Moonlight flooded the courtyard, cold and clear as water.
"Who's there?!"
Lu Chen's eyes snapped open. The next instant, he was standing at the front of the courtyard.
A scrap of cloth had been left on the stone table—a dark-red corner of a robe, its edges scorched, dotted with several drops of blood that had already turned black.
The blood had dried, but the lingering aura had yet to dissipate.
Death qi.
Exactly the same as the mist in the Northern Frontier Ruins.
He raised his head and looked into the darkness beyond the courtyard wall. There was nothing there. The night wind swept through the bamboo grove, making it rustle softly. But he knew something had come by just now. The disturbance had been too faint, as light as a night bird passing overhead, but it could not escape his senses.
The mark on his right shoulder began to throb again.
It was not excitement, but wariness.
Lu Chen frowned slightly and raised a hand to press against his right shoulder. The mark had retreated into the deepest recesses, like a mouse that had seen a cat, desperately burrowing inward.
He lowered his head and looked at the scrap of cloth again.
Something was wrong.
It wasn't that "something had come by."
That thing was still here.
Lu Chen turned and stepped into the room.
Yun Qingyue was sitting by the bed, leafing through a medical tome. When she saw him suddenly enter, she froze for a moment. "What is it?"
Lu Chen said nothing. With a wave of his hand, the door slammed shut with a bang. He walked to the window and peered outside through a gap in the paper.
The courtyard was empty.
The moonlight remained cold and clear, and the scrap of cloth still lay