Eight Supreme Arts: Kindling Crossing

"What Magic Artifact? What kind?"

Granny Liu's slit pupils narrowed slightly. She tapped her dragon-headed cane against the ground with a dull thud.

Her gaze passed over the others and fixed on the black-draped crates behind Zhou Yonghe.

She did not look at them like cargo. She looked like an old snake that had lain coiled there for years, inspecting its prey's nest.

Horse Immortal Mediums cultivated their bond with spirits, and their senses were keenest of all.

The black cloth could hide the crates from ordinary eyes, but not from someone like her, who dealt with spirits year after year.

Zhou Yonghe's shipment had met with disaster, but a faint, elusive spiritual resonance still flickered among the cargo like candlelight in the dark.

She wanted to look, and she dared to.

But it broke the rules.

Before those slit pupils could make anything out, a wash of gray mist rose without warning.

It carried no chill, only a stillness that seemed to divide life from death, and it drifted over the cargo.

Granny Liu's gaze struck it like a wall of cotton. She could not see through that thin gray veil.

"In such a hurry to peek at someone else's goods? That's a little out of line."

Partridge Sky took a puff from his pipe, a half-smile on his weathered face. He pointed the stem first at the sky, then at the ground. "We came to lend a hand, not rob the road. Liu Sanniang, this is Tianjin, not the old forests Beyond the Pass. Your outlaw rule that everyone gets a share won't fly here."

"I was merely curious."

Granny Liu's pupils slowly rounded, and her kindly expression returned. She chuckled. "Since Senior Partridge Sky is protecting them, I won't look. But that thing is uncanny. If it