The copper coin was still clenched in my palm, the red marks pressed out by its edges tingling faintly. When I opened my eyes, daylight had already seeped through the window crack. The Medicine Hut was so quiet that I could hear furnace ash falling to the floor. The silhouette in the Black Cloak from last night had long vanished, but that dull boom from the direction of the old Monster Suppressing Stele was still lodged deep in my eardrums like a nail.
I did not sleep again.
When I got up, I pulled the incomplete volume of the Northern Wasteland Anecdote Record from the bottom of the chest. A corner of its cover was torn, its pages yellowed. Afu had dug it out of the Ji Clan's pile of discarded archives some days ago. On the third page were densely packed records of Beast Tide outbreaks across the Northern Wastes over the past decade. The handwriting was sloppy, as if some old cultivator had left it behind in haste before dying.
I tapped three lines with my fingernail—July fifteenth three years ago, Black Market's western outskirts; September third two years ago, Broken Spine Ridge; May seventh three months ago, Black Market's western outskirts again. None of the three could be separated from the Monster Suppressing Stele.
My fingertip moved to the City Lord Token, lightly rubbing its pattern. It looked remarkably similar to a ring of dark symbols carved along the edge of a page in the book, like the key and keyhole of the same formation. Before every Beast Tide erupted, the underground spirit veins would give a faint tremor, exactly sixty-six days apart.
This was no coincidence.
When the door opened, Ye Qingwan stood in the doorway, draped in the Black Cloak that concealed her anomaly, holding