The market goes silent as Guildmaster Ouyang steps through the crowd. His silk robes do not hurry, but the air around him thickens like packed mud. He does not look at the crimson cocoon seal. He looks only at Li Wu's bloodied arm.
Guildmaster Ouyang
That wound is fresh. Who touched you in my market?
Merchants lower their eyes. The Scrap Vendor stays rigid beside the stall, while the hidden ripples inside the cocoon keep listening. Ouyang lifts one hand, not to strike, but to measure the silence with two fingers.
Guildmaster Ouyang
I do not care for the seal. I care for disturbances that spread under my bricks.
He finally glances at the cocoon, then back to Li Wu's forearm, as if comparing two problems of the same shape. The pressure of his presence pins every loose breath in the square.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Show me the injury, or show me the cause. Either way, I want the truth before this market starts whispering lies.
✓ Quest Accepted
Protect Li Wu's anonymity
“I quickly I focus inward and combine healing arts with flowing earth essence to quickly heal my wound until not even a scab remains. "What wound?" I ask aloud.”
SUCCESS (Good Healing Arts, rolled -1)
Li Wu closes his fingers around the ache in his forearm and lets the qi settle. Earth steadies the blood, water mends the split, and the sting fades beneath his skin.
The torn flesh knits shut. Red vanishes, then the last trace of damage, until his arm looks whole under the market light.
Li Wu
What wound?
Guildmaster Ouyang
So it disappears when questioned. Convenient.
The Scrap Vendor
His market, his brick, his rules. I told you the ground was wrong.
The Jade Clerk
The cocoon remembers what enters it. The witness mark does not forget, even if skin does.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Then prove to me your signature was not stolen from my market, or I start asking which sect taught you to hide it.
“I keep my sect hidden and answer Ouyang with a smirk, "And if I said this hidden technique is from the Shadow Sect?"”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +0)
Li Wu
And if I say this hidden technique comes from the Shadow Sect?
Li Wu lets the words land with a thin smirk, easy as a tossed pebble. The healed forearm stays bare in the lantern light, giving Ouyang nothing to grab but suspicion.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Shadow Sect? You hand me a poisonous answer and expect me to swallow it whole?
The Scrap Vendor
He is not the one making the market listen. The cocoon is.
The Jade Clerk
A false name still leaves a pattern. The witness mark records the shape of the lie.
Ouyang’s hand lowers by a finger, not from trust, but from recalculation. His eyes shift from Li Wu’s face to the crimson cocoon, where the listening ripples tighten and hold.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Then prove it. Show me why a Shadow Sect signature sits in my market, or I will take your silence as theft.
Quest Complete
Protect Li Wu's anonymity
Skill Upgrade: Healing Arts Good→Great
“"Very well," I make a different seal and add the pesky jade witness mark to the Hollow Lotus Tomb binding it's fate to the fate of the tomb. When the cocoon is destroyed, the mark mirrors its fate.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Hand-to-Hand Combat, rolled +2)
Li Wu answers with a small shift of his fingers, and the cocoon around the jade witness mark twitches to his rhythm. The red seal’s listening pulse catches the new pattern at once.
A second seal blooms over the first, thin as thread and clean as a copied stroke. The witness mark latches onto it, as if recognizing its own reflection.
Inside the crimson cocoon, the Jade Clerk stiffens. The mark on the shell answers the new binding, mirroring the Hollow Lotus Tomb’s slow, hungry beat.
The Jade Clerk
It is bound now. If the tomb falls, the witness falls with it.
The Scrap Vendor
He tied it in without breaking the lattice. Clever.
Guildmaster Ouyang
That is a stolen signature, then. Explain how you touched my market’s mark without permission.
Ouyang steps in, and the market seems to narrow around his voice. The cocoon’s ripples hold steady, but the half-collapsed stall groans once under the pressure of the new link.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Surrender your sect’s seal, or prove you have a right to wear it here.
“"How is this for proof?" I make the third seal of the Hollow Lotus Burial technique which feeds off of the resistance of both men and their qi hastening the implosion of the cocoon and the jade witness.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Hand-to-Hand Combat, rolled +2)
Li Wu turns the accusation into motion, two fingers drawing a third line through the air. The crimson cocoon answers at once, its shell tightening around the jade witness mark.
The new seal bites deeper. It feeds on the resistance in the cocoon and the witness, pulling their qi into a single, sharper strain.
The Jade Clerk
The record is taking strain. It will remember this pressure.
The Scrap Vendor
That is no borrowed stroke. He is folding the market’s own answer back into it.
Ouyang’s expression hardens as the cocoon pulses under his gaze. The stall beams creak, then settle, locked into the seal’s rhythm.
Guildmaster Ouyang
You dare fasten that here. Surrender your stolen signature, or name the sect that taught you to wear it.
Li Wu
How is this for proof?
The third seal completes, and the witness mark flares to match it. The cocoon contracts, the jade token’s trace pinned inside the same hungry pattern, while Ouyang stands forced to choose between striking or listening.
✓ Quest Accepted
Get Guildmaster Ouyang to listen
“I speak to Guildmaster Ouyang directly. "Why didn't you listen when I answered it was the Shadow Sect? Simply because an answer is too poisonous for you to swallow does not make it untrue."”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +0)
Guildmaster Ouyang
He does not move to strike. His gaze stays on Li Wu, then drifts to the seal. “Speak. If you mean the Shadow Sect, say it plainly.”
The cocoon holds its shape and the market goes still around them. The jade witness mark keeps glowing, taking in every word as if it expects a verdict.
Li Wu
Why didn’t you listen when I answered it was the Shadow Sect? Simply because an answer is too poisonous for you to swallow does not make it untrue.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Poisonous. So he knows what he is carrying, and he knows what I am afraid to name.
The Scrap Vendor
He said it before. You chose the harder sound.
The Jade Clerk
The record has both versions now. If one is false, it will show in the strain.
Guildmaster Ouyang
Then I listen to this version. Start at the beginning, Li Wu. Who taught you the seal, and why does it answer you like a door that remembers your hand?
Quest Complete
Get Guildmaster Ouyang to listen