Without the Art Student's overwriting, the painting was like a magic lamp with its lid removed. The genie trapped inside suddenly lost its restraints and seeped beyond the layer as a free being.
Its arms, tipped with sharp nails, burst out of the wall as though piercing a sheet of plastic film.
[Screee-]
The moment the Grinning Angel's body seeped out of the painting, it assumed that translucent, illusory form. Perhaps because it had finally escaped its cage, it displayed a sense of utter relief, like someone who had suffered from constipation finally finding release.
What awaited it, however, was not freedom, but Lao Mo.
Lao Mo gave it no chance at all. Winding golden aura around his arm, he reached out and seized its wing, looking exactly like a farmer grabbing a large white goose.
The Grinning Angel realized something was wrong and tried to struggle, but Lao Mo slammed it onto the flagstones beneath his feet, then poured golden aura into it all at once.
Time was tight, and Lao Mo did not hesitate in the slightest. At that moment, he was a textbook chef, preparing fresh ingredients with the cleanest, most efficient techniques.
But this time was different from before. This Grinning Angel was a Lantern-Bearer.
Under the cleansing of the golden aura, the channels inside this Grinning Angel gradually became clear. Then multicolored gases began seeping from its body, most of them gray fog...
Soon, the Grinning Angel's surface turned gray-white.
It twitched as it became solid, like an Angel Sculpture that had fallen from the sky and landed face-first. The feathers on its back were as straight as blades, and the droplets clinging to them gradually solidified as well.
Once it had completely become a petrified Angel Sculpture, Lao Mo took out the Pig Slaughtering