Wind swept across the rooftop, sharp and restless.
The fox's mind aligned its thoughts in a single, crystalline breath.
Jinshi City.
When the lizard's eyes had bled.
When it had been too focused on survival to care about the droplets left behind.
Kindness.
Mercy.
Carelessness.
Call it what it would—
It had left a trail.
And now they were paying for it.
Its gaze hardened.
If they were to escape—
The blood-tracking talisman had to be destroyed.
As long as she held it, distance meant nothing.
Running would only delay the inevitable.
It needed chaos.
Distraction.
A shift in focus.
And then—
Opportunity.
---
Figures burst onto the surrounding rooftops.
The cultivators from the night market—the ones who had given chase the instant it sensed the breach in the formation.
Breathing hard.
Weapons drawn.
Expressions tight with tension.
They froze when they saw her.
Hovering.
Untouched.
Golden Core pressure—faint, yet unmistakable.
The fox's eyes flicked between them and Lianhua.
And inwardly—
It smiled.
Perfect.
Its voice rang calmly through the night.
"You didn't think I came alone, did you?"
One sentence.
No explanation.
Only implication.
Confusion rippled across the newcomers' faces.
Before anyone could respond—
A concealment talisman ignited soundlessly beneath the fox's paw.
Its aura collapsed inward.
Its presence thinned.
Its outline blurred—
And vanished.
Only wind remained where it had stood.
The night market cultivators stiffened.
They now found themselves facing a woman they could not read.
A woman radiating quiet, terrifying composure.
They sensed it now.
Too late.
Golden Core.
Their aggression faltered—
Shifted to caution—
Then to dread.
---
Perched at the rooftop's edge, invisible and silent, the fox flowed across the tiles like a drifting shadow, the lizard suspended within its qi, every fluctuation suppressed to nothing.
Below—
Tension crackled.
One wrong word.
One wrong movement.
And River M would witness a slaughter.
But the fox did not look back.
Its thoughts were cold. Precise.
Let them test the mountain.
While I remove the knife from her hand.
---
The night air thickened.
The fox—already unseen—moved without stirring even a loose tile.
First priority.
The defensive formation tool.
With a faint flicker of qi, it slipped back through the broken wall of the inn. The floating formation disk still hovered where it had left it, faint runes rotating lazily in midair.
With meticulous control, the fox retrieved it, suppressed its fluctuations completely, and stored it away.
No evidence.
No anchor.
No trace.
---
Outside, the standoff sharpened.
The night market cultivators were no longer certain whom they faced. Their divine senses stretched forward cautiously—
And met resistance.
Lianhua hovered in silence.
Calm.
Unreadable.
But not idle.
The fox felt it.
She could still sense it—even invisible.
Golden Core perception was not so easily deceived.
Good.
That meant she was tracking its movement.
Which meant—
It could guide her perception.
The fox shifted deliberately, allowing the faintest ripple of suppressed qi to brush past one of the cultivators.
He stiffened.
"Behind you!"
A blade of flame tore through empty air.
Another cultivator reacted instantly, assuming he was the target—
Steel clashed.
Wind burst outward.
A defensive talisman activated too soon.
"Watch it!"
"Are you blind?!"
Suspicion ignited faster than dry tinder.
The fox moved again—this time gliding close to Lianhua, letting its aura flicker just enough to suggest proximity.
One cultivator caught the minute shift in her gaze.
His heartbeat stuttered.
"She's tracking something—!"
"She's working with it!"
That was all it took.
Panic bloomed.
Spiritual tools flared.
A talisman detonated too close to another's barrier.
Anger replaced restraint.
Lianhua's eyes cooled.
Golden Core pressure deepened—
Not outwardly aggressive.
But sufficient.
Sufficient for fear to spiral into certainty.
---
The fox waited.
Watched.
Calculated.
Then—
It moved.
Swift.
Precise.
It circled wide, approaching Lianhua from a socially blind angle—not beyond her senses, but beyond her focus.
All attention was on the escalating standoff.
On accusations.
On rising pressure.
The fox extended a thread of divine sense.
Thin.
Sharper than silk.
It brushed against the faint resonance of bloodline tracking energy anchored near her sleeve.
There.
A small talisman, discreetly woven into the inner lining.
Golden Core perception followed its movement—
Just as intended.
The fox deliberately let its presence surge briefly to her right—
Then—
In that fractional instant—
Its divine thread snapped inward.
Clean.
Exact.
Like severing a tendon.
The blood-tracking talisman split without sound, its binding rune cut through the core.
The connection unraveled.
The scent anchor collapsed.
Cracks spidered across the talisman.
It trembled—
Then dissolved into drifting fragments of spiritual ash.
Gone.
Completely.
For the first time—
Lianhua looked surprised.
The fox did not hesitate.
A second concealment talisman ignited.
Its presence thinned further—so faint that even Golden Core perception would now require active pursuit rather than passive sensing.
That half-second of confusion—
Was enough.
---
The newly forged spiritual tool activated.
Body armor unfolded, metallic threads reshaping fluidly across its back. Refined wind channels ignited. The fused iron-claw eagle wings manifested in sleek arcs of spiritual construct, reinforced with lightning filaments drawn from the crystallized claw.
Wind compressed.
Lightning whispered.
With a thunderless burst—
The fox launched.
Not upward in a clumsy arc—
But forward.
Low.
Fast.
A streak of compressed air slicing across rooftops.
Behind it—
Misunderstanding ignited.
One cultivator struck.
Another retaliated.
Golden Core pressure flared in suppression—
But that only confirmed their worst suspicions.
"She's attacking!"
Chaos erupted.
By the time Lianhua stabilized the situation—
The fox was already a distant streak against the horizon.
Wind howled past its ears.
Its heart pounded.
But its mind—
Clear.
Cold.
Alive.
The talisman was gone.
Tracking severed.
Now—
It was a race.
Between speed—
And a Golden Core's pride.