succeeds in limping twice as hard.”
“At least he displays martial ambition,” Barnaby grunted. “You have not moved a leg in a hundred hours.”
“Lying down lets my bones absorb the autumn Yin,” Kaelen replied smoothly. “Ambition gives people wrinkles, Old Barnaby. Look at your forehead.”
Barnaby touched his brow with his ladle, scowled, and stomped back to the chopping block.
Kaelen did not mind.
He lay flat on his back, eyes scanning the printed lines of his romance novel.
Inside his mind, the grey slate recorded every silent minute.
[The Fallow Slate]
[108 Hours Abstained]
[Multiplier: 109x READY]
The afternoon heat peaked and slowly retreated behind the western peaks.
As twilight settled over the estate, long shadows stretched across the southern lane.
Near the eastern boundary wall of the herb shed, two figures crept through the thick hawthorn hedges.
They wore the drab grey tunics of outer manor servants, but their faces were wrapped in coarse black linen.
It was Dan and Mok, two kitchen runners who took private orders from First Young Master Cassian.
Cassian still limped around the main manor with frostbitten shins and bruised pride, burning with bitter hatred for the Third Herb Shed.
In their leather sleeves, Dan and Mok carried triangular iron files made of hardened tool steel.
“The armory is right behind that side shed,” Dan whispered, pointing a dirty finger through the hedge.
“Are the guards watching?” Mok asked, his voice shaking with nervous fear. “If that spear-girl catches us, she will feed our livers to the hogs.”
“The wall guards are looking south toward the avenue,” Dan hissed, pulling his collar tight. “The ground sentries just went to the bunkhouse for the evening meal. We have ten minutes.”
“What did Lord Cassian promise us?” Mok asked.
“Ten silver pieces each,” Dan replied, clutching his iron file. “All we have to do is saw through the bowstrings of the twenty repeating arbalests. Without the crossbows, the third young master cannot stop a single armored charge.”
“Ten silver is enough to buy two milk cows,” Mok muttered, licking his dry lips. “Let us make it fast.”
The two servants crawled on their bellies through the gap in the stone foundation.
They slipped across the damp weeds behind the drying racks, keeping their heads low beneath the shadow of the roof.
Ahead of them stood the heavy oak door of the secondary armory, where the twenty heavy perimeter arbalests were stored.
A large brass latch held the door firmly shut.
Dan smiled under his black cloth mask.
“Easy silver,” Dan whispered.
He reached out his right hand and grabbed the brass handle.
Mok reached out and grabbed the iron latch bar to lift it.
The metal felt strange against their bare palms.
It was slick and slightly tacky, coated in a transparent, odorless film.
Two days earlier, Kaelen had instructed Barnaby to boil down a basket of dried blister-nettles and ghost-weed roots into a thick, clear syrup.
Barnaby had painted the invisible sap across every armory handle and window latch on the estate.
One second passed.
Two seconds passed.
Suddenly, Dan’s eyes widened in sheer agony.
A sensation like boiling lye flared across his palm and fingers.
The heat shot up his wrist and forearm like liquid fire, setting his nerve channels ablaze with unbearable torment.
Bright crimson blisters erupted across his skin in grotesque, bubbling clusters.
“Aaargh!” Dan shrieked, letting go of the handle and falling backward into the dirt.
Beside him, Mok began screaming in frantic terror, clutching his swollen, blistering hand against his chest.
“It burns!” Mok wailed, thrashing on the gravel. “My skin is melting off!”
Before either servant could roll toward the hedge, a whistling sound cut through the twilight air.
Sera Thorne dropped from the shed roof like a descending hawk.
Her soft leather boots made no sound as she hit the flagstones.
Her spear flashed twice in the dim light.
Crack.
Crack.
The blunt wooden pommel slammed into the side of Dan’s jaw, snapping his teeth together and dropping him limp into the dust.
A second later, the butt of the spear struck Mok in the solar plexus, driving all the air from his lungs with a strangled gasp.
Sera planted one iron-studded boot on Mok’s neck, pinning his head against the stone foundation.
Total elapsed time: nine seconds.
Barnaby shuffled around the corner of the shed, his ironwood ladle resting on his shoulder.
“Well, well,” Barnaby chuckled, his voice dry as wood shavings. “The fish took the bait without even needing a pin.”
Sera leaned down, plucked the triangular iron file from Dan’s sleeve, and held it up to the lantern light.
“Hardened steel files,” Sera noted. “They came to saw the arbalest strings.”
Mok sobbed under her boot, clawing at his blistering hand. “Mercy! Young Master Cassian paid us! He gave us the files! Please give us the antidote!”
Kaelen’s voice drifted from the covered porch fifty yards away, smooth and unhurried.
“Do not kill them,” Kaelen said between mouthfuls of roasted barley tea. “Dead spies cannot deliver useful lies.”
Sera looked toward the porch, her brows raised. “What do you want to do with them?”
“Feed them the lie they came for,” Kaelen replied, turning a page of his book. “Then send them home to collect their pay.”
