The night wind brushed over the tips of the grass. That drop of blood still clung to the edge of a leaf, not yet dry.
Chen Wuya crouched and lightly touched it with his fingertip. The blood was still warm, bright red—fresh blood spilled not long ago. He closed his eyes for a moment as the Misidentification Domain automatically swept through it, confirming that the blood had come from the corpse inside the temple—the gray-robed man whose heart had been pierced by a short blade.
"He didn't escape on his own," he said. "Someone brought him here, then killed him."
Bai Zhi stood half a step behind him, one hand resting on her sword hilt as her gaze swept toward the crack in the ruined temple doors. The door panels hung crooked, and the gap between them was black beyond sight. Her nostrils twitched. "The smell of burned incense candles is still there, mixed with blood. More than one person has died here."
Mo Feng had not followed them. But Chen Wuya knew that if he were here, he would have taken out his mechanism compass to compare the trails. Chen Wuya did not wait. He sat cross-legged, pressed both palms to the ground, and ran the Canglang Art in reverse. True qi flowed backward through his meridians, Misaligned Force seeping into the soil and spreading like roots.
The ground began to ripple.
Fine rings spread out from beneath his palms like ripples across water. Misaligned Force coursed underground, catching the traces of lingering blood and qi. The ripples flickered between light and dark before finally stabilizing, pointing northeast—straight toward the ruined temple. The path was clear, without a single fork.
"More accurate than Iron Claw's bird," he murmured.
Bai Zhi glanced at him. "You can find people through the