"Xiao Luo, what are you doing?"
The young Li Luo crouched on the floor, constantly adjusting her building blocks.
Mom came over to her and watched her move the blocks around in her hands, finding it rather strange.
"I'm making a huge monster!"
Little Li Luo answered as she held up a cube.
"A huge monster?"
Mom looked at the cube in Li Luo's hand. It really did not seem "huge."
Moreover, the pile of blocks beneath it did not look like it could be built into anything particularly spectacular.
But little Li Luo was utterly certain. "Yes, a really, really, really huge monster! It can destroy this whole city with one stomp!"
So the pile of blocks below was the city. Mom nodded in understanding.
"Then where is the huge monster?"
"It's in my hand." Little Li Luo shook the cube in her hand.
Holding the cube aloft, she moved it as though she were playing with a toy plane, making "vroom, vroom, vroom" sound effects with her mouth.
The ceiling lights shone on the cube, casting its shadow into the "city."
That enormous black shadow really did resemble a monster.
Little Li Luo adjusted the angle of the cube, and the monster below shifted shape as well. Her fingers extended from the cube's edges, and the monster began to bare its fangs and claws, countless tentacles bursting from its shapeless body in an instant.
The monster's shadow sometimes became a square and sometimes a diamond. A massive neck stretched into the distance, while spiderlike claws viciously stabbed toward the edge of the "city."
Everyone in the city looked fearfully at the sky, at the shadow of the void that blotted out the sun. The monster uttered a terrifying "vroom, vroom, vroom" whisper, like a curse that tore at