Luckily, the terrain below was a tangled maze.
Narrow alleys, heaps of clutter, and clothes hanging every which way forced the figure on the ground to dodge, turn, and leap without pause. "Meaningless."
The guardian's griffin possessed vision far beyond that of humans. From the air, every obstacle below might as well have been nonexistent.
All he needed to do was lock his gaze onto that moving black dot and let him weave through the maze, while he himself maintained the shortest possible straight-line route. The chase came to an abrupt halt at the end of the third street.
The other party had rushed into a dead end. Towering brick walls stood on three sides, leaving nowhere else to go.
The griffin let out a triumphant shriek and hovered above the alley. The gusts whipped up by its enormous wings scattered dust across the ground. Looking down from on high, the guardian pointed his lance at the figure driven into a corner below. "Now, there is nowhere left for you to run. Remove your hood and state your identity, as well as your connection to the Gray Rat Gang!"
He Xi raised his head and met the gaze in the sky, thinking to himself, That should be about enough.
Maintaining a guarded stance, he silently invoked [Telepathic Communication].
"Are you safe?"
Very soon, Zoya's voice rang out in his mind. "Mm. The one in the air didn't notice us. There are a lot more people around the tavern now. Be careful." He Xi breathed a sigh of relief at the news, but he did not cast a spell immediately.
He noticed that the pale-blue runes on the other man's lance were faintly flashing. It was a common law-enforcer enchantment—"Magic Disturbance Detection." Any substantial magical fluctuation would be detected by it.