Unspeakable terror!
Li Gao's father had never imagined he would encounter such unspeakable terror on a beach. He felt hot and damp all over, as though he had entered the true heart of the South Seas, as though he had truly set foot in the Outer Wilds.
When he came to his senses, he saw the stranger opposite him staring straight at him.
It was as though the red moon in the sky had come alive.
Exactly the same. At the sight of those eyes,
an inexplicable fear rose in Li Gao's father. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he let out an agonized "Aah!"
He scrambled backward on all fours, tumbling and crawling, but the stranger did not pursue him. Watching Li Gao's father panic, he even smiled faintly. The curve of his lips resembled a fish's mouth forcibly pulled upward by a hook—a fish thrashing helplessly in a pond before being hauled ashore and gutted.
He continued smoking and said, "Want to live? Someone has their eye on you. If that person really comes..."
The stranger blew a mouthful of smoke at Li Gao's father. In that single puff, Li Gao's father smelled an extraordinarily complex mixture: burning toad skin, burning Qinluo Grass, some plant from the buttercup order, and, more strongly still, the odors wafting out of an old, enclosed, damp ship's cabin—stinking feet, sweat, and diarrhea that had not been properly wiped away.
Damp and sweltering, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder, even the short jackets they wore had turned yellow.
Those tangled odors assailed his nose.
Yet in the end, they turned into a fragrance like mint.
Li Gao's father abruptly regained his senses.
He stared at the man in horror. After exhaling that puff of smoke, the man's face had sprouted a dense mass