Just as Su Ming's hands were about to touch the water, a hand shot out from behind him, fast as lightning, grabbed him by the collar, and lifted him off the ground.
It was Lu Yuan.
At some point, he had turned around. His face still wore that same eternally indifferent expression, but his eyes held a trace of unmistakable mockery.
"Idiot."
He spat out the word and tossed Su Ming back into Su Wan'er's arms.
Su Ming let out a startled wail and began to cry.
"Senior..."
Clutching her little brother, Su Wan'er turned deathly pale, at a loss for what to do.
Lu Yuan paid no attention to her apology. He merely lifted his chin and gestured toward the stream.
Following his gaze, Su Wan'er saw tiny, nearly transparent bugs, each no bigger than a thumb, clinging between the pebbles near the bank of the crystal-clear stream.
They swayed gently with the current. Unless you looked closely, they were impossible to spot.
"These are Marrow-Devouring Threadworms."
Lu Yuan's voice was utterly cold. "If you drink them down, they'll burrow into your bone marrow within three days and devour you from the inside out. By then, you won't even be able to cry."
A chill shot up Su Wan'er's body, from the soles of her feet straight to her scalp. Her arms tightened around her little brother.
She had almost gone to drink from the stream herself.
"There are more ways for this world to kill you than you can imagine."
Lu Yuan glanced at the siblings as if they were two tools on the verge of breaking. "Being thirsty is better than being dead. You don't have a brain just so your ears don't grow together. Try using it once in a while."
With that, he walked to