The river village of Qingyan was never on any map.
It clung to the southern bank like moss—twelve homes, three boats, one shrine. Ji Haneul arrived near dusk, when the water turned gold and the frogs had not yet begun to sing.
He came because a name was whispered to him in a courier's passing breath:"Hollow-Blood Sutra."
A forbidden technique. Long thought erased.
It wasn't just the name that bothered him.
It was the tone used to say it.
Reverent.
And grateful.
—
The villagers greeted him with the tired courtesy of a place too far from the martial world to care. But their eyes lingered. Not with suspicion—but with recognition they couldn't explain.
As if they'd already dreamed of his face.
He asked no questions. Slept in an abandoned granary. Waited.
On the second night, the frogs did not sing.
And the shrine bell rang once.
No wind.
Just sound.
Summoning.
—
He walked alone to the shrine.
Inside, a woman knelt before a scroll unfurled across the altar. Her robes were plain. Her face calm. But her qi—
It curled in on itself.
Twisted through pressure points in reverse, drawing essence from marrow, not dantian.
Hollow-Blood Sutra.
She did not flinch when he entered.
"You walk without sound," she said.
"You cultivate without mercy," he replied.
A pause.
Then: "We do what the heavens won't."
"What is it you think heaven denied you?"
She turned.
Eyes pale. Mouth soft.
"Justice."
—
The woman's name was Ruo Lian.
She was not a cultist. Not yet. Just a caretaker of something old.
The scroll she guarded was a copy—translated poorly, inked with blood not pigment.
"It was given to us after the Purge," she said. "By a man in gray. He said it would keep us safe."
"From what?"
"Memory."
Haneul looked down at the scroll.
The sutra described techniques that could sever grief from the body. Detach pain from spirit. Make soldiers forget their own names to fight without fear.
"And does it work?" he asked.
She didn't answer.
She simply looked out at the river.
Where three boys played, laughing—without ever blinking.
Without ever stopping.
Even as night fell.
Even as the frogs remained silent.
—
"You knew I would come," Haneul said.
She nodded. "They said a sword would arrive. One that remembered too much."
"Do you believe that?"
"I believe forgetting has a price."
He stepped toward the scroll.
"I'm going to burn this."
"I know."
"And you?"
"I already forgot what it felt like to stop you."
She smiled. And that was the saddest part.
—
He severed the scroll with his blade. No fire. Just silence.
The paper turned to dust.
And the river stopped flowing—for one breath.
Then surged anew.
The frogs began to sing.
The boys on the riverbank looked at one another—blinking for the first time.
One of them cried.
Ruo Lian said nothing.
But tears streamed from eyes that no longer knew why.
Haneul turned away.
And left the shrine behind.
—
Atop the ridge, he looked down at the village. Lights flickered in windows now. Smoke curled honestly from roofs. The unnatural was gone.
But so was something else.
A shield. A lie. A mercy.
In its place, pain.
But real pain.
The kind that could be healed.
Ji Haneul whispered the names of no one.
But he remembered them.
So they wouldn't vanish completely.
Not while his sword still moved.