The sea wind skimmed past the reefs. Chen Wuya's hand was still resting on Bai Zhi's shoulder. She was bent over, her fingers clawing at the edge of a rock, dry sounds rasping from her throat, yet nothing came up. Her face had turned bluish, and cold sweat covered her temples.
Chen Wuya immediately helped her sit on a flat rock, one hand pressed against her back. He could feel how chaotic her breathing was, how fast and unsteady her pulse beat. That fit of dry retching had come out of nowhere, as though something inside her were churning.
"Hasn't your injury healed yet?" he asked.
Bai Zhi shook her head and wiped the corner of her mouth. "It's not the wound... it's something else."
Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke, but she still forced herself upright. She stared at the mark on the outside of Chen Wuya's right arm—two intersecting wavy lines, dark red, like bloodstains seeping up from beneath the skin. Then she suddenly reached out and lightly touched it with her fingertips.
"Does it hurt?"
"It doesn't." He said, "It just feels hot."
Bai Zhi's fingers remained where they were, unmoving. The look in her eyes changed, shifting from concern to shock, then slowly into an emotion too complicated to name. She said softly, "This pattern... I've seen it before."
"Where?"
"On the back of the jade pendant my mother left behind. This exact pattern was carved there." She looked up at him. "Exactly the same."
Chen Wuya said nothing. Looking down at the mark, he felt something in his heart begin to sink. The system sounded in his mind:
[Ancient bloodline curse fluctuation detected. Source located in the South Sea Divine Domain.]
This was not the first time the system had flagged an