Rotting leaves in the bamboo forest behind the village crunched softly underfoot as Ye Fan’s boot crushed a blood-stained bamboo leaf. He could hear the hurried gasps of the villager ahead—a boy of fifteen or sixteen with half a woodcutting cleaver tucked into his waistband, its blade notched and stained with dark red blood.
"How much further?" he asked in a low voice, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the carved patterns of the Jiuxiao Huanpei at his waist. The golden tree within his Inner World was trembling gently, every leaf glowing with a faint golden light that infinitely magnified his senses: thirty paces away to the left was a protruding blue stone, deep in the bamboo forest to the right came the chirping of insects, and then... that faint, elusive scent of sulfur and saltpeter.
The boy wiped the blood from his face, the red oozing between his fingers looking black in the moonlight. "Past this old bamboo, and we're at the threshing floor. The grain carts are parked right in the middle of the threshing floor, and they... the explosive packages they're carrying are taller than I am!"
Chapter 407