After Wood led Yang Qing through the second stone gate, figures suddenly appeared in twos and threes across the previously quiet, empty wetlands.
Like ghosts, they appeared before Yang Qing and the others without a sound.
The farther they walked, the more people appeared.
Before long, the crowd had surrounded them in layer upon layer, blocking them in completely.
By then, Wood had led Yang Qing and the others to a stilt house.
The stilt house looked very old, and a small flag flew above it, bearing the image of an eagle gazing down into an abyss.
Yet, puzzlingly, a strip of black cloth covered the eagle's eyes.
It was very strange.
Unlike the surroundings, where quite a few people already stood, there was not a single figure in the little house. Yet Wood stopped right in front of it.
Wood led Yang Qing and the others in bowing toward the empty house before continuing onward.
They had not gone far, however, before he stopped again.
This time, without Wood having to say anything, Yang Qing saw someone already standing before them.
It was an old man.
The old man was painfully gaunt, his face crisscrossed with deep furrows, like land that had gone without water for ages, all pits and hollows.
His eyes were pitch-black, like the eyes of a dead fish, staring at them without a trace of luster.
They sent an inexplicable chill down one's back.
"Wood, are these the guests you brought from afar?"
Seeing Yang Qing standing before him, the old man looked him over, then glanced at Bu Er and Jiang Zhizhou behind him before addressing Wood.
His voice sounded like a blunt knife slowly sawing through stone, its grating rasp painfully harsh.
For an instant, Yang Qing's mind grew hazy at the sound