Yet her mind worked like a hunting hawk circling high above.
After observing for just a few days, Ling Yu figured out the entire system in place and committed it to memory. The watchtowers were manned at all hours. The gates opened at intervals too strict to be natural, controlled like clockwork. Every refugee was accounted for with number tags, and soldiers regularly cross-checked them in the public squares.
It wasn't protection. Rather, it was a kind of containment.
Her suspicions deepened when she followed one of the nightly patrols under the cover of her concealment skill. On the surface, the guards seemed disciplined but dismissive of the "weak civilians." Yet she caught sight of sigils carved into their armor, binding runes, faint but distinct. When activated, they shimmered faintly with a power not of mortal craft.
"Divine inscriptions…" she muttered to herself, crouched in the shadow of an alley.
Why would mortal soldiers bear marks of gods?
