The wind blew in from the north, carrying grains of sand and the stench of scorching. The scrap of cloth trembled faintly between his fingers.
Chen Wuya did not move. The heat of the blood patterns in his palm had yet to fade, as though something had awakened them. Lowering his head, he stared at that corner of tattered cloth. The mark of a broken chain seared into it flickered in and out beneath the moonlight. Its edges were curled and blackened from the burn, yet the indentation in its center varied in depth, as if someone had traced over it again and again with a branding iron.
His fingertips quivered as Misaligned Force slowly seeped into their pads, traveling along the cloth's weave. The system activated soundlessly, magnifying his sense of touch severalfold—those seemingly chaotic scorch marks were in fact distributed in a pattern, their depths interlacing to form a set of hidden ripples. This did not resemble a military command banner. It was more like some kind of cipher.
"What are you looking at?"
Bai Zhi's voice came from behind him. She had already leaped onto the rock platform, her deerskin boots making little sound on the gravel, yet Chen Wuya had sensed her nonetheless. He did not turn around, only spread the cloth across his palm.
She walked closer, her gaze falling on the charred scrap, her brows drawing together slightly. "This isn't from the Northern Desert." As she spoke, she drew a dagger from her waist and lightly scraped the cloth's corner with its tip. "Silver threads are mixed into the fabric, and the warp-and-weft pattern is wrong too. I saw it once, at the bottom of a tribute chest carried by a Western Regions caravan. This fabric is called Shadow Embroidery. Only royalty or priests