Chen Wuya's palm still braced the lower rim of the wheel, his fingertips smeared with that dark-red grease as the pads lightly brushed the edge of the crack. The fissure was hair-thin, yet it stretched all the way upward, like some living thing slowly crawling through the metal's innards. He neither moved nor looked up. He merely slowly curled his fingers, closing that greasy, fishy trace within his palm.
Zhao Tianying stood three paces away, his gaze shifting from the stilled mechanism to the youth's face. The wheel had gone quiet, and so had the valley, yet the scene from moments ago still weighed upon his heart—boulders hanging in midair, iron arrows firing in reverse, assassins killed by their own trap... None of it had been coincidence, nor had it been luck.
"Who exactly are you?" His voice was not loud, yet it struck the rock walls like an iron hammer, its echoes squeezing tight against the eardrums.
Chen Wuya took a breath, his throat bobbing before he slowly raised his head. His face was ashen, his lips cracked, and the blood at the corner of his mouth had already darkened. Leaning against the wheel, his shoulders sagged slightly, and he looked as if he might slide down at any moment.
"Someone... who doesn't want to die," he said.
It was neither a novel answer nor a clever one. But it was too real. Zhao Tianying stared at him for a long while, then suddenly laughed. At first, the laughter was low, but it grew louder and louder until the valley walls hummed with it.
"What a fine answer—someone who doesn't want to die!" He slapped his thigh. "I've escorted shipments for thirty years. I've seen men pretend to be heroes, seen men pose as masters, but never one like