Jin'en had staked out the Bridge District for three days, all to find the handicraft shop that did the embroidery.
He had turned the glove over and examined it no fewer than ten times.
The initials on the lining were embroidered very finely, in black thread almost the same color as the fabric. Without looking closely, they were impossible to see.
The stitches were tight and the thread neatly finished. This was not a beginner's work.
Someone who embroidered initials like these was either a professional tailor or someone with a personal habit of marking things for identification.
There were only a few underground shops in the Bridge District that made custom equipment for ability users, and he knew them.
On the first day, he visited two.
One was behind the secondhand market. The craftsman was a deaf-mute old man who waved him away after seeing the initials he had drawn.
The other stood diagonally across from a card room, with a wooden sign reading "Alterations." The proprietress recognized the stitching, but said the work was from over two years ago and she could not remember what the customer looked like.
On the second day, he went to Warehouse Street on the edge of the New Hethereau District, where small, semi-underground workshops specialized in nighttime jobs.
One shop had a sheet of glass weighing down several samples of leather gloves on its counter.
Jin'en set his black glove on it. The clerk picked it up, turned it over, and his expression changed.
"This came from our shop." The clerk switched on the light inside the counter and pointed to the initials on the glove's lining. "But it was a special order. For the runners working for Prism. We made three pairs in total. Two pairs are with the goods. No idea where the other went."
Jin'en remained still, waiting for him to finish.
"Finding the embroiderer won't help." The clerk pushed the glove back. "Our master did the embroidery, but that's all he did. He doesn't know who bought them. If you really want to find the source, you need to ask whoever placed the order."
"Who placed it?"
The clerk glanced at him and lowered his voice. "There's a warehouse manager on this street, surname Zhu. All Prism's orders go through him. He usually comes to collect the goods after midnight."
Jin'en put the glove away and thanked him.
He did not leave right away. He circled Warehouse Street, familiarizing himself with the storefronts and mentally reviewing the coordinates of several key locations.
On the way back to the mansion, he kept thinking about one thing: Prism had watched Porsette for so long, and even its runners had custom equipment. This was an organization that could afford to maintain personnel, not the sort of "small-time business two middlemen removed" that Zhou had described.
Zhou had said Prism paid well and exclusively bought spatial coordinates, but he was only a middleman himself, unable to reach the real buyers.
Jin'en parked in the concealed space in the backyard and switched off the engine, but did not get out.
He leaned back in his seat, his right hand resting on the steering wheel. His palm was completely clean, the black rod's dark shimmer withdrawn without a trace.
The following evening, he went to Warehouse Street again.
Night fell early. The streetlights glowed yellow, making the concrete ground look gray.
Jin'en circled around to the side wall of Zhu's warehouse and crouched against the corner.
His Spatial Perception spread out-one person inside, seated, with the light on, as though waiting specifically for something.
He did not rush in.
After about twenty minutes, someone pulled the roller shutter up from inside. A man in a dark jacket emerged, carrying a paper bag.
Jin'en recognized him. This was the man who had picked up the black glove on the library's second floor that day-the one who had hurried away and left the glove on the windowsill.
Instead of heading toward the main road, the man turned into a branching alley at the end of Warehouse Street.
Jin'en followed, keeping a distance of around twenty meters and making his military boots as quiet as possible on the concrete.
A black van waited at the end of the alley, its engine running, white exhaust rising beneath the streetlight.
The man opened the door and got into the front passenger seat. The window rolled down a crack.
Jin'en did not get too close. He crouched behind a low wall at the alley entrance and narrowed his Spatial Perception as finely as possible.
There were two people in the van, one in front and one in back.
The one in front exchanged a few words with the man in the jacket. Their voices were too low to make out clearly. He only caught scattered phrases-"coordinates," "haven't got them yet," and "that girl's hiding in the mansion."
The person in back never spoke.
After a minute or two, the man in the jacket got out and retraced his steps, walking faster than before.
The van did not move. It remained parked there.
Jin'en did not pursue the man in the jacket.
He waited until the van drove away and memorized its license plate before emerging from behind the low wall.
The van did not seem to have come to collect goods. It seemed more like it had come to pick someone up-someone whose specific purpose was to hear the jacketed man's report.
Jin'en noted down the license plate and decided to investigate it tomorrow.
It was already past midnight when he returned to the mansion.
Jin'en entered through the concealed door in the side corridor. The wall lamps were set to low, and the hallway was empty.
