One of the best character introductions in Tai Sui: Zhuoming
Ripple after ripple rose in the calm lotus pond. The lotuses were white, and the big round lotus leaves were also white. The flowers had neither pistil nor stamen, and there were no lotus seeds to be found. There was also no silt underwater. It was extremely clear. Dark red lotus roots and long stalks coiled in the crystalline water, all the more startling in comparison to the snow-white leaves, like internal organs laid bare to the light of day.
When the man in the lotus pond opened his eyes, all the lotuses in the pond curled up into buds.
This man who was the “shame of flowers” had a very shocking countenance—not only did he have no hair, he didn’t even have eyebrows. His willow leaf eyes, placed slightly low, seemed to sit in the middle of his face. A red-lipped mouth had been drawn in cinnabar on his forehead, so it was impossible to tell at a glance whether his head was right-side up or upside-down.
As he spoke, the “shame of flowers” turned and looked at Elder Xuanwu with his head whose top and bottom were almost indistinguishable. He asked, “Elder Xuanwu, can you guess whether my head is right-side up today?”
Xuanwu ignored him. The features drawn on his mask normally changed every moment, but facing the person in the pond, he maintained an oddly neutral expression, making him suddenly seem not so strange.
“Take a look at the future state of affairs in Tao County for me.”
“I’m not looking. Some place on the border where even birds don’t shit, what’s there worth looking at?” The bald head of the shame of flowers in the pond pushed apart the lotuses, and he swam towards Elder Xuanwu at the edge of the pond like a water ghoul. “Elder—shizun, can you guess whether my head is right-side up today?”
It was only when he moved that you noticed what was wrong: this person had no legs.
His lower body grew into the dark red lotus roots. It was hard to say whether he was a freak who had grown out of the lotuses, or whether there were flowers growing all over a freak’s body.