"He—"
Fang Xiaoxia sat in the car with her seatbelt fastened, one hand tightly gripping the door handle as she stared out the window at the youth's figure. Her heart seemed to hang in her throat.
The violent rain had somehow become thick and sluggish, as though reluctant to part.
After the Maserati's roaring engine died, the world fell into an eerie silence. Only raindrops battered the uneven roof and puddles on the road, along with—the dull rumbling scrape of enormous bodies against concrete whenever those huge shadows occasionally moved.
Bai Zhou paced not far from the car, his saber slung over his shoulder as he stood before the Maserati. The violet gold gleam reflected in Fang Xiaoxia's eyes.
The downpour quickly drenched his hair and clothes, but he seemed completely unaware of it, merely raising his head slightly to look ahead.
Following his gaze, Fang Xiaoxia's breath caught instantly, as though her reason had been stripped away along with it.
Where she looked, beneath the suspension cables around the elevated road's bend and behind that dark curtain of rain, enormous mountain-like shadows stood densely packed together, their chests visibly rising and falling.
Their silhouettes flickered in and out of the darkness like ancient Terracotta Warriors—silent, grim, towering. Their outlines formed an endless, despairing black mountain range amid the hazy rain, dotted with dark-red points of light. Those were their eyes.
This murderous mountain range closed in from every direction, coldly watching Bai Zhou—the man standing with saber in hand amid the storm, looking especially lonely and slender.
And beyond that continuous range of mountains, the Deformed Child standing atop the streetlamp and the Painter hidden beneath it had smaller figures, yet their oppressive presence was even more suffocating than those massive outlines.
At that moment, in Fang Xiaoxia's eyes,