She came back on the seventh day.
Not alone. Four of them this time. They entered through the east garden wall at the deepest point of the night — past the third bell, when the sect's patrol rotation created a seven-minute gap.
Wen Dao was awake.
He had been awake. The Pale Flame sense had been running continuously for three days, alert to any qi approach that felt like Iron Moth's signature. He had identified her pattern during their single encounter — the way her qi moved had a specific texture, aggressive-circular, like water cutting stone in a spiral.
When that pattern crossed his sense boundary at the east wall, he was on his feet before she cleared the garden.
He didn't fight. He ran to Zhou Jin's room, knocked twice with the specific pattern they had agreed on, and kept moving.
By the time Iron Moth's group reached his corridor, his room was empty.
He was in the inner compound's roof space — the maintenance gap between the ceiling and the outer tiles. He moved through it on hands and knees, slowly, keeping his qi suppressed to minimum.
Below him, through the thin wooden ceiling, voices.
"He knew we were coming." A woman's voice. Controlled. Not angry — Iron Moth didn't sound angry. She sounded precise. "His Pale Flame sense has developed faster than we estimated."
Another voice: "Should we take the friend? Use him."
"No. That creates noise." A pause. "He's not in the building. Check the east storage and the training halls."
They spread out.
He stayed still.
Seventeen minutes.
Then, from the east side of the compound, a sound. Brief. Sharp. Combat.
Zhou Jin.
He moved.
Not toward the sound — away from it, toward Elder Tang's chambers at the far end of the inner compound. He slid out of the roof space through a maintenance hatch, dropped to the corridor, and ran.
He was twelve steps from Tang's door when a figure stepped from the shadow of the doorway directly ahead.
Iron Moth.
She had not gone to the east side. She had sent three of her people there as a sound — to make him move. And she had waited at the one place his movement would logically end.
He stopped four feet from her.
She looked exactly as his Pale Flame sense had pictured: lean, controlled, with the posture of someone who had spent years in precise physical training. Late twenties. A horizontal scar across her jaw. Eyes that held no hostility — just complete focus.
"You felt me coming," she said.
"Yes."
"From how far?"
He didn't answer.
"The Pale Flame sense at your age and level is not supposed to extend that far. Shao Wei's technique does not develop that quickly without a complementary method." Her eyes went to his hands. "You have the Question Fist."
Silence.
"Ren Long's inheritance," she said. "He had it and we didn't know. Shao Wei knew." Something moved through her eyes. "He chose you because you already had the other piece."
"Yes," Wen Dao said.
"Then you understand why the technique was never going to be mine." The first real thing she had said — something beneath the precision. "Nine years. I gave him nine years."
He looked at her.
"Was it the years that should have earned it?" he said carefully. "Or the understanding?"
Her jaw tightened. "Don't."
"I'm asking. Because the answer matters. If years were sufficient, then the technique was owed to you. If understanding was required, then Shao Wei gave it to who could complete it. Those are different things."
"Stop."
"I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm trying to understand if there is any resolution here that doesn't end in one of us dying."
She looked at him for three full seconds.
Then she moved.
Fast. Qi Condensation Level Three, full commitment.
He dove left and barely cleared the first strike.
The corridor was about to become extremely dangerous.