Feng Kuan staggered through the predawn mist, legs numb and heavy. Little Sparrow's face refused to leave him, those wide, terrified eyes, the wooden sword clutched in small hands, the cut-off cry swallowed by the jiangshi. He had looked at the boy. He had chosen to run. The guilt sat in his chest like a stone soaked in baijiu.
"Black Maiden," he muttered bitterly, the monks' words still echoing. "Bearer of death. Everything I touch rots."
The valley gave way to cracked, drought-stricken farmland. Distant smoke rose on the horizon, rebel fires or burning villages. Li Zicheng's peasant army was spreading like locusts somewhere to the north, swallowing counties while the Ming Empire bled out.
He heard the horses before he saw them. Hooves thudding on hard ground. Rough laughter. Feng Kuan tried to veer into the sparse trees, but exhaustion slowed him. A rope whistled through the air and looped around his shoulders. He hit the dirt hard. The baby strapped to his chest cried out at the impact.
"Got one!" a voice barked. "Old man with a whelp. Check if he's bit. "
Rough hands hauled him up. Six men on gaunt horses, a mix of Ming deserters and starving peasants turned raiders. Their leader, a scar-faced brute called Scar Wang, had the hard eyes of a former squad commander who had long abandoned honor. Famine and rebellion had stripped them of everything except hunger and cruelty.
Scar Wang eyed Feng Kuan's nicked military dao and the way he carried himself even while bound. "Soldier, eh? Deserted like the rest of us?"
Feng Kuan said nothing. The baby wailed louder. One bandit reached for her. Feng Kuan twisted violently, shielding her with his body. "Touch her and I'll feed you to the stiff ones myself."
Scar Wang laughed, a dry, ugly sound. "Feisty for a half-dead old man. Search him."
They took his empty gourd, his flint, and bound his wrists tighter. They left the baby strapped to his chest, smart enough not to separate a crying infant from its carrier in jiangshi country. "She'll make good bait if she keeps that noise up," one muttered.
They rode hard through the day, Feng Kuan tied behind a horse like baggage. Dust choked his throat. His wounded arm throbbed with every jolt. The shame burned deeper than the pain. Captured again. Useful again. Just like the corrupt generals had once used him before sending his troop to die.
By nightfall they reached a makeshift camp inside a ruined Ming watchtower overlooking a dry riverbed. Another twenty bandits lounged around small fires. Captured women cooked thin gruel in silence. A few half-burned jiangshi corpses lay piled at the edge of the camp, crude attempts at fire had left them blackened but not fully destroyed.
Scar Wang shoved Feng Kuan to his knees near the largest fire. The baby had gone quiet again, exhausted from crying. "You move like a captain," Scar Wang said. "We heard screams from the valley last night. You know how to handle the stiff ones?"
Feng Kuan stared into the flames. The memory of Little Sparrow's plea flashed again. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat. "Fire is the only thing that stops them for good," he said, voice flat and tired. "A blade wound heals in moments. Fire cauterizes the corrupted qi. Cut and burn at the same time if you can. Otherwise set the whole thing alight and run."
The bandits murmured with interest. Scar Wang grinned. "Good. You're going to teach my boys proper saber work too. Ming army style. We hit a rival crew tomorrow at the old granary. You train them, fight with us, and maybe we don't sell the whelp or leave you both for the dead."
Feng Kuan felt the chain close around his soul. He could refuse. Die here. Let them take the girl. But the same stubborn refusal that had made him pick her up in the burning temple rose again. Teaching them might buy time. Fighting with them might create a chance to slip away. Or maybe he was simply too much of a coward to choose a clean death.
That night they loosened his wrist bindings enough for demonstration but kept guards close. Feng Kuan showed them basic dao forms on a wooden post by firelight, the powerful downward chop, the horizontal slash that could open a man from hip to shoulder. The bandits copied with clumsy hunger. Every correction felt like another betrayal of the soldier he once was.
Scar Wang watched with greedy eyes. "You were somebody once. What broke you, old man?"
Feng Kuan did not answer. Instead he looked down at the sleeping baby. Her tiny face, peaceful for once. He remembered Little Sparrow's laugh, the wooden sword, the silent plea. Another innocent lost because of him.
By morning the real training would begin in earnest. For now, they left him sitting against the cold stone wall, the baby still bound to his chest. The night air carried distant moans of jiangshi roaming the dark. Somewhere beyond the dry riverbed, the rival granary waited.
Feng Kuan closed his eyes, but sleep would not come. He was no longer just a drunken outcast carrying a nameless child. He was now a teacher to monsters.
And the little ghost in his arms, the only thing keeping him from lying down and dying, would pay the price with him.