The red rain drummed against the grease-soaked canvas awnings of the market thoroughfare, masking the sound of footsteps in the mud.
Pei Jing shadowed the three guards at an exact distance of forty paces.
He didn’t walk on the raised wooden boardwalks where dry boots clicked. He moved along the muddy roof edges of the timber shacks. He stepped on soggy straw bundles and soft clay with his zero-sound Spirit Wind Stride. His dark linen tunic blended with the soot-blackened walls. His cone-shaped bamboo hat remained angled low, obscuring his facial features from the loitering scavengers.
Scarface Wei, Hook-Hand Liu, and Thin Ghost Cao walked with the swaggering arrogance of men who owned the street.
They laughed loudly, gesturing with their weapons as they passed the lower stalls. Twice, Liu used his poisoned iron hook to skewer a dried marsh sausage from a vendor’s rack without paying, laughing as the scared stallholder bowed in silence.
After three hundred paces, the trio turned off the main thoroughfare into a paved dead-end courtyard backed against the eastern canyon wall.
At the rear of the courtyard stood a two-story fortified warehouse built of dressed granite blocks. Above the heavy oak entrance hung a large wooden signboard painted in peeling gilt characters:
