Seeing a perfectly healthy man turn into something like a painting before his eyes, Pan Long was stunned.
He had considered that these men might die. But he had imagined that once their identities as "ancients" were exposed, they would become corpses, perhaps even weather into piles of dry bones—as though they had been dead for ages. He had never imagined anything like this.
The other scholars were even more terrified. Their souls had nearly flown from their bodies.
They looked around helplessly, as frightened as quails about to be caught, gutted, and skinned. None of them knew what to do.
"Brother Wang! Brother Wang! What happened to you?" one scholar cried.
He was probably close to the scholar who had become part of the painting, for even now he was worried about him. But no matter how he called, the man did not move. He seemed frozen in place.
After a moment's hesitation, the scholar saw that Brother Wang showed no further changes. He looked around, picked up a branch, and, mustering his courage, poked him with it.
The branch had no effect. Pan Long clearly saw that the spot it touched did not give even the slightest bit. The man no longer seemed made of flesh and blood, but of something hard, like a sculpture.
Still unwilling to give up, the scholar poked him twice more. Only after confirming that his "Brother Wang" had indeed become something that could not possibly be alive did his face fall. He threw the branch away.
"How could this... How could this happen? We only came to see the World's Number One Dao Tower. Somehow we were swept into this place, and then, just as inexplicably, Brother Wang became like this..." He stared around him in a daze. "When I see his