Misaligned Force Confuses the Enemy, Skillfully Shakes Off Pursuers

Torchlight drifted along the ridge like iron nails driven into the night.

Chen Wuya leaned against a massive boulder, his knuckles pressed to the ground as Misaligned Force probed outward through the rock strata. The tremors returned to his palm—scattered footsteps on the left, orderly rhythms on the right, and thirty paces directly ahead, disturbed soil bearing traces of buried tripwires. He closed his eyes briefly, keeping his breathing shallow. The gash on his shoulder throbbed hot with every heartbeat.

Bai Zhi crouched behind and beside him, one hand supporting the wounded man, the other gripping her flexible sword. Its blade lay angled into a crack in the stone, ready to spring free at any moment.

"They're closing the net," she said softly, her voice nearly carried away by the wind.

Chen Wuya did not answer. He merely pulled three copper bells from his robes. Their bodies were mottled with age, tied with faded red cords—old trinkets Old Wu Tou had stuffed into his hands at parting, claiming they could scare off nocturnal beasts. He did not expect them to truly repel enemies, but if he used Misaligned Force to stir resonance in the underground currents, making the bells ring not from his hand but rise from the earth itself... perhaps he could fool their ears.

He threaded thin vines through the bell clappers and silently wound the other ends around an exposed tree root. Then he gathered his force. Misaligned Force surged backward through the Lesser Yin Heart Meridian; his true qi took a dead-end route, only for the system to forcibly complete the pathway and redirect it into the depths of the earth. In an instant, the copper bells did not move, yet a faint chime sounded in the distant woods, as though someone stepping on a dead