"We should go to the outer ring."
Lu Li and Matthias walked on the road back to the core cave.
"Pardon me, Mr. Luli, but that's too dangerous; no one knows if it might be a trap..."
"It was already spreading in the outer ring before I came."
"But we don't know if it has discovered us or if it knows we have discovered it..."
Lu Li did not think the other would give up spreading for him, but the possibility existed—even though no longer human, Lu Li, bound by faith, was still a prime candidate for a follower.
They left because, when the Twisted Shadow was converting a believer, it found a resident marked by the Evil God's aura.
Because the residents' food and water sources were contaminated and lacked monitoring, the Twisted Shadow presumed the residents either inadvertently consumed the flesh of an Evil God's believer or drank the polluted water, but soon it discovered a second, then a third.
