When the rain stopped, Lin Shisan was kneeling in the very center of the rear garden of Zi Tianya's Prince's Residence.
The standing water had long since drained away, leaving only a damp sheen on the flagstones.
He had held that kneeling posture for an unknown length of time, and his legs had lost all sensation.
A few tender green strands of algae had sprouted from the cracks beneath his knees, trembling and nodding in the wind.
His vacant gaze rested on a flagstone three paces ahead and to his left. It looked no different from any of the others, with nothing unusual about its surface.
Yet his instincts kept telling him that this flagstone had been pried up and put back.
The moss in the cracks had been crushed and grown back, its color a shade paler than the moss around it.
These were not marks washed out by this downpour. They had been left before the rain, which had worn away their edges.
Someone had been here.
Someone had done something here, and then a downpour had washed away every trace.
Lin Shisan still did not move. He merely closed his eyes slowly and sat motionless.
He had no spiritual power with which to investigate, nor did he use his divine sense to sense anything.
After the cold reception he had received from the old Purple Sky Dragon King, the spiritual power circulating within him seemed to have been blocked by something invisible.
He could detect no lingering trace of Bai Youyou's presence, nor any residual spiritual power fluctuations, as though he had become a mortal again.
He could only sit in this almost lifeless stillness, trying to catch that elusive connection in the silence.
On the first day, he sat on those flagstones.
Moisture rose from the