My dao to eternity

He worked backward from what little he already knew, the same methodical approach he brought to any problem too large to solve through brute persistence alone.

The Azure Cloud Sect disciple who'd recruited Mu Qinghe and Luo Yulan had spoken of the valley's deeper reaches, ground unfamiliar enough to the sect's own disciples that experienced local hunters were worth the expense of hiring. Li Fan reconstructed the expedition's likely route from that single fact, cross-referencing it against the terrain he'd walked so far and the general shape of the valley he'd studied, years ago, from Wei Baishan's old regional maps. He didn't know precisely where they'd gone. He knew enough about how a hunting expedition would reasonably move through unfamiliar ground to narrow the search considerably.

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