Chapter 3 — Sword God Appears

Lang Uyen Citadel in the early morning is always more bustling than any other town in the region. The sound of sales resounds throughout the paved streets, the sound of horse-drawn carriages running across wooden bridges across the small canal dividing the market, and the laughter of children running and jumping between street vendors that smell of delicious baked goods. In the midst of that bustling scene, there is a small pharmacy located modestly on the corner of East Street, with a wooden sign that has faded over the years, engraved with three simple words: Nhan Tam Duong.

Chuc Dieu Vy stood behind the pharmacy counter, her hands quickly wrapping each step of herbal medicine for customers, her mouth constantly giving instructions on how to prepare the medicine for the correct dosage. This year she just turned twenty-three years old, her figure was slim but her hands were very steady, and she had been accustomed to weighing and measuring each medicine since she was a child. Her eyes were bright and clear, with a steadfast look rarely seen in girls her age, perhaps because she had to be independent very early, after her mother passed away when she was only fifteen years old.

Nhan Tam Duong Pharmacy was originally the inheritance left by her mother, and her aunt named Luc Ngoc Hien helped her rebuild it from the most difficult days, when both capital and reputation were almost from nothing. Thanks to hard work and skill in dispensing medicine, the pharmacy gradually regained the trust of the people in the area, becoming one of the most trusted places in Thanh Lang Uyen whenever someone is sick.

Dieu Vy doesn't remember much about her father. Only a few fragments remained of his memory: a large hand holding her hand and leading her for a walk by the river, a deep voice telling fairy tales before sleeping, and the only time she saw him carrying a sword at his side, his solemn eyes different from usual, before he left home somewhere and never returned. Her mother rarely mentioned her father, every time she mentioned it she brought a deep sadness. Only once, when Dieu Vy was young, her mother told her that her father used to have a close friend, a person whom he still affectionately called "little brother", who if Dieu Vy encountered any difficulties in the future, could help her.

But her mother never said that name, and now that her mother had passed away for many years, Dieu Vy had no way to ask more. She grew up with those fragmentary stories, seeing her father as a noble knight who had passed away on some chivalrous journey, and told herself that even though her father was no longer by her side, she would still live an upright and kind life, so as not to disappoint him.

That morning, while Dieu Vy was wrapping medicine for a regular customer, she suddenly felt someone's eyes following her from the store. She looked up, only to see a man in a gray shirt standing across the street, looking normal like any other passerby, but there was something in his eyes looking towards her that made her shiver, a cold feeling down her spine that she had never experienced before.

When she regained consciousness and looked back, the man had disappeared in the flow of people passing by. Dieu Vy shook her head, told herself perhaps she was thinking too much, and continued her daily work. But from that day on, that feeling of being watched did not disappear, but became more and more obvious. One day, when she went to the market to buy ingredients to make medicine, she caught a glimpse of a figure in a gray shirt standing behind a pillar, eyes fixed on her, then quickly scurried away when discovered. One night, when she closed the pharmacy late, she heard soft footsteps following her all the way home, but when she turned back, she saw no one.

Nhan Tam Duong Pharmacy was open from the moment the cock crows until the moon rose, with almost no day of complete rest. Dieu Vy had been accustomed to that rhythm of life since she was a fifteen-year-old girl who had to take charge of the family business, learning how to distinguish each herbal medicine, each type of root, and each method of marinating according to the methodical method that her mother left behind in a worn-out notebook. People in the town loved her not only because of her skill in dispensing medicine, but also because of her kind heart, willing to dispense medicine for poor families without calculating the disadvantage, just like the name Nhan Tam Duong that her parents had given to the pharmacy from the beginning.

Helping her take care of the pharmacy every day was Xuan Dao, a girl a few years younger than Dieu Vy that her mother took in and raised when she was ten, after her biological parents died in an epidemic that swept through the poor riverside neighborhood. Xuan Dao grew up next to Dieu Vy like two siblings, familiar with weighing medicine, wrapping oil paper, and making tea for guests just like the person she still wholeheartedly called sister. With a bright personality and a good laugh, Xuan Dao was often the first person to notice when something was wrong in Dieu Vy's heart, and in recent days, she had held her sister's hand more than once to warn her sister to be more careful when going out alone in the evening, as if a younger sister's premonition had long warned that something bad was quietly approaching them both.

