Swallowing Anfuni

The four figures stood there, so focused, so entranced, motionless as wax statues. The sight frightened Li Ziran; he could sense what would happen if he touched them.

Sure enough, the instant his finger made contact, identical wood grain spread through the gaps between his fingers and across his entire body.

Bzz!

Another tremor rang out. Li Ziran instinctively looked toward its source. It was the Ogre giant puppet; it took another step into the shadows.

But he had only glanced at it once. When he looked back again, Anfuni had already returned to flesh and blood.

Li Ziran fell silent. Though he still did not know what state he was in, at least the people before him had not harmed him.

Bzz!

The vibration sounded again. This time, he did not curiously look up. Just as he had expected, Anfuni, under Woodification before him, had not returned to flesh and blood. Clearly, the disturbances caused by the Ogre controlled the puppets' transformations.

Li Ziran secretly laughed at himself. He blinked unconsciously, and with that single blink, Anfuni recovered.

In an instant, Li Ziran's scalp went numb.

Everything had happened too fast. It seemed that in the instant his eyelids closed, the entire world had changed completely again.

Heh heh!

Li Ziran gave a bitter laugh. He could not go without blinking for the rest of his life, and keeping Anfuni in flesh-and-blood form was not useful in the slightest.

Right now, he seemed to be sealed inside a completely airtight bottle.

He had to leave.

He jumped again, and familiar cracks appeared—more than one this time. Like flamboyantly dressed women, those cracks beckoned to him. Li Ziran deliberately avoided them and leapt straight toward the shadows.

He left the hill and landed on the Grasslands, touching those grayish blades