Li Mingyue's expression changed at his words. She asked in surprise, "Are you sure? Could you be mistaken?"
Cui Jiuyang first nodded firmly, then shook his head with some puzzlement. "I'm certain this aura belongs to Hu Seventeen."
"But..." He paused, sensing the faint fluctuations lingering on his fingertips. "...something seems wrong with his condition."
Cui Jiuyang rubbed the stone again and rolled his fingertips together several times, seemingly trying to find more clues. His voice held some confusion. "He was injured."
"This stone holds the lingering aura of blood he dripped onto it."
"Yet his blood... seems to have been deliberately wiped away."
"I can clearly sense the aura of fox blood lingering on this stone, but look." He pointed at its surface. "The stone is completely clean. There isn't a single bloodstain left."
Li Mingyue hurried closer, widening her eyes to examine the stone. She even bent down and sniffed it carefully before nodding. "That's right. There's a rank fox smell."
"And..." Confusion appeared on her face. "I feel as though this aura is a little too powerful."
"Hu Seventeen's cultivation shouldn't be very much higher than mine."
"Why does sensing the aura on this stone give me a feeling... a feeling that I couldn't possibly catch up to him?"
Cui Jiuyang nodded in agreement. "I feel something like that too."
"When I ran into Hu Seventeen outside Changchun City, his cultivation should only have been a shade higher than mine was then."
"I made another breakthrough afterward, so I should have left him some way behind."
"Yet the aura I'm sensing on this stone is actually a shade stronger than I am now."
"Could Hu Seventeen's cultivation have advanced just as quickly during this time?"
"Or... I was stuck at the threshold of the Fourth Extremity back