Another useless letter joins the others in the ashes as Nie Huaisang stares at the flames, willing them to blaze higher and torch the entire rotten world.

So many months, so many years, searching and hiding and tugging at strings that always end up in flames, nothing but dead ends as once again his target slips away from Huaisang's net.
Still, the river is bound to run dry in the summer and soon that slimy little fish won't have anywhere to swim but mud, choking into a dead end of his own making and Huaisang's painstaking design.