CHAPTER NINETY SEVEN
### The Shadow Sect
The message arrived at the third hour of the night.
Not through a relay. A cultivator at the camp perimeter — a young woman Jian Yu did not recognize, Ice Sect outer territory uniform, breathing controlled but wrong in the way of someone who had been running for an extended period and was not showing it correctly.
She had been running for three days.
He was awake when she arrived. He was always awake when something arrived.
"Shadow Sect," she said. "Three teams. Moving south through the dead zone above the third outpost's former position."
He was already standing.
"How many," he said.
"Forty-three confirmed. More possible." She paused. "They are not scouting. They are moving in formation."
He looked north.
The third outpost. Bing Xi's outpost. Evacuated three years ago. Rebuilt six months after and restaffed with a reduced posting. Seven people now where there had been twenty-two.
"The new posting," he said.
"They do not know yet," the woman said.
He woke Bing Xi first.
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She was dressed and moving in forty seconds.
Not because he had told her to hurry. Because she had been carrying the number of that outpost in her bones for three years and forty seconds was all her body needed.
"The relay," she said.
"Already sent," he said. He had sent it while waking her.
Lin Mei was at the camp's edge. She had a specific way of waking — completely, immediately, no transition — that he had catalogued as one of the things she had in common with Bing Xi that neither of them knew about.
"How far," Lin Mei said.
"Three days from us," Jian Yu said. "One day from the outpost."
"The outpost will receive the relay warning at dawn," Bing Xi said. "They have until the afternoon to evacuate." She paused. "Seven people. Three have been there less than two months."
"Evacuation or defense," he said. Not to her. To himself.
He was calculating.
Forty-three confirmed Shadow Sect agents moving in formation. Not the same as the previous incident — the previous incident had been covert approach, agents moving under cover of the dead zone's isolation. This was formation movement. This was not a raid.
This was a reoccupation attempt.
The dead zone above Ice Sect's outer territory. The region the Shadow Sect had been using as a staging area. The combination had changed the spiritual conditions in that territory — the vein network's clearing had extended into the dead zone's southern edge. The Shadow Sect had noticed.
They were not coming for the outpost.
The outpost was in the way.
"They want the vein network access points," Jian Yu said. "The clearing. The combination cleared pathways into their staging territory. They are moving to establish control of those access points before anyone else does."
Bing Xi looked north.
"The third outpost sits above two of those access points," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him.
"We go," she said.
He looked at her. At the walls present and the direction held and the fourteen and eight carried correctly and three years of being still arrived now at a specific morning where the motion required was not away from something but toward it.
"Yes," he said. "We go."
He counted his first five steps north before Lin Mei fell in beside him.
Five. That was all the counting he needed.
They moved.
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