The knock came late. Two police officers stood in the snow at Old He’s door, asking about a strange man at the inn. Old He smiled, called his guest a distant relative from the countryside, and sent them back into the cold. Lü Yueguang did not wait to hear how it ended. By the time the lock clicked, he was out through the laundry window and down the frozen fire escape, gone into the dark.
He never saw what came next. Old He’s smile fell away. The tired, gentle voice turned flat and cold, and he spoke into his phone: He’s on the move. The man who had fed him and offered him a bed was not just a kind stranger. Someone had been waiting for Yueguang in Jiuyuan, and now they knew he was running again.
And Yueguang was no longer the one in control. In a dark alley, one shove, a patch of black ice and a brick wall put him down. What got up was Wei Měng: a voice like grinding stone, an accent older than anyone’s grandparents, hands that ended a fight before it began. Now a frightened young man is leading him through the old streets, toward a family that may still carry Wei Měng’s blood.
Someone is watching him. He does not know who, and he will not see them coming.
Chapter Twenty-Three of Tales of Alive — 纪真然 arrives Sunday, October 18, and closes Book One.
The Dart in the Smoke
After one week of rest, Book Two begins with Chapter Twenty-Four on Sunday, November 1.
About this chapter
Chapter Twenty-Three brings Book One to its close. Since the first chapter, Lü Yueguang has lived two lives: a gentle historian in modern China, and the fierce soldier Wei Měng on the northern frontier of the late Han. Now both lives are pressing in on him at once. In the present, the people he trusted may not be what they seemed. In the past, the frontier years of 189 AD are coming to an end. The chapter asks what it means to be watched when you believed you were unseen, and whether a man who came only to witness history can stay a witness for long.
About Tales of Alive
Tales of Alive — 纪真然 is a historical novel by 吕恩豪, set between contemporary Shenzhen and Han Dynasty China. Book One follows a man trained to read the past who finds himself forced to live inside it. New chapters publish every Sunday on WebNovel and Royal Road. Every court session, every meal, every execution has a source. What the author cannot prove is marked clearly. The rest, they will stand behind.
Continue reading
- Chapter One — The Weight of Plastic and Dust
- Chapter Two — The Vessel of Wrath
- Chapter Three — The Weight of the Bargain
- Chapter Four — The Echo of the Breaking
- Chapter Five — The Bureaucrat’s Halberd
- Chapter Six — The Long March
- Chapter Seven — The River of Rot
- Chapter Eight — The Shards of Home
- Chapter Nine — The Ghost in the Glass
- Chapter Ten — The Dangerous Bargain
- Chapter Eleven — The Shadow on the Road
- Chapter Twelve — The Ink and the Ache
- Chapter Thirteen — The Awakening of the Beast
- Chapter Fourteen — The Madman’s Map
- Chapter Fifteen — The Slick and the Silent
- Chapter Sixteen — The Signal and the Ash
- Chapter Seventeen — The Shadow in the Terminal
- Chapter Eighteen — The Flight of the Fugitive
- Chapter Nineteen — The Mistaken Shadow
- Chapter Twenty — The Cleaner’s Key
- Chapter Twenty-One — The Hearth in the Northern Dust
- Chapter Twenty-Two — The Roots in the Shadows
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