The golden needle inside the circular Bloodline Telemetry Compass did not point toward the magnetic north of the star field.
Tilted upward at a precise thirty-two-degree angle, the glowing crimson tip of the needle pointed straight up through sixty thousand miles of solar magma and fifty million miles of open space. Locked directly onto the civic ethics classroom on the main Star-Ring where fourteen-year-old Gu Nian was currently helping freshmen review their afternoon homework!
Beside the humming telemetry compass in the lower tray of the Blood-Jade Box rested a second, smaller scroll.
This scroll was not woven from dragon-silk. It had been shaved from pale white beast-bone, cold and slick as a gravestone. Tied around the middle with a tiny, faded red string holding a lock of fine, soft black baby hair.
The instant Gu Changsheng’s eyes fell upon that tiny lock of black baby hair, a sharp, familiar resonance hummed inside his chest.
He didn’t even need the system to identify it. Any father who had washed and combed his son’s hair every week for six years knew the exact texture of his boy’s hair. That lock of fine black hair had been snipped from Gu Nian’s crown fourteen years ago in Frost-Pine Town when the infant was barely three days old.
