Sea mist crawled across the water's surface, and the boat rocked gently. Mo Feng's fingers slid over the mechanism box. The three glowing characters, "Gate of Returning Ruins," still flickered, yet his brows drew tighter and tighter.
"Something's wrong," he said quietly. "These coordinates are too clean."
Chen Wuya stood in the middle of the deck, the swaddled bundle on his back rising and falling faintly. The child was asleep, its breath filtering through the cloth against his back. Without turning around, he only asked, "What do you mean?"
"The star chart shouldn't be this quiet." Mo Feng looked up. "A real formation leaves traces of fluctuation, like a heartbeat. But this... feels like a shadow recorded in advance."
With a sweep of his fingertip, he split the projection in two. One side showed the current stars, the other an ancient rubbing. The two Three Origins Nine Stars Formations looked alike in shape, but their details did not match.
"Look here." He pointed at the tail of the Big Dipper. "The angle of the inverted sword differs by seven degrees. That's not an error—it was deliberately skewed."
Chen Wuya stepped closer and stared at that slanting streak of light. He remembered the heat that had flared in his chest during the surge of waves earlier. Misaligned Force had been stirring.
"So what lies ahead isn't the Gate of Returning Ruins?" he asked.
"It might be a graveyard." Mo Feng put away the projection. "Someone used a false star chart to lead the way, waiting for whoever barged in to crash straight into the seal's backlash."
The mist beyond the boat churned, and the dark silhouette of an altar appeared and vanished in the distance. That place was still rising, seawater bubbling around it with the smell of rust.
Chen Wuya