Who is he…?
The thought arrived before Wang Chen could stop it — instinctive, unbidden, the kind of question the mind asks before the conscious self has given it permission. One look. That was all it had taken. Just one look at the white-bearded elder standing behind Nong Li, and something deep in Wang Chen's perception had reacted the way a small flame reacts to the proximity of something vast — not extinguished, but suddenly, acutely aware of its own smallness.
His thoughts had very nearly frozen entirely.
The sensation was not fear in any form he had previously experienced. It was more fundamental than that — the involuntary recognition of a presence so far above his current position that the mind struggled to process the distance between them. His gaze refused to move away from the elder's face, held there by something that had nothing to do with choice.
