NOVEL WEB Chapter 231: Green Silk, Black Steel
Abandoned Baiguang Checkpoint
The fire was already out when Shi Yaozu arrived.
That was the first problem.
A checkpoint burned by retreating soldiers should've left smoke, glowing embers, heat pulsing from the timber. This one was cold. Neat. A structure that was not destroyed, but rather emptied.
He dismounted quietly, his boots hitting the frost-covered ground without a sound. The only light came from the moon slipping between clouds. No wind. No birds. Even the trees were still.
Three soldiers moved with him—his own handpicked shadows. No armor, no words. They knew better.
Baiguang hadn't just left in a hurry. They had already prepared to vanish.
The checkpoint was made of three buildings—an outer barrack, a record hall, and a storage hut. All three stood upright. Not burned down. Not ransacked. Not looted.
And Yaozu didn't like it.
He drew a curved blade from his side—not because he expected a fight, but because caution was his nature.
He gestured toward the storage hut.
The door had been left open a crack, as if someone wanted them to look.
He nodded once. Two of his men fanned out. The third followed him inside.
The air was musty. Not old—just disturbed. Like someone had rearranged the room and tried to make it look abandoned.
He crouched near the shelf stacked with rice sacks.
There, between the grain and the rats—scrolls.
Fresh ink. Green ribbons.
He pulled one free and unrolled it.
A counterfeit military report. Stamped with the Daiyu emblem—wrong ink, wrong brushwork. The characters had hesitation in them. Someone copying, not writing.
He found another. And another.
Scrolls declaring Xinying had personally ordered the execution of southern scouts. Scrolls accusing her of stockpiling grain while border towns starved. Even one that suggested she'd struck the Empress across the face.
Yaozu didn't speak.
He turned slowly and checked the beams above. No dust.
Someone had used this hut recently. Frequently.
He signaled for the other soldier to guard the door. Then moved to the side wall and examined the floorboards.
They weren't nailed down.
He pried one up with his blade and found a lacquered box tucked beneath the joist.
Inside were forged Daiyu banners—made from cheap silk, dyed wrong, but passable at a distance. Some bore symbols only those close to Xinying would recognize.
She wasn't being framed.
She was being rewritten.
Yaozu's eyes narrowed. He stood, shoved the box into a satchel, and turned toward the exit—but froze.
Something was hanging from the back door.
A strip of green silk, tied in a perfect bow.
Deliberate. Decorative. Meant to be found.
He stepped closer and gently tugged it free. It smelled like lavender and copper.
Attached to the silk with a pin was a steel tag—flattened, inscribed.
The name scratched onto it had been X-ed out.
But he could still read it.
Captain Zhen Ji. One of their own.
A southern scout who had gone missing two weeks ago. He was presumed to be dead. But there was no body and no witness.
Yaozu closed his fingers around the silk.
They were using her soldiers now.
Not just dressing like her.
But trying to become her.
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The ride back to camp was silent. The cold bit harder than usual. The sky had begun to cloud—heavy with snow that hadn't yet fallen.
Yaozu didn't speak the entire way.
The checkpoint burned behind him, this time for real. His men torched it with clean oil, no rush. They didn't leave anything behind—not a wall, not a scroll, not a nail.
Some lies don't deserve to rot.
They deserve to vanish.
When he finally returned to the southern war camp, the guards at the edge of the perimeter saluted quietly. They didn't question his return. His absence hadn't been announced. That was how he preferred it.
He walked straight to Xinying's war tent.
She was seated alone at the map table, studying troop formations in the northwest. Her hair was tied up in a single knot, not a strand out of place. Her fingers tapped slowly along the corner of the parchment—one, two, pause. One, two, pause.
She didn't look up when he entered.
"I heard the checkpoint was burned."
"I burned it," he said.
She looked up now.
He walked forward and placed the strip of green silk on the table between them.
Then set the engraved tag beside it.
She stared at the name.
Her jaw didn't tighten. Her eyes didn't narrow.
She just… breathed.
One long breath.
"Zhen Ji?" she asked.
He nodded once.
Her voice dropped. "Was it him?"
"Yes."
"How?"
He reached into his coat and placed the lacquer box of false banners beside the tag.
She opened it. Saw the pattern. The color. The threads.
The corner of her mouth pulled ever so slightly.
"You think they're only dressing like me," she murmured. "But they're not. They're building a version of me they can easily destroy."
He said nothing.
"You know what this means."
"Yes," he said. "They're not trying to outfight you."
"They're trying to outlive me."
She looked at him.
Her voice was steady. "Burn it all."
"It already is."
"Not the checkpoint," she said. "Everything. Every name connected to that silk. Every smuggler, every tailor, every ink master. I want them all erased before the snow settles."
"Understood."
She reached across the table and picked up the silk with bare fingers. Her fire stirred, just faintly—he saw the edge of it curling under her nail.
The green thread singed, but didn't ignite.
"I want this pinned to Baiguang's gate," she said. "With his name still crossed out."
"Alive or dead?" Yaozu asked.
"Doesn't matter," she said. "I want them to see how badly they failed to erase him."
She stood, the silk clenched in her fist.
"And how much worse I'll be now."
That night, Yaozu stood watch outside her tent.
He didn't speak to anyone. Didn't move unless necessary. He simply stood, silent, as her firelight danced through the canvas, and the winds began to howl across the field.
Let them wear her face.
Let them steal her words.
When she moved again, it wouldn't be with fury.
It would be with precision.