Sera smiled, a cold and dangerous expression that showed the edge of her teeth.
She lifted her boot from Mok’s throat and hauled both trembling servants to their feet.
“Listen closely,” Sera whispered, her voice colder than mountain ice. “We have twenty old wooden hunting crossbows in the scrap pile. We are going to drag them out and saw halfway through their cords.”
Barnaby nodded with savage approval. “And we will mount those decoy wooden crossbows on the outer walls where everyone can see them.”
“What about the real arbalests?” Sera asked.
“Move all twenty heavy Spirit-Iron arbalests up into the dry shed loft,” Kaelen called out from the hammock. “Oil the winches, pack them with armor-piercing bolts, and cover them with canvas tarps. When the time comes, they will fire down on their heads from twenty feet above.”
Sergeant Korba jogged over from the barracks, gesturing to four burly mercenaries.
“On it, captain,” Korba grunted. “We will cut firing slits through the loft floorboards so we have overlapping fields of fire across the gate.”
Mok stared at Sera in terrified wonder. “You... you will truly let us go?”
Barnaby reached into his pocket and pulled out a small clay jar of cooling lard.
He smeared a generous dollop of grease over their blistering palms.
The searing heat eased into a dull, thumping ache.
“You go back to Lord Cassian right now,” Barnaby growled, tapping Mok’s nose with his ladle. “You tell him you filed through every single bowstring in the armory. You tell him the Third Herb Shed has no heavy weapons left.”
“And if you say one word about blister-sap,” Sera added, pressing her spear point against Mok’s collarbone, “I will paint that oil over your entire mattress while you sleep.”
“We will swear it!” Mok wept, nodding frantically. “We will swear the crossbows are broken!”
Sera shoved both servants through the hedge gap with a sharp kick.
The two men scrambled through the briars and sprinted down the dark avenue like frightened rabbits.
Barnaby, Sera, and Korba spent the next thirty minutes executing the deception.
Twenty decoy wooden crossbows with frayed cords were hoisted onto the parapets, propped against the stone battlements to look like sabotaged defenses.
Meanwhile, twenty gleaming Spirit-Iron repeating arbalests were carried silently up into the shed loft, hidden beneath dark canvas and pointed directly toward the courtyard choke point.
Kaelen listened to the quiet work without moving an inch.
The rope cords of his hammock held him suspended in perfect comfort.
He turned the final page of Book 2.
The bandit king had poisoned the imperial governor, rescued the third disciple from the dungeon tower, and escaped into the misty northern peaks on two black stallions.
A solid conclusion.
A bit heavy on the horse chases, but the poisoned wine scene was nicely executed.
Now let us see what happens when the bandit king enters the northern sects.
Kaelen closed the blue cover, reached down to the wooden crate beside his hammock, and picked up Book 3.
Old Barnaby, returning from the loft, eyed the blue pamphlet with obvious curiosity.
“Is that the third book?” Barnaby asked, trying to sound indifferent. “Does the bandit king ever learn proper spear forms?”
“He prefers throwing poison darts from under tea tables,” Kaelen said, opening the cover. “Much more practical.”
Inside his dantian, the grey stone slate chimed with deep, ringing clarity.
[The Fallow Slate]
[120 Hours Abstained]
[Multiplier: 121x READY]
Five full days.
One hundred and twenty hours of total stillness.
He had officially crossed the halfway mark of his ten-day stack.
His multiplier now stood at one hundred and twenty-one times.
Kaelen cracked open Book 3 and began reading the opening prologue in total peace.
Meanwhile, two miles south of Ashford, thick pine forests blanketed the rugged foothills.
Inside a hidden hunting lodge nestled deep in the ravine, Magistrate Vane-Locke sat before an iron map table.
His Iron Bone cultivation hummed with dark, heavy pressure, causing the lantern flames on the timber walls to flicker.
A cloaked courier knelt before the magistrate, panting from a hard ride.
“Lord Cassian’s servants have returned from the herb shed,” the courier reported, bowing low. “Their mission was a complete success. The files severed the strings on all twenty heavy repeating arbalests.”
Magistrate Vane-Locke’s lips curved into a cruel, ruthless grin.
“No heavy arbalests,” Vane-Locke murmured, stroking his jaw. “The Herb Shed is now completely defenseless against heavy armor.”
He turned toward the dark corner of the lodge, where a hulking warrior clad in spiked steel plate stood in the shadows.
It was Blood-Claw Tor, a senior vanguard captain of the Blood-Wolf bandits, carrying a seven-foot iron executioner’s poleaxe.
“The boy thinks he has five more days until the full moon,” Vane-Locke said, his voice dropping into a deadly whisper. “He does not know his crossbows are ruined.”
“What are your orders, magistrate?” Tor grunted, his voice rumbling like grinding millstones.
“Move fifty of your heaviest armored Blood-Wolf raiders into the woods behind the Vance Manor tonight, three days ahead of schedule,” Vane-Locke commanded, his eyes flashing with brutal malice. “The moment we strike through the postern gate, we will butcher the third son before he can even blink.”