There were nights, after closing the shop, Dieu Vy sat alone by the oil lamp, flipping through her mother's old notebook, her fingers running over each faded handwriting, trying to re-envision her parents' faces through the few notes mixed in there. There were a few pages of paper that she recognized as not being her mother's handwriting, the handwriting was different, stronger and more decisive, perhaps her father's, but the content was just a few discrete notes about the paths of the northern mountains, nothing noteworthy, so she didn't pay much attention, simply thinking they were the random notes of a person who had once wandered the martial world.

About two months ago, also because she was curious about those strange lines, Dieu Vy asked an old scholar who specializes in reading ancient words, who happened to stop by Thanh Lang Uyen to sell parallel sentences, to help look at a few pages in the notebook. The old man just glanced at it, waved his hand and said it was just a martial arts practitioner's route sign, nothing to worry about, then accepted his pay and said goodbye. Dieu Vy heard that and closed the book with peace of mind, not thinking about anything else. She could not have imagined that the master, who occasionally received money to send small information to a few acquaintances in the underground business world to earn more money to work in the fields, would accidentally mention the story of "the old notebook recording the strange mountain road symbols of the Chuc family" during a gossip party, and that gossip, through several rounds of word of mouth, finally reached the ears that were always perked up waiting for any remaining traces of the old Tang Phong Mon.

Aunt Luc Ngoc Hien, after listening to her niece's story, also began to worry. She is an experienced person, knowing that the martial world are not lacking in gossip and resentment from generation to generation, but she cannot understand why a gentle girl like Dieu Vy, who only knows how to take medicine to save people, could become someone's target. She told her to be more careful, avoid going out alone at night, and secretly asked a few people she knew in town to keep an eye on her.

But those warnings seem not enough. One afternoon, when Dieu Vy was on her way back from delivering medicine to a family at the end of the street, she suddenly felt something sharp and cold grazing her ear, penetrating into the tree trunk on the side of the road. She turned around, her heart pounding, and saw that it was a small dart, the tip of which was still sticky with a dark black liquid that she, with the professional eyes of a smoker, immediately recognized as poison.

She looked around in panic, but the street was deserted at that time, only the late afternoon light dyed the mossy tiled roofs red. No one appeared, no explanation was given, only the poisoned dart stuck deep into the tree trunk like a silent warning. Dieu Vy ran home, closed the door tightly, panted and told Aunt Ngoc Hien the whole incident, her hands and feet still shaking with fear.

That night, the aunt and niece sat by the oil lamp, neither saying a word to the other for a long time. Finally, Ngoc Hien spoke, her voice lowered: "Do you remember what your mother said about your father before? Was he involved in something in the martial world?" Dieu Vy shook her head and honestly replied that she only knew that her father was once a knight and died early on a long trip, but she didn't know anything else.

Ngoc Hien sighed, her eyes looked far away as if trying to recall something in her memory that had faded over the years. She was the younger sister of Dieu Vy's mother, but in the past, she rarely heard about stories related to her sister's husband, only knowing that he was a martial artist, often absent from home, and one day never returned, leaving his young wife to raise their children alone in endless, silent sadness.

"Perhaps," Ngoc Hien said slowly, "this is related to your father's past. But I don't know specifically what it is. You have to be more careful, don't go out alone, especially at dusk." Dieu Vy nodded, but the question kept swirling in her heart: what did her father leave behind, that eighteen years after his death, someone was still trying to take his daughter's life?

In the following days, Dieu Vy tried to maintain a normal lifestyle, but inside she was always uneasy. She began to pay closer attention to each stranger entering the pharmacy, each eye following her on the street. There were nights when she lay awake and couldn't sleep, wondering if she should leave Thanh Lang Uyen and find another place to take refuge, but then thinking about the pharmacy, about the familiar patients who still trusted her every day, she couldn't bear to leave.

She did not know that, in another hidden corner of Lang Uyen Citadel, in a closed house with high walls that seemed to be just the residence of an ordinary businessman, there were men dressed in gray who were silently reporting her every move to an anonymous commander, whom they only dared to call by the nickname Black Eagle, none of them had ever seen her true face. The orders were very clear and cold: watch closely, look for opportunities to strike decisively, do not reveal your whereabouts, and above all, find the notebook that the girl may be keeping without knowing its true value.

That night, before turning off the lights and going to bed, Dieu Vy took out the tip of the poisoned dart, looked at it again under the candlelight, then wrapped it carefully in a piece of cloth and stored it at the bottom of the chest, as if the more hidden it was, the harder it would be for the danger to find her. She didn't know that what really put her in danger was not anything she had done, but an old notebook that was still lying in a wooden box at the head of her bed, waiting to expose a secret that had been buried for eighteen years.