The West Suburbs at night were heavy as spilled ink.
Li Tui carried no lantern. He crouched beside the field ridge, hidden in a clump of wild thistles, like a stone soaked through with darkness.
He stayed there for about the time it took an incense stick to burn. All around him, there was only the chirring of insects and the rustle of wind in the grass. In the distance, only a few scattered lights shone from the direction of Zhao Mansion. The patrols seemed to be slacking off.
Li Tui rose, moving as lightly as a cat stepping across roof tiles. He skirted the traces of their last fight and crept toward the abandoned well from the side.
The moonlight was miserly, barely outlining the well's rim. The dead vines covering it were still there, but their position was askew. Someone had clearly moved them.
He crouched and brushed his fingertips over the stone edge. Fresh scratches marked the moss, and half a blurred footprint remained in the damp soil.
Li Tui's gaze darkened. He didn't rush to look into the well, but went first to where the corpse had been buried. Beneath the wild thistles, the earth had been dug up. The pit was empty, with only a few shriveled, blackened scraps of entrails left behind, as if something had licked them clean.
The corpse had been dragged away.
He returned to the well and took a thin hemp rope from his clothes. He tied one end securely to the old tree root beside the well and wrapped the other around his waist.
The mouth of the well yawned black, and a damp, rank stench washed over his face. Without hesitation, Li Tui braced both hands on the rim, let himself drop, and slid into the darkness.
The hemp rope went taut. Its whispering scrape against the well wall sounded especially piercing. After dropping about three zhang, his feet touched solid ground. The bottom was hard-packed earth, with no water.
He released the rope and steadied himself. The bottom of the well was surprisingly spacious, about a zhang square. A faint glimmer leaking from above barely lit the area nearby.
Then he saw the thing.
The Earth Lizard Demon's corpse had been dragged to the center of the well. By now, it was barely recognizable. Large patches of scales had been torn away, exposing gray-white sinew beneath, which was slowly being covered and consumed by dark-red, moss-like fungus threads. They emerged from cracks in the well wall, densely packed, like countless tiny blood vessels burrowing into the corpse. They pulsed faintly in some strange rhythm.
Even more eye-catching was the wound he had cut open on the corpse's belly. Dark-red moss had accumulated especially thickly along its edge, swelling into a vague lump like a poisonous sore growing out of rotten flesh. It heaved faintly with the moss. The shape immediately reminded him of the fleshy lump in his clothes.
Li Tui looked away and turned to the well wall. The seams between the blue-green bricks were coated in slippery moss, but several bricks near the bottom were darker than the rest. He crouched and scraped away the surface moss and grime with his fingernail.
Beneath them were several crooked grooves.
They were shallow, their edges worn smooth with age. They looked nothing like writing or drawings, more like the random scratches of a child.
In places, moss had grown over them again. They would have been impossible to spot without looking closely.
Li Tui touched the grooves. The stone was icy cold, and damp mud had collected in them, but the moment his fingertip brushed the surface, something felt inexplicably wrong.
That frigid aura felt much like the damp, rank stench in the well and the dark-red moss.
This well... probably hadn't only become like this recently.
The grooves were so old, and moss had grown all around them. Someone had likely done something down here a long time ago.
As he focused on them, the light at the mouth of the well suddenly dimmed for an instant.
It wasn't a cloud covering the moon. A figure had blocked the light.
A faint sound came from above as soil was pressed underfoot.
Every muscle in Li Tui's body tensed at once. He moved silently to the side and pressed himself into the shadow against the well wall, his right hand already resting on the newly sharpened short blade at his waist.
Half a head appeared over the well mouth. Backlit, the face was impossible to make out; only a pair of eyes glimmered faintly in the darkness.
The person didn't climb down right away. After a moment, a hand reached down and grabbed the hemp rope hanging in the well. The rope swayed as the person tested its strength.
Li Tui held his breath, true qi quietly gathering at his fingertips.
Just then, Li Tui's heart gave an inexplicable jolt, and a chill crept through his pores and into his bones. Immediately afterward, an invisible pressure descended, weighing heavily on his chest and making his breath catch.
He forcibly suppressed his instinct to spring up and flee, slowing his breathing until it nearly stopped. He even deliberately slowed his heartbeat.
He couldn't move.
If he did, he would confirm the presence of a "living creature."
The person at the well mouth fell silent for a moment.
That omnipresent "sense of being watched" slowly swept over every inch of the well bottom, seeming to linger for an instant longer in the shadow where Li Tui was hiding.
Then the "sense of being watched" vanished.
Suddenly—
"Who's there?" A hoarse voice crashed down, its muffled echo bouncing between the well walls.
Before the words had faded, a streak of black light shot down from the well mouth, aimed straight at Li Tui's throat!
The instant the prickling sensation struck, Li Tui had already tensed. The moment the black light tore through the air, he threw himself sideways. The bottom of the well was too narrow, and his shoulder slammed heavily into the wall. Bits of stone pattered down.
The black light grazed his neck and with a thunk embedded itself in the stone wall behind him. It was a short fork made of spiritual energy, buried nearly halfway into the stone, its end still buzzing with vibrations.
A Qi Refining cultivator?!
Before you continue