The moment those words were spoken.
Lord Hammer Nine's pupils abruptly contracted. He stared at Lu Feng in utter disbelief, his voice trembling with barely concealed hope and joy. "You... what did you call me?"
"Old Wood," Lu Feng said with a faint smile, looking at Old Wood's dumbstruck expression with his usual irreverence.
Just as before, he loved teasing that blank, dazed look of his.
"Take off your mask," Old Wood urgently demanded.
Lu Feng removed it without hesitation.
When Old Wood saw the unfamiliar face beneath Lu Feng's mask, the astonishment in his eyes visibly gave way to disappointment, his expression filled with desolation.
Lu Feng stared at him in surprise and teased, "What, you can't recognize me just because my face changed? Didn't Old Jing and Old Mo mention me to you? Even if they didn't, Little Fifth must have secretly come to tell you, right?"
The disappointment in Old Wood's eyes turned back into hope. He could not think of a second person who would so familiarly call those old friends by name.
"You've already met them?"
There was even a trace of resentful complaint in his words.
Lu Feng laughed heartily. "I should have come looking for you long ago. But if Old Jing hadn't mentioned it, I still wouldn't have known you were hiding your name and drifting around this place."
Old Wood remained somewhat doubtful. "Are you really Third?"
"The genuine article," Lu Feng replied calmly.
After hearing Lu Feng's familiar manner of address and the way he spoke just as he had in the past, Old Wood actually believed him seven parts out of ten. Yet the unease in his heart made him afraid to simply accept it. He feared suffering the grief of loss once more.
So he pressed further, "When