Gu Man's face had lost all color.
The old Horn-Seer looked as though he had smelled a ghost from the first age of beasts.
Gu Yaohe's spear remained at Yin Qianmo's throat, but the force behind it had changed. Less anger now. More focus.
"That man..." she whispered.
Yin Qianmo lowered the jade.
"We do not understand it either."
Gu Man's gaze fixed on him.
"You expect us to believe your sect simply found this and came out of kindness?"
"No."
"Good. A stupid lie would offend me."
Yin Qianmo inclined his head. "Then I will avoid one."
Gu Yaohe's voice sharpened again.
"Where is he?"
"River Ridge City."
The answer came too smoothly to be improvised.
Gu Yaohe turned fully toward him.
"You waited weeks to tell us?"
Yin Qianmo did not deny it.
"Yes."
The spear point pressed deeper.
Blood slid down his throat and disappeared beneath his collar.
"And you admit it?"
"A lie would waste time," Yin Qianmo said. "We needed to know whether you would find him on your own. You did not. We needed to know whether the Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion would find him on their own. They did not. Now all parties have reached the same wall."
His eyes remained calm.
"My sect is offering a door."
The name Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion made the scouts stir in the shadows.
Gu Man's expression did not change, but his voice cooled.
"They are looking too."
"For their dead 7th layer Sky Lord beast scout, yes. Their trail has led them in circles. The talisman marks confused them. The staged evidence satisfied their lesser trackers, but not their blood readers." Yin Qianmo's smile thinned. "They suspect a Noble Domain hand. They are not wrong. They are also not right."
Gu Yaohe said, "Speak plainly."
"Long Shenyu is connected to the answer."
Gu Man's brows lowered.
"Connected how?"
"If I knew that, I would not be standing here bleeding in front of you. I would be selling certainty to a Sage Ruler."
Gu Yaohe gave a cold laugh.
"At least you know your worth."
"I know what I have. I also know what I lack." Yin Qianmo looked toward Moonwatch. "Night Ledger had arrangements in that city. Quiet ones. Profitable ones. Stable ones. Long Shenyu entered, and the entire pattern changed."
Gu Man studied him.
This was the first thing Yin Qianmo had said that smelled completely true.
Humans and beasts were hostile by nature, but hostility had never stopped cooperation when benefit was sharp enough. Humans betrayed humans. Beasts betrayed beasts. Sects sold maps to enemies. Clans poisoned their own branches. A common threat had a way of making old hatred practical.
The Heaven-Horn Desolation did not need to like Night Ledger.
Night Ledger did not need to like them.
A working path did not require trust.
It required direction.
Gu Man asked, "What does Night Ledger want?"
Yin Qianmo answered without hesitation.
"Information. Access. Survival."
Gu Yaohe's eyes narrowed.
"Survival?"
"Long Shenyu has already disrupted one of our local structures. If he rises unchecked, every patient arrangement in this region may be overturned." Yin Qianmo tapped the bamboo ledger under his arm. "My sect does not fear strong people. Strong people are predictable when they want land, resources, disciples, or reputation. But Long Shenyu does not move like a normal young genius."
Gu Man's gaze sharpened slightly.
Yin Qianmo continued.
"He does not show fear when provoking stronger powers. He enslaved a King Beast. He walked into River Ridge and immediately offended the Qin Family and Verdant Edge Sword Sect. He travels with women whose origins and abilities do not match their apparent realm. His sister kills too cleanly. His own aura changes too strangely."
Gu Yaohe listened in silence.
Yin Qianmo's voice lowered.
"And now Heaven's Edict Thunder Palace has begun moving because their youngest War Heiress is near him."
That drew a reaction.
Not loud.
But Gu Man's eyes shifted.
Gu Yaohe's spear dipped a fraction.
"Heaven's Edict?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Which War Heiress?"
"Ning Huang."
Gu Yaohe's brows lifted.
Even among beast territories, that name had weight.
Heaven's Edict Thunder Palace was not some local family hiding behind old walls. It was one of the great Noble Domain powers, a sect of thunder law, punishment rites, and war disciples raised beneath lightning pressure. Their War Heiresses were not sheltered flowers. They were blades tempered in heavenly storms.
If one of them had lingered around Long Shenyu, then this matter had grown another horn.
Gu Man said, "You bring many names."
"I bring the names already moving toward the same place."
"River Ridge City."
"Yes."
Gu Yaohe slowly withdrew her spear from Yin Qianmo's throat.
The wound was shallow, but blood still marked his collar.
He did not wipe it away.
That was wise.
Among beasts, pretending pain did not exist was arrogance. Ignoring it calmly was strength.
Gu Man looked toward the horizon.
