Lin Feng's gaze swept across the books, drawn to a loosely bound handwritten volume. Its pages had long since yellowed and curled, and an old water stain marked one corner. Clearly, it had been soaked by rain and dried again, bearing the weathered traces of time.
He casually opened it, then his fingertips stilled. A rough sketch caught his eye in the corner of a page—a solitary, slender tower, its body leaning slightly, with a winding line beside its base that resembled a hidden passage running through the foundation and underground. The tower's outline and the course of the passage bore a faint, inexplicable correspondence to the clues he held. Lin Feng studied it silently for a moment. He neither asked the price nor bought the volume, but etched every detail of the sketch firmly into his memory. Then he closed the manuscript, turned, and walked slowly back to the inn along the bluestone-paved road.
He did not immediately compare the sketch with his existing clues. He simply tucked the memory away in his heart like a pebble he had picked up, in no hurry to examine its texture or decide its use. He quietly waited for the right moment to bring it out and check it against the other fragments.
Several more days passed. One afternoon, beneath gentle sunlight, Lin Feng left the inn and deliberately chose a route he had never taken before. He followed Main Street in the west of the city to its end, then turned into a narrow, secluded alley. Tall walls rose on either side, the light was dim, moss covered the ground, and a stale air hung over the place. At the alley's end stood a half-closed wooden door. Its vermilion paint had long since faded away, exposing the mottled wood beneath and