The medicine was gone, but a layer of dark brown dregs remained at the bottom of the bowl, clinging to the porcelain like dried blood.
Lu Chen set the bowl beside the stove and heard the faint crackling of the dregs as the residual heat baked them.
Voices murmured outside the tent, kept very low. Zhou Tieshan was arranging the night watch.
More than three thousand people had to defend a city this large. Every watch post had to be calculated down to the last man—which places needed ten men, which needed five, and which only needed one pair of eyes. Zhou Tieshan had served in the border army for twenty years; he could arrange such matters with his eyes closed.
Lu Chen closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. The true essence in his dantian was pitifully scarce, like a well on the verge of drying up. Each circulation of his cultivation art could only squeeze a few drops from the bottom.
The medicinal power of the Qi Restoration Pill remained, but that warmth was fading. It could last an hour at most. Once that hour passed, he would return to a state utterly devoid of true essence.
The flame atop the stove flickered. Wind slipped through the gap in the tent flap, carrying the scent of death. Lu Chen opened his eyes and looked toward the flap.
Beyond the gap was utter darkness. Nothing could be seen, but he knew that thing was still behind the wall of fog.
It had left, but not completely. It had retreated into the depths of the fog wall, like a well-fed wolf crouching in the distance to lick its paws, waiting to return once hunger gnawed at its belly again.
Footsteps came from afar, light yet exceptionally clear in the night.