With every sentence that ended, the faces and builds of the three subordinates behind him changed a little.
By the end, all three had become Li Sansi in different clothes—three cold, utterly expressionless versions of Li Sansi.
Black waves slapped against the walls. Auntie's figure flickered in and out of sight on the opposite bank, and more corpses surfaced from beneath the Deep Pool.
Darkness surged toward Gao Ming. Auntie turned around, and all the corpses looked at him.
One by one, those water-rotted faces became Li Sansi's own. It was as though he alone existed in this boundless darkness.
Ding Xiang, Jia Youzhi, and Wu Wei laid their hands on Gao Ming's shoulders as the rotting corpses drew closer.
A child's arm, like a white radish, grabbed Gao Ming's leg. Stepmother's hair spread beneath the filthy water, tangling around his shoes like dense waterweed.
Darkness completely filled the black hollows that were all that remained of his eyes. He saw many people beckoning to him from the Deep Pool: Auntie in the grip of an episode, his biased Adoptive Mother, his missing adoptive father, and his father, dressed as a lawyer, defending him against a death sentence.
His body pitched forward. Pulled by countless forces, Gao Ming fell into the Deep Pool.
Gao Ming's own memories surfaced in the darkness, constantly drifting away, like pictures painted on water, vanishing the moment they took shape.
He sank through the darkness. Malice seemed to roll through his blood vessels like tiny, sharp stones.
It also felt as though countless insects had burrowed out of his liver.
They gnawed and tugged at his heart, liver, spleen, and stomach, dragging them down together. There were no cries, let alone calls for help. Gao Ming could only watch himself sink. He sank into boundless