"Glug-glug—"
"Glug-glug-glug—"
As his body sank, the intense pain of something burrowing into his brain gradually eased. But he remained dazed, his consciousness still a complete muddle.
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
"Boom!"
In his trance, Jiang Qiao seemed to hear the sound of drums.
Hmm?
What was going on?
Why were there drums in the lake?
He barely managed to open his eyes. Everything was hazy, as if he had developed severe myopia, and he could not see anything clearly. He could only vaguely make out a shadow that seemed to be a person beating a drum.
A circle of people surrounded the shadow. They faced forward and prostrated themselves on the ground.
It looked as if they were kowtowing to something.
"What is there?"
"What's over there?"
Jiang Qiao felt tired—extremely tired. His senses had also become unusually sluggish, as if he were fighting someone in a dream, with every movement weighed down by iron balls and unbearably difficult.
He struggled to raise his head, wanting to see what was ahead.
The next moment.
A powerful terror swept over him. He saw a burly Shadow Figure standing beside him. He could not make out its features, but he could see the large blade in its hand, gleaming with a bone-chilling coldness.
The blade rose and fell!
Jiang Qiao shuddered, but no pain came.
He only saw—
His own head roll away, blood spraying across the ground. Then, slowly, he seemed to be pulled out of himself, bit by bit. The process was slow, and he had no control over it.
Yet his entire body became lighter.
He looked around blankly.
It was not just him.
Dozens of others were also being held down on the ground, their limbs bound, with huge stone slabs strapped to their backs.
So they had been