In the depths of winter, even the sun seemed unable to endure the biting wind. Wrapped in a thick quilt of clouds, it left only a faint, watercolor-like silhouette in the sky.
Diamond dust filled the skies above the Silent River, glittering beneath the sunlight, dazzling and brilliant like miniature Milky Ways stretching across both banks of the babbling river.
At the edge of Puji Island, amid a patch of barren ground where grass and trees grew sparsely.
The earth suddenly began to tremble like boiling water. In only a moment, the once cold, hard soil churned like quicksand and sank inward from all sides, revealing a massive hole several yards across.
Awooo!
It sounded like the howl of a wild beast, yet also like the strange whistling of a fierce wind passing through a culvert, echoing from within that enormous hole. Yet those terrifying sounds did not frighten the Magical Creatures in the tree hollows around the wasteland.
A Two-tailed Squirrel lazily poked half its body out, clutching an acorn it had only half eaten. A Treant Sapling hiding in the humus irritably pulled over two handfuls of weeds and plugged its ears more tightly. As for the little birds on the branches, usually the most timid of all, not only did they fail to chirp in panic, but they even gathered in groups of three or five, craning their necks to inspect the enormous hole, their black bean-sized eyes filled with curiosity.
Whoosh!
A huge figure suddenly shot out of the hole. Faint red light seeped through its half-lidded eyes, making it resemble a demon returned from hell.
But the demon did not go mad and charge at the birds. It merely opened its mouth at tremendous speed. Rings of sharp teeth rotated apart, revealing a throat as