Book 1: Chapter 49

Book 1: Chapter 49

The other two immediately saw the change in my expression and Fatty asked, "What is it? What do you see?

"Theres a shadow under the water." I looked carefully, but I didn't dare approach it. Fatty followed my line of sight and squinted at it for a long time, "Wheres the shadow?"

I pointed to where it was underwater, "Can't you see it?"

Fatty moved towards it, but I quickly grabbed him for fear that he would touch it. Its shape looked distortedalmost like a floating corpsebut I knew it wasnt going to be good whatever it was.

"Look carefully," Poker-Face told me.

I did as he said and found that there was more than one such shadow floating in the water. There was another shadow in front of the first one I had seen and it looked like a lump suspended in the water. All of them were completely black.

If they were floating corpses that had rotted to the point of blackening, then not only would they have looked like giants by now, but they would've had Fatty's physique no matter how fucking thin they were. But these black things didn't show any signs of rotting or bloating.

"It's black. Black all over. More than one. Theres a line of them in the water."

"Black? Like Kobe (1)? Fatty asked me. "Were there any blacks in the Han Dynasty? Could it be a Kunlun slave (2)?"Read latest chapters at novelhall.com Only

"That thing is out of the water."

"What is it?" Fatty couldn't stand the fact that he still couldnt see it.

The three of us moved forward until I could get a closer look at it. The black head looked very strange and we could see that the skin was so thin that our green light could pass right through it.

"That's a leather paper doll (3)," Poker-Face said.

I suddenly remembered the legend of the Mute Emperor and how it had said he liked to use paper soldiers and horses for his army. But the army had been blind because their eyes were made of fried sesame seeds.

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TN Notes:

(1) Kobe Bryant. He was a famous American basketball player. He died last year.

(2) Black slaves from Southeast Asia in the Tang Dynasty. The majority of Kunlun slaves were dark-colored people captured in Southeast Asia, and some of them were Africans bought from Arab merchants who captured them in Africa. More info here. Note, the Han Dynasty was like 3 dynasties before the Tang Dynasty. The Han Dynasty was from 206 BC to 220 AD, while the Tang Dynasty was from 618 to 907 AD.

(3) Leather paper refers to paper made from bast fibers such as mulberry bark and mountain sap. Think of it as a mix of paper and fabric with a leather-like texture.