Once Zhong began dancing in his ferocious mask, the darkness around them began to retreat. Lightning cascaded like a waterfall, yet not a single drop of rain fell. Everything around them was parched.
Dark clouds began bearing down overhead.
Then bolts of lightning struck the ground one after another. Amid the thunder and lightning, Zhong's ferocious mask came "alive." Cries followed from beneath it, indistinct yet filled with power. It was hard to imagine a human could make such sounds.
He was imitating the cries of beasts.
The darkness retreated again. Suddenly, the bonfires on all four sides blazed higher, almost piercing the heavens and illuminating every corner.
They exposed every last trace of darkness.
Beneath the lightning, everything should have trembled.
With a boom, the flames seemed to explode.
They grew even brighter!
The light was so intense that Shi and Niu could not open their eyes. Yet neither was pleased, because the effect they most wanted had failed to appear under the influence of the dance.
Shi's eyes were watering.
The light stung them.
Even so, he raised his head and looked around.
Nothing was out of the ordinary.
Uneasily, Niu stroked the ox bone at his waist.
The bone was smooth and lustrous, with a hint of warmth.
At that moment, no "warning signs" appeared anywhere on it.
He lifted the "ox bone." It was an ox skull, only scaled down proportionally. He raised it to his eyes.
After he muttered an incantation,
a single tear fell from the skull.
It landed in Niu's eye.
He gazed around through his tears. With the aid of the flames and lightning, he seemed to have truly glimpsed something.
"It's the wind. Something's wrong with the wind. There's fire in the wind, too, and a mass of darkness hidden in