Morning light fell upon the summit of Soul-Ending Cliff, the wind sweeping fallen leaves across the rocks. Chen Wuya stood where he was, his gaze never leaving the cliff's edge. The peach branch in his hand had long since been snapped and tossed away; all that remained in his palm was a rough wooden splinter, slowly ground to dust beneath his fingertips.
Bai Zhi walked to his side. Her steps were light, yet they carried the faint rustle of the tassel hanging from her sword. She said nothing, merely following his gaze toward the dense fog at the bottom of the cliff. Nothing could be seen there—only a damp, frigid breath continually rising upward.
"He won't come again so easily," she said.
Chen Wuya shook his head. "But he wasn't the mastermind."
His voice was not loud, yet the words landed like a stone sinking into water. Mo Feng leaned against a stone pillar some distance away, head lowered as he cleaned fragments of a mechanism. At those words, his hands paused.
"A devil willing to sell his life for another wouldn't expend an entire force of deathsworn merely for the Heavenly Machine Scroll," Chen Wuya continued. "What he feared was not defeat, but missing the deadline."
Mo Feng straightened, drawing a copper tube from his sleeve. Within it was sealed a dark-red drop of blood. He raised it before his eyes and gave it a slight shake, his brow furrowing. "There's an unusual fragrance in this blood aura. It doesn't seem to come from Central Plains martial arts. It resembles the Burning Heart Paste commonly used at Northern Desert altars."
Bai Zhi's gaze sharpened. "You're saying it's... something from the foreign tribes?"
"It's more than a thing." Mo Feng put away the copper tube, his tone dropping. "It's a