He headed toward his room, pausing as he passed the staircase in the third-floor west wing.
At the end of the hallway, Porsette's door stood slightly ajar, a little dim light spilling through.
Jin'en walked over and looked through the gap. Porsette sat on the edge of her bed, awake and still wearing her cloak, her half-unraveled braid hanging over her shoulder.
Hearing his footsteps, she looked up, her golden eyes briefly shining in the dim light.
"You're back," she said.
"Mm." Jin'en stood in the doorway without entering. "Why aren't you asleep?"
"I was waiting for you." Porsette gathered her loose hair. "You said you'd tell me when you found something."
Jin'en fell silent for a beat.
He had indeed said that.
"I haven't found the source," he said.
"But I found a lead. There's a warehouse manager named Zhu on Warehouse Street. He places all Prism's orders.
"That runner met with a black van on Warehouse Street today. Someone in it handles collecting information."
Porsette listened quietly, her fingers lightly touching the edge of the bedding.
"That man..." she said. "Was he the one who picked up the glove on the library's second floor last time?"
"Yes."
Porsette said nothing.
She lowered her head and thought for a while. When she looked up again, there was something in her golden eyes that Jin'en did not quite recognize.
"Big brother," she said, "they might have left that glove on purpose."
Jin'en looked at her.
"Think about it..." Porsette's voice was level. "That day, you used me as bait. I stood outside the library, and someone watched through binoculars.
"Then you went upstairs. The person was gone, leaving a glove behind.
"The glove had initials embroidered on it. You spent three days following those initials through the Bridge District, finding Warehouse Street, finding Zhu, finding the runner."
She paused.
"There was someone at every step," she said.
"As though they deliberately laid out a path and waited for you to walk into it."
Jin'en did not answer immediately.
Leaning against the doorframe, he went over the logic in his head.
She had a point.
Prism had watched Red Letter for so long and had even obtained Daffodil's coordinates. There was no way they would leave a glove on the library's second floor-left so neatly, with the initials on the lining perfectly clear, as though afraid someone might miss them.
"You already thought of this," Jin'en said.
"Only today." Porsette lowered her head, gathering her unraveled hair to one side again. "You were out for three days, and I stayed here thinking. Before you left, you said, 'Bait only works once.' I thought about it and felt they might be using me as bait too."
Jin'en looked at her without replying.
She sat on the edge of the bed, her cloak trailing down to her feet and her golden eyes half-lowered. Her voice grew quieter. "They want Poinsettia's coordinates. They realized you were using me as bait, so they turned it around and set a trap for you, making you think you'd found a lead on them when they'd actually spun that thread themselves.
"If you follow it to the end, to Zhu's warehouse, to that van, to wherever they really want you to go-their people will be waiting there."
Jin'en was silent for a long time.
He had spent three days staking out that "lead." She had figured it out after spending a day thinking in the mansion.
"Then what do you suggest?" he asked.
Porsette raised her head to look at him, her golden eyes bright in the dim light.
"Just don't go," she said. "The lead breaks off, and when you don't show up, they'll have to change things. You take another path, and so do I. Neither of us steps onto the one they laid out."
Jin'en looked at her.
She spoke decisively, leaving no room for negotiation, as though she had already thought it through.
"If you don't go, what will they do?" he asked.
"They can do whatever they like." Porsette finished gathering her hair, her voice so flat that no emotion could be heard in it. "I'm not worth that price. They can do the math themselves."
Jin'en said nothing more.
He reached out to pull the door shut. As the gap closed, Porsette's voice came softly from inside. "If you still go to Warehouse Street tomorrow, take me."
Jin'en stood outside the door for two seconds.
"No."
The door closed completely.
The hallway fell quiet again.
Jin'en headed toward his room, pausing at the junction by the courtyard.
The bare tree still stood behind the iron railings, its naked trunk pale in the weak light.
He glanced at it without lingering, then returned to his room.
The next morning, Broken Rainbow cornered him in the dining room.
She was not barefoot today, wearing a pair of old cloth shoes. Her long white hair was tied in a crooked braid as she sat beside him with a bowl of porridge.
"Little Red Riding Hood said you didn't get back until after midnight yesterday." She looked at him with her green eyes. "What did you find?"
Jin'en briefly recounted what had happened on Warehouse Street, including Porsette's remark that "they laid out the thread."
After listening, Broken Rainbow set down her bowl and tapped the table twice.
