Yang Zhen left as instructed.
Zhou Xuan led Second Brother across half the city and returned to the underground chamber beneath the City Lord's Mansion.
The moment the door closed, the wind and voices outside were cut off completely.
He sat down in the main seat.
Second Brother crouched across the stone table, his dragon tail trailing along the floor and his two foreclaws resting on the table's edge.
"I'll turn the whole city upside down."
"You won't find him."
"How could I not? No matter how good that old bastard Zhao Ji is at hiding, he's still flesh and blood. He's got to have somewhere to hole up, doesn't he?"
"He dared to run at a time like this because of something other than how fast he thought he could move."
Zhou Xuan pushed aside several scrolls piled on the table, cleared a space, and casually traced a few lines on the stone with his fingertip.
"You remember what I did beneath the Kui Kingdom, right? I broke my consciousness into fragments and put them inside, changing the nature of the entire vow power network. Now my anchors are embedded in the network's underlying structure."
"And?"
“The Divine Statue's perception reaches as far as the vow power network does. Inside the city or outside, it can see the flow of vow power in every Mortal.”
Second Brother's slit pupils narrowed.
"But it can't see that thing Zhao Ji made, because that thing shares the same origin as vow power. It's wearing the skin of one of our own."
"What exactly are you getting at?"
"Zhao Ji doesn't need to leave the city."
Zhou Xuan tapped one of the lines he had drawn.
"All he needs to do is wrap his own aura in that same sheath, and he can