"...There was no one in that old house. It looked like it had been abandoned for a long time."
"The walls were covered in wild climbing roses and wisteria. The gaps between the stones were wide enough to fit a Gog Giant's claws... The courtyard was overgrown with weeds, crawling with insects. If anyone still lived there, it shouldn't have been so neglected."
"But I remember a wooden bucket beside the well. It was wet."
"Maybe it had been soaked by dew."
As Zhang Jixin and Fatty Xin described the old house, they discussed the impressions lodged deep in their minds—there might have been minor differences in the details, but they agreed on one thing: the house had been abandoned, and its owner had likely been away for a long time.
Their discussion came to an abrupt stop at the end of the path.
At the edge of the night, Engra Old House had emerged amid the luminous mushrooms Jiang Yu had summoned. Yet unlike Zhang Jixin and the others' description, it did not look so desolate.
In front of the house lay a patch of soft grass, trimmed neatly and evenly. A ring of shrubs encircled the lawn, all pruned into round balls that looked particularly charming.
The entire house stood amid the howling night winds of Kela Mountain Valley, its back to the silent mountains. Jagged boulders lined the twisted ridgeline like ridge beasts atop the old house; before it lay a small patch of grass, reddish-brown beneath the mushroom light, and the dense, ink-dark forest surrounding it.
Black bricks formed the wall at the edge of the lawn, clean and immaculate. A gate-guarding beast carved from white marble lounged on the bluestone steps, yawning lazily. Even upon spotting the unexpected midnight visitors, it merely flicked its tail