Parlor Trick
Linan, Bertuah Village, Democratic Union of Aviye
Xu
Three months after returning to Linan, and Xu was still sorting through old cases, looking for patterns.
The most obvious patterns she discovered so far were the murders. Every few weeks, seemingly random people turned up dead. Quynh suspected they were wild cultivators, many of them so weak they wouldn't have even known that they had stepped onto the Ascendant's path.
The victims read like a tableau of everyday citizens. The last three she could identify were a housewife, known in her neighborhood for her cooking. A fisherman, whose particular talent was getting home ahead of storms. A newspaper girl, the fastest on her bicycle route.