The boy's trouser cuffs were rolled up, exposing his pale, slender ankles.
A few rats followed him at a short distance, stopping and starting as they went. Their gray, furry bodies stayed warily close to the shadows, and every so often one would rise halfway up to look around.
He never looked back, but whenever one of the rats did, it would pretend to casually glance at Yu Xing and Ghost Wine, who had never strayed far behind. Only after confirming they were still there would it turn back around, reassured.
Creak.
Creak.
The sound of bone and flesh being squeezed together was faint, but the surroundings were so quiet that all three could hear it.
The boy held a sturdy branch he'd found, using it as a crutch. With every step, his legs made that hair-raising sound of being squeezed together.
Barefoot, he walked as unsteadily as someone who'd only just learned how, each step extraordinarily difficult. If he hadn't been leaning on the branch, he would have fallen many times by now.
If any ordinary townsfolk had dared open their doors to take a look, the boy's appearance would surely have terrified them—
Around the middle of each lower leg was a ring-shaped gash where it had been severed. Strands of black mist had hardened into threads and pierced his skin, stitching the upper and lower halves together.
The stitches were dense and even, a testament to Yu Xing's impressive needlework and unusual attention to detail.
Unfortunately, reattaching a severed limb wasn't that easy. The body needed time to adjust to the connection. At that moment, the severed lower legs still twisted with every step, and that twisting kept squeezing and deforming the bone and flesh inside.
At the same time, tiny beads of blood continuously seeped from