Fuwa bounded out from behind the corner, his split-crotch pants covered in mud, half a piece of meteoric iron clutched in one hand and a branch raised in the other, his expression taut.
But that face was Fuwa's face: round eyes, chubby cheeks, even the blush was embroidered on. No matter how tightly it was drawn, it still looked like a smile.
"Deputy City Lord Yang, I was doing that for work!"
Yang Yong's expression did not change. "Mm. For work."
"You..."
Huang Santainai's Fuwa face puffed up like an angry pufferfish. Then she spun around, jabbing the branch into the ground with heavy thuds, muttering as she walked.
"This part is wrong... a donkey must have kicked me in the head back then... and here too..."
Long Ya looked up at Yang Yong. "Master, why did Granny Huang turn into a child?"
"She's experiencing life."
"Oh." Long Ya nodded, seeming to understand and yet not quite.
Yang Yong patted her head, his palm brushing over her dry hair as though he were touching a handful of withered grass.
He turned to glance toward the ancient well. Huang Santainai's Fuwa body had already crouched back down beside the array patterns. Against the enormous ancient well, her tiny figure looked like a peanut beside a washbasin.
Yet that very peanut was repairing the restriction barrier around the village at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Every time the branch came down, the lines of the array patterns glowed for an instant. The light was faint, almost invisible in daylight, but Yang Yong could feel the changes in the air.
The temperature was falling, the wind was weakening, and the scenery at the village's edge warped slightly, as if some force had pinched its edges and drawn them inward.
Cao Xianming