Moonwatch lay behind them now, outwardly calm and inwardly conquered. Tuo Shan guarded it. The Shen Family obeyed. The city had become a closed mouth.
The answer had moved elsewhere.
River Ridge City.
A stronger Lower Domain city. Sharper families. Noble Domain connections. A place where the Qin Family bared its sword and Verdant Edge watched from above. A place now crowded with too many threads pulling toward one young man who should not have been able to make a Gorehorn King kneel.
Gu Man spoke at last.
"This is not trust."
Yin Qianmo bowed his head.
"I did not ask for trust."
"Then it is a working path."
"That is all Night Ledger ever asks for."
Gu Yaohe spun her spear once and returned it to her back. The motion was smooth and beautiful, but the killing intent in her eyes had not faded.
"If he made a Beast King kneel," she said, "I want to see whether his bones are as arrogant as his shadow."
Yin Qianmo's gaze lowered slightly.
He hid the brief satisfaction in his eyes.
Not because he had fooled them.
He had not.
Gu Man was too old for that. Gu Yaohe was too sharp. The scouts were too loyal to ignore the smell of manipulation.
But he had given them a direction.
And sometimes direction was more powerful than trust.
…
Elsewhere around Moonwatch, the demon investigation was quieter.
And because it was quieter, it was far more dangerous.
No beast roars shook the sky here. No great aura pressed openly across the wilderness. No horned scouts trampled through the dead grass, sniffing out traces with bloodline instincts and territorial rage.
This place had already gone silent.
The site where the Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion's 7th layer Sky Lord had died looked as if the earth itself had swallowed a curse and failed to digest it. A patch of land nearly a hundred feet wide had turned cold and red-black. The grass had not merely withered. It had hardened, curled, and fused into thin needles of dead fiber. Soil clumped together like dried blood. Small stones were split open, their inner surfaces stained dark as if something inside them had bled.
Several talisman burns scarred the ground.
They were easy to see. Too easy.
Each burn carried a sharp, oppressive surface signature. Sword-light. Fire pressure. A trace of Noble Domain formation craft. The marks had been placed well enough that any ordinary investigator would have reached the same conclusion: someone from a Noble Domain force had used high-grade talismans to obliterate a demon Sky Lord.
That was precisely why Xue Moren did not trust them.
He knelt in the middle of the ruined ground, thin body folded like a corpse that had learned patience. He wore plain dark robes with red thread stitched into the cuffs. His face was pale enough to look bloodless, but his eyes were not. They were red-black, dull at first glance, then horribly focused once they settled on something dead.
This was Xue Moren, an 8th layer Sky Lord coroner of the Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion.
He was not famous for charging through armies. He was not one of the Dominion's blood generals who liked to bathe battlefields in moon-red slaughter. He had no roaring war title, no great demon-banner, no legend about tearing apart cities with his hands.
Among the Bloodmoon Rakshasa, that made him more unsettling, not less.
He read what remained after killing was done.
Blood residue. Cracked organs. Torn vitality. The shape of fear left behind in flesh. The last direction a dying heart tried to beat. To Xue Moren, a corpse was not silent. It was simply rude. One had to know where to press until it spoke.
Beside him stood Rakshasa General Luo Xuechan.
She was beautiful in a way that made beauty feel unsafe.
Her black-red hair fell to her waist like spilled wine under moonlight. Her skin was pale, her lips faintly tinted, her eyes soft enough to invite a second look and sharp enough to punish it. A crescent blood-blade rested at her hip, its sheath carved from some dark bone polished to a mirror sheen.
Her presence was gentle at first.
That was the danger.
Anyone careless enough to breathe too deeply near her would begin to feel warm. Thoughts slowed. Blood moved faster. Pulse betrayed discipline. Even cultivators stronger than her could be affected if they allowed their guard to loosen for a moment.
She was only a 6th layer Sky Lord, but no one who understood the Bloodmoon Rakshasa Dominion measured Luo Xuechan by cultivation alone.
She watched Xue Moren dig one long, almost boneless finger into the dead soil.
Then he lifted that finger and placed the blood dust on his tongue.
Luo Xuechan's brows moved slightly.
"Well?"
Her voice was soft. It carried a lazy sweetness, as if she were asking about wine.
Xue Moren closed his eyes.
For several breaths, he did not answer.
The wind crawled across the ruined land. Somewhere beyond the blackened patch, a small spirit insect landed on a dead stalk of grass. The moment its legs touched the red-black stain, its body curled and fell apart into dust.
Luo Xuechan glanced at it, then back to Xue Moren.
"I hope you are tasting more than old dirt."
"The talisman traces are real," Xue Moren said.
"That should settle it."
"No."
His answer came so quickly that her smile deepened.
