Bai Zhi turned and fixed him with a stare, her voice lowered to almost a whisper. "You said there was something wrong with Eastern Ridge. Did you suspect it all along?"
Chen Wuya did not avoid her gaze. He merely nodded lightly, his fingers brushing the edge of his travel pack as though confirming that something was still where it belonged. He said nothing, but his eyes had already passed over her shoulder and settled on the corner of the corridor outside the council hall.
That figure had appeared again.
Clad in a gray-blue sword robe, tall and lean, he stood with his back against a corridor pillar. A short brush was clutched in his hand as he rapidly wrote on a folded slip of paper. It was the very man who had repeatedly led the attacks during the earlier discussion—a double-fish jade pendant hung from his waist, one corner missing from its tail end.
Without changing expression, Chen Wuya shifted his footing slightly. Under the guise of adjusting the travel pack on his shoulder, he hid half his body behind the doorframe. His breathing softened as the Misaligned Practice Connects to Spirit system silently began to operate, his senses spreading outward along the currents of air. Every time the man wrote a character, his fingertips trembled faintly, and the true qi within him gave an unnatural ripple, as though he were suppressing the backlash of some internal breath.
This was no ordinary record.
It was preparation to send a message.
He slowly stepped back two paces, pretending to inspect the freshly replaced roof tiles under the eaves, while the corner of his eye remained locked on that corner. After finishing a passage, the man swiftly folded the note into a small square and tucked it into his sleeve. Then