Footsteps echoed sharply against the blue stone slabs of the secret passage. Ye Fan walked at the very front, his fingertips resting against the Jiuxiao Huanpei at his waist. The zither gave a slight shudder, its strings grazing a pale red mark across his palm—a warning transmitted by the Rivers and Mountains Map within his Inner World. Although Zhao Batian's black mist had dissipated, that insidious aura still clung to everyone's sleeves.
"Stop." He suddenly raised his hand, and the group froze in unison. Su Qingxue's "Listening Fragrance Gu" crawled out from her sleeve, its gold-powder-like swarm of insects circling three times overhead before finally landing on the begonia hairpin in her hair, beating their wings to stir up a faint, rotting stench. "Thirty paces to the southeast, three corpses have been fed 'Bone-Corroding Powder'." The rouge at the outer corners of her eyes had been faded slightly by the night wind, and her fingertip gently tapped the stone wall. "That old scoundrel Zhao is showing us the way."
Lin Zhaoyue's Primordial Sword hummed as it left its scabbard, the blade hooking the moss on the stone wall to reveal a newly carved arrow beneath. Veins slightly bulged on her fair wrists, and the sword spine reflected the moonlight, illuminating the character for "life" with a snowy white glare: "This is leading us right into his lair."
Chapter 226