The tent was filled with smoke.
After placing the Octopus Skull over Xiao Xiao's head, the old merfolk returned to its earlier sickly appearance and leaned once more on its beast-bone staff.
As it stroked the Dragon Skin Cloak hanging from its staff, it sang a strange old tune in a language no one could understand. Its feet shuffled in tiny steps, as though performing a prayer dance.
Zheng Qing had already visualized his Colt Python in his mind, and its cylinder was loaded with bullets.
At the slightest sign of trouble, he would immediately fire a Talisman of Evil Warding round and suppress that strange Merfolk Old Priest.
"Evil."
Beneath the Octopus Skull, Xiao Xiao suddenly spoke a single word.
His voice was extremely strange—hoarse and piercing, like that of an uncivilized merfolk. Yet from the timbre, Zheng Qing and the others could clearly tell that it was Xiao Xiao speaking.
"Evil eyes gaze upon the earth, and evil breath pervades every corner," Xiao Xiao hissed in a merfolk's voice. "A massive lump of flesh, with many tentacles and a great mouth dripping with slime."
"Light shrouds the earth, but it cannot stop evil from watching."
"There is no place safer than this, nor any place more dangerous. Evil tentacles stretch from the heavens to the earth, seizing one innocent person after another. If you do nothing, more and more innocents will fall."
At that point, the Octopus Skull fell silent.
The old merfolk looked at the young wizards, and the young wizards looked back at it in confusion—especially Zheng Qing. He had just heard the crucial part and vaguely felt that he had grasped some clue.
But at that very moment, Xiao Xiao—or rather, the octopus fastened over Xiao Xiao's head—closed its mouth.
Nothing could have been more