Chen Yao tugged at her father's sleeve and pointed to the ground before the hall. A dark red line was slowly seeping from the cracks between the bluestone slabs, as though some force were pushing it up from underground, faint heat still clinging to its edges. Her voice tightened. "Th-this isn't the diagram I drew, but it's moving."
Chen Wuya crouched down and lightly touched the stone crack with his fingertips. A faint yet distinct tremor traveled through his finger pads and into his meridians, its rhythm subtly matching the circulation of Misaligned Force within him. He said nothing. He merely pressed his palm to the ground and closed his eyes to sense it. A moment later, he opened them, his gaze settling on the training ground in the distance—more than a hundred disciples were practicing the "Thirteen Reverse Steps." Their movements were uneven, yet they formed a seamless whole, as if their true qi were linked by invisible threads to the depths beneath the earth.
"No one activated it." He rose to his feet, his tone calm. "They connected to it themselves."
Bai Zhi came over and stood beside him, watching the steadily spreading lines. Centered on Misaligned Principle Hall, they rippled outward in widening circles, shaped like spiraling water rings and like some ancient sigil. She asked quietly, "Doesn't it resemble that sketch you drew in the refugee camp all those years ago?"
Chen Wuya nodded. It had been the path he had casually scribbled out when he first stumbled into dismantling the Canglang Art, crooked and lopsided, mocked by others as "chicken scratch." Yet now, that pattern had grown from the soil itself, spreading ever farther.
Mo Feng hurried over carrying a mechanism compass. He crouched down, brushed aside the dust, and examined the direction of the