The crisp clinking of glasses rang out one after another throughout the banquet.
Lin Mu raised his cup, smiling as he toasted each of his colleagues in turn.
"Director Lin, I'll down this one, you do as you please!"
"Director Lin deserves the top credit for landing this project. Please look after us in the future!"
The private room was brightly lit, the atmosphere fervent.
This was his victory banquet.
Several more years had passed, and Lin Mu's career had reached its smoothest point.
That boy who in high school had been somewhat introverted and unremarkable had long since shed every trace of adolescence, and had now truly planted his feet firmly in this bustling metropolis.
Lin Mu smiled as he returned everyone's flattery, draining the cup in one go.
The mellow liquor slid down his throat, bringing a faintly spicy warmth.
"Clink."
The cup came down lightly on the tabletop with a crisp sound.
...
"BOOM——!!!"
Blinding light exploded in an instant!
Amid the deafening blast, a White Bone Alliance Gu Master who had just crept close to the Mountain Protection Grand Array took one of Lin Cang's vicious strikes head-on, his entire body sent flying violently backward!
"Pffft——!"
The Gu Master sprayed out a great mouthful of blood in midair, his body slamming heavily into the mountain rock in the distance, bones snapped and tendons torn on the spot, his life or death unknown.
At this very moment.
Black Blood Stockade had already been surrounded on all sides by the White Bone Alliance's army for nearly two days.
In those two days, this land had scarcely known a moment's peace.
After discovering that the Mountain Protection Grand Array could not be forcibly broken in a short time, the White Bone Alliance had quickly changed tactics.
They no longer massed all their troops in blind frontal assaults, but broke the whole into parts, beginning to grind and probe without pause.
Squad after squad of elite Gu Masters pressed forward in waves to launch attacks, like a tireless wolf pack.
And Black Blood Stockade's side could only rely on the Mountain Protection Grand Array's shelter to counterattack and hold on for dear life.
The two sides traded blow for blow, the radiance of Gu worms in every color weaving and colliding in midair, yet neither ever truly gained the upper hand.
On the surface, though the White Bone Alliance's offensive was ferocious, they had long failed to achieve any substantive breakthrough.
But as head of the clan, Lin Cang understood better than anyone.
This kind of stalemate was absolutely not good news for Black Blood Stockade.
The White Bone Alliance had numbers and momentum.
They could afford to grind it out.
Black Blood Stockade, whether in personnel or supplies, had already gradually reached the point of being stretched thin, with hardly any strength left to rotate.
In these two days, Lin Cang had scarcely closed his eyes.
Under such high-intensity coordination and pressure, though he had never truly set aside the matter of Lin Mu's bizarre disappearance, he could only spare an exceedingly limited portion of his energy for it, leaving his subordinates to continue the investigation.
However, at such a chaotic, war-torn juncture.
The longer they investigated, the more muddled the reports became.
At the very beginning, the investigation had at least had some thread to follow.
Nearly every relatively reliable testimony pointed to one clear fact—
Lin Mu had indeed returned to the main stockade.
"I swear it, I really did see Clan Elder Lin Mu. He was covered in blood at the time, his clothes in tatters, walking slowly inward from the direction of the outer perimeter."
"I remember too! His face was frighteningly pale, and even walking normally was hard for him. He must have been gravely wounded."
"That's right, I vaguely saw it as well. Afterward he seemed to head deeper into the stockade — maybe he wanted to find somewhere to treat his injuries…"
But as time went on, as the scope of the investigation widened and more and more people became involved, all sorts of entirely contradictory accounts began cropping up one after another.
Some rebutted with absolute conviction:
"Nonsense! I was over at the main stockade at the time, and I never saw Clan Elder Lin come back! If he really was wounded that badly, how could there have been no commotion at all?"
Others offered leads with total certainty:
"When I was pulling back from the perimeter, I think I saw someone who looked a lot like him in the bushes beside the mountain road! That person was already lying on the ground, not moving. The White Bone Alliance was chasing too close behind, so I didn't dare go over and look…"
And even more outrageous claims began to spread.
"Think about it — that Crimson Armored Giant Lizard King was a Thousand Beast King! I heard it never actually died. Could something have gone wrong with the Dragon Trap Gu in Clan Elder Lin's hands? Maybe that beast suddenly turned on him and killed him?"
But press further—
"Who saw it with their own eyes?"
"How should I know? I heard it from someone else too."
"Who started spreading it in the first place?"
"Who could possibly remember? It was utter chaos back then!"
So had Lin Mu made it safely back to the stockade, or had he already died out there in the chaotic fighting?
No one could say for certain.
War has always been the time most prone to breeding rumors.
The retreat had been far too chaotic.
Wounded were everywhere, fleeing people were everywhere. Many could not even clearly remember which road they themselves had withdrawn along, let alone accurately recall another man's movements amid the chaos.
And after passing through layer upon layer of retelling, truth, speculation, misunderstanding, and imagination quickly churned together into a single mess.
By the end, even that initial, relatively firm claim that "someone definitely saw Lin Mu return to the stockade" began to draw doubt from more and more people.
Lin Cang stood in the side chamber of the council hall, looking at the several reports his subordinates had submitted — mutually contradictory, some even absurd — his expression growing uglier and uglier.
Two full days had passed.
No living man to be seen.
No corpse to be found.
