Moonlight spilled through the breach in the stone gate, casting a cold, white light over the corpse of Ye Wuji. Ye Fan knelt beside the body, his fingertips brushing the fragment stained with golden blood. His knuckles trembled slightly—the cloud-patterned fire seal on the edge of the fragment was an exact match for the seal on the decree of that "Taisu Daoist Lord" who had hunted him down in his past life.
"Ah-Ye?" Su Qingxue's voice carried a weak, breathless quality. She leaned against the mottled stone wall, her delicate hand resting on the jade flute at her waist. Cold sweat beaded on her temple, trickling down her sideburns into her collar, yet she still forced a faint, shallow smile. "Did you discover something?"
Ye Fan snapped back to reality, clenching the fragment tightly in his palm. He raised his head and swept his gaze across the group: Lin Zhaoyue's sword hung by her side, the tip still dripping with blood, yet she had shifted half a step closer to him than before; Chǔ Hóngzhuāng sat sprawling in the pile of rubble, the Gu Insects clustered in a ball upon her shoulder, but she winked her left eye at him and scratched the tip of her nose with her cinnabar-lacquered nail; Qín Wǎnshuāng was still clutching that blood-stained dagger, her knuckles so white they were nearly translucent. Seeing him look over, her lips moved silently—forming the two words: "Be careful."
Chapter 357