He slowly crawled inside. Before he had gone far, footsteps sounded from where he had been earlier. "After him! He took the water route!"
"Phew..."
Shen Yangge kept crawling forward, his hands and face smeared with ash.
At last, he reached the exit. He tried to open the iron grille and only managed it after a great deal of effort.
Yet the moment he crawled out of the vent, he found himself looking into a pair of bewildered eyes.
A young boy dressed in white held a lamp as he crouched in front of Shen Yangge, staring at him in confusion. When he spotted the pair of Dragon Horns on his head, his eyes widened.
Although he had never seen them before, the boy thought they looked very much like the horns of dragons in the storybooks and folk tales he had heard.
As that realization flashed through his mind, the boy fell onto his backside. Panic crossed his face, and his voice trembled with fear. "W-who are you?"
Fear made the boy stammer. Looking at that familiar little face, Shen Yangge suddenly remembered Physician Liu. He climbed out of the vent, patted down his clothes, and said, "I'm not human."
That only frightened the boy more. "Th-then what are you?"
Shen Yangge raised an eyebrow. "I'm a dragon."
"Exactly what you're thinking-a dragon from the legends."
The boy remembered a description of dragons in a book. In ancient times, some dragons specialized in eating children, several at a time, and the children they ate were neither too young nor too old.
"Don't eat me!"
Shen Yangge said, "..."
Did he really look that much like a man-eating dragon?
"I don't eat people. Is your name Little Bamboo Shoot?"
Little Bamboo Shoot tilted his head and asked curiously, "How do