Chapter 49: An Educated Wish

"I have an idea." Leon looked toward the trail ahead, then at the divination tool in Lyra's hands. "Originally, my intuition should have been enough to follow the spirit wolf."

Lyra raised an eyebrow, shifting her position on the saddle. "Your intuition?"

"Not ordinary intuition," he paused, searching for the simplest way to explain a system mechanism he barely understood himself. "My Universal Vessel has something called hyper intuition. Even in its current state, it should be capable of following something like this." He tapped the edge of the divination tool. "But my body is damaged, and so is my soul. The Vessel itself is still newborn, meaning whatever power I can actually access remains severely restricted. There's another problem: I can't properly control what remains."

Adrian frowned from behind them. "So you can't just use it?"

"I can use fragments of it," Leon countered, glancing toward the distant trail. "I just can't reliably tell those fragments what to do. But I might be able to cheat."

Lyra's expression changed, her curiosity instantly spiking. "How?"

"Your tool already recorded the wolf's trail. I don't need to reproduce everything it can do; I only need to use the information it gathered as a starting point." Leon began explaining his logic, sketching lightly on the cave floor. "I'll make a divination formation specifically for tracing the spirit wolf, then I'll use it to amplify my hyper intuition."

Maya looked down at the geometric sketch. "And that will let you find it?"

Leon hesitated. "Maybe."

"That's not very reassuring."

"It's closer to an educated wish than an educated guess."

Adrian gave him a flat look. "Somehow that's worse."

Leon ignored his comment, continuing his structural analysis. "The Universal Vessel is like the sharpest greatsword ever made, except it's in the possession of an eight-year-old. If I can't lift the sword, I can't use it normally. The best I can do is put an apple against the blade and use the edge as a stationary kitchen knife."

Lyra stared at him, entirely deadpan. "That might be the strangest explanation you've ever given me."

"But you understand?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

Leon nodded. "Good."

He sat down, and the next two hours passed almost entirely in silence while he focused on his cultivation. He filled his meridians carefully, letting the Qi circulate while the temporary formation took shape around him, ensuring every adjustment accounted for the data already recorded by Lyra's tool. The formation wasn't designed to locate the wolf directly; it was designed to give his intuition something to work with—a framework, a direction, a question—and then let the Universal Vessel's remaining power answer it.

When Leon's internal energy finally recovered to full capacity, he opened his Sage Eyes. The formation came alive as lines of Qi spread across the ground, intertwining with the traces recorded by the divination tool to form a strange network that seemed to extend beyond the physical world. Leon stared at the glowing blueprint, and his intuition reached outward.

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For a long moment, there was nothing. Then, a faint pull materialized. It wasn't a location, and it wasn't even a clear direction—it was simply a statistical possibility. Leon adjusted the formation lines, and the sensation strengthened. He changed another connection, and the vector shifted.

Leon smiled faintly. "There."

Lyra immediately looked up. "You found it?"

"I found where we should go."

"That's not the same thing..."

"Nope," Leon stood up, brushing the dirt from his clothes. "But it's the best I've got."

Lyra studied his expression for a moment before looking toward the heading he had indicated. "Then we move."

They packed their gear quickly. The six-legged mounts carried them through the deep drifts as they followed Leon's chosen route, and for several hours, nothing seemed particularly unusual. Then Maya noticed a discrepancy in the snow.

"Leon."

He turned in his saddle. "Hm?"

She pointed toward the ground. "Blood."

Small crimson droplets had stained the frozen terrain, but it wasn't beast blood. Leon dismounted, crouching beside the frozen stains to follow the trail with his eyes. A few meters away, he found another mark, and then another. Footprints—strange, unnatural footprints that weren't shaped like any beast they had encountered since arriving.

Lyra approached, her expression slowly shifting into tactical alertness. "What is that?"

Leon didn't answer immediately, looking farther ahead at the trailing indicators. Some were partially buried beneath the recent snowfall, while others had been aggressively dragged across the ground. Lyra crouched beside one of the marks. "These aren't beast tracks."

"No."

"Then what are they?"

Leon looked back toward Adrian and Maya, giving them a quick, sharp look that meant one thing: *Don't say anything.* Maya's expression tightened, and Adrian understood the message immediately, ensuring neither spoke a word.

Lyra noticed the silent exchange. "What?"

Leon stood up, masking his thoughts. "We don't know yet."

Lyra frowned. "You clearly have an idea."

"I have possibilities." That cryptic answer did little to satisfy her.

They continued forward, and the underlying traces became increasingly frequent—more blood, more footprints, and occasional disturbances in the drifts. Something had passed through this area, and someone had been severely hurt. There was another problem: the vague sensation of wrongness he had been feeling throughout the journey, from the moment they met the first crab all the way to the Grade One territory, was currently blaring an internal alarm.

***

In the distance, the silhouettes still followed. Leon's group had changed direction, changed it again, and then circled around the route entirely, yet the distant figures continued advancing straight toward them. They should have been nowhere near the squad by now, yet they continued the chase, closing the distance so rapidly that contact was imminent.

***

Leon didn't understand the anomaly. What felt wrong about that first beast encounter? What about the beast territory? The location of the fight they were just in was around the same sector they had been originally transferred to, so what made him feel so unsettled and deeply disturbed? What was different?

He kept his eyes on the route ahead as the team moved deeper into the frozen expanse. Hours passed, and while the storm had weakened, the landscape remained hostile. Frozen cliffs rose around them, snow covered old tracks almost as soon as they were made, and the mountains forced them through narrow passages where every detour changed their route. Every change should have made the distant group fall farther behind, but instead, they were closer. Much closer.

Leon didn't know why, but he started feeling like he was being followed. He tried looking back without alerting Lyra or the group, but there was nothing as far as his eyes could see. He didn't even know whether they were being actively hunted or if they were simply pursuing the same target, but somewhere beyond the snow-covered ridges, the unknown group continued moving. Without anyone realizing it due to the detours, the two groups had circled one another, leaving the unknown figures directly between Leon's group and the frontier outpost. Still moving, still approaching, neither side had seen the other—not yet.