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“What?”

“The chilittered in anticipation

“I don’t knohat you’re talking about”

“I choose to believe you,” he said ive me the journal”

“I don’t keep one”

“But Brian did Once I knew you had it, our path together was clear You can help me find the rest of—what is it, Hulan?—a tomb or a treasure chamber?”

What had been right in front of her these last years as she’d tracked the activities of the All-Patriotic Society finally dawned on her “Your travels, Michael, I understand the the Yellow River Then you carowth mirrored your journey and you used the watershed of the rivers to proselytize”

He stared into her eyes, and she stared back, reading the calculation in his Should he respond to her? A subtle shift deep within hiain

“You hear so much about the Yellow River as the birthplace of Chinese civilization,” he said at last, “but we know people traveled We know that Yu ca his legend—through poetry and art, then myth, and finally fact”

“To see the nine provinces To see the places where Yu stopped the floods And you found more followers”

“Soseeds,” he ade of hope She could draw hi that looked like a maze in the dirt between them

“Do you knohat this is?”

She shook her head

“Ha!”

She looked at hinorant”