Qin Keqing paused. The sound of her breathing came through, carrying irritation she could not suppress.
"That old bastard started moving at least two or three days in advance. This wasn't a spur-of-the-moment decision; he planned it long ago. Yang Mie is already widening the search, but the blizzard outside the city is too heavy. We have no leads yet."
Zhou Xuan took the Jade Talisman away from his ear and clenched it in his palm.
Once the transmission ended, only the wind and the faint clicking of Apocalypse's cooling engine remained in the docking pit.
Second Brother waited beside him for a while, but Zhou Xuan said nothing.
"What do you think?"
Zhou Xuan did not answer immediately.
He took that piece of rubble out of his Storage Ring again and laid it in his palm. Raising the Supreme One Divine Eye to its highest precision, he scanned the lingering gray-black ripples over and over.
The timing matched.
The window in which Zhao Ji had vanished without a trace almost perfectly overlapped with the window in which the monster had appeared in North City.
He tossed the rubble into Second Brother's hands. Second Brother caught it instinctively, his slit pupils fixed on the dingy piece of broken stone, his face full of questions.
"Do you remember what we saw when we searched the soul of that Central Province deathsworn last time?"
Second Brother thought for a moment.
"The Forbidden Secret Art in that set of gray Jade Slips? The one that plundered Mortals' Hatred and turned it into power?"
"Right. Zhao Ji has that set."
Zhou Xuan extended a finger and casually drew two circles on the frozen ground, one large and one small, with a line connecting them.
“After I planted Anchors in all the Mortals down below,