One of Two

The loop and the confinement had been broken.

The Legless Man seemed somewhat sluggish.

Perhaps because he had no legs, merely getting up from the ground took considerable effort.

But Ye Wuyou would never give him the chance to rise.

Almost in an instant, Lu Caiwei had swept up before him.

She could not see, but the tremendous commotion Ye Wuyou had caused was enough for her to sense his position clearly.

Her sword strikes poured down like rain.

A three-foot blade of azure energy erupted from the sword's edge, visible even to ordinary eyes.

A third-realm cultivator's full-force strike at close range should be enough to kill this anomaly, shouldn't it?

After all, the supernatural ability the Legless Man used did not seem destructive. It was more of a loop that restricted movement.

The sword finally descended.

Boom!

Thunder erupted in the dim corridor. A crater some ten feet across burst open in the dusty floor, sending clouds of dirt billowing through the passage.

That familiar sensation struck again.

The next moment, Ye Wuyou realized he was once again trapped in the loop, unable to move.

Lu Caiwei looked bewildered. She had fallen to the ground and did not quite understand what had happened.

That strike of mine... missed?

She tightened her grip on her sword, then planted it against the floor, trying to stand.

But even after several attempts, she could not get up.

Gradually, she became helpless and flustered, panic creeping into her cool expression.

What... happened to me?

The dust filling the air dispersed, revealing the corridor as it had been.

The candle flames flickered, never once going out.

In Ye Wuyou's eyes, the Legless Man had already risen from the floor, without so much as a scratch on him.

The Legless Man still had no feet, and the shadow cast by the candlelight still consisted of nothing but a pair of feet.

Only... did it seem a little more solid than before?

Beside him, Lu Caiwei sat bewildered on the floor, trying again and again to rise, but the legs behind her refused to obey.

The candlelight cast her silhouette.

On the wall, the woman's shadow had lost its legs.

The Legless Man slowly approached Ye Wuyou, never sparing Lu Caiwei another glance. Little remained of the initial frenzy in his eyes when he had looked at her.

So this was an anomaly?

Perhaps, as anomalies went, the Legless Man really wasn't particularly destructive...

He merely "stole" people's legs.

But in this godforsaken place, what difference was there between crippling someone's legs and taking their life?

Ye Wuyou could not move. The narrator, which had shared his thinking just moments ago, now seemed to have taken a vow of silence, offering not a word in response.

Everything around him seemed to fall silent, leaving only the Legless Man's footsteps ringing clearly through the corridor.

The footsteps abruptly stopped.

The Legless Man came to a halt several meters from Ye Wuyou. His dull, hollow eyes stared ahead, reflecting nothing.

"Watch behind you," Xia Anmeng's voice sounded in his mind.

But it carried no confidence anymore.

Had she still been a sixth-realm cultivator, she would have been confident she could turn everything around.

But now she was merely a remnant soul, barely able to cling to him, watching this absurd spectacle with a clear view.

Behind me?

Ye Wuyou smiled. He did not know what the Legless Man had done, but he could not even turn his head now.

Even so, he knew what was happening behind him.

Cold breathing sounded beside Ye Wuyou's ear, then spread across the back of his neck.

Human breath was warm.

But this icy breath... did anomalies need to breathe too?

He could even hear the almost greedy, frantic inhalations, like a starving dog furiously sniffing at food.

Ye Wuyou felt rather helpless. Did he really look so delicious to her?

Suddenly, an icy body pressed lightly against his back.

A strand of hair fell onto his shoulder, while two faint points of contact against his back made Ye Wuyou's expression falter.

Were there... female anomalies too?

Or rather, did these things called remnants of the Great Dao, these anomalies, even have genders?

"...You seem quite popular with women?" Even in such a terrifying situation, Xia Anmeng ultimately could not resist making the remark.

Ye Wuyou's expression was somewhat numb. Hearing that, he even stretched his lips into a stiff smile.

"Thank you, but I think she's about to bite me to death."

The fatal bite he had imagined never came...

Ye Wuyou did not know how long she had sniffed him, but it felt as though an entire century had passed.

Only when the body behind him moved away did Ye Wuyou breathe a sigh of relief.

But he soon tensed again. Within his fixed field of vision, a figure slowly emerged from behind him.

She wore a grayish-white, floor-length dress. Her hair nearly reached the ground, but now it all hung down in front of her, hiding her face.

All she showed him now was her back as she moved to stand before him.

Then she directed a string of incomprehensible sounds at the Legless Man standing ahead.

"Ss-ha... aba aba... ah."

What was this?

A mute?

This female anomaly was mute?

Ye Wuyou could not understand her, but perhaps the Legless Man could.

His hollow, grayish-white eyes seemed to focus for a moment. Then the Legless Man shook his head, apparently rejecting her proposal.

"Ah..."

The Legless Man finally resumed his approach.

There were only a few short meters between them.

The Mute Woman finally stopped speaking-or rather, she had never been able to speak at all.

Bzz...

A piercing buzz rang out. Ye Wuyou felt as though an electric current had passed through his brain, and his ears rang without cease.

"This is..."

But then, to his surprise, he found that he had regained control of his body.

The loop had been broken again.

The Mute Woman hunched slightly, her nearly floor-length hair now whipping through the air.

She seemed to be shouting.

Yet there was utter silence.

Even so, a lock of hair still covered her face.

And the Legless Man finally stopped, unable to take another step-or even move.

Unless there were special circumstances, anomalies would leave one another alone.

But clearly, this was one of those special circumstances.

"Hurry, get inside a cell first. They're in this state because two anomalies have clashed. Once that happens, both will remain locked in a stalemate for a long time," Xia Anmeng warned.

Ye Wuyou reacted swiftly. Before Xia Anmeng had finished, he was already beside Lu Caiwei, lifting her from the floor.

Six cells: three occupied by anomalies, three empty.

Each cell was a domain unto itself. Anomalies from different cells could not enter one another's cells.

Ye Wuyou's gaze swept over the child whose eyes brimmed with sinister energy and the white jelly-like skin, and he immediately ruled them out.

As for that enormous tree root... it did not seem particularly dangerous.

But after everything he had experienced, Ye Wuyou felt that an anomaly's appearance was no guide to what supernatural abilities it possessed or whether those abilities were lethal.

That left only the three empty cells.

Ye Wuyou remembered which cell belonged to the Legless Man. He certainly would not choose that one.

So now there were only two empty cells left to choose from.

One belonged to the Mute Woman. As for the other, he did not know what anomaly belonged there, nor where it had gone...

If he had to choose, Ye Wuyou felt the Mute Woman's cell would be better.

After all, she had been willing to fight the Legless Man for him.

At worst, he would just have to sell his good looks.

So now it came down to choosing one of two.

Which one was it?