Morning light fell upon the peachwood talisman on the doorframe. Its golden lines remained clear, and the reversed character for "Guard" gleamed with a chilly sheen in the faint light. Chen Wuya's fingers lightly brushed its surface, and his fingertips met a trace of resistance, as though fine sand were wedged within the grain. Rather than withdrawing his hand, he slowly let Misaligned Force seep deep into the wood, probing inch by inch along the circuit of qi he had laid down the night before.
The woodland a hundred paces away remained shrouded in chaotic auras. The soil was rigid as an iron shell, and the wisp of Blood-Trace Incense buried beneath the fallen leaves had long since been sealed underground. Yet he knew that someone had already made it out of that maze.
Three li away, beneath a mountain ridge, a black figure lay sprawled amid withered grass, half a scorched and cracked jade slip pinned beneath his body. Three others crouched beside him, draped in black robes with silver-threaded Shadow Scale Patterns embroidered at their cuffs. One of them sliced open his own palm and dripped blood onto the dead man's forehead. Before the droplet could fall, it condensed into a thin line in midair and burrowed into the corpse's nostril. The body suddenly convulsed. Its eyes flew open, yet there were no pupils within—only a shifting film of gray haze.
"Speak," murmured the man holding the blade.
A gurgling sound came from the dead man's throat, as though something were crawling inside it. A moment later, a broken voice rang out. "...Governance by Non-Action... has been achieved. There is a bell in the courtyard. When it rings, it throws the mind into chaos. He does not strike—he only uses the child to draw qi... the backlash enters