Zhang Rong and I slipped out of Shen Zhiyi's room because dawn was almost upon us.
When we looked back, Shen Zhiyi was still crouched in the doorway, her eyes fixed on us.
It was the most helpless look I had ever seen.
Especially when we were leaving just now, she had kept clutching at Zhang Rong and me, unwilling to let us go.
"This is awful."
Zhang Rong sighed. "Do you think... she and her little brother Gou Dan will ever escape this place?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. There aren't just young and able-bodied men here. There should be elderly people, women, and children too. Even if we killed all the young men, we couldn't kill the elderly and the women, could we?"
"If we tied up the elderly and the women too, what about the children? We'd have to tie up the children here as well, to stop them from untying everyone."
"But even if we did all that, it would still come down to Shen Zhiyi herself. Her mental state isn't very stable. Who knows whether something might happen after dawn, when we're gone, and make her choose differently?"
After saying that, I glanced toward the large house.
Zhang Rong and I had seen it when we first entered the village, but now it was out of sight again.
I looked up at the sky. The first pale light of dawn was showing again.
This village was about to disappear...
Zhang Rong and I hurried along the path out of the village. Once we were outside, we looked back, and everything within sight had turned into wasteland again.
This was different from the illusions within a Ghost Wall. It was truly stunning.
A village that had existed one second was completely gone the next.