Ghost Envoy

After obtaining permission, Lu Chen retrieved the piece of ancient jade. The jade was warm and lustrous, a fine piece of Hetian jade carved with auspicious cloud patterns. It appeared perfectly ordinary.

But after Lu Chen carefully probed it with his divine sense, aided by the system, he finally discovered an almost imperceptible dark red mark deep within the jade's very core—of the same origin as the carved rune marks on the well railing!

This mark was not harmful. It was more like a signal receiver or a tracking marker!

"Could it be... that all the victims had come into contact with items bearing this kind of mark? Or were they marked near the nodes?"

Lu Chen speculated.

This jade might have been "infected" with the mark near the ancient well node. Once Merchant Li carried it, he became a mobile "signal source" or "sampling point"?

Just then, Yun Qingyue suddenly cried out softly, "Lu Chen, look!"

After Merchant Li fell into deep relaxation, an exceedingly faint dark red phantom unexpectedly emerged at the ancestral aperture between his brows, sharing the same origin as the ancient jade and the well railing runes!

The phantom was extremely slowly drawing away wisps of Merchant Li's soul power—so little as to be almost negligible—and producing a faint resonance with certain memory fragments in his sea of consciousness. It seemed to be continuously conducting some kind of "reading" as well!

"The mark is on his body! It didn't vanish when the fainting ended—it's continuing to operate at low intensity!"

Lu Chen's gaze turned icy.

This method was far too well concealed!

If not for Yun Qingyue guiding it with a special technique, coupled with Merchant Li having been unconscious only briefly and the mark being relatively "fresh," they would never have discovered it!

"Can