By the time Ye Qianfan finished reading the story on the Human-Skin Painting...
He had unwittingly crawled deep into the cave.
Several members of the Heavenly River Cult wore black robes and tall, pointed hats shaped rather like the traffic cones in a parking lot, except they were black instead of red and white.
They were supervising a group of villagers as they treated fresh human skins with medicinal solutions, dried them, and finally drew and tattooed designs onto them.
The artist was an elderly man with graying hair. Two kerosene lamps stood on his table, suggesting that his standing was far from low.
Perhaps he had been overworked. Ye Qianfan saw that his hands trembled slightly and his eyes were terribly bloodshot. Even his lines had lost their smoothness.
Although the Heavenly River Cult members had noticed this...
They merely frowned in displeasure without demanding anything more!
The tattooing was handled by three other people, some young and some old, holding small tools shaped rather like rakes.
They were roughly palm-sized. The workers dipped the tips of the spikes in ink, then repeatedly struck the tools with bamboo strips along the lines drawn on the human skins, driving the little rakes into the skin and leaving permanent lines!
"Who's there!"
Just then.
One of the Heavenly River Cult members, who wore a pointed hat and a golden mask over his face, suddenly looked toward Ye Qianfan (Ye Fu)!
Fortunately, Ye Qianfan had been clinging to the cave ceiling the entire time as he moved. With the limited light inside the cave, the man clearly had not located Ye Qianfan, despite shouting angrily at the ceiling.
"Hall Master, what's wrong?"
An unmasked cult member beside him hurriedly asked.
Only then did the masked Hall Master say, "Something's wrong! Just now,