A month passed like a whispered prayer.
The Jiangs' talismans, that is the Huolian's talismans spread like wildfire. At first, they were a novelty.
A pretty ribbon tied to a customer's parcel, a charm slipped into a pocket. Then came the whispers. Quiet at first. Stories of coin purses found, exams passed, illnesses eased. Fortunes changed.
By the end of the second week, Jiang Wei had stopped giving them away for free.
"Only three spirit coins a piece," he told customers with a grin. "The monks say you can't put a price on fate. But I can at least cover ink and ribbon."
They sold faster than fire-pickled lotus cakes during Spring Market.
By the third week, Huolian no longer needed to attend the stall in secret.
She sat proudly beneath a red canopy beside her "father," smiling demurely as customers pointed at her and whispered. That's the daughter. The one who paints the tags. They say her qi is blessed by moonlight.
She bowed and offered them by hand.
With every exchange, she felt it. Threads of soul trickling back into her. So subtle even she barely noticed the shift at first.
But it built.
Dozens of talismans every day. Hundreds of soul wisps returning. She didn't devour them, they came willingly. Belief, after all, was just another form of consent.
She didn't feel full. She felt strong.
By the fourth week, Jiang Wei built her a separate stall.
"You've earned it," he said, proud eyes crinkling. "You've brought us fortune. You brought her back." He didn't mean the talismans. He meant Jia'er. His lost daughter. A role Huolian played with sickening ease now.
She smiled, bowed, and accepted the keys.
Each day, her fingers flew over silk paper like wind over water. By now, she had refined the demonic weave. The soul thread hidden within each charm no longer simply marked the buyer. It tasted their qi signature, mapped their spiritual density, and returned to Huolian with everything they lacked, ambition, doubt, fear and joy. Even fragments of memory.
But only a wisp at a time. It was slow.
Safe.
Until the cultivator came.
It was nearing dusk. The market buzz had thinned to soft chatter and copper clinks. Huolian was sealing her ink pot when a young man, barely older than Xun approached the stall breathless.
"Senior Brother Shenxiu sent this to me!" he said proudly, placing a folded charm before her. "He said it brought him clarity during last week's meditation. Gave me this as a gift. He said it was from here."
Huolian blinked. The talisman looked like hers. Felt like hers.
But it was warm.
That meant it had been held, truly held by a cultivator of high realm. Perhaps even-
Her chest seized.
The moment her fingers touched the paper, a ripple hit her soul-core like a hammer through water. The feedback from her soul thread snapped tight.
Too tight.
Like a rope tied to a whale.
Her eyes flicked shut. For a split second, she followed the connection backwards. A mistake.
The soul line traced past the buyer, past the junior... and surged toward a presence cloaked in golden-black flame. Boundless, coiled power. Not even pressure, it was a presence.
Shen Realm.
A true cultivator of the heavenly threshold.
She gasped and dropped the charm.
The soul thread didn't snap.
It pulsed.
Somewhere in a manor at the edge of Mushan's northern heights, a man named Shenxiu, eldest disciple of the Violet Cloud Pavilion, frowned.
He stood by an incense table, holding the talisman lightly between two fingers. Behind him knelt a junior, head lowered in fear.
"This was gifted to me, you said?"
"Yes, Senior! From the Jiang merchant stall in Eastern Hill. They said a young girl paints them. That the charms are lucky."
"Lucky..." Shenxiu whispered. He traced a thumb over the symbol. "You're not wrong. It granted me five extra breaths in my meditation last night. Broke through the fourth stance of Heavenly Lotus without effort."
He smiled.
But it didn't reach his eyes.
This charm was no mere object of faith. It had soul embedded within it. Not a seal. Not a talisman. A thread. A living, breathing soul strand that had brushed his own.
His cultivation had burned it away instantly.
But he had noticed.
And now, he was curious.
Huolian didn't go home that night.
She claimed she was visiting the calligraphy master in Lower Row to discuss ink recipes. Meilin gave her a lunch basket. Jiang Wei offered to send an escort.
She smiled but declined.
By nightfall, she sat alone beneath the stone bridge by the Willow Lantern River, her cloak drawn over her face.
She had followed soul threads before.
She had never felt something like that.
A Shen Realm cultivator. One strong enough to meditate in spiritual stances without any spirit stone support. And he had touched her work. Her weave. Her soul.
And he had felt it.
She could sense it. He wasn't angry. Not yet. But he was interested. That was worse.
Interest meant attention.
Attention meant death.
The soul gain she had received when he touched the talisman had been overwhelming, more than a week's worth of fragments condensed into one instant. Not stolen. Given. His soul had unknowingly paid a toll for connection.
She was certain he hadn't even meant to.
'Too fast,' she thought. 'I flew too close. Grew too proud.'
She had meant to let the city feed her over years, quietly. Without flash.
Instead, her talismans had turned her into a shadow cult. She had followers now. Willing ones. And one thread had reached the heavens.
Now she had to act.
But she couldn't flee. The soul web she had created was anchored here. Ripping it loose would cripple her for a decade, perhaps longer. She had bound her growth to the city's rhythm.
She had to stay.
She had to hide better.
No…she needed some muscle.
By morning, she returned to the stall and sealed half the talismans in lacquered boxes.
"To keep them fresh," she told Meilin. "We'll rotate stocks. Less exposure."
That same day, she painted new versions, visibly different in pattern. Still infused, but with reduced soul signatures. She infused them with trickles of harvested soul instead of her own.
If the cultivator came looking, she would be gone before he stepped through the threshold.
But one problem remained.
The original thread, the one he had felt was still tied to the talisman.
And Shen Realm cultivators could follow such things. Not easily. Not directly. But with time?
He would.
She couldn't destroy the original talisman. She didn't have it.
But she knew what she had to do. She had found her muscle.