A bead of blood dripped onto the shattered crystal. The inverted character for "reverse" gave a slight tremble, then spread along the cracks like a living thing. Chen Wuya stared at the ground, his breath catching—these patterns had not been carved there. They had been seared into being by some force from within, startlingly like the scorch marks left in his meridians whenever his Misaligned Force went astray.
He slowly raised his hand. The wound on his palm was still bleeding. The battle just now had drained him badly. Though the seven currents of energy within him had fallen quiet, every movement still sent a dull, tearing pain through his sinews and bones. But he knew this was not the time to stop.
Bai Zhi stepped to his side. The cloth at her shoulder was soaked through with blood, but she paid it no mind and merely asked in a low voice, "Do you understand it?"
Chen Wuya did not answer. He crouched down, tracing the direction in which the character for "reverse" extended with his fingertip. It felt faintly hot, as though he had touched ashes from a fire only just extinguished. Then something occurred to him, and he looked around—the rune nodes the enemy had once used to borrow strength were now flickering in a strange rhythm. It was not a natural circulation. Rather, it looked like... pendulums deliberately set in motion.
"Not a seal," he murmured. "A key."
Before the words had faded, he sprang to his feet and crossed several strides to a broken stone gate ahead. A circular rune array was embedded in the gate, with a depression at its center perfectly sized for a palm. And the flow of that rune array was completely inverted.
Without hesitation, he pressed his palm against it.
Blood