The Tenth Origin Clan's source land lay empty.
After the waves had passed, silence reigned. Even the gray mist gradually dispersed.
The sound of dragging chains grew clearer. A figure suddenly emerged from the thin mist.
He dragged chains in his hand and wore clothes made from gray human skin. Bandages covered his face, but the patches of flesh beneath them still trembled, as if they might spin loose at any moment.
His two eyeballs were deathly white, swaying on rotting strands of flesh as though they were about to fall.
The Corpse Slave stood where the great lake had once been. Woodenly, he walked to the gray-mist spring.
"Grass seed..."
When he saw the sand-binding grass seed rooted in the spring, the Corpse Slave's body began to tremble. He reached up, tore off his rotting ear, and threw it toward the spring.
A gray arm flashed through the spring and slapped the rotting ear away.
Dragging his chains, the Corpse Slave went to retrieve the ear. He casually stuck it back onto his head, and a voice sounded from within it:
"White mist... flee..."
The Corpse Slave's lips twitched slightly.
"Grass seed... white mist... cannot be spoken..."
"What... happened..."
He turned around, then suddenly dropped to the ground and sniffed like a dog.
He found the scattered chunks of flesh.
Those pieces of flesh also gave off the stench of decay.
The Corpse Slave picked them up one by one. It took him a very long time—perhaps two days, perhaps three—to gather all the scattered flesh.
Then he removed some of the burial shrouds from his body and wrapped the pieces of flesh into a human shape.
Once they were wrapped in burial cloth, the chunks of flesh seemed to undergo a wondrous change. The human figure stood up.