He could already discern these things. His Spirit Vision allowed previously invisible things to surface layer by layer, like a piece of paper soaked in water, with the words underneath slowly showing through. He glanced at them and then looked away, urging his horse to follow the Snow Empress through the checkpoint.
After passing the checkpoint, the road gradually became lively. First, there were scattered roadside stalls—selling tea, roasted sweet potatoes, and offering letter writing services at small tables—then rows of shops and houses appeared. Houses with blue bricks and gray tiles lined both sides of the road, their doors and windows open in the late autumn sunlight, wafting the aroma of food and the sounds of children running around. Snow Empress stopped at a sesame seed cake stall and bought six freshly baked cakes. The heat made the oil paper bag slightly bulge, and she handed it to Yin Wujou so he could keep it warm in his arms.
"The largest post station in this city is just ahead," she said. "Change horses there, and then head east without turning. You'll only need to change horses twice more to get to Capital."
Yin Wujou tucked the bag of sesame cakes into his coat, feeling the warmth of the cakes slowly seep into his chest through the fabric. He watched the shops and pedestrians receding along the street, his Spirit Vision automatically scanning his surroundings—most people didn't possess any noticeable aura, only a few showing signs of training. He spotted a middle-aged woman squatting in front of a vegetable stall, picking out radishes. Her hands were covered in fine, old wounds, each edge bearing a faint trace of white spiritual energy—marks left from long-term use of some kind of blade-shaped magical artifact. After picking out her radishes, she paid, stood up, turned, and disappeared into a narrow alley.
"You were watching too." Snow Empress didn't turn around, but she seemed to sense the direction of his gaze.
"I saw a little bit."
"Don't stare for too long. People with old wounds on their spiritual veins are very sensitive. If you stare for a few more breaths, they'll know someone is examining their spiritual veins."
Yin Wujou withdrew his gaze, closed his eyes briefly to allow his Spirit Vision to recede. When he opened them again, the world had returned to its normal appearance—shops, pedestrians, vegetable baskets placed by the roadside, and clothes drying on bamboo poles. All the light had receded to the surface, like a river surface covered with a thin layer of ice, the water still flowing beneath but no longer visible.
The post station was located in the east of the city. It was a three-courtyard complex. A dozen or so horses were tethered in the front courtyard, the middle courtyard was a hall for travelers to rest, and the back courtyard was the living quarters for the postmaster and his servants. Snow Empress went in to discuss changing horses with the postmaster, while Yin Wujou stood by the stables in the front courtyard and took out six sesame cakes, checking their temperature one by one. The two at the bottom were still warm, and he took one and handed it to Snow Empress, who had just come out of the hall.
She took it and took a bite; the aroma of roasted sesame seeds and the sweetness of the flatbread spread in the cold air. "It's changed," she mumbled, chewing the flatbread. "Two strong horses, better than the two at the post station. They can cover sixty li before Shenshi (3-5 PM)."
"How much do you believe your old acquaintance—the one who sold the information—about Pei Yuan?"
Snow Empress swallowed the sesame seed cake and brushed the sesame seeds off his chest. "Seventy percent. He never lies about information, but he'll only tell half of it. He told me Pei Yuan's name and position, but he didn't say where Pei Yuan is now, or whether he's dead or alive. I'll have to find out that myself."
Why did he stay?
"Leave yourself some room for maneuver. If I find out more about what he told me, he can still ask me for information later. If he tells me everything at once, it won't be worth anything next time."
Yin Wujou rewrapped the remaining sesame cakes and put them back in his satchel, then patted the horse's neck. The newly replaced chestnut horse was plump and strong, with a glossy mane. When he patted it, it twitched its ears and snorted. Snow Empress untied the reins of the green horse, mounted it, adjusted her posture on the horse's back, and glanced at him.
"Hold on tight. The next section involves crossing a mountain pass; the road is narrow, and the horse can easily veering off course."
The two horses left the east gate of the city and continued eastward along the official road. The scenery outside the city was different again—hills began to appear, the official road rose and fell on the undulating slopes, and the forests on both sides became more hardy mixed pine and cypress forests, their dark green canopies a deep and stable color in the late autumn sunlight. The horses slowed down a little as the road became steeper, but both the chestnut horse and the blue-gray horse had plenty of stamina, and their steps were still light and brisk as they went uphill.
Yin Wujou sat on his horse, one hand gripping the reins, the other secretly fidgeting with his fingers under his robes. He mentally reviewed every detail of Daoist Yun's sword sheath array diagram—the positions of the twelve star-shaped nodes, the curvature of the loops, the finishing technique of the central blank space. He had memorized the entire diagram perfectly; the stroke order, the variations in line thickness, the pauses at the turns—all were etched into a grid in his mind like wood grain. What he lacked now was an opportunity to put it into practice—a sufficiently smooth metal surface and a lamp that wouldn't flicker.
The mountain pass appeared ahead of them when they reached the third quarter of the afternoon. The official road narrowed into a narrow path, just wide enough for one horse to pass, at the saddle of a low mountain. On both sides were weathered rock walls, covered with dark green moss and a few clumps of withered ferns. As Yin Wujou urged his horse to follow behind Snow Empress through the narrow path, the wind rushed in from the mountain pass, and the whistling sound reflected and amplified repeatedly between the rock walls, sounding like a dozen people playing the xun (a type of ancient Chinese wind instrument) at the same time.
Snow Empress, riding in front, suddenly reined in her horse. The green horse's four hooves were firmly planted on the narrow path, and she stared at the exit of the mountain pass ahead—there was a small pile of newly fallen rubble. The shape of the pile did not look like a natural collapse; there were signs of it being moved and stacked between the fragments.
Yin Wujou also stopped. The chestnut horse trotted slightly restlessly beneath him, but he held its neck to steady it. He then used his Spirit Vision to scan the pile of rubble. There were faint traces of Spiritual Power remaining in the soil beneath the pile—as if something had been buried there not long ago and then hastily dug out, leaving a lingering, pale grayish-brown aura in the earth, lifeless and stagnant.
"Someone buried something here," Yin Wujou said.
Snow Empress did not dismount. She rode around the pile of rubble, her gaze lingering on a spot at the edge of the pile—there was a small patch of turned soil, darker in color than the surrounding area, with fresh, damp stubble from the torn grass roots at its edge.
"What was buried was an array artifact," Snow Empress said. "It was buried and then dug up. Judging from how much soil was turned up, it was dug up about half a day ago, less than six hours after we passed through this mountain pass."
She straightened up and looked out of the mountain pass. Beyond the narrow exit was a gently sloping open area, with the official road stretching straight out into the distance. She could see wisps of smoke rising from the horizon. There were no people, hoofprints, or other traces in sight. The road lay there cleanly, as if it had just been swept.