Not a Threat!

No Threat!

After hearing him out, Ning Xiaohe did not respond immediately. Only after a few moments did she softly murmur, "Mm," as if speaking to herself.

On the way back, Luo Wen walked at the rear. Lu Chi and Ning Xiaohe were ahead, chatting on and off as they went, mainly reviewing what each of them had missed by the pool. Lu Chi said he had missed that the marks in the mud by the pool had not been made by footsteps, but by something pushing up from beneath the mud. Ning Xiaohe said she had missed that the whirlpool's speed had gradually been increasing; from the scent alone, she had failed to notice the change in the time dimension.

As they talked, the two stopped walking and stood by the roadside, writing down every missed detail in their notebooks. Luo Wen came up from behind, glanced at what they were writing, and did not urge them on. He found a stone nearby and sat down to wait.

Only after they had finished writing did he stand up and deliver his longest speech of the day.

"You made more mistakes today than in all the past few months combined. But these were mistakes you made yourselves, not the kind you remembered only after I pointed them out to you in the mountains. Figuring out how to correct your own mistakes after you go back will do more good than hearing me say it a hundred times."

Lu Chi and Ning Xiaohe both fell silent.

"You're going into the valley again tomorrow," Luo Wen said. "And the day after. Once you can make a full circuit of the outer perimeter without making any new mistakes, then we'll consider going a little deeper."

With that, he turned and headed for the