For half a second, Fu Qian admired himself. Then he examined what he had taken from the skeleton.
He didn't have much time. Under the oil lamp's scorching heat, he could lose the ability to move at any moment and be left waiting to die.
It was a black, round iron disc about the size of a watch face. It looked quite ancient.
It was very thin, so there probably wasn't anything hidden inside.
As Fu Qian turned the disc over in his hand, he suddenly remembered something.
He turned around and propped up the skeleton's head again. This time, he pried its jaw open and reached inside.
When the skeleton had cried out earlier, he thought he'd seen something in its mouth.
After feeling around a couple of times, Fu Qian pinched something between two fingers and pulled it out.
It was a heavy little sphere.
It seemed the skeleton had been holding it in its mouth when it died.
His search complete, Fu Qian examined his discoveries, one in each hand.
First, the stone he'd taken from the skeleton's throat.
It was about the size of his thumb, with a dark red pattern winding across its oval surface. Dozens of spikes of varying lengths jutted out among the crooked lines.
If it hadn't clearly been a stone, he might have mistaken it for some kind of mutated tonsil.
As for the iron disc in his right hand, one side was blank. After he wiped away the grime on the other, he found a strange design drawn in crude lines.
Apart from these two objects, there didn't seem to be anything else useful in the room.
But using them to end his colorless state? That would take some imagination.
Fu Qian turned to look at the skeleton, imagining what