The wind still howled, and the deck creaked. Chen Wuya stood on deck with one hand pressed to his chest, where he kept the ambergris and the embroidered pouch Mo Feng had given him. He did not look into the cabin again, nor did he turn back.
Bai Zhi lay against the bed, her breathing weak. He knew she would never agree to take such a risk, and he knew she would rather die herself than let anything happen to the child. But if they kept waiting, none of them would survive.
He lowered his gaze to the planks beneath his feet and lightly tapped them seven times with his fingers. Each tap landed in a different spot, as though he were stepping about at random—or testing something.
"Rise and fall of the tide..." he murmured. True qi surged from his dantian, flowing through his meridians into his lower body. The aura of the Canglang Art slowly spread through him, like seawater receding and then rushing back in.
Fleeting Bloom was fast—fast enough to tear space apart. But excessive speed would injure people, especially the weak. What he needed was not speed, but to halt time for an instant and make the passage of the jump smooth.
He closed his eyes, recalling how he had broken the deadlock in reverse within the Mist Killing Array. Back then, he had stepped wrong at every point, yet triggered the system's completion mechanism instead. The more mistakes he made, the closer he came to the essence.
"Since going the proper way won't work..." He opened his eyes. "Then I'll step wrong every single time."
He raised his right foot. With his first step, he deliberately veered away from the spatial anchor indicated by the system. The second was even farther off. With the