The campfire crackled and burned.
The heat source drove away the chill from the drafty cottage.
The night enveloped the silent village, with the eerie mist devouring bodies outside with missing brain matter.
The shadow of the knowledge poison had receded from them, but at a cost...
Katerina, the Evildoer, and Puxiu huddled on one side of the campfire, while Lu Li sat alone on the other side.
The sound of a wriggling cavity emerged from the shadows cast by Lu Li's shadow, and Katerina and the others tried not to look in that direction.
The Crowd of Suffering was right behind Lu Li.
Its presence frightened them from looking, but it also had its advantages.
They didn't have to worry about Mist Monsters approaching.
The shadow could barely cover the barrel-sized bulk of the Crowd of Suffering, with rotating eyeballs blinking between light and darkness, making Lu Li seem like a Divinity with a strange background on a church stained glass window, inspiring awe.
