The night wind passed beneath the eaves, making the window paper billow faintly. Chen Wuya still sat on the stone stool, his palm pressed against the top board of the cradle as a thread of Misaligned Force slowly seeped deep into the grain of the wood. That force showed neither brute strength nor outward flare; like water seeping into cracks in parched earth, it silently left its marks.
He did not move, nor did he close his eyes.
Ever since discovering that the leaf veins overlapped with the paths of Misaligned Force, the flow of qi within him had seemed to gain a will of its own, circulating by itself whenever he was not paying attention. He no longer deliberately controlled it, allowing it only to rise and fall with his breathing, like a man guarding a deep well and quietly listening to the undercurrents below.
Inside the room, Bai Zhi had already coaxed the child to sleep. She gently lowered the bed curtains, her fingertips brushing the edge of the cloth, her movements feather-light. Then she turned and sat beside the bed, hands resting on her knees as her gaze fell upon the beam of moonlight slipping through the crack in the door.
Outside in the courtyard, a dead leaf was swept up by the wind. It skidded several feet across the muddy ground, then suddenly stopped.
Not because the wind had stopped.
Someone had stepped on it.
Chen Wuya's eyelid twitched. His fingers curled slightly, and the Misaligned Force instantly drew back, condensing in his palm. He remained seated, without even turning his head, as though he had merely noticed the faint irritation of a mosquito bite.
But that leaf had clearly drifted over from thirty feet away.
The next instant, the window paper gave an exceedingly faint