"She's right," Broken Rainbow said.
"You followed that lead for three days and turned up a warehouse, a man named Zhu, and a van. You found all of them step by step, like someone was waiting for you to take those steps."
Jin'en did not reply.
"Then are you still going?" Broken Rainbow asked.
"No."
"Really?"
"No." Jin'en finished the last mouthful of porridge. "She's right. If I don't take that path, they won't get me."
Broken Rainbow looked at him, her green eyes shifting as the corners of her mouth slowly lifted.
"You actually listened to her," she said, sounding a little intrigued. "You're never this quick to listen to me."
"Nothing you tell me to do is very useful."
"And that one thing she said was?" Broken Rainbow lifted her bowl and took a sip. After swallowing, she continued, "Fine, listen to her, then. But give me that license plate. I'll have someone look into it."
Jin'en recited the license plate to her.
Broken Rainbow noted it down and left with her bowl, her steps lighter than usual.
Jin'en did not go out that day.
He stayed at the training ground, conjuring the silver rod and the black rod in turn for a round of practice each.
The silver rod's rifts were growing smoother, and the black rod's devouring power was steadier than it had been during the first two days. When it touched a stone target, the gray dust it drew in fell away layer by layer, as though it were gnawing at the stone.
He trained until noon, then sat at the edge of the grounds to catch his breath, holding the black rod and watching the dark light at its tip.
He suddenly remembered something Daffodil had said-dark-attribute devouring could penetrate spatial rifts and gnaw away a layer wherever it struck.
He had tested it with Porsette. When he struck through the openings she made, his destructive power doubled.
They had not yet used that combination in actual combat.
Jin'en withdrew the black rod into his palm. Its dark shimmer shrank into the lines of his hand without a trace.
Three days later, Broken Rainbow brought back news.
The van's license plate was a duplicate, making it a dead end. But following it had led her to something else-the van appeared at the Bridge District docks after midnight every day to unload cargo.
There was a storage yard at the docks, with a row of shipping containers along its edge. One container had an electronic lock rather than an ordinary one.
"That's probably where they store things." Broken Rainbow slapped several photographs onto the table. "I didn't go in. There were quite a few people inside. At least five."
Jin'en looked at the container in the photographs, then at Broken Rainbow.
"You stopped there?"
"I did," Broken Rainbow said. "If you want to go, I won't stop you. But don't follow their path in. You need to go around."
Jin'en put the photographs away.
He did not go that day.
Two more days passed before he went to the Bridge District docks alone, without Porsette and without telling Broken Rainbow the exact time.
There were few people at the docks after midnight. Shipping containers were packed tightly together, and the cranes cast crisscrossing shadows beneath the streetlights.
Jin'en bypassed the main entrance and climbed into the storage yard from the side, creeping through the containers' shadows toward the row with the electronic lock.
He crouched at the corner of the neighboring container, narrowed his Spatial Perception as finely as possible, and swept the interior-five living signatures, four clustered near the door and one at the far end behind a sheet-metal partition, breathing steadily as though asleep.
The electronic door lock was connected to a control panel.
Jin'en did not touch it. He circled to a seam at the back of the container. It had been welded, and one small section of the weld was newer than the rest.
The black rod formed in his palm. He pressed its tip against the weld, and dark light seeped along the seam, silently dissolving an opening two fingers wide.
He turned sideways and squeezed inside.
Several rows of shelves filled the container, stacked with cardboard boxes and document envelopes. The four people near the door were playing cards with their backs to him.
The person at the far end lay on a camp bed, a phone beside their pillow.
Jin'en did not alert the card players.
He moved inward along the shelves and spotted a stack of document envelopes on the row against the wall. They were unsealed, with the corner of a photograph showing.
It was Porsette.
The photographs had been taken from far away: her entering and leaving the mansion's back door, standing outside the Bridge District library, and seen in profile on the Unheard-of Bay seaside promenade. Each photograph had a line written on the back-the date, location, and how long she had stayed.
Jin'en turned through the photographs one by one. The last was new, showing Porsette standing outside the library on the day he had used her as bait.
There was only one line on the back of the photo: The bait is set. Wait for her to leave the residence.
Jin'en put the photo back where it had been and stayed still.
The person furthest inside turned over. Their phone screen lit up briefly, then went dark again.
Jin'en noted the phone's position, backed out of the shipping container, and climbed back out the way he had come.
He hadn't touched anything in that shipping container.