Chen Wuya's steps halted at a bend in the mountain ridge. Mud churned up beneath his soles before splattering back down. Bai Zhi on his back was breathing weakly, her forehead burning hot, while the blood seeping from her side had already soaked through her coarse cloth lapel. Mo Feng lay half-conscious on his shoulder, his fingers twitching now and then as though he wanted to grasp some mechanism's lever, yet he did not even have the strength to raise an arm.
The three figures in gray-green cloaks three hundred paces away neither approached nor left. They stood atop the slope like stakes driven into the earth—motionless, silent, their gazes fixed solely on every movement here.
He could not stop.
Yet after only two steps, his chest suddenly constricted. It was as if an invisible thread had tugged at his meridians from within, making his organs convulse in turn. He staggered to his knees, bracing a palm against the wet, cold stone. Sweetness welled in his throat as a mouthful of blood surged up, but he forcibly swallowed it back down.
"What's going on..." he muttered.
Within his sea of consciousness, the system suddenly displayed a line:
[External pulling force field detected. Abnormal true qi flow. Suspected Spirit-Drawn Breath Guidance Art currently in effect.]
His pupils contracted.
He had heard Old Wu Tou mention this secret art at the refugee camp—using particular melodies or objects as a lure, it secretly disrupted another person's inner breath. At best, it could send one into qi deviation; at worst, their meridians would rupture in reverse. It had long been lost to the martial world. Supposedly, only those among the Eight Great Sword Sects who held authority over discipline might possess incomplete fragments of it.
He slowly raised his head, his gaze