The well was deep.
The dark red daylight reached only twenty or thirty feet down. Beyond that was pure darkness.
But something was moving in that darkness...
Two faint points of blue-green light slowly rose and fell in the depths, like two open eyes looking up at him.
One was brighter and closer, revealing a fist-sized snake's head with a small patch of silver scales at the center of its forehead.
That was Little Green.
The other was dimmer and farther away, wrapped in a translucent stone shell with a grayish-white sheen, like a lamp sealed in amber.
That was Qingyun.
Both points of blue-green light flickered at once.
Yang Yong sensed an extremely faint, tentative thread of Demonic Power rising from the bottom of the well. Like an invisible strand of silk, it wound once around his wrist.
It felt cool and slippery, carrying the fresh, bitter scent of aquatic plants. There was no hostility in it, and even a hint of an attempt to please.
He turned his wrist and caught that invisible thread in his palm.
Silver light flashed across his palm. The thread broke in two, dissolving into blue-green fragments that drifted away.
"I set the rules."
Yang Yong spoke quietly, but the well walls amplified his words several times over, carrying them down layer by layer. They struck the bottom and rebounded, overlapping into a string of echoes.
"First, the Symbiotic Contract will not bind your lives, only your true hearts. You must never turn against the village or harm the innocent."
The two points of blue-green light at the bottom brightened together, then dimmed again, as though nodding.
"Second, while the formation is being modified, Little Green will give Huang Santainai her full cooperation in guarding the Formation Eye. Slack off once, and the