Chen Ming did not move against Zhou Yuan immediately.
It was not that he did not want to, but that he could not. He had a feeling that the karmic ties entangling Zhou Yuan ran far deeper than he had imagined. Had he been an ordinary spy, Chen Ming could simply have captured and killed him. Yet he vaguely sensed that the thread behind Zhou Yuan might be the true key to unraveling the mystery of Shattered Star Reef.
He ordered Zhao Tie Zhu to raise surveillance to the highest level, not to make an arrest, but to observe. He wanted to know whom Zhou Yuan contacted, how he contacted them, and the frequency and content of their communications. He would follow Zhou Yuan's vine to find the melon behind it.
The wait lasted seven days.
Late on the seventh night, Zhou Yuan finally made his move.
He neither used a Communication Jade Pendant nor went to meet anyone. Instead, in the dead of night, he went alone to a desolate beach on the western side of Divine Wind Island. Reefs bristled across the beach, and waves crashed noisily against the rocks. It was the best place on the entire island for a secret meeting-the roar of the surf could drown out almost any conversation.
Zhou Yuan came to a stop atop the tallest reef, took a palm-sized black shell from his robes, and held it to his lips, murmuring a few words. Then he tossed the black shell high into the air. It became a streak of light and vanished into the night sky in an instant.
He had actually used the rare Ten-Thousand-Mile Sound Transmission Shell-an exceedingly precious communication artifact that could deliver a message ten thousand miles away in an instant and was almost impossible to intercept.