The canyon floor was narrow and uneven.
Wen Dao ran left, toward the far canyon wall. The water beast came after him — not fast on land, but the body length was enormous. It didn't need speed. It just needed to be where he was running to.
It angled. Cut him off. Its white eyes tracked him without reflection. No light in them. Just pale flat attention.
He stopped.
Behind him, Cai Rong and Zhou Jin had split — Zhou Jin went up the canyon wall immediately on contact, fast and silent. Cai Rong had the third stone and was backing toward the far waterfall.
The beast's head lowered. It was reading him.
Wen Dao held completely still and pushed his Pale Flame sense outward.
The creature's qi was massive — dense and cold. Not chaotic. Controlled. It was intelligent in the way that very old creatures were intelligent. Not reasoning, but pattern-reading. It had lived in this canyon for a very long time.
He felt its qi structure. Ancient. Layered. And —
He felt the weak point.
Not physical. Every large creature had a qi circulation bottleneck — a place where the internal energy narrowed as it cycled. For this creature, the bottleneck was at the base of the skull, where the qi from the body fed the sensory network.
If he disrupted that junction, the sensory network would go blind for a moment.
He had three seconds before it struck.
He formed qi in both hands. Counter-rotating pattern, small and precise. Not a power burst — a targeted signal disruption.
He hit the air six feet in front of him.
The qi pulse hit the creature's sensory junction.
Its white eyes went blank for two full seconds.
He moved. Not past it — up. The canyon wall directly beside him, hand over hand, fast.
The creature's eyes came back. It swept the floor. He wasn't there.
It searched the wall. He was already twelve feet up, pressed flat, motionless, Pale Flame circulation suppressed to minimum.
The creature waited. It was patient. Terribly patient.
Four minutes.
Then it returned to the water.
He exhaled once, slowly.
"That," said Zhou Jin from two feet above him on the wall, "was a White Stone Constrictor. It is not officially classified as Tier Three because the sect that classified it underestimated its intelligence."
"I noticed," Wen Dao said.
"How did you stun it?"
"I disrupted its qi sensory junction. Momentary blindness."
Zhou Jin was quiet for a moment. "I can't do that."
"The Pale Flame technique reads internal qi structure at contact range. I extended it to near-range. The disruption works if the pulse is precisely timed to the creature's natural circulation rhythm."
"That is not a technique anyone should be able to perform at Qi Condensation Level Two."
Wen Dao started climbing again. "Then we don't tell anyone what level I used it at."
They reassembled at the ridge. Cai Rong had the third stone and an expression that mixed relief and residual terror in roughly equal parts.
"Never again," Cai Rong said.
"Probably again," Wen Dao said.
"I said what I said."
They began the return journey. The canyon fell away behind them. The Black River stones were heavy in the carry sack — dense and qi-saturated, cool to the touch.
At the halfway point, one hour from the sect, Wen Dao felt it.
The yellow eyes.
Not distant now. One mile north. Moving parallel to their path. Matching their walking speed exactly.
Not hunting. Accompanying.
He didn't stop walking. Didn't mention it.
But every step of the remaining hour, he felt that patient golden attention moving beside them through the trees.
And the warmth in his dantian — the Pale Flame — pulsed in response.
Not in fear.
In recognition.