After sending the lean soldier away, the tall, thin man closed the door of the general store and sat at a table.
He picked up a brush and wrote a few words on a narrow strip of paper, rolled the paper into a thin tube, and inserted it into a bamboo tube the thickness of a little finger.
He then took a pigeon cage from a shelf and tied the bamboo tube to the leg of a gray-feathered carrier pigeon.
He walked to the window and released the carrier pigeon.
The gray-feathered carrier pigeon spread its wings and took flight into the twilight, soon disappearing into the southeastern sky.
...
「Dark Abyss Headquarters, inside the secret chamber carved from the belly of a mountain.」
The candlelight flickered, casting the shadows of four seated figures onto the rough stone walls.
Jia Yi sat at the head, his hair and beard completely white, his face withered. His deeply sunken eyes were half-closed.
