Mayor Chen Hu stared at the purple mark. His round face was blank. Genuinely blank. He had no idea. The mark had appeared three nights ago. He had been told. He had investigated. He had found nothing. He had reported nothing because there was nothing to report.
"No, sir," he said. His voice was thin. "I do not. We found it three days ago. We do not know its origin."
Tianlong looked at him. The gold-crimson eyes, the brief contact, made the mayor's bowels loosen. The gaze was not hostile. It was simply... complete. The gaze of a being who saw everything, who missed nothing, who could read the truth in a man's sweat and heartbeat and breathing.
The mayor lowered his head. His eyes went to the ground. He knew, with the certainty of a man who had spent decades reading people, that the question had not been for him.
Tianlong's gold-crimson eyes moved. To Madam Yueying.
