Wu Dong smiled. "[Flowing Wind] has another assignment."
Sui Zaihua nodded and asked no more. He simply looked at Wu Dong, paused a moment, and said, "Then, farewell."
Wu Dong gazed at him just as quietly. "Farewell, Lord Sui."
Sui Zaihua sprang into the air, as fleeting as a startled swan in both coming and going. With his longsword bearing him, the trees parted before him wherever he passed.
The sky grew whiter.
Pei Ye watched his figure disappear from sight, then turned back. Wu Dong was drawing out a sheet of letter paper, which he laid on his bloodstained knee and began to write on.
Beneath the pale predawn moon, the old man sat with one leg folded and the other extended. It was plainly a most casual posture, yet in the slow, careful strokes of his pen, Pei Ye discerned a rare solemnity.
"...What are you writing?"
"An unproven deduction." Wu Dong kept his head lowered. "...To someone you would never imagine."
"..." Pei Ye sat down again, hesitated, then asked softly, "Sir, what do you think about the 'shadow'?"
The boy watched him with shining eyes. They had discussed much just now, but the figure he had kept in his thoughts seemed to have vanished from the conversation.
"Do you think he's in Kongtong?"
"Of course. This formation was his work. At a moment this critical, there's no reason for him not to be here."
"Yes. But he will never show his own face." Wu Dong looked at the boy. "Or rather, he no longer has a face of his own, does he?"
"...Do you think someone could repair a severed arm within a few days?"
"For a master of the Artifact Dao, making it look whole to outsiders would be effortless." Wu Dong's pen paused on