Chapter 85: The Second Test

By sunrise, the footprint beside the western boundary had already begun to soften beneath the wind.

Lin Yuan no longer believed the crossing had been accidental.

He opened the tavern as usual.

Breakfast still needed to be cooked, rooms needed cleaning, and the caravan that had arrived the previous evening wanted enough food packed for eleven people before continuing west. There was little point in frightening every customer because someone had stepped across the boundary during the night.

That did not mean Lin Yuan intended to ignore it.

Once the morning rush eased, he wrote a short message to the Cultivator Association.

He kept the report simple. The western warning formation had triggered once during the night. A partial boot print had been found just inside the monitored boundary, and there was no indication that whoever crossed had continued farther into Blackstone. Nothing had been damaged, but the crossing appeared deliberate.

Lin Yuan included the approximate time and location of the node.

An eastbound caravan was preparing to leave before noon, so he sealed the message and gave it to the caravan leader along with a small delivery fee.

The man examined the seal.

"Association office in Green River City?"

"Yes."

"I’ll deliver it."

Lin Yuan thanked him.

He did not expect Zhao Wei to suddenly appear because of a footprint. Green River City was several days away even by flying artifact, and the Association had already made it clear that a single boundary crossing was not an emergency.

Still, having a record mattered. If the situation became worse later, Lin Yuan did not want to explain that he had noticed the warning signs and told no one.

The caravan departed before noon.

Qiao Ren watched it leave from outside his shop.

"You sent a message?"

"To the Association."

"About last night?"

Lin Yuan nodded.

That seemed to satisfy him.

Qiao Ren had brought his short blade with him to breakfast that morning. It remained hidden beneath his outer robe rather than openly displayed, but Lin Yuan had noticed it anyway.

He chose not to comment.

The Travelers’ Market continued operating normally throughout the day. A pair of herb sellers occupied one stall, while another merchant displayed cheap traveling cloaks and spent most of the morning complaining about the dust settling on them.

Nothing about Blackstone looked threatened.

Lin Yuan preferred to keep it that way.

Near midday, Su Mei approached the counter with the supply ledger tucked beneath one arm.

"Do you want someone watching the western side tonight?"

Lin Yuan had already considered it.

"Not constantly."

She waited for him to explain.

"If whoever crossed last night was watching us, putting someone beside the boundary all night tells them we’ve changed our routine."

"And doing nothing tells them we haven’t."

"I’m not planning to do nothing."

Lin Yuan glanced toward the open entrance.

The formation had done exactly what he had paid for. The problem was what happened afterward.

The moment it rang, Lin Yuan had left the tavern and headed west. Anyone watching from a distance could have learned how quickly he responded and roughly where he came from.

If he reacted the same way every time, the warning itself would become predictable.

"Keep everything normal tonight," he said. "If the formation rings, stay inside unless I tell you otherwise."

Su Mei nodded.

"What about Xiao Lan?"

"Tell her the same thing."

Su Mei hesitated.

"She’ll listen?"

Lin Yuan looked at her.

A faint smile appeared before she turned back toward the kitchen.

That was a separate problem.

Nothing happened that night.

The formation remained silent.

The following day passed much the same way.

By the second quiet evening, Lin Yuan had begun to wonder whether he was giving one footprint too much importance.

Travelers crossed the wasteland every day. Someone could have approached the boundary out of curiosity, triggered the warning, and decided that one test was enough entertainment.

The five suspicious travelers had also been gone for several days.

They might really have continued west, and there was still no proof that their strange questions, the stones beside the boundary, and the nighttime crossing were connected at all.

Lin Yuan disliked how easy it was to construct threats when there was no evidence.

He concentrated on work instead.

That afternoon, a merchant from Green River City finally brought a reply from Golden Brush Signworks.

Xiao Lan noticed the seal before Lin Yuan did.

She appeared beside the counter as he began opening it.

"Is that from the signmaker?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"I haven’t read it yet."

She remained exactly where she was.

Lin Yuan unfolded the letter.

The craftsman remembered the previous design. The price had increased slightly because the treated wood he intended to use was now more expensive, but the modular board and carved BLACKSTONE lettering could still be made.

Lin Yuan read the new estimate twice.

Xiao Lan leaned closer.

"Well?"

"More expensive."

"How much more?"

"Enough that I’m thinking."

"That means you’re buying it."

"That means I’m thinking."

She seemed far too pleased with that answer.

Lin Yuan folded the letter and placed it beneath the counter.

For several minutes, deciding whether to buy a sign was the largest problem in front of him.

He appreciated that.

Then evening came.

The warning sounded shortly after the tavern closed.

Lin Yuan was still downstairs. Su Mei had gone to check the kitchen storage, while Xiao Lan carried a stack of cleaned bowls toward the back room.

The metallic chime rang once.

Neither woman moved toward the door.

Good.

Lin Yuan listened for the secondary warning near the restricted site.

Nothing carried from that direction.

The western boundary was the more likely source.

He looked at the receiving plate as the Qi within it faded.

He did not leave immediately.

Xiao Lan glanced at him.

"Aren’t you checking?"

"In a minute."

Lin Yuan extinguished one of the lamps near the front windows, then another. The dining room became dimmer without going completely dark.

He moved away from the entrance and waited.

Thirty breaths passed.

Nothing followed.

Another minute went by.

The formation remained silent.

Lin Yuan slipped through the rear exit instead of using the front.

The tavern blocked him from view for part of the way west, and he kept between the nearby buildings rather than crossing the open courtyard.

Qiao Ren’s shop was dark.

