"Where did everyone go?"
Lin Shisan drew a deep breath, temporarily buried the matter of Gai Jiuyou's Dao Seed in his heart, and turned to walk back down the mountain path.
But when he reached the fork halfway down the mountain, he stopped.
Everyone was gone.
Hu Niu was gone, Zi Yuner was gone, Pang Yue was gone, and even Mu Ling'er was gone.
The clearing, so lively and noisy moments before, held only a few trampled blades of grass and an empty low table. The half-full jar of Seven-Day Immortal still sat crookedly on the table, liquor dripping over the edge and soaking a small, dark patch into the dirt.
"Yun'er..."
No one answered.
"Hu Niu?"
The mountain wind rustled through the Bamboo Grove, as though mocking his wasted effort.
Lin Shisan called for Pang Yue as well, but still no one answered.
His brows furrowed, and he immediately launched into the Seven Star Step.
He flitted through the Bamboo Grove like the wind, his robes snapping and billowing, startling several mountain birds perched on the branches.
He searched along the route they had taken, from where they had disembarked from the Cloud Boat to the wine cellar in Seven-Day Immortal's back courtyard, then circled from the cellar to the grove of old locust trees. He spent a full half hour searching back and forth.
At last, on a rocky bank downstream of a shallow creek, he spotted Zi Yuner.
Zi Yuner crouched on a bluestone beside the creek, her whole body curled into a tiny bundle.
Her long, deep-purple hair fell from her shoulders, its ends soaking in the water and swaying gently with the current, but she seemed entirely unaware.
Her chin rested in her hands as she stared motionlessly at the water before her, as though