With a dull thud, the back of Envoy Qi's head hit the "Map of the Western Regions" mounted on the screen.
The moment the folds of time and space disappeared, his sword slipped out of his hand and stabbed into the sand table, and the tip of the sword pierced the lapis lazuli bead marking the false information point.
The sound of camel bells could be heard outside the tent, and the drunken laughter of agent He faded away.
Chen Yao lowered her eyes and looked at her fingertips which had turned blue due to the activation of her supernatural powers. The silver chain of the wooden tower pendant was slowly seeping into her skin - this was the price of going back in time.
"Do you know what's wrong?" Mou Xuan used a dagger to peel dried wolfberries, and the bright red juice dripped along the blade into the bronze jar.
Envoy Qi stared at the fake coordinates pierced by the tip of the knife in the sand table, and suddenly found that the hydrographic pattern at that location was exactly the same as the arc of the eagle wings newly engraved on the handle of his knife.
Chen Yao suddenly chuckled.
She squatted down and picked up the broken wooden tower pendant. Her fingertips wrapped in silver chains gently touched the throbbing temple of the young messenger: "Every time Xiao Qi tells a lie, his right eye will unconsciously blink three times - this morning when you showed off your new code, you blinked so hard that your eyelashes almost flew up."
Envoy Qi's face flushed and he wanted to explain, but he was hit on the forehead by the dried wolfberries thrown by Mou Xuan.
The dark red fruit rolled into his collar, leaving a rouge-like mark on his collarbone. "The real flying eagle pattern..." Mou Xuan used the tip of the dagger to pick up the boy's sword, "The third tail feather must be cut off half an inch, otherwise it will be a Liao Dynasty imitation."
Suddenly, the aroma of baking naan wafted from outside the tent, mixed with the benzoin that Chen Yao had relit.
The girl tucked the hair that was stained with the smell of saltpeter from her collar behind her ears, and the colorful paper that slipped out of her sleeve just covered the red line that Mou Xuan had drawn on the military newspaper.
Those childish scribbles, stained with cinnabar, actually projected the hydrological map that Agent He had annotated last night in the candlelight.
"You deserve to be punished." Mou Xuan suddenly grabbed Chen Yao's hand that was tidying up her hair, and pressed the painted paper between her fingers to the brow of Qi Xinshi. "Tomorrow, carve these three coordinates into 300 pottery jar fragments and mix them into the goods of the Hu merchants in the West Market."
The silver chain on Chen Yao's wrist suddenly straightened. While wiping cinnabar on the young messenger, her fingertips quickly swept across the back of his neck - the newly formed scab there was rusted with peacock blue, which was the oxidation characteristic of the blood letter from the Protectorate.
When she turned around to pour wine for Mou Xuan, the indigo silk thread in the secret pocket of her sleeve had unnoticedly replaced the young messenger's knife tassel.
The drum at midnight was broken by the wind.
Mou Xuan stood on the observation deck and gazed at the stars in the direction of the Shule River. The cloak brought by Chen Yao still had the sweet scent of lotus crisps.
When the girl was fastening the fox fur around his collar, she discovered a bronze compass pattern emerging on his collarbone - that was the mark of excessive use of the time power.
"You could have foreseen that Xiao Qi would make a mistake three hours ago." Chen Yao's fingertips brushed the dark lines, and a bronze halo swirled in her pupils. "Why did you let him try?"
Mou Xuan suddenly leaned forward, and the white mist he exhaled condensed into frost on the tip of Shen Yao's nose: "Because the indigo dye on the cuffs of Agent He..." He picked up the broken snow at the girl's temples, "It will turn into peacock blue when exposed to heat."
Behind the two of them came the sound of a pottery jar breaking, and three hundred pieces of broken porcelain carrying the true and false coordinates were blooming in the West Market.
And in the shadows that they could not see, the copper ring between the claws of a carrier pigeon was oozing indigo liquid, which condensed into a flying eagle pattern exactly the same as the one on the handle of Qi Xinshi's sword when it encountered the wind.
Mou Xuan's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of a needle tip.
The bronze compass on his wrist emitted a beeping sound that only time-traveling people could hear. The projections of three coordinates in the star map were slowly shifting, and the final intersection was the position where the gilded pocket watch left to him by his parents when they disappeared seven years ago had stopped.
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