The night was tranquil. Moonlight spilled through the sparse leaves like liquid mercury, casting mottled patches of light and shadow across the ground.
Chen Qing moved soundlessly through the forest, pushing the Startling Swan Shadow Escape Art to its limit, leaving behind only a barely audible breeze brushing through the grass.
Following the faint traces Miao Zhiheng and Lu Da had left while fleeing, he tracked them all the way here.
The direction could not possibly be wrong.
Yet after chasing them for several li, the trail seemed to vanish into thin air.
Other than insects chirping and wind rustling through the woods, there was no other sound.
"Where did they go?"
Chen Qing stopped, his brow slightly furrowed. "With injuries that severe, they couldn't possibly move that fast, much less leave no trace at all."
Did they have someone waiting to receive them?
Or had they used some special concealment method?
Holding his breath and focusing his mind, he pushed his hearing and perception to their limits, carefully probing every movement within several dozen zhang.
After searching the surroundings for a long while, an exceedingly faint murmur of conversation, mixed with suppressed groans of pain and ragged breathing, drifted into his ears on the wind.
The sounds came from a sheltered hollow in slightly lower ground to his left-front.
Chen Qing's gaze sharpened. He immediately concealed his entire aura, circulated the Turtle Breath Sleeping Dragon Technique, and silently crept toward the source of the sounds.
He crouched behind a thick clump of bushes, parted the branches and leaves, and looked down.
In the hollow, Miao Zhiheng sat slumped against an ancient tree. His face was pale as paper, his chest rising and falling violently, blood foam continuously spilling from the corners of his mouth. He was clearly gravely injured