"You're reckless, Erwin!"
Ravenclaw shook her head as her form dissolved into starlight, darting across the Changbai Mountains. Each flash of light marked a spot where a stone pillar once stood.
Inside a tent within the British encampment, Sunny Finch wasn't sleeping either. She sat surrounded by books brought from Kunlun, flipping through pages with increasing agitation.
"No—how can it be missing? How could this type of array not be in our records? I clearly remember seeing it before! Am I mistaken, or is someone deliberately preventing me from knowing?"
She tossed the books aside and leaned back in her chair, brow furrowed. The image of the white jade dragon sculpture replayed in her mind. It was a Dragon-Locking Array, but different from the ones she knew. She felt she'd overlooked something important—a function she couldn't quite recall.
Frustrated, Sunny Finch raked her hands through her hair, making a mess of it. She needed to see the sculpture again. Perhaps examining it would trigger her memory.
Without disturbing anyone, she slipped out of the tent. The moment she left, Erwin's eyes snapped open. At his level, nothing in the camp escaped his notice. A faint smile touched his lips—Sunny Finch's sensitivity to arrays was indeed exceptional.
Erwin's magic dissipated, sinking into the ground to follow her as she ventured deeper into the mountains. Unaware of his observation, Sunny Finch navigated the dark terrain until she stood near the white jade sculpture. She didn't approach immediately. Instead, she took out several copper nails and drove them into the earth.
As the nails sank into the ground, a flash of light rippled across the white jade.
Her eyes lit up. She moved quickly, driving nails into the ground around the dragon sculpture, creating a makeshift perimeter. Once finished, she took out a compass and placed it on one of the nails. The needle spun wildly before settling in a specific direction. She frowned, then moved to the next nail. The needle pointed a different way.
"Something's wrong," she murmured, her frown deepening as she checked the rest. "The energy is too dispersed. Dragon veins are supposed to be concentrated. This isn't right."
She took out a map and spread it on the ground, her pen moving swiftly. Using the Changbai Mountains as the center, she drew several arrows outward, extending them across the topography. Suddenly, her pen stopped.
One arrow pointed to a familiar, renowned location: the Qinling Mountains. She continued extending the other lines, her movements becoming more urgent. Soon, she had marked them all: the Himalayas, the Kunlun Mountains, the Tian Shan, the Greater Khingan, the Taihang, the Nanling, the Qilian, the Hengduan, and the Altai Mountains. Along with the Qinling and the Changbai where she stood, she had the complete set.
In Britain, these ten mountain ranges were legendary, even to ordinary people. In the magical world, they were revered as the ten great dragon veins surrounding the nation.
Sunny Finch felt as if she'd touched upon a terrifying truth. She stared at the map, her voice a low whisper.
"The ten dragon veins are far apart, supposed to guard their own territories. Yet judging by the trajectory of the Changbai vein, they're interconnected. Who connected them? Was it Erwin? To manipulate ten dragon veins means mobilizing the entire magical energy of Britain."
She shook her head immediately. "No, it couldn't be Erwin alone. A scheme of this magnitude is beyond even him. It requires mastery of arrays and a massive expenditure of resources that even the Cavendish family couldn't have accomplished overnight."
She looked back at the white jade dragon, realization dawning. "There's only one possibility: this arrangement has existed for a long time. But who orchestrated it? And why? Mobilizing ten dragon veins... what are they planning? And why has no one ever heard of anyone actually succeeding in doing this?"
Suddenly, her gaze fell on the nails surrounding the sculpture.
"But if someone had succeeded, their goal should have been achieved long ago."
She looked at the Dragon-Locking Array with new understanding. "Could it be? Someone wanted to use all the dragon veins of Britain for something, but Ancestor Qingtian discovered it. He severed the connections, locked the dragon, and thwarted the opponent's plan."
She stared at the silent white jade in the darkness, her heart racing. "Did Ancestor Qingtian really do this?"