Lin Xiao strode quickly toward the edge of the arena, his back rigid. Bai Zhi's gaze locked onto the gray traces lingering on his cuff. Her lips moved slightly, but no sound came out. Chen Wuya had already come to her side and asked in a low voice, "What is it?"
"There's medicinal powder in his sleeve." Bai Zhi kept her voice extremely low, her fingertips trembling faintly. "It isn't ordinary dust. It's the kind that seeps into flesh when it meets blood. When I drew my sword just now, the flow of qi through my left shoulder meridians went astray for an instant—it shouldn't have happened like that."
Chen Wuya's expression darkened. He immediately recalled seeing Lin Xiao standing in a corner before last night's match, his fingers lightly rubbing something within his sleeve, as though adjusting something. At the time, he had taken it for a nervous little habit. Now that he thought about it, Lin Xiao had clearly been checking whether the powder was in place.
"They don't just want you to lose," he said slowly. "They want you to lose control in front of everyone, perhaps even injure a fellow disciple, and be saddled with the charge of 'losing control.'"
Bai Zhi closed her eyes. If that were true, then even if she won the match, she would be driven from the list of candidates on the grounds that her sword intent was unstable and she was unfit to succeed. This whole game had been laid out from the moment she stepped into the training grounds.
Chen Wuya turned and left at once, his stride decisive. Bai Zhi followed him. "Where are you going?"
"To find the source."
He said nothing more. One after the other, they passed through the corridors and headed straight for the