Ye Zi listened, utterly engrossed.
Dozens of images of the envoy's wise and valiant bearing had already surfaced in his mind.
He could not help asking, "Uncle Spider, what does this envoy look like?"
"He has many great horns on his head, as if raging flames were burning atop it."
Spider had not actually seen the envoy himself.
He was merely taking rumors that others had already embroidered and exaggerated, then magnifying them another tenfold.
Gesturing as he spoke, he said, "They say the Great Horned Rat God's envoy has a head that gleams silver, with more than a dozen pairs of great horns growing all over it—some long and slender, some massive, some curved, all mighty and magnificent.
"Even the strongest Minotaur Warriors cannot grow such beautiful great horns!"
High-Level Orcs had a worshipful aesthetic for great horns.
The bigger and more beautiful the horns on one's head, or the more coils they curled into, the more formidable one was.
Legend had it that the Great Horned Rat God possessed dozens of pairs of great horns, each with a different posture yet all overflowing with dominance. This was the product of that aesthetic.
No wonder the Great Horned Rat God's envoy had become the nightmare of countless Clan Warriors.
"Ever since that failed capture, when they were instead brutally humiliated by the envoy, the Clan Warriors have never even caught sight of his tail again. On the contrary, they stirred up the envoy's fury, and the attacks have become more frequent. By now, who knows how many Clan Warriors have had marks carved into their foreheads by the envoy? Aside from the dozens of unlucky fellows we know about, there may well be plenty more hiding at home, clutching their endlessly bleeding foreheads and weeping without tears!"
Suppressing a