Delighted by the prospect of food, Nafan whistled quietly to himself as he headed over to the far table. A group of three rather elderly men, local peasants from the look of it, turned their heads curiously as he passed but he barely noticed. There was a second door at the far end, near the table. It was half-open – through the other half, he could see a hall with several wooden sliding doors. A young girl was sweeping the floor, and he eyed her curiously for a while until the warm steam of food took his attention elsewhere.

The old man from earlier set a tray down on his table. He was avoiding Nafan’s gaze, so out of respect for the elder, he also glanced the other way. By the time he looked back, the man had left, and in front of him was a platter that glowed with heavenly light. Tea, rice, squash, and carp. Tongue swelling with saliva, Nafan grabbed his chopsticks and instantly began to devour his lucky meal.

It wasn’t until he nearly choked on a fish bone that he noticed the note – held down by the teacup, which he hadn’t touched until then. Curiously, Nafan sipped the hot tea and lifted the note to read. Written in neat, black lettering were the words, if you give one more silver, I’ll be your bedmate.

Nafan coughed and abruptly set down his cup of tea. Then he turned in his chair and promptly met the dark gaze of Wang Tianxi, who was watching him from across the room. Impressed, Nafan laughed to himself and turned back to his food. He’d had nothing but bad luck recently… but it looked like that was starting to change.

Now that his terrible stomach pangs were gone, Nafan ate slower, finishing the rest of his rice and then casually sipping at his tea. He paused for a moment, gazing at his rippling reflection in the surface of the dark liquid. He’d become aware of the fact that he was a rather big man, and could look intimidating at times with his thick head of honey-brown waves and messy bangs, which shadowed a good portion of the right side of his face. But that was fine – it was better that people stayed away from him, anyway. Shifting his attention away, Nafan lifted the cup and noted that the ceramic teacups were well-decorated, though not quite as lavish as the ones they used in the palace. The patterns were rough, but he thought he managed to make out the body of a wolf etched into the pottery.

Hm. It was rare for artists to incorporate wolves into their work. They weren’t particularly common in the Middle Country, especially on this side, far from the capitol. There had been a couple years in the palace where scrolls containing artwork of the lycan were common, but those had been taken down and burned after the late King Zhaoxiang passed away. According to the King’s advisor, Fan Sui, the lycan had fought each other to extinction. The two clans, the Raoul and the Sreki, had engaged in an intense, deadly war, and in the end neither had survived.

Nafan hadn’t believed it at first. The lycan were beasts but they were noble beasts, with a distinctly rational and human side. Besides, from what he understood, the Raoul and Sreki had never had a reason to fight. But upon travelling to the lycan territory himself, just north-west of Qin, he’d found the mud and rivers stained with blood. A massacre of that scale… nothing could have done it but the lycan themselves. He’d been forced to accept the truth.

That had been ten years ago, and hardly anyone knew about the lycan now. The majestic creatures that had churned the battlefields with blood alongside King Zhaoxiang would probably disappear from memory when Nafan died.

In a somber mood, Nafan set down his cup of tea with a sigh and reached into his garments to finger his chain of silver coins. Across the room, Wang Tianxi had come out from behind the counters and was speaking to the three peasants with a smile on her face. He couldn’t see the rest of her body through her long robes, but he guessed that she was quite petite. Probably, her limbs were thin and delicate… a little drowsily, Nafan leaned back in his chair and let his delirium thicken.

Barely seconds into his daydream, there was a loud bang and a figure came flying out of the wooden hallway doors just in front of Nafan’s table. Sitting up in guilty shock, Nafan stared with wide eyes as a heavyset man lumbered out and slammed the swinging doors back again with an angry snarl.

“You deceitful little bitch –!”

The figure, a dark-haired girl in cerulean robes, picked herself up and grabbed desperately at the man’s feet as he tried to stomp past. Growing furiously, the man kicked her aside and lifted his foot with a yell.

“Let go of me, dirty runt! Who would want to lay with a rat like you?!” he screamed, slamming his foot down on the girl’s hand.

Nafan’s mind blanked. Without thinking at all, he skid his chair back and rushed over, grabbing the man by the shoulder and shoving him away from the girl.

Across the room, Wang Tianxi had also been rushing over, but she had stopped and was eyeing them guardedly.

Wrenching himself free, the unfamiliar man whirled towards Nafan and threw waves of drunken snaps into his face.

“Who the fuck are you? You’ll pay for treating me disrespectfully, I’ll have you know that I’m an important merchant around here, you bastard! Without me, you would all starve to death!”

With a haughty cackle, the man lifted his fists threateningly – but Nafan grabbed his wrists swiftly out of the air.

Pretending to be immune to his furious glare, Nafan smiled pleasantly and replied in an exaggerated foreign accent.

“Back in my country, we eat fat little merchants like you.”

Releasing one of the man’s shocked hands, he stabbed a finger into several pressure points along the man’s left wrist, rendering it immobile, then proceeded to pop every single one of his finger knuckles.

“First, we pluck out their fingers, one by one” he said, continuing to smile even as utter horror appear in the man’s eyes. “Personally… I like the part just under the fingernails.“ Reaching the pinky finger, he cracked the last knuckle with a neat snap.

“It fries very nicely.”

The man’s mouth, which had been slowly opening, finally let out a high squeal. He yanked himself free and staggered backwards, stumbling and collapsing on his hands and knees in his frantic attempt to escape. Nafan remained where he was, watching with the same pleasant smile plastered over his face, until they had finally left – leaving behind only a stunned audience, and his terrified whimpers echoing through the silence.

Relieved, Nafan exhaled in a big sigh. Hoping to brush off his performance without too much consequences, he turned back to his seat – only for a hand to clamp down on his ankle.

Startled, he looked down. The dark-haired girl from earlier was lying behind him, pale knuckles clenched around his foot.

“Oh… are you okay?” he asked in concern, about to offer her hand. Briefly, he thought that she had ah awfully strong grip for a young girl – but that was about all the suspicion he managed to muster before it was too late.

“You…!”

As he knelt down to help, a low snarl filled his ears. In the next instant, it turned into a massive ringing, deafening his senses to all else.

He found himself gasping for air and blinking into a blurred, starry haze. Pain laced through the entire length of his jawbone and rippled across his spine, worsening with each wheeze that his body tried to take.

What the…?!

His weakened torso slid down with the flow of gravity, and Nafan realized he’d been thrown against a wall. Strange, he hadn’t been standing close to any walls…?

Parts of his vision throbbed unsteadily into view. He caught sight of a dark-haired silhouette stalking up to him, and he caught sight of them lifting their foot over his chest.

It slammed down, hard, making him gasp and splutter. Instinctively, Nafan grabbed their ankle with both hands, but he couldn’t make them move. The force on his chest was immense – just a little more, and it felt like his ribcage would crack.

“Nosy asshole. Who asked you to interfere?”

The voice that growled down at him didn’t sound feminine.

“Scaring off my customer like that… you know how long it took me to seduce that bastard? Fine. I’ll just take my money from you instead…”

A hand reached towards his face and grabbed him by the front of his tunic. With a pang of alarm – and in a sudden spurt of insanity, Nafan acted on pure instinct. Moving his fingers, he shoved his thumb into the dip beneath their ankle joint and pushed it swiftly down, rubbing twice more with pressure at the end of the stroke.

The pressure on his chest froze. It lingered there for a moment, then disappeared.

Relieved, Nafan coughed and gasped for air. The warm, delicious breeze comforted his lungs, but once the physical pain had begun to subside, a pang of intense shock seized him in its place.

It... worked?!