The wooden door flew open hard enough to strike the inside wall with a sharp crack.
Cold air rushed into the tea house.
Three figures stepped in from the wet street, each dressed in dark, unremarkable clothes that would have allowed them to disappear into the modern city at a glance. There were no dramatic robes, no ceremonial weapons, no visible sect badges. Yet the moment they crossed the threshold, the smell of hidden cultivation came with them metal, talisman ash, old blood, and suppression techniques.
Not beasts.
Hunters.
The one in front was a woman with short hair, a lean frame, and eyes so flat they seemed almost polished. She surveyed the room in a single sweep, taking in the old man behind the counter, Chen Mo, Li Xian, and the overturned angle of the front door without changing expression.
"You left the perimeter," she said to Chen Mo.
Interesting.
They knew him.
Chen Mo's voice cooled by several degrees. "And you followed me into a neutral house. That's either very brave or very stupid."
The woman ignored the insult. Her gaze moved to Li Xian.
"We need to speak with her."
Li Xian raised a brow. "Then you should have knocked."
The two behind the lead woman shifted slightly, not at the words but at the tone. One held back near the entrance, broad-shouldered and watchful. The other, a younger man with narrow eyes, looked like the type who enjoyed his work too much.
The lead woman stepped forward once. "A shadow beast woke on sealed ground. A dormant site reacted. Witnesses place you at the center of both events. Come with us."
Li Xian folded her hands loosely before her. "No."
It was immediate.
Simple.
Absolute.
The younger man laughed once under his breath. "That makes this easier."
Chen Mo moved to stand half a step ahead of her. "She's under temporary observation."
The lead woman's attention returned to him. "Not by you."
"By my family's authority."
That made all three of them pause.
So the warden bloodline or whatever fragment of it remained still carried weight, at least in certain circles.
Unfortunately, the younger man recovered first. "Your family's authority applies to sealed sites, not active incidents."
"Then perhaps you should stop turning them into active incidents," Chen Mo said.
The old man behind the counter set down a tea cup with a sharp click. "You children may argue somewhere else."
No one listened.
The lead woman's gaze settled once more on Li Xian. "If you refuse voluntary compliance, we'll proceed under containment protocol."
Li Xian found that wording unexpectedly nostalgic.
Containment. Suppression. Elimination. Every age preferred polite words when violence was about to begin.
She looked at Chen Mo. "Are they yours?"
"No."
"Then may I break them?"
The younger man's expression darkened. "Try."
Li Xian smiled.
This body remained weak, and these were real cultivators with active techniques and trained movement. In a straight fight, she would be foolish to underestimate them.
So she did not intend to fight straight.
The younger man lunged first, eager enough to make himself useful. His hand flashed toward her wrist, not striking to injure but to seize and suppress. A containment method, just as promised.
Li Xian moved a fraction too late for ordinary eyes to notice.
Not away.
Closer.
Her fingers met the inside of his elbow with surgical precision.
The man's arm instantly went numb from shoulder to fingertips.
He stumbled, shock flashing across his face.
Chen Mo took advantage of it immediately, driving the heel of his palm into the man's chest and sending him crashing sideways into one of the low tables.
The broad-shouldered cultivator moved at once.
A suppression cord whipped from his sleeve, shining faintly with embedded runes as it snapped toward Chen Mo's legs. Chen Mo leapt back, but the cord changed direction mid-flight like a hunting snake. He answered with a talisman strike, blue-white light flashing through the room and cutting the cord into two twitching halves.
The lead woman did not waste time.
Her hand rose, and six thin metal tags flew out from inside her coat, spinning through the air to form a circle around Li Xian.
Ah.
Containment array.
Modernized, portable, efficient. Crude compared to ancient formation work, but effective enough if one lacked distance or warning.
The tags flashed.
A net of pale silver force dropped toward her.
Li Xian's eyes sharpened.
Before she could move, the room darkened.
Not literally.
Something passed through the tea house like a shadow skimming over water.
All six metal tags froze.
Then they shattered.
The lead woman's expression changed for the first time.
Everyone in the room felt it.
A fourth presence.
Not outside.
Inside.
Near the ceiling beam above the front room where no one had been a second earlier.
Li Xian turned.
A black shape crouched in the dim light, long tail split at the end, silver eyes narrow and gleaming.
The scavenger spirit from the well was dead.
This was something else.
Larger.
Older.
Its body looked feline, but only in the broadest sense. Its fur was dark enough to erase its outline. Fine silver markings ran along its spine like moonlit cracks. One ear was nicked. Its gaze fixed not on Li Xian, but on the three intruders.
A shadow cat.
Mid-rank at least.
Chen Mo swore softly. "Why is that here?"
The old man behind the counter muttered, "Because tonight hates me."
The beast did not attack immediately.
It only crouched lower, lips pulling back from sharp white teeth.
Then it looked at Li Xian.
And bowed its head.
The room went completely still.
Li Xian herself was the least surprised.
Beasts of shadow and ruin often recognized superior bloodline forces more honestly than humans did. This one had probably been lurking near the western grounds for years, feeding on leaked yin energy from broken seals and avoiding stronger hunters. Now it had smelled a phoenix and decided the hierarchy of the night had changed.
The younger hunter, half-risen from the broken table, stared. "What did she do?"
The cat answered for her.
It launched itself from the beam in a streak of dark silver and hit the broad-shouldered cultivator hard enough to drive him through the tea house doorway and back out into the street.
Chaos followed.
The younger man cursed and reached for a concealed blade. Chen Mo intercepted him. The lead woman twisted toward Li Xian again, this time dropping pretense and aiming a killing talisman straight at her chest.
Li Xian caught her wrist.
For one suspended instant, they were face to face.
The woman's eyes widened.
Not because of strength.
Because of what she saw.
Li Xian let a trace of herself surface not enough to reveal everything, but enough to let the hunter understand she was not holding the wrist of an ordinary modern girl.
"Containment," Li Xian said softly, "is for things smaller than me."
Then she twisted.
The woman hit the floor hard, her talisman skidding uselessly across wet wood.
By the time the old man shouted about his tables and the shadow cat shrieked outside, the fight was already decided.