Chapter 129: Four Shields, One Seam
My Dao to Eternity — Chapter 129
Chapter 129: Four Shields, One Seam
The land flattened out two days past the bamboo forest, the hills giving way to open scrubland cut through by dry creek beds that hadn't seen real water in weeks. Li Fan kept off the main road here, judging open ground easier to watch than forest for anyone still hunting him, and it was crossing one of those creek beds, boots sinking slightly into cracked mud, that he first felt something wrong about the ground behind him.
Not a presence. An absence of one — the particular, specific quiet of a stretch of empty scrubland that should have held nothing and somehow felt, to the small, careful part of his awareness that never fully stopped watching, like it had held something a moment before he turned to look at it.
He stopped walking and listened, and heard only wind moving through dry grass.