Lin Yuan reached the side of it and stopped to listen.

The market had already closed. Only two caravan camps remained occupied that night, both farther from the western posts.

He continued carefully toward the boundary.

This time, he approached the fourth post instead of the third.

Nothing.

He moved south along the inside of the monitored line.

Near the fifth node, he found the first sign of disturbance.

A shallow footprint marked the dry ground.

Another sat beside it.

The first was outside the formation.

The second had crossed the line.

Unlike the previous test, an entire boot print had been left just inside the boundary.

Lin Yuan crouched without touching it.

A third mark lay farther back outside the line, angled toward the northwest.

Whoever had approached had stepped across once, remained long enough to leave a clear impression, and then withdrawn.

Again.

Lin Yuan looked beyond the boundary.

For several moments, he saw nothing.

Then something shifted in the darkness.

Not close.

Perhaps thirty or forty paces away.

Lin Yuan’s grip tightened around the low-grade artifact in his hand.

A human-sized shape moved between two darker patches of ground and disappeared before he could make out anything else.

He did not chase it.

Open wasteland looked simple during daylight. At night, visibility faded quickly beyond the settlement lights, and someone deliberately trying to draw him farther out could easily have companions waiting nearby.

Lin Yuan began backing toward the developed area without turning his back on the boundary.

The formation rang again.

The chime carried faintly from the tavern behind him.

He stopped.

The footprint near the fifth node had not changed.

The second crossing had happened somewhere else.

Lin Yuan turned his head toward the northern section of the boundary, but it was too far away to see clearly.

The warning faded.

He stayed where he was.

One deliberate crossing on another night had already been suspicious. A second warning only minutes after the first changed the situation.

Lin Yuan did not go looking for the second footprint.

That was exactly what someone outside might be expecting.

Instead, he returned toward the buildings.

Qiao Ren appeared between two structures before Lin Yuan reached the courtyard, his short blade already drawn.

"I heard it twice."

"So did I."

"Two people?"

"At least one near the fifth post. I saw someone outside the boundary."

Qiao Ren looked west.

"And the second?"

"I didn’t check."

That surprised him.

Lin Yuan explained why.

If the second warning had been intended to draw him away from the first location, following it immediately would give whoever was outside exactly what they wanted.

Qiao Ren considered that for a moment.

"So what now?"

Lin Yuan looked toward the road entrance.

"We make sure nobody came in while we were looking west."

The marked road was deliberately allowed through the formation. Customers and caravans had to be able to enter Blackstone without setting off a warning every time they arrived.

That also meant someone who understood the system could use the proper road without alerting him.

Lin Yuan and Qiao Ren returned to the developed area separately.

Qiao Ren checked the market side while Lin Yuan approached the tavern from the courtyard.

Nothing appeared disturbed.

The entrance door remained closed.

Two wagons stood beside the road exactly where their owners had left them.

A cultivator sleeping near one of the caravans lifted his head as Lin Yuan passed, recognized him, and settled back down.

Su Mei opened the tavern door only after Lin Yuan knocked.

Xiao Lan stood farther inside with a wooden pole held in both hands.

Lin Yuan looked at it.

She looked back at him.

"It was nearby."

He decided there were more important things to discuss.

"Did anyone come through the front?"

Su Mei shook her head.

"No one."

"You heard the second warning?"

"Yes."

Lin Yuan stepped inside.

The receiving plate had already gone quiet. Nothing appeared damaged, and there was no sign that anyone had entered the tavern or taken anything.

He explained what he had found near the fifth post.

Xiao Lan lowered the pole.

"So they were testing it again."

"Probably."

"Why?"

Lin Yuan pulled out a chair and sat.

"To learn."

The open road bothered Lin Yuan more than the footprints.

"They’re not trying to get inside yet," he said.

Su Mei sat across from him.

"You’re sure?"

"No."

The answer came faster than he intended.

He rubbed one thumb along the edge of the table.

"If tonight was an attack, they had opportunities to do more than step across the boundary. They didn’t."

Xiao Lan glanced toward the dark windows.

"Then what are they waiting for?"

Lin Yuan thought about the five travelers.

They had asked whether merchants kept stock overnight, how often caravans stayed in Blackstone, when the market closed, and whether anyone watched the road.

The woman had even wanted to know whether Qiao Ren planned to remain permanently.

They had not been interested only in the buried structure.

They had been studying Blackstone itself.

"Maybe they’re waiting until they know enough."

No one had an answer to that.

At first light, Lin Yuan returned to the western boundary with Qiao Ren.

The second crossing was easy to find.

It had happened near the second post.

Another partial boot print sat just inside the monitored line.

It was a different size from the one near the fifth node.

Qiao Ren crouched beside it.

"Probably two people."

"Probably."

Qiao Ren looked south.

"They were far enough apart that you couldn’t check both quickly."

Lin Yuan followed his gaze toward the fifth post.

That was the part he disliked most.

The first crossing had given him something obvious to investigate. The second had tested what happened while his attention was already somewhere else.

Whoever planned it understood the basic weakness of a system that warned him someone had crossed without telling him exactly where.

Qiao Ren stood.

"You still think it’s those five?"

"I think those five asked questions I didn’t like."

"That isn’t an answer."

"It’s the only one I have."

They started back toward the road entrance.

Caravans would begin moving soon. The market would open. Breakfast customers would fill the tavern.

Blackstone would look normal.

Lin Yuan intended to keep it that way.

But there was a difference between avoiding panic and allowing someone else to dictate every response.

He stopped beneath the empty entrance frame and looked west.

He had no intention of letting them choose every move from here on.