Deceitful Heart Conceals Short Branch Tears, Blood Soaks Wilderness Forest, Ten Thousand Bones Wither

Tuoba Gu stood at the "crossroads" where a marker should have been, staring blankly for quite a while.

Unwilling to give up, he waved over several scouts. "Search the area. Within fifty paces—search carefully.

"There has to be a marker here. Even judging by the distance, there should be one..."

The scouts scattered.

Some lay flat on the ground and parted the grass. Some burrowed into the bushes to search. Others climbed onto rocks and felt around in every direction.

After the time it took to drink a cup of tea, everyone returned one after another.

"My lord, there's nothing to the east."

"Nothing to the west either."

"The south... there's nothing there."

"Same in the north."

Tuoba Gu's expression darkened.

"Could it be... that we remembered wrong?"

One scout asked cautiously.

Tuoba Gu did not answer.

He was asking himself the same question.

This mountain forest was too vast. The grass grew deep, the trees thick, and all the trees looked much the same. The Shaman Smoke was dense too, reducing visibility to less than ten paces.

Mistaking the place or remembering the route incorrectly was perfectly normal.

But...

He still felt that this was the place.

That crooked old tree, with the lightning-split crack in its trunk.

That half-buried stone, shaped like a wolf lying prone.

He should not have remembered it wrong.

But where were the markers?

Where had the markers gone?

Just as he hesitated over whether to pick a direction at random and continue onward, a hoarse voice sounded behind him.

"Perhaps the enemy erased them."

At some point, Lufan Lie had walked over.

His complexion was still ashen, but his eyes held more clarity than before.

It was not that his spirit had recovered. Rather, having completely accepted reality, he had instead calmed down.