NOVEL WEB Chapter 227: Kindling
The air smelled of frost and charcoal.
Shi Yaozu stood at the edge of the uppermost terrace, boots planted in dirt that still held the faintest heat—not from the sun, but from something deeper. Something older. Something left behind by her.
She had walked this field hours ago. He could tell. The ground had been disturbed in precise ways—never chaotic. Never careless. Metal hummed just beneath the soil, waiting like wolves beneath a thin sheet of snow.
He turned to the squad behind him—six men, hand-picked, silent. Not for loyalty. For obedience.
"We burn what she marked," Yaozu said. "Nothing else."
One soldier hesitated. "Sir… the fields… are you sure?"
Yaozu didn't answer immediately. He looked at the tree standing crooked at the far ridge, bark scarred in three diagonal slashes. They looked like axe marks—but they weren't. He'd seen her make them before. Metal melted through bark, then cooled instantly. A whisper-thin brand that only those trained to look would see.
"I'm sure," he said.
He crouched at the field's edge and pulled a small pouch from inside his coat. Inside were several metal fragments—caltrops, melted nails, broken buckles. Useless on their own. But when he scattered them across the dirt, the ground seemed to shift, as if exhaling.
He didn't need to understand it. He just needed to set it off.
The men began moving through the terraces, spreading the oil. They poured slowly, carefully, never stepping where the dirt seemed freshly laid. Yaozu had taught them well: trust the stillness, not the surface.
At the second slope, the youngest soldier—barely more than a boy—paused mid-step.
"She planted traps," he whispered. "Not just fire. There's metal under here."
Yaozu walked to his side, quiet. "Do you doubt her?"
The boy shook his head. "No, sir. Just…"
He swallowed.
"I just don't know how anyone survives thinking like this."
Yaozu looked out across the terraces—layered steps carved into the mountain's side, ripe and golden, the last light of day gilding them like coin. He remembered a time when he believed war was won with swords and honor. That time died the day she walked into the court and didn't bow to anyone.
"She doesn't think like us," Yaozu said. "She doesn't have the luxury."
The boy nodded and kept pouring.
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By the time the oil had been spread and the metal seeded, the sun had vanished. The trees at the edge of the ridge creaked softly in the rising cold, and the wind carried the smell of something about to break.
Yaozu lit no torch.
He stepped to the center of the lowest terrace and removed one of her marked pins—a black spike tipped with copper. Her mark was carved into the base in a pattern only visible if tilted toward firelight.
He knelt. Pressed it into the dirt.
Then stood and drew a single match from the bundle in his sleeve.
The flame flared to life, trembling. And when he dropped it, the ground didn't explode. It simply seemed to have sighed.
Fire licked across the field in perfect symmetry—curling up the grain stalks she had pre-warmed, fed by the metal veins hidden beneath. The blaze moved like a script being written across the land. Not rage. Not destruction. Precision.
It took less than a minute for the first field to vanish.
The second caught before they even turned to watch.
One man whispered, "Did you see that? It—she shaped it."
Yaozu didn't answer. His eyes were on the ridge line.
The tree she'd marked was burning at the tips. Not violently. Reverently. As if even the bark knew who had sentenced it.
He watched the flames twist into curls and rivers, feeding upward without leaping. Controlled. Obedient.
Just like the land had been when she walked it.
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The squad said nothing on the way down the slope. They didn't need to. The fire moved behind them like a curtain closing on an old play, one the empire no longer had the stomach to perform.
Yaozu walked at the rear, scanning every movement, every rustle in the grass. Not for threats.
For signs of her.
She hadn't returned yet. She wouldn't—not until she knew the fire had done its work.
At the base of the hill, one of the soldiers broke the silence.
"Sir. What if they blame us?"
"They will," Yaozu said.
Another asked, "And what if they say it was her order?"
"It was."
He turned back to watch the terraces vanish beneath a bloom of smoke and gold.
"She asked me to do this," he said. "That's enough."
And it was.
Because she didn't need forgiveness.
She needed someone who would burn what she touched and never ask why.
Lost in his thoughts, the wind picked up as the last terrace crumbled under flame. The sound itself wasn't violent—just steady. Like a breath drawn in and never exhaled.
Yaozu turned away from the fire and began walking the perimeter alone, eyes scanning the ground where her footprints had once been. He could still see the shape of her presence in the flattened grass, in the way the earth bent and stayed bent, like even the dirt knew better than to defy her.
A sliver of metal glinted near the third slope.
He crouched, brushed the ash aside, and found a small coil of blackened wire—one of hers, sharpened and shaped like a question mark. It had already served its purpose.
He slipped it into his sleeve without a word.
Years ago, on a mission west of the capital, he'd watched her set a field on fire just by pressing her palm to the base of a tree. No oil. No spark. The heat had risen from her skin like a living thing. She hadn't even looked at the blaze. She'd been watching him.
"You're good at cleaning up messes," she'd said. "Let's see if you're good at starting them."
He was still trying to be.
Behind him, the firelight painted the soldiers in flickering red. None of them moved. None of them spoke. They didn't fear the flames.
They feared what it meant that she hadn't needed to be here for it to obey.
Yaozu tilted his head to the sky, watching the smoke rise higher, carried west on a wind that would reach the next enemy camp by dawn.
Let them see it.
Let them know what's coming.
Let them whisper her name—and pray that she never arrives with the fire.