The figure turned around. Its face had no features, only a sheet of grayish-white skin.
Chen Wuya immediately raised a hand, Misaligned Force condensing into a dark current in his palm. He did not move or speak, only stared at that face. Bai Zhi slowly retreated half a step, her hand finding her sword hilt without drawing it. Mo Feng had already crouched down, his fingers gliding along the edge of his mechanism pack, ready to activate the defensive device at any moment.
The cleaner stood where it was, its short spear hanging to the ground. Black fluid dripped onto the ice with a faint sizzle. Rings of gray veins spread across the corroded patches like ripples on water. After several breaths, it turned and continued onward, its footsteps so light they were nearly soundless.
The three waited until its silhouette had completely vanished into the depths of the icy forest.
"That wasn't a person," Mo Feng said quietly. "It was a puppet remade from a corpse."
Chen Wuya nodded. "The poison on those arrows was extracted from things like that."
He crouched and pressed his palm against the spot where the cleaner had stood. Misaligned Force spread along the ground like an invisible net. The system quickly returned a response:
[Residual demonic energy detected. Composition matches the poison arrows. Source direction: southeast ice valley]
"It was them." Chen Wuya rose to his feet. "Those poison arrows were made at this outpost."
Mo Feng opened his mechanism instrument and pulled up the trajectory data he had recorded earlier. He entered the poison arrows' flight angle, wind speed, and landing points. The instrument began retracing their paths. A red line appeared on the screen, ultimately pointing to a heat source deep within the ice valley.
"That should be the