Chen Xun stepped a few paces closer.
The little girl did not retreat. She merely shifted instinctively toward the pile of rubble behind her, like a small beast guarding its nest, quietly hiding that pile even more tightly from view.
Chen Xun lowered his eyes and glanced at the pile of stones.
It was an unremarkable heap of broken fragments, large and small, each a different shape. She had arranged them neatly together, clearly putting thought into sorting them; the gaps between every piece were nearly identical, orderly enough to be surprising.
Yet upon closer inspection, several pieces among those fragments were far from ordinary.
One was a chipped porcelain shard. Most of its glaze had already peeled away, leaving only one corner where a cluster of dark green grass-leaf patterns could faintly be seen. The brushwork was exquisite. It was the distinctive vessel glaze of the Azure Mystic Immortal Domain, used specifically for holding precious spirit medicines.
There was half a broken bronze plaque as well. The inscription on its back had long since blurred away, but an incomplete character for "Mystic" could still be made out on its front.
There was also a short length of charred wood, black and light, likely weightless in one's hand. It was impossible to tell what it had once been, yet she had placed it at the very center of the rubble pile, in a solemn position, as though it were the most precious piece of all.
Chen Xun stared at that piece of wood for a while.
He recognized it.
That was the grain of Moon Pear Wood.
The stair railings of the Archive Pavilion in the Azure Mystic Immortal Domain were made from Moon Pear Wood.
"What are these," Chen Xun asked, raising his eyes to the little girl, "for?"