At Ji Chen's somewhat smug question, the Dragonborn's pupils contracted sharply.
It slowly turned its head. Its golden, vertical pupils reflected that familiar yet unfamiliar face.
The shocking scene on the battlefield had just stolen its attention, making it completely forget the old friend who had suddenly appeared beside it.
Memories of him surged forth like a tide.
They had first met in the prison White Demon had built. Every living being imprisoned there had been forced to cultivate a special technique, becoming a furnace for White Demon to drain of power.
Back then, Ji Chen had huddled in the darkest corner of the prison.
His body was so thin he was almost unrecognizable, and the contours of his bones were clearly visible beneath his pallid skin. The chains of the restrictions White Demon had planted wound around his wrists. His eyes were dim and hollow as he stared blankly out of the prison, like a living puppet.
The other newcomers at least still struggled, expressing their anger through roars and the like.
But Ji Chen had been as quiet as a corpse, as if he had already given up and accepted his fate of becoming a furnace for White Demon to draw power from.
At the time, it had been imprisoned right beside Ji Chen.
But sitting around waiting to die had never been its nature.
Even as a prisoner, it had never thought it would remain trapped in that cage forever.
It saw this as nothing more than a challenge before it reached the Monster World. It treated the prison as a new battlefield and began devising a way to break out.
It was obviously difficult to break through the many layers of White Demon's defenses alone.
So it thought of the other prisoners in the group's cell.