The blood-red glow of the scrying magic charms on the upper narrow high walkway cast long, evil crimson shadows across the churning sapphire water below.
Lin Tao didn’t shout. He didn’t point or make a sudden movement that would alert the watcher above.
His test left eye locked onto the red light, zooming through sixty feet of rising mist to resolve the fine red stone brushwork of the magic charm paper:
Elder Qian, Lin Tao analyzed with cold, careful certainty. He slipped his house arrest. A man who has spent forty years building a personal empire on embezzled spirit water doesn’t sit quietly in his mountain villa. Meanwhile, his private well is drained. He left a monitoring tripwire on the high narrow high walkway to alert him the moment the water returned.
“Watcher above,” Tie Shan muttered, his voice barely louder than the splashing deck drains, his grip shifting on the twelve-pound iron pry-bar.
“Don’t look up,” Lin Tao instructed in a low whisper. He wiped water from his land-mapper measuring tongs. “He knows the water has returned. But he doesn’t know who’s standing down here. Because the steam from the relief valve is scattering the sight signal. He only sees the sapphire glare of the sky dew.”