A Rank 3 Clan Elder had simply lost all trace of himself, both inside Black Blood Stockade and out.
The cloud of suspicion in Lin Cang's heart grew heavier and heavier.
But right now, he could not spare the energy to look into it personally.
Because in these two days of ceaseless pulling and probing, the White Bone Alliance had finally begun to grasp some of the Mountain Protection Grand Array's patterns.
White Bone Stockade likewise had many years of heritage.
Through generations of warfare, the stockade had naturally accumulated no small amount of experience in dealing with formations of all kinds.
Several White Bone Stockade Clan Elders relatively versed in this field, piecing together the various changes observed after two days of wave assaults on the Mountain Protection Grand Array, finally detected certain anomalies.
They discovered that although this Mountain Protection Grand Array appeared seamless on the surface, with offense and defense echoing one another, the speed at which the array's power recirculated and replenished after different directions were attacked was not entirely uniform.
Especially when one particular area came under fierce assault, the array nearby would rapidly shift.
And at the same time, the light curtain in several other directions would show exceedingly minute fluctuations.
Having seized upon this pattern, the White Bone Alliance quickly adjusted their offensive once more.
A ferocious assault on one point.
A sudden halt at another.
Then, once the array's power began to be drawn along, they would abruptly change direction, shifting their true elites to the opposite side.
The first time.
Though Black Blood Stockade's defenders were somewhat thrown into disarray, they still reacted in time.
The second time.
The light curtain shuddered violently, yet still held on by the narrowest of margins.
But as the White Bone Alliance's probing grew more and more frequent, and their coordination more and more practiced, the internal redeployments within the array finally began to show obvious lag.
The equilibrium that had been grimly maintained for two days by the Mountain Protection Grand Array at last began to tilt for the first time.
Pressure on the defensive lines surged.
Lin Cang had no choice but to pour more and more of his attention back into the defense and redeployment of every key position.
As for the matter of Lin Mu's bizarre disappearance.
At a time concerning the clan's very survival, it too could only be pressed down for now.
But while Lin Cang could set it aside for the time being, rumors would not stop because of it.
For two days running, people everywhere were being questioned.
"Have you seen Lin Mu?"
"Where did Clan Elder Lin last appear?"
"Did he make it back to the stockade or not?"
Asked enough times, ordinary clansmen and low-level Gu Masters naturally sensed that something was wrong.
At first, it was only private speculation.
"Has something happened to Clan Elder Lin Mu?"
Then the talk gradually turned into—
"Could Clan Elder Lin Mu already be dead?"
And later still.
After passing through who knew how many mouths.
In the end, there were already people saying it with complete conviction:
"Have you heard?"
"Clan Elder Lin Mu already died out there!"
As for who had first spread this news, that was long since impossible to trace.
And as prisoners, rogue cultivators, and all manner of scattered information passed back and forth across the battlefield, this claim finally sprouted wings and spread beyond Black Blood Stockade.
On the White Bone Alliance's side, word began to reach them as well.
...
The edge of Grey Street.
Old Ma sat hunched on a broken folding stool as usual.
In his hand he still pinched that worn-out dry tobacco pipe.
Several rogue cultivators preparing to flee far from the flames of war hurried past nearby, discussing the news that had recently spread out of Black Blood Stockade.
"Have you heard? That young Clan Elder from Black Blood Stockade who's been making such a name for himself lately, Lin Mu or whatever his name is — seems he hasn't shown his face for two whole days!"
"I heard it too! Some people say his wounds were too severe and he died on the mountain road during the retreat."
"No way, I heard it was that Thousand Beast King that went wrong!"
"Either way, the man's been missing two days and they can't even find a corpse. Odds are he's dead."
Their voices gradually receded, vanishing before long into the far end of the grey, hazy alleys.
Old Ma sat in the shadows.
Having heard it all, he did not speak right away.
He merely raised his hand slowly, brought the pipe mouth to his lips, and drew a deep pull.
"Hooo…"
Pale blue-white smoke drifted slowly out.
In the dimness, the ember in the pipe bowl brightened and dimmed.
Old Ma smacked the pipe mouth twice, his cloudy eyes narrowing slightly within the smoke.
...
Elsewhere.
The White Bone Alliance's central encampment.
Li Mang leaned on that ghastly pale Bone Spine Scepter, standing atop a rise.
Behind him, a trusted subordinate in charge of gathering intelligence kept his head lowered, swiftly reporting the news that had recently spread out from within Black Blood Stockade.
"…At present, opinions within Black Blood Stockade on Lin Mu's whereabouts are all over the place, but the most widely circulated claim lately is that he already died in the chaotic fighting at the perimeter."
Having finished, the subordinate quietly withdrew to one side.
Li Mang did not speak.
Nor could any obvious change be seen on that old face like a withered skull.
With his experience, he naturally would not readily believe Lin Mu was truly dead on the strength of baseless rumors.
Quite the opposite.
A death notice that suddenly surfaced at a time like this only made him feel it was all the more worth pondering.
Two different places.
Old Ma, pinching his tobacco pipe, seated in the dim smoke.
Li Mang, leaning on his Bone Spine Scepter, standing before the White Bone army.
One smacked his pipe mouth twice.
The other narrowed his eyes slightly.
At almost the very same moment, both of them softly spoke the same words—
"Lin Mu is dead?"