Chapter 335 — Patty Glan

He could not make out what it was, but he knew someone was indeed there at the door's gap—because beside him, Lopenny Glan had already risen, and was looking at the same place with astonishment, tension, and worry.

The viscountess seemed somewhat at a loss. "Your Grace, please permit me to first..."

Gaoyang had already risen. "Never mind me. Go."

The viscountess left her place almost at once. She cut quickly along the side of the hall toward the banquet hall's doors, and Gaoyang naturally followed.

Some in the hall noticed this scene with surprise, but after Lopenny waved a signal, the music resumed and the nobles attending the ball did not leave—though many had plainly turned their attention toward the doors, following the figures of Lopenny and Gaosong.

Lopenny pushed open the banquet hall's door, and Gaoyang, standing behind her, looked out.

A chair built of wood and fitted with wheels stood in the corridor outside. A somewhat flustered maidservant stood behind the chair, and a small, curled-up figure sat within it.

That small figure was a girl. She wore a white "garment" of special cut, with only one sleeve and a large opening at the waist, because the skin of the one who wore it was fragile and festering and could likely no longer bear contact with any cloth. She sat in the chair in a crooked posture, several leather straps binding her body in place lest she roll out; beneath her skirt, one leg had been severed at the knee, and the withered, shrunken stump rested limply on the chair. Half her torso looked as though it had been scorched by fierce flame, the skin blackened and wrinkled, and everywhere layered scars where it had split and scabbed over. A mass of twisted, grotesque flesh clung and grew upon that blackened, wrinkled half of her body—it was the arm she had once had.

Thus, like a tattered rag doll, she was strapped into the chair, her head propped up with difficulty and trembling faintly without cease, as though she could not hold her neck steady at any angle.

Yet she still had a pair of bright eyes, and those eyes were fixed curiously on Gaoyang.

A third of her face was covered in ugly, twisted purplish-red scars, but she smiled nonetheless, looking very happy.

"You really are tall!"

Then she added, "Just like in the stories Papa tells!"

Gaoyou crouched down in front of the chair so the little girl would not have to strain her neck looking up. He gazed into those bright eyes of hers—only those eyes remained exactly as they had been, identical to the lively girl in the city of Phantasm Nexus.

"Hello, Patty."

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