The copper coin on the windowsill was still lying there, face up, engraved with the two words "Yin Feng." I stared at it for several breaths without moving or speaking.
I slipped the copper coin into my sleeve pouch and turned toward the council hall.
Dawn had just broken, yet the camp was already bustling. The night watch returned to change shifts, their footsteps heavy. As I passed the watchtower, I saw a new notice posted on the wall—all personnel leaving the camp had to register their departure and return times. This was Iron Spine Swallow's order. He knew what to do now.
The council hall was empty, and the lamps had already gone out. A note lay pinned beneath a blank secret letter on the desk. It read: "Everything has been handled as instructed. Chen Qi is under covert guard surveillance, and intelligence will continue to be passed along as usual."
I nodded. Things were proceeding according to plan.
The moment I stepped outside, I ran into the captain of the Crimson Flame Mercenary Group. He stood at the foot of the stairs with a wooden box in hand, his expression darker than yesterday's.
"Something happened?" I asked.
"A squad brought something back from the edge of the Northern Wastes last night," he said. "Come take a look."
I followed him into a side hall. Half a piece of fragmented jade rested on the table, bluish-gray in color. Its broken edge was uneven, a spiral pattern ran across its surface, and several illegible lines of writing were carved along its rim.
"What is this?" I pretended not to understand.
"I don't know." He opened the box. "The day before yesterday, while escorting a merchant caravan, we found it in a temple that had collapsed halfway. No one had lived