Gui Ren's command was low and steady. "He is moving north. He believes the barren lands grant him cover. He is intelligent, but he is still just one man. Sanction, you take your team and follow the stream. Look for any further signs of passage. Zhao, your team will swing west and then move north, parallel to the stream. Create a pincer. He will feel us before he sees us."
The Black Tortoise disciples nodded, melting into the landscape without a sound. Gui Ren remained, staring at the faint impression in the mud. He was not just tracking a person; he was tracing the edges of a mind. This Jian Feng had humiliated the proud, evaded the strong, and now moved with a purpose that baffled Gui Ren. It wasn't just about points. It felt… larger.
He looked up at the vast, empty-looking northern territories. A feeling of unease, alien to his perpetually calm nature, settled upon him. It felt like he was stepping onto a game board far larger than the valley itself, and he had only just realized his opponent had already moved his pieces.
Jian Feng cataloged his latest harvest: a cluster of Stone-Heart Fungi and three vials of Crystal-Vein Dew. A respectable, if not spectacular, haul. Yet, as he secured the items, a faint prickle ran along his spine. It was not the sense of being watched, but a more ephemeral feeling—like a single thread of fate had been pulled taut.
He had felt this before. It was a subtle intuition, a quiet whisper in his soul that warned him of shifts in fortune. It had warned him moments before the rockslide in his childhood. It had guided his hand when choosing his first cultivation manual. His clan had called it useless sentiment. He had come to understand it as his sharpest weapon.
The whisper was telling him that his trail, once cold, was now being followed. And not by the rampaging tigers, but by something cold, patient, and methodical.
Gui Ren.
Jian Feng stopped his work. His initial strategy of scavenging the edges was sound, but it relied on the hunters being predictable. If a true predator was on his heels, he needed to give it something to chase.
He moved to a nearby game trail, a path used by wild beasts. Deliberately, he scuffed his boot in the dirt, creating a clear, obvious footprint pointing deeper into the northern crags. A few dozen meters later, he snagged a thread from his sleeve—identical to the one lost at the stream—and caught it on a low-hanging branch. He continued this charade for half a kilometer, creating a trail that was just a little too easy to follow, a trail that screamed amateur. It was a path for a fool. Or, it was bait for a genius.
Chaos was beginning to ripple through the valley. Far from the silent hunt in the north, two disciples from the Crimson Cloud Sect were cornered by a furious Raging Tiger team.
"Where is he?!" a tiger disciple with a fresh scar on his cheek demanded. "We know you lesser clans would curry favor with the Azure Dragons! Did their ghost pass this way?"
"We've seen no one!" the Crimson Cloud disciple protested, his hands up in surrender. "We've been tracking a Three-Tailed Fox all morning!"
The confrontation was pointless, born of Hu Jin's impotent rage, and it was happening all over the valley. Smaller clans found their hunts disrupted and their disciples harassed. The fragile ecosystem of the trial was breaking down, all because of one person's actions.
Meanwhile, Jian Qiao listened to a different rumor, one whispered between two disciples from the Golden Blade Sect as they tended their wounded nearby.
"...scared the life out of us," one said, his voice hushed. "We were stalking a Steel-Back Ape near the Eastern Falls. Suddenly, this mist rolled in. Thick and dead silent. It wasn't natural."
"What did you do?" his companion asked.
"We ran, of course! When we came back an hour later, the mist was gone. But the ape… it was dead. Not a mark on it, not a scratch. Its beast core was still inside, untouched."
"Strange. So what was taken?"
The disciple shuddered. "That's the thing. Nothing we could see. But Old Man Feng, you know, the one who knows about obscure spiritual herbs? He said the ground around the ape felt… hollow. He said it was as if its 'Spiritual Root' had been pulled right out of it. He said only grandmasters or those with a bizarre inheritance would even know how to do that, let alone want to."
Jian Qiao froze. A silent mist. A kill with no visible wounds. The theft of an esoteric spiritual essence instead of the valuable core. This was not Jian Feng's style. His methods were efficient, logical, and grounded. This was… ethereal. It was another ghost, playing an entirely different game on the same board.
Gui Ren's team eventually converged on the game trail. Disciple Zhao pointed to the obvious footprint. "Senior Brother, the trail is clear here. He's getting careless."
Gui Ren didn't move. He stared at the footprint, then at the artfully placed thread on the branch. He saw the path stretching ahead into the rocky terrain. It was a perfect trail. Too perfect. A panicked boy would leave a messy trail. A cunning man would leave no trail. Only a provocateur would leave a trail that looked like a panicked boy made it.
This wasn't a trail. It was a message. It was a question. Are you smart enough to see the trap?
A slow, cold smile, more chilling than any frown, touched Gui Ren's lips. His opponent was more magnificent than he had imagined.
"Follow it," he commanded, his voice filled with a newfound, dangerous excitement. "Cautiously. Let us see what lesson he wishes to teach us."