"Good," Luo Xuechan said. "I was afraid this would be dull."
Xue Moren rose.
He was tall, but so thin that his robes seemed to hang from bone. When he moved, there was no wasted motion. He did not carry the wild pressure of most demon Sky Lords. His aura was pulled inward, sealed tight around his body, like a coffin nailed shut from the inside.
He pointed toward three separate marks in the stone.
"Here. Here. And here."
Luo Xuechan followed his finger.
Each burn was deep. The first had cut through stone like sword qi. The second had melted the edges glass-smooth. The third had punched a black ring into the earth, leaving faint formation characters scattered like broken teeth.
"Noble Domain talismans," Luo Xuechan said. "Expensive ones. Someone wanted this death to be convincing."
"Someone wanted this death to be easy to understand," Xue Moren corrected.
"That is different?"
"Completely."
He crouched again near the first mark, then placed two fingers against the stone. A faint red light appeared beneath his nails. It seeped into the crack. The dead soil trembled.
A thin line of black-red vapor rose.
It twisted once, then formed a faint shape in the air.
Not a full image. Not even a clear memory. Just a distortion.
A dying demon heart.
Pierced.
Luo Xuechan's smile faded by a fraction.
Xue Moren watched the vapor with cold attention.
"The talismans struck after the fatal wound."
The words entered the air like a blade sliding free of its sheath.
Luo Xuechan's hand rested on the hilt of her crescent blade.
"After?"
"After."
"You are certain?"
He looked at her.
She laughed softly. "Yes, yes. Stupid question."
Xue Moren turned back to the ground.
"The talisman force scorched the remains and scattered aura. It damaged the corpse. It confused the surface traces. It buried the direction of the killing intent beneath Noble Domain signatures."
He drew one finger through the dirt, making a thin line from the center of the ruined patch toward the first scorch.
"But the demon heart was already pierced. The blood had already stopped resisting. The vitality had already lost command before the talisman pressure descended."
Luo Xuechan's gaze sharpened.
Bloodmoon Rakshasa were not humans. They were not beasts either.
A beast might rely on bloodline flesh, instinct, and raw recovery. A human Sky Lord might rely on cultivation arts, dantian strength, and defensive treasures. But a Rakshasa demon's body was a different thing. Their hearts were not merely organs. They were blood-moons in miniature, nodes of corrupted vitality that could ignite, heal, curse, and feed all at once.
Piercing one cleanly was difficult.
Piercing one before it could resist was worse.
Luo Xuechan walked closer, her robes brushing the dead grass without sound.
"Who can pierce a 7th layer Sky Lord demon's heart in a Lower Domain?"
Xue Moren did not look up.
"That is the question."
He moved several steps away, then crouched at the edge of the patch. His fingers hovered above the earth. This time he did not touch it immediately.
"There was movement here."
"Yes. Fighting tends to involve that."
"Not panic. Not retreat. Adjustment."
Luo Xuechan's teasing expression thinned.
Xue Moren pressed one finger down.
The earth shivered again.
A faint crescent of red-black light surfaced, not from the talismans, but from blood that had soaked beneath the stone before the surface burned. It curved inward, collapsing toward a point no wider than a needle.
"The wound was narrow," he said. "Clean. But the surrounding vitality collapsed inward, as if something drank the recovery force before the body could use it."
Luo Xuechan's fingers tightened around her blade hilt.
The crescent blade gave a faint hum, hungry and low.
"Demons are not beasts," she said. "Killing one cleanly is harder."
"Exactly."
Xue Moren's eyes narrowed.
For the first time since he arrived, a change passed through his face. Not anger. Not fear.
Interest.
If the talismans were false, then the killer had understood the politics of the region. They had known the Heaven-Horn Desolation Court would sniff after its own dead scout. They had known Bloodmoon Rakshasa would send someone eventually. They had known a Noble Domain talisman signature would widen suspicion, scatter blame, and make every force hesitate before acting.
A crude killer left corpses.
A careful killer left explanations.
This death had been explained too neatly.
Before Luo Xuechan could answer, the wind changed.
It was faint.
A strand of pressure slipped into the dead zone, thin as ink dropped into water. Luo Xuechan turned her head. Her eyes became curved and bright, the way a fox's eyes might brighten when hearing a bird land nearby.
A figure walked out from beyond the broken trees.
This man was younger in face, though his eyes were not young. He wore brown-black robes, clean but deliberately plain, the kind of clothing that would vanish in a merchant hall, a court archive, or a funeral procession. At his belt hung a small wooden abacus. Its beads were dark from years of use.
He stopped at a respectful distance.
Then he bowed.
"Night Ledger Sect, intelligence elder Lu Shenzhi. I greet the two honored demons of Bloodmoon."