THUMP!
A Buddha statue, maintaining a one-legged stance, had its ceramic outer layer burst open, revealing the gray-white body of Buddha's shed skin hidden beneath the shell. It extended its arms through the gap, smashing the surrounding ceramic shell and freeing itself from its bindings.
Like a chick freshly hatched from an eggshell and still mastering its balance, the Buddha's shed skin body stepped out of the broken ceramic shell only to slip and fall. With an expressionless face, it supported itself with its hands and slowly rose, seemingly adjusting to its new body.
CRACK. CRACK.
One by one, pale Buddha's shed skin bodies emerged from the statues, devoid of the sacred purity of new life, instead evoking an indescribably unsettling nausea.
Everyone instinctively ceased attacking each other and raised their weapons, aiming them at the eerie Buddha's shed skin bodies crawling out of their shells. Kou Huai'an squinted, pulling Kou Wukui's wheelchair as he slowly retreated.
