When Chen Wuya stepped onto the first steep slope, the sound of gravel rolling beneath his feet was swept away by the wind. He did not look back. Bai Zhi's warning behind him—"Be careful"—was like a thread that snapped with the slightest tug. The wound on his shoulder tightened in waves as he climbed, as though a rusty wire were sawing back and forth inside it. The blood mark on his left palm had stopped pulsing, yet it remained warm, like a coal buried beneath his skin.
He slowed his pace and suppressed his breathing to the faintest whisper, guiding what little true qi remained through his meridians toward his palm. Misaligned Force ran in reverse within him. The current that should have flowed toward his dantian was forcibly twisted outward, seeping from his fingertips. His skin became extraordinarily sensitive, able to sense the faint tremor of air between the rock walls—like a spider feeling one strand of its web stir.
After crossing the ridge, moonlight spilled over the field of broken stones, casting several crooked shadows. He crouched and took out a charcoal pencil, drawing half an arc upon a rock before abruptly stopping. When his fingers touched a corpse, the stiff neck was already cold through. This was a Greenwood Alliance sentry disciple. There was a pinprick-sized hole in his throat, its edges blackened by poison. There had been no struggle, no cry for help. He had died cleanly.
He continued scouting ahead and found two more bodies. The three had been positioned in a triangle, clearly an intentional defensive formation. Hidden inside one man's collar was half a silver-scaled token. It was icy cold to the touch, its edge engraved with the totem of a wolf's head. He recognized the mark. Old Wu Tou had mentioned it