There was no time in this world.
The hunters walking through this world would naturally not be troubled by time.
The chubby short-tailed snake had been sliding forward along the winding path for who knew how long when the scenery around them finally began to change. At first, individual pitch-black blades of grass poked out from the pale bone powder beside the road. Then came low black shrubs, bunched together among the grass, their bodies covered in sharp little thorns. Later, withered trees appeared, stretching their branches through the vast shrubbery like the claws of ghouls reaching up toward the sky.
Neither the shrubs nor the withered Tree had leaves.
From the grass to the shrubs and then to the withered trees, everything was black, and the color grew steadily deeper.
When they encountered the first blade of grass, the hunters of Youzui studied it for quite some time. Xiao Xiao had even carefully cut off a section, placed it between glass slides, and preserved it as a specimen.
Unfortunately, aside from staining people's fingers black, the grass provided no valuable information. More precisely, they were not grass at all, but something that merely looked like grass. In Xiao Xiao's words, the difference between it and grass was even greater than the difference between humans and puppets.
"Have you noticed? From the grass to the withered Tree, they've become increasingly... solid."
The Fat Wizard, walking second to last, waved the Deadwood Branch he had picked up, weighing his words as he searched for a more appropriate way to put it. "Mm, if the grass from before was like a 'shadow,' then the Deadwood Branch now is the 'substance behind the shadow'?"
He waved it twice more with great effort.
Unfortunately, this world had no air, so there was no whistling