Signing for Life and Death, Stepping onto a Perilous Path, Traps Hidden in Smoke, Targets Gone

The group began to move.

It was not an orderly march, but a mass of people huddled together, like sheep driven into a dead-end alley, blindly inching back in the direction they had come from.

The shaman smoke was too thick. Beyond ten paces, no one could make out another person's silhouette. Everyone could only follow one after another, stepping in the footprints of the person ahead.

"Stay close! Don't fall behind!"

Tuoba Gu's voice came from the front of the group, carrying a few traces of deliberately mustered confidence.

He walked at the very front, but instead of looking ahead, he kept his head lowered, carefully searching specific spots.

"Look for the markers we left behind! Under tree roots, in cracks between rocks, deep in the grass—open your eyes wide and search!"

Someone in the middle of the group crouched down and parted a clump of dead grass. Inside were four stacked stones, with a branch pinned beneath them, pointing in the direction the group was traveling.

His eyes lit up. "Found one! It's our marker!"

"There's one here too!"

Another man lay prone on the ground and found several deliberately arranged branches at the base of a large boulder. The shortest branch pointed toward the way they had come. "The marker's still here—the direction is right!"

The calls rising one after another eased the atmosphere within the group slightly.

Some began to whisper among themselves, while others let out long breaths, as though those markers hidden in secret corners were signposts leading them back to life.

The corners of Tuoba Gu's mouth lifted slightly.

These markers were secret signals passed down through their tribe for generations.

A few branches, several stones, arranged in a particular manner in inconspicuous places.

Even if outsiders passed right by them, they would