Mouse Garan did not dare blink. He merely washed his eyes with Buddhist light, sweeping away the floating dust and scattering his stray thoughts. When he looked again...
There was still that jade-like face, black hair, and graceful bearing.
Behind him, yellow leaves drifted down in fragments; farther away, tree shadows swayed.
Everything seemed never to have changed.
Mouse Garan suddenly recalled a scripture the abbot had once expounded, a single line circulating through his heart—"All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, and shadows."
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Lu Qilang suddenly turned his head and asked.
His life force was vivid, his aura solid. He did not seem like some false demon, nor was he any kind of bubble or shadow.
"Ha, there seemed to be something strange in those woods." Mouse Garan instinctively grasped a small Demon-Subduing Pestle—the pendant he had originally worn around his neck.
He lightly rolled the tiny Demon-Subduing Pestle between his thumb and forefinger, using the frequent little movement to conceal the turmoil in his heart. "What was that? It vanished in the blink of an eye."
"Is that so?" Lu Qilang turned back around, little emotion in his voice. "My spiritual senses tell me this place is deeply bizarre, with no shortage of dangers. Don't go looking blindly at what you shouldn't see."
And indeed, he had kept his eyes on the road ahead all along. It was Mouse Garan himself who had kept glancing around.
"I see... thank you for the warning." Mouse Garan did his best to remain calm.
Like encountering a savage beast while walking alone in the mountains—the more fear one showed, the more easily one became food. Having lived alone in the mountains for many years as a child, he understood this principle deeply.