Ibn slowly rose to his feet and, under everyone's watchful eyes, walked into the house.
His movements were hardly fast—if anything, his steps were slow. Nor was he in a good mood; he was even somewhat sorrowful.
He did not know whether to thank the Construction Team that had come to renovate the place or laugh at Aziz's shortsightedness and stupidity... The decorations here had hardly changed at all.
The missing corner of the living-room table leg had been shaved off by accident when he was a child, swinging his father's saber and pretending to be a hero. His mother had scolded him at the time, but his father had laughed heartily and said that he would surely become a hero one day;
The symbols carved into the corridor walls had been drawn by his sister when she imagined herself joining the Sand Throat Sect and practiced the coded language the Rebels used to communicate with one another. Of course, she had made up all those coded symbols herself; they were not real codes. At the time, she had been holding the young Ibn in her arms, explaining to him one by one what meanings she had given them;
A lion's head had once hung above the damaged hole in the living room... It had been his father's greatest achievement. But after his father died, his mother sold both the lion's head and the golden scimitar that had killed the lion. It was not for the money—their family was not short of it. Otherwise, they could never have lived in the Third Ring.
It was simply because she did not want them to attract too much attention and bring trouble upon themselves.
Everything before Ibn was both unfamiliar and familiar.
Ibn slowly walked toward the basement, and illusions seemed to