The river answered Zhao Mou's question.
A surging undercurrent swept him up and smashed him through the illusion of the rundown courtyard. A murky white light flashed before his eyes, spreading like a curtain and radiating filth and a terror that made his soul tremble.
Zhao Mou was enveloped in white.
He took his time, trying a few steps. When he found that every direction led only to nothingness, he quietly stayed where he was and looked toward the "curtain" before him.
A misshapen silhouette slowly emerged from behind it.
The enormous shadow puppet that had appeared above the temple earlier had shrunk to human size. Its black pupils shifted within blood-red eye sockets before settling on Zhao Mou. The severed heads bound in its hair grinned along with it, their mouths splitting open in a hideous smile.
"Ohoho, you've got some nerve." It still had that same ghastly voice, speaking in a chorus of men and women, young and old, with a sing-song lilt that was anything but friendly.
But Zhao Mou found that looking straight at the shrunken shadow puppet no longer exposed him to that unbearable pollution. That meant that after making it through the ancient illusion, it at least acknowledged his success.
So he held his tongue for the moment and waited to see how the shadow puppet would react.
The shadow puppet swayed on the curtain for a while. When it saw that he remained silent, its eyes grew even redder. A long shadow-puppet tongue suddenly slid from its mouth, curling like a tentacle as it licked the air.
"The fear you've got left is delicious. Mmm! Even though you said some really cool things at the end, I still managed to scare you along the way, didn't I?"
The shadow puppet giggled with delight.