"Rua!?"
Kuru, beside him, let out a startled cry too. He hurriedly kicked the small corpse away, then immediately dropped to the ground and played dead.
"Is this our corpse? Is someone warning us to leave?"
Arthur had also recognized the corpse. His hesitation brought Tang Qi's thoughts back to the present.
Tang Qi looked at the man who had the same face as him. His face was pallid and sunken, and it was hard to tell whether he had been frightened to death or hanged.
"Maybe they're welcoming us?"
Arthur covered the corpse's eyes with his palm, gently helping them close.
"What kind of person uses someone else's corpse as a welcoming salvo?"
"Take another good look. Is that really a corpse?"
Arthur hesitantly turned around, only to find that the cold body whose eyes had refused to close a moment ago had turned into a straw-stuffed scarecrow.
"An illusion?"
"The mist in the Twilight Forest is hallucinogenic, remember?"
Tang Qi explained,
"If it's a warning, they'd probably use more extreme methods. For instance, make the 'corpses' around us suddenly howl, leap up, and attack us, trying to drive us away.
"But an illusion of this level seems more like a trick meant to frighten us. Maybe someone's hiding in the mist not far away, secretly enjoying the sight of us looking suspicious and afraid."
"Is someone nearby?" Arthur raised his Holy Emblem warily, trying to drive away evil.
Tang Qi was a little helpless.
"I was only joking—forget it. You'll never understand my humor."
He clapped his hands and prepared to continue looking for the way, but noticed Dawn beside him staring fixedly at the scarecrow without saying a word.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I saw a familiar face."
"Oh?"
If these "corpses" showed what they had looked