Hearing Xiao Xiao say that,
the young man actually brightened. "Oh, I get it—you're jealous! I know that word... You're jealous because I'm better-looking than you! That's easy to fix!"
With that,
he raised a sleeve and swept it before his face. When he lowered it again, the handsome, tall young man had turned into a scrawny little old fellow with a bulbous nose, a half-bald head, and one eye larger than the other. Paired with the uneven shades of the ink-wash painting style, he looked very much like an old kappa that had just crawled out of the water.
"...How about now? Do you still think I'm good-looking?" Even his voice had become hoarse and unpleasant.
Xiao Xiao was speechless again.
"You're not good-looking anymore... but whether you're good-looking or not doesn't affect my previous conclusion. You're trying very hard to pretend to be human."
At that, the Diviner paused slightly before changing tack. "Or, to put it more clearly... is this what you really look like?"
"Of course not."
The old man rolled his strange eyes, his voice somewhat shrill. "Death has no face. No one can survive after seeing what 'Death' looks like, or it would severely harm the laws of death... I merely thought that, compared to true 'Death,' you might prefer dealing with a 'Death' that has a human face..."
"And that's exactly the problem."
Xiao Xiao let out a heavy sigh. "Wizards have an old saying: never speak to someone whose face you cannot see, unless you can see where it hides its mind... So even speaking with you now puts us at great risk. Let alone the word 'trust.'" The smile gradually vanished from the old man's face.
He turned his head.
His face was shrouded in shadows from nowhere. His scrawny body