The hoe was stuck at an angle beside the vegetable bed, its blade smeared with damp black earth. Chen Wuya's fingers still rested on his knee. The echoes of those two taps from his fingertips had long since scattered into the wind, but he knew Bai Zhi had heard them.
She had already retreated beneath the eaves, her back against the doorframe, her right hand hanging at her side with her palm pressed to the sword hilt. She neither drew her sword nor lifted her head to look around. She merely stood a little straighter than usual, like a bamboo stalk bent by the wind yet refusing to fall.
The shadow on the hillside beyond the courtyard truly moved.
The man withdrew along the rock face with extreme care, his toes touching down as though treading on thin ice. Every step avoided dead branches and loose stones. A fine thread was concealed in his left sleeve, originally linked to another lookout post thirty zhang away as an early-warning device. Yet when he came within three zhang of the courtyard wall, the thread suddenly snapped—not cut by anyone, but shattered by some invisible force, as though unseen blades lay buried in the air.
He stopped and crouched behind a bluish-gray boulder. From his robes, he pulled out a small wax-sealed bamboo slip and swiftly scratched three short marks and one diagonal stroke into it with his nail. This was the Northern Desert Scout Camp's secret code: "Target alert, defenses unknown, cannot approach for now."
He did not blow the bronze whistle.
The original plan had been to confirm that Chen Wuya remained in the courtyard and was wholly unguarded, then use three long notes and one short note to notify the contact ten li away. But now, he did not dare.