Whispering Chains
He Ao gazed at the card before him.
This time, the image on the card showed an Old Man floating in a void, his eyes tightly shut.
He looked peaceful, a Crystal Pocket Watch hanging from his chest, his hands resting before him as though he were sleeping soundly.
Beneath his aged skin, faint milky-white radiance surged and ebbed like dense blood vessels, flowing through his body before ultimately connecting to the Crystal Pocket Watch on his chest.
At the same time, a faint green glow coiled around him, mutating into a twisted, bizarre-looking magic array.
These magic arrays spread outward from the Old Man's body, then slowly condensed into pitch-black chains covered in jade-like patterns. Some of the chains wound around the Old Man's front and ran across the entire image, while others stretched behind him into the depths of the void.
Beyond those chains, behind the Old Man's figure and in the upper-left corner of the image, a hand formed from starlight seemed to extend from the void, reaching toward where the Old Man was.
As He Ao examined it closely, he could vaguely make out tiny gray-white bolts of lightning flowing near that hand.
"Whispering Chains..."
He Ao looked once more at the card's name.
His gaze settled on the chains wrapped around the Old Man. They seemed to be the origin of the card's name.
He stared at the black chains, at the jade-like patterns covering them.
Those patterns were so clear and so steeped in ancient meaning that one could not help wanting to look at them again.
At that moment, He Ao realized something. He opened his palm and traced the patterns on the chains across it.
After tracing only a few lines, he seemed to hear faint murmurs.
He immediately stopped.