Still! Utter stillness!
Inside a dim room where only the faint light seeping through a window crack could vaguely illuminate the drifting mist, two large barrels stood side by side. Billowing steam carried a pungent medicinal stench.
"Cough..."
Before long, a cough broke the silence. Bubbles rose from the medicinal barrel on the right, and a voice emerged. "Bai Zhou really has made his move, throwing himself into the trap."
"It was obvious. Ba Zunan did not want to cooperate, and Xu Xiaoshou did not want to cooperate either."
"The living creatures of this world were mostly like this, I suppose. Given a choice between one and two, they always insisted on forcing out a third."
"Never realizing that they could never escape the calculations of Heavenly Secrets waiting behind them."
With a splash, the medicinal liquid flung from the barrel transformed into paper cranes after hitting the ground.
After the paper cranes sped forward across the floor for some distance, they flattened back into blank square sheets, lying limp upon the ground.
A figure floated up from the medicinal barrel.
He turned toward the left, placing both hands on the barrel's rim as though he wished to use it to support his body's weight and lift his head as well.
To no avail.
He could only hook himself over the edge with his armpits first, allowing his upper body to hang naturally downward. When his waist caught on the rim, his upper body slumped limply over the barrel's outer wall like a sheet of paper.
When his head halted just short of the floor, he spoke with a smile. "Wouldn't you say so?"
Blub blub...
A few bubbles rose from the medicinal barrel on the left as well. A perfect face with icy skin and jade-like bones slowly emerged