Chen Wuya's fingers still rested on that red mark, his fingertips able to feel the faintly pulsing veins beneath the skin. This mark had not been burned there. It was more like it had grown out of flesh and blood, like a poisonous vine rooted in the cracks between bone.
He slowly withdrew his hand and rose to his feet, his gaze sweeping across the gray-robed figures standing motionless. They neither pursued nor retreated; even their breathing maintained the same rhythm. Such uniformity was not the result of training, but a rhythm forcibly imposed by some power.
Bai Zhi stood half a step to his left, her sword tip lowered to the ground, her knuckles pale from gripping the hilt for too long. She said nothing, but her eyes had been waiting for a signal.
"They're imitating," Chen Wuya finally said, his voice kept low, as though afraid of disturbing something asleep. "Not learning. Copying wholesale."
Bai Zhi frowned. "What do you mean?"
"When that man struck with his palm just now, he used the force-generating method of the Heavenly Dipper Halberd Art, but the flow of force ran backward. The shoulder blades should have been driven by the back muscles, yet they forced it through by twisting the spine. And that one who charged forward from a kneeling position—his movements looked like a spider's. In truth, he had taken the 'Flowing Cloud Step' from the Qingfeng Thirteen Forms, dismantled it backward, then pieced it together again."
As he spoke, the system in his mind had already begun replaying the earlier exchange. Every move was broken into three stages: opening stance, channeling force, and withdrawing the move. The originally chaotic motions, under the analysis of the Misaligned Practice Connects to Spirit system, unexpectedly revealed clear traces of replication.
"These people...