Tianlin Ward, Number Eighteen.
The four walls were mottled, the wooden window half-shut. An oil lamp hung overhead, casting a dim yellow glow.
Seven armchairs formed a loose semicircle, spaced neither too close nor too far apart.
Ji Yuan found himself seated in one of them. The restriction beneath his feet had vanished without a sound, as though it had never existed.
The Illusion-Form Masks slipped from everyone's faces on their own, turning into streaks of light that flew back into True Person Feng He's sleeve.
With the masks gone, everyone's true face was laid bare.
Ji Yuan could finally see the faces of those before him.
The first place he looked was the chair opposite his.
An old man in a black robe sat there.
An ink-black robe wrapped his gaunt frame. His face was withered, his cheekbones jutted high, and his cheeks were deeply sunken. Gray-brown eyes sat deep in their sockets.
His eyes were small, their pupils faintly yellow. His lips were so thin they showed almost no color.
Sitting there, he looked like an old tree root dried by the wind, without a trace of life leaking from him.
He was Devil Lord Mushan.
Ji Yuan's gaze rested on him for less than a breath. He branded the man's features and aura into his Sea of Consciousness, then looked away as if nothing had happened.
He did not startle the snake in the grass.
True Person Feng He was introducing everyone present, one by one.
He pointed to himself first. "This old man is Feng He, born of the crane clan. I've scraped by in Kunxi for a thousand years or so and barely kept this business running."
Then he pointed to Tao Yao.
Tao Yao sat in the chair to Ji Yuan's right, one leg