Chen Lin stopped when he reached the village entrance.
The sight before him eased the slight furrow in his brow.
At the Song-Style Courtyard House construction site, the main cluster of buildings had already begun to take shape.
The white walls were up, and workers were laying dark, traditionally made glazed tiles on the roofs. The setting sun cast a soft sheen over the sweeping eaves and upturned corners that had already taken shape.
In the distance, faint rumbles of excavators came from the direction of the Three Mountain Peaks An Changlin had approved for development.
The construction crew knew better than to cause trouble. All the earthmoving trucks entered and exited through Mang Village territory at the other end of the Reservoir, never using Chen Family Village's main road.
The dust and noise were kept entirely out of the tourists' awareness.
Chen Lin nodded in satisfaction.
As he drew his gaze back, he suddenly tilted his head.
Two hundred meters away, someone was breathing in the crown of an old locust tree.
The rhythm differed from an ordinary person's-long inhalations, short exhalations, with a distinctive cadence.
The Taiyin Breathing Technique. The bargain-basement version.
Chen Lin's lips curved slightly as he discreetly swept his gaze around.
On the Guesthouse roof to the west, one.
Deep in the bamboo grove to the south, two.
In a corner of the Water Restaurant's parking lot, disguised as security guards, three.
Within a two-hundred-meter radius, he pinpointed seven members of the Jiaolong Guard in total.
Their disguises were flawless enough to fool ordinary people, but within his range of hearing, that distinctive breathing rhythm stood out like fireflies in the night. There was nowhere to hide.
Zhang Long certainly knew his stuff. His deployment was well organized.
Chen Lin withdrew his senses and checked