The Scent of the Orchid in the Forest of Secrets (密林兰香)

Chapter One

The night had never felt so silent to Shu Haolin. There were no chirps of the crickets, whistle of the wind, or faraway barking of their neighbor's dog. Everything was still, as if death had draped its cloak over the entire countryside of Suzhou.

As Shu Haolin ran, she felt that the distance between her house and the Taihu Lake that she'd played in every day growing up had never been longer. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her, her hair, still messy from tossing and turning in bed just hours before, flying out behind her. Her robes were so dark a color, as dark as the bottom of the sea, that they almost blended into the darkness of the night. Shu Haolin stopped at the low, rickety wooden gates before her house. The answer she had been dreading had presented itself to her without much searching.

Two bodies lay on the ground, silent, still, unmoving. Shu Haolin gripped the old wooden fence, and she felt bile rising up in her throat. She slowly pushed the gates open, their creak splitting the quiet night. Her foot nudged something, and she heard a quiet tinkle. Glancing down, she found a jade pendant, shattered into several large pieces, the character "Lin" that was carved into it split down the middle. It must've fallen when she had fled in a hurry, with her little brother in tow.

She knelt down and picked up a fragment of the shattered jade pendant on the ground. It dug into her finger, slicing open a jagged wound, but she couldn't feel anything as she continued to pick up the pieces, wrapping them up in a clean handkerchief and tucking it into her robes.

Several feet behind her, hidden in the shadows, was a tall, slender figure, draped in lilac robes, with a white veil hiding her face and a sword clutched in her hand. Her thin, light brows were tightly furrowed as she watched. Shu Haolin stayed completely still, only seeming to sway a little on her knees.

But there was not much time for Shu Haolin to grieve. From behind her, the flash of a sword caused her to move automatically, dodging just as the sword stabbed right where she had been standing a moment before. She had no weapon, so as several figures clad in black advanced on her, she could only take steps backwards, and in several moments, she had dodged and ducked all the way back to the lake. The figures in black seemed to simultaneously agree on something, and their swords glinted as they closed in on Shu Haolin. As she spun around rapidly, considering her choices, four swords approached rapidly, about to run her through like a pincushion.

Something flashed through her eyes. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps this was her fate, to fall on the same night her parents did. But at the same time that heaviness set down in her bones, the image came to mind of her little brother, still huddled in an inn in Suzhou, waiting for her to come back, and her parents, laying in their herb garden, dead without any explanation, without any rhyme or reason, and if Shu Haolin died now, perhaps dead without anyone to mourn, grieve, and seek the truth.

Shu Haolin moved purely on instinct. One sword pierced at her left shoulder, and she caught another with her bare hands, wrenching it away with the strength of a madman at the end of their rope. Pain faded to the back of her mind and blood rushed to her ears as she made a break for it as a gap opened up in their ranks, but she had only taken a few steps when someone caught her robes, and she started to fall.

But before Shu Haolin tumbled to the ground, an arm caught her around the waist, and she smelled the sweet scent of an orchid. Clad in lilac robes lined with deep, royal purple, she moved with fleeting, light steps, knocking away the swords advancing on Shu Haolin and defeating everyone neatly and without any extraneous effort, even while supporting Shu Haolin at the waist. A veil on her savior's face obscured any details that could've been used to identify her, but for a moment, her eyes seemed to reflect the moonlight, but rather than seeming cold, they seemed to hold the warmth of a blazing fire in the dead of winter.