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Nine days.
He used every one of them.
Morning: archive. He moved through the tablets in order of qi charge density — the ones with highest stored energy first, working down. By the third day he had developed a faster absorption rhythm. The Pale Flame sense created a structural map of each tablet in thirty seconds, then he spent the remaining time on the most information-dense sections.
Afternoon: Li Qing.
Their sparring sessions had become something neither of them discussed directly. She adapted. He adapted. Each session produced outcomes neither had fully prepared for. By the fifth day the five-win-each record had moved to eight-seven in his favor, then eight-eight after she introduced something he hadn't seen before: a qi dampening technique that temporarily suppressed her own signature below readable range.
"Where did you learn that?" he said, after she landed a strike he hadn't predicted.
"From one of the plateau stones," she said. "A practitioner named River Stone."
He looked at her.
"You read River Stone's record."
"Three months ago. I've been practicing the suppression technique since." She reset her stance. "You'll adjust to it eventually."
"Probably," he said. "How long did it take you to develop?"
"Six weeks." She came at him again.
He moved. Took the hit on his shoulder instead of his face. Stepped inside and landed two before she could reset.
"You gave me that hit deliberately," she said.
"The shoulder absorbs force better than the face," he said. "What did River Stone's record tell you that made you practice suppression instead of offense?"
A pause. She looked at him.
"That you can't always be seen," she said simply. "Some things hunt by sight."
She knew about the entity. Not from him. From the plateau stones.
He filed that and kept training.
On the sixth day, Ma brought him news.
"Xuan Bing's advance party has been seen at Stone Bridge City," she said. "Moving north. Three Core Formation disciples and one Spirit Opening elder."
Not twenty-five days away. Eighteen.
"He sent the elder ahead," Wen Dao said.
"Yes. The elder is named Wei Dao. He is..." Ma paused. "Precise. Efficient. He does not damage what his master wants intact."
"He wants me intact."
"For now."
He looked at the archive wall. Forty-one tablets unread.
"I need three more days," he said.
"You have seven."
"Three is enough. I'll prioritize." He turned back to the nearest tablet. "Send word to Cai Rong and Zhou Jin. They prepare to leave in three days, not ten."
He worked through the night.
The tablets told him three critical things he hadn't known.
First: the ancient tower site four hundred miles north was not empty. Something lived there. Not a beast. A practitioner in long-term stasis — deeper than anything at Iron Mountain, deeper than Long Shen, deeper than the Cloud Peak plateau. River Stone had documented it. She had gotten close but not entered.
Second: the path from the tower site continued beyond it. Broken Dawn's trail did not end at the tower relay point. It went further. How far, the tablets didn't say.
Third: the entity's detection cycle was not random. It operated on a rhythm — periods of active searching followed by quiet intervals. River Stone had mapped the intervals at roughly forty days between active cycles. The last active cycle had been the one that had detected him at Iron Mountain — approximately sixty days ago.
He was in a quiet interval now.
The next active cycle would begin in approximately twenty days.
He stopped reading.
Twenty days. The elder Wei Dao moving north. The detection cycle restarting.
He needed to be past the next detection cycle's range before it activated. That meant moving fast and staying close to the Tiger.
He went to find Li Qing directly.
She was in the archive. Reading. She looked up.
"Three days," he said. "Then we leave."
She looked at him for two seconds.
"I know," she said. "I've been packed for a week."
He almost smiled.
"The Tiger won't pace its movement for five people," he said. "The road north will be hard."
"I've read what the road north looks like," she said. "I'm not concerned about hard." She looked back at her tablet. "I'm concerned about what's at the end of it."
"So am I," he said.
"But you're going anyway."
"Yes."
She turned a page.
"Then so am I," she said.
Outside, the Tiger had moved to the mountain base's east side. Wen Dao felt it through the Pale Flame sense — the qi shadow settling around the mountain's lower structure, protective and patient.
Eighteen days until the elder arrived.
Twenty days until the entity's active cycle.
Three days of preparation.
He went back to work.