Kong Shishuang sat frozen, too frightened even to breathe. The others kept their distance, and slowly the group passed by. Fortunately, Xiao Li had already flattened itself out in a patch of grass and gone unnoticed by the second-tier youths.
“Miss Kong, do you know them?” Sese whispered, voice barely more than wind.
Kong’s fingers tightened hard around Sese’s palm. Neither of them dared move.
“They look like people from the Tianyuan Sparrow,” Sese said after a moment, as if testing the name in the dark.
Tianyuan Sparrow? That couldn’t be right. Rumor had it that the Tianyuan Sparrow disciples, under Zhang Tianyuan’s leadership, had already ascended to the Fourth Tier ages ago. Why would members of that sect still be wandering around the Third Tier?
“Even if they are from Tianyuan Sparrow,” Sese added, puzzled, “they shouldn’t be here, should they?”
Kong Shishuang shook her head and lowered her voice. “Look—”
Sese squinted into the gloom. “See their arms? Many of them bear wounds. They’re hurt badly. I’ve heard of these men — they’re notorious among the second-rank apprentices, late-stage second rank. At that level, they shouldn’t still be stuck in the Third Tier.”
Her words made sense. The wounds were claw-shaped, but unlike the ragged gouges a spirit beast would leave. What spirit beast could maim several late-stage second-rank alchemists like that?
“The Third Tier is poor in medicinal herbs, but it still has some rare cures,” Sese mused. “They probably came down because they couldn’t find healing in the Fourth Tier. But what could have inflicted such wounds?”
Xiao Li sat up so suddenly that both girls startled. Dark moisture gleamed in its eyes.
As a creature of the beast realm, Xiao Li recognized wounds of spirit-origin at a glance. Those were marks left by a phoenix’s primordial spirit—no, not a complete phoenix, just a sliver of its soul. That much remnant could still be terrifyingly lethal. If these men bore phoenix wounds, they must have encountered Zhao Shuning.
Zhao Shuning’s disappearance suddenly pointed at them.
Sese, fond of books and quick to connect dots, went very still. “I think… it wasn’t a phoenix,” she said slowly. “It’s an ancient divine beast.”
Kong and Xiao Li both turned to her.
“Sese?” Kong urged.
“The Chongming Bird.” Sese sounded almost embarrassed to name it, as if even saying it aloud was to court the impossible.
Xiao Li exhaled and settled back onto its haunches. The Chongming Bird — a divine bird said to belong to the old myths — was far beyond an ordinary phoenix. Though avian in form, its power dwarfed that of a phoenix by miles. For such a beast to appear in this narrow, insignificant place—an out-of-the-way marsh like Anze—it was absurd.
Sese’s face softened in the moonlight. “I’m not absolutely certain… but nothing else fits. The marks, the strength… only an ancient beast like the Chongming Bird could have done this.”
“The An family might be involved,” Kong murmured. “An Susu’s mount is the Chongming Bird. Could they have come down to join this trial?”
Sese shook her head. “I don’t know. My brother once said the An family look down on things like our little trials. Their foundations are deep—why would they stoop to this?”
Kong frowned. The An family led the Four Great Houses; even if only one disciple, Linlang, represented them in the trials, that one could outmatch most candidates in the whole region. The idea that they would send such a beast here was disorienting.
Before they could sort it further, Xiao Li rose. It shook its fur once, then trotted quietly along the path those men had taken.
“Xiao Li—” Kong started. Sese moved to stop it, but then thought better of it.
“If Xiao Li went after them, it could be dangerous,” she whispered. “We should follow — carefully. Xiao Li’s sense of smell is far keener than most spirit beasts’. If it’s behaving like this, there’s a reason. Maybe it picked up Chief Ning’s aura. Stay low and follow. We’ll see if there’s anything odd.”
Kong’s worry gave way to reason. Sese’s temper was gentle, but her mind was sharp; no wonder Zhao Shuning had liked to speak to her. The two girls crept after Xiao Li, pale blades in hand, slipping through the tall grass with the practiced silence of hunters.
Xiao Li stopped at the edge of a hollow and lay down again, not moving forward. They crouched behind a veil of reeds and watched.
After a quarter hour or so, the men produced several small jars and began uncorking them. Whatever was inside smelled faint and medicinal; they dabbed the liquid over their wounds with careful, almost ritualistic motions.
“The boss really kicked the hornet’s nest this time,” one murmured.
“No kidding,” another replied. “I’ve followed the boss for years, but never seen him so cautious. We owe everything to his planning—otherwise, half of us would’ve been sent to the afterlife.”
Kong and Sese flinched. “The little baby,” one of the men said with a cruel laugh, “I thought he was too young. But thank the heavens the boss sealed her fate. If she’d lived, Tianyuan Sparrow would have never stayed the top gang.”
“The way she stared at us when she fell off the cliff—terrifying,” another added.
A cliff? The words landed like stones on the girls’ chests.
“The Dark-Current River,” someone said, voice flat. “Even if that newborn had a few extra lives, the current would’ve finished her.”
Their whispers were casual, as if speaking of an annoyance rather than a life. Kong Shishuang’s fingers went numb on her sword hilt. Zhao Shuning had been called a “little baby” — the same child they all knew. The man’s words threaded together a single chilling possibility: Zhao Shuning’s disappearance might not have been an accident at all.
They could not speak. All three of them — two girls and a small beast — watched in silence as the men finished bandaging their wounds and melted into the night. The moon slid behind a cloud. The river’s current far below murmured like a suggestion.
Some secrets surface only at the price of courage, and this one had just shown its face.