A sinister-looking man with a hooked nose and a long, narrow blade scar on his left cheek stood with his arms folded, staring at the dry well before him as he spoke coldly.
"Brother Lu, you are mistaken. Our duty as Dark Guards is to report to the sovereign above and uphold the realm below. How can we neglect something merely because it seems minor?"
As soon as the scarred man spoke, a Dark Guard of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a distinctly martial bearing, countered, "Besides, Miasma Calamities are inherently incomprehensible things that defy common sense. This dry well may only be a second-tier Calamity Abomination now, but who is to say it won't transform in an instant into a disaster that would give even Divine Ability Practitioners headaches? When that happens, all of Yingyang Commandery could suffer."
"You mean the Aberrant Mutation phenomenon of Miasma Calamities?" The scarred man's expression stiffened, and he snorted. "How many times has that happened in the four thousand two hundred years since our Wu Dynasty established its rule?"
"However few the occurrences, however low the odds, it remains possible, doesn't it?"
The martial-looking Dark Guard spoke unhurriedly. "Brother Lu, you're straightforward by nature and have no taste for mundane matters. I, however, have read many of the records held by the Dark Guards. I recall that the most recent Aberrant Mutation was the Five-Colored Brush, over two hundred years ago. At first, it was merely a brush that could paint on its own. It posed little threat, and even ordinary people could handle it freely."
"Yet before long, the pictures painted by the Five-Colored Brush somehow manifested as illusions that were almost real. Anyone who saw those paintings would be drawn inside, lose themselves, and forget everything. In the end, even a Grand