The night wind swept over the courtyard walls, making the bronze bells beneath the eaves chime softly. Chen Wuya stood before the stone table, his fingertips resting on the edge of the ceramic box without opening it at once.
Bai Zhi leaned against the doorframe, her gaze fixed on his hand. Mo Feng sat on a low stool opposite them, slowly and intently wiping the mechanism grooves inside his folding fan with a fine cloth.
"That line," Chen Wuya finally said in a low voice, "the Twin Scrolls, placed separately in north and south—they aren't after martial arts. They're after the leyline coordinates."
Mo Feng paused and looked up. "You believed it?"
"Even if I don't, I have to." Chen Wuya lifted the lid of the ceramic box. The fragmentary scroll, wrapped in gray cloth, lay quietly inside. "A clue someone burned their life to leave behind wouldn't be meant merely to scare us."
Bai Zhi walked over and stopped beside him. Without a word, she placed a small bronze mirror face-up on the stone table.
The three gathered around it. Mo Feng untied one corner of the gray cloth, took out a small piece of scorched paper, and gently laid it over the mirror's surface. Moonlight slanted down, and broken lines of text emerged in the reflection, identical to the projection they had seen on the rock wall.
"The Central Plains holds its principle; foreign tribes grasp its form." Chen Wuya finished reading softly, then looked at Mo Feng. "You said this was a graveyard marker, but can something that's been sealed truly be dug out?"
"Not dug out." Mo Feng shook his head. "Awakened. Three soul-pacifying nails are buried where the dragon veins of the northern border converge. Once the earth's energy flows in reverse, the nails loosen