Nighttime, the 5th of September. Eastward of Changliushui.
It was the same familiar mountain ditch, although there were now several bonfires lit around it, with twenty-two people sitting in a circle surrounding them.
One of them, a geezer wearing rags who had been tapping his smoking pipe, coolly asked, "It's almost eleven. Why hasn't the Tranquil Heavenly General come back?"
But even as he spoke, a skinny figure appeared quietly out of the darkness and smirked. "Old Liu, why are you so impatient? Sure, the Tranquil Heavenly General himself may have told us that the operation starts at dawn tomorrow, but isn't that still a while to go?"
This man had been walking in the night, his figure appearing and vanishing—a rare shadow-type superpower. He then took a seat opposite Old Liu, his form extending and bending bizarrely amidst the flickering bonfire.
There were all sorts of characters in the Sky Demon Cult.
