"Mars!"
A hoarse, discordant chorus still echoed faintly by his ears. Zheng Qing stood alone in the courtyard, talisman gun in hand. The hunters and captives of Youzui lay sprawled across the dirt with their eyes tightly shut, while Maodou flickered in and out of the void, meowing anxiously.
The young wizard looked up at the front door of the house.
The door stood half-open, revealing a blurred face. Zheng Qing found it difficult to describe its exact features. It possessed the flat characteristics of a human face, with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, yet its eyes were entirely black, while the tip of its nose hung beneath the bridge like melted wax, trembling as though about to fall.
As for its mouth, a ring of tiny tentacles surrounded it, extending and retracting restlessly. They resembled enlarged snail feelers, or weakened octopus tentacles. The tentacles rubbed against one another, producing the hoarse, discordant chorus Zheng Qing had heard. They continuously repeated incomprehensible phrases with certain qualities of prayers or incantations.
Zheng Qing could not tell whether those tentacles were a beard or mouthparts.
When he had opened his eyes and broken free of the illusion, one tentacle had been slowly approaching him, less than five centimeters from his cheek.
Perhaps startled by the young wizard opening his eyes, that tentacle instantly snapped back and clustered once more around the blurred face's mouth behind the door, extending and retracting restlessly.
"Release them."
The young publicly funded student held the talisman gun in hand, steadily aiming it at the blurred face behind the door. He issued a brief warning. "You have three seconds to think it over... You know how powerful this shot is."
As he spoke, he raised his head and glanced at the sky.
The night above had been