Zhao Feng and Nangong Wanwan exchanged a glance. Both frowned and thought for a while, but neither could make sense of it.
They committed the locations to memory, then stood up.
Zhao Feng did not rush to follow the clues before him. Instead, he first checked the direction of several footprints around the campfire.
Then he gathered the scraps of paper from the bark back into the ashes and stirred the pile until it roughly resembled its original, covered state, as though no one had touched it.
The next day, they followed the wheel ruts and footprints deeper into the swamp.
Daylight was much better than the light at night, allowing them to see clearly the paths that had been repeatedly trampled into the mud.
The paths branched at several junctions before converging again, as though someone had traveled back and forth through the same area many times. Zhao Feng noticed several fresh depressions in the mud along one branch. The soil around their edges had not yet dried, and the footprints largely followed the direction of the path. They seemed to have been left by someone who had passed through only recently, while the disturbed earth was still loose and had yet to be compacted by subsequent frost or standing water.
After nearly four hours of walking with their auras suppressed, a low building appeared ahead. Its structure resembled an ordinary hunter's hut. There were no obvious guards outside, but Zhao Feng and Nangong Wanwan sensed auras moving within, scattered across three different parts of the building.
They exchanged a glance and concealed themselves.
Just then, a narrow door in the bamboo wall at the side of the building was suddenly pushed open from within. A figure leaned halfway out and looked around. As the man poked his head