The moon cast a pallid light, leaving crisscrossing, mottled shadows among the pines and illuminating the battle-scarred ground and a headless corpse.
Flap, flap, flap~
The big, fluffy Niao Niao flew through the mountains and landed on a pine branch, looking around.
Not long afterward, a sword-bearing woman in snowy white slowly entered the pine grove. The night wind lifted the white gauze of her Veil Hat, revealing full, red lips, while the yin-yang fish emblem on the Acacia Sword flickered in and out of sight beneath the moonlight.
Ye Jingtang and Fan Qinghe had set off southeast in pursuit that morning and had yet to return. Naturally, everyone aboard the boat worried about their safety. When they still hadn't returned after nightfall, Dongfang Liren could no longer sit still and asked Perfected Person Xuanji to search for them.
Niao Niao had scouted southeast from high above without finding them, but the pine grove had suffered such severe destruction that a conspicuous black circle stood out in the snowy forest when viewed from the sky, so she had found this place immediately.
Examining the traces in the pine grove, Perfected Person Xuanji could confirm that Ye Jingtang had fallen into the Seven Absolutes Formation, broken through it, and left, his life in no danger. But judging by the silver needles casually discarded on the ground, he had probably been injured as well. Since he hadn't immediately returned, she could only say that he was receiving treatment somewhere.
Although Perfected Person Xuanji had poor luck, having searched for the Dragon-Mingling Diagram for ten years without results, her ability to track Fan Qinghe for over half a year showed that her tracking skills were hardly poor. After inspecting the grove briefly, she found the faint footprints the two had left behind. Using