Lian briefly returned to Jingyi's room to examine the entrance. It showed no signs of a struggle, or of being forced open. She then proceeded to head out into the rain, which was thinning as the night draped itself in a thicker darkness. She walked around the outside of the large building, her hood up and her face covered in tiny droplets of water, until she looked over the exterior of Jingyi's room, high up and the interior visible through her large, open windows.

In fact, Lian noticed, all the windows on that side of the building were wide open. The wind and rain stung her gently as she looked up, and she realized the prevailing wind was sweeping away from the house, leaving that side of the building unexposed to the majority of the harsh rainy season deluge. So there would be no sign of a rough exit that way, either.

Still, there was the simple act of exiting that had to be figured out. Even after a day's rain, anyone scaling up or down the walls outside Jingyi's room would leave marks. The stone was smooth and handholds would have to be worked in or tiny cracks exploited. She already knew there wouldn't be any signs of those tiny holes being used, but she nonetheless approached the base of the wall and examined, then used, each of the miniscule openings she could find to make her way up towards the young woman's room. She gave up when she made it halfway up and confirmed that not seen a single mark indicating that another person had made the same climb in the last ten years. But there was a softness to certain parts of the stone, as if they'd been recently rubbed down by something. Either the girl had jumped, had dropped herself down with a rope that she'd managed to dislodge and take with her, or she'd slid down the whole way. None of the options were likely to have produced good results.

Lian noted, with an involuntary sneer, just how few things seemed likely out of this entire incident.

She returned to the ground and set about examining the surrounding grounds, looking for footprints, indentations, or any markings of a young girl or any accomplices. There were tracks, but they mostly revolved around the home – the paths of servants and merchants and visitors. There was nothing leading from out of the house and into the surrounding terraced fields of rice paddies. No signal, no indication whatsoever. At least, no human signal.

It took her a few extra minutes, but when she saw it, it was unmistakable. A crease in the grass, just near the window – perhaps ten feet away from the wall – and then a trail of it, heading out to the west, into the terraces. A criss-crossing pattern of imperceptibly disturbed green. Imperceptible to anyone but a Shuli Go.

"And now we know which direction she went."