"Lord Ahtal, do you like my gift?" A gentle yet respectful voice reached his ears, as Xi Mu opened his eyes to see a young maiden with cascading black hair, gracefully kneeling beside him and looking at him with a smile.
Indeed, last night he had received a gift, but that gift was none other than the puppet maiden herself.
"It's truly an exceptionally unique gift," Xi Mu remarked, while surveying his surroundings. He observed alluringly shaped puppets being drawn into the void by imperceptible threads and silently disappearing.
These alluring puppets were gifts meticulously prepared by the puppet maiden, masterpieces of her puppet artistry, embodying a thousand forms of beauty, a thousand breaths of elegance, and a thousand murmurs of dreams.
As for the black-haired maiden kneeling beside him, she was the puppet maiden's original form, the master of all puppets, and the... truth behind the puppet maiden.
