Three days later, early in the morning.
The sky had only just begun to brighten when Chen Mo left the inn.
The morning mist had yet to disperse. A layer of milky white vapor floated over the Gan River, shrouding the entire town.
Without alerting Boss Liu, he climbed out through the back window, released Paper Kite in an uninhabited spot beyond town, and took to the air.
Paper Kite skimmed low over the hills, the morning wind pouring into his sleeves with a bone-deep chill.
After flying for less than half an hour, the outline of Ganzhou City emerged in his field of vision.
People streamed in and out through the city gate, chattering away in the Southern Jiangxi dialect.
The two patrolmen guarding the gate wore their caps crookedly and lazily swept their eyes over the passersby, too idle even to ask questions.
Chen Mo followed the crowd through the gate. He had just entered the pedestrian street when his brow suddenly creased slightly.
Across the street, a middle-aged man in a gray cloth jacket was buying cigarettes with his head lowered.
The man looked utterly ordinary, the sort who would vanish the moment he was thrown into a crowd. Yet an intermittent, chilling aura coiled around him.
As though he had cultivated some crooked, forbidden art.
One of the Left-Hand Path.
Chen Mo gave no sign and kept walking.
Just as he neared the alley where Li Jinrong's grandmother lived, he abruptly stopped.
Someone stood beneath the old pagoda tree at the mouth of the alley.
A monk.
He looked to be in his forties, tall and powerfully built, clad in a dark red kasaya.
A string of jet-black prayer beads hung around his neck, their surfaces faintly etched with Sanskrit.
What caught Chen Mo's attention even