Chapter 36 — The Fiend

Zhang Qingyue's heart leapt with joy. He was about to call the staff back when a searing pain shot through his shoulder; half his body went weak, and his mind went blank. He looked down, and there at his chest and shoulder, a dark-red trident had burst through and stood out from his flesh, while bright red blood poured and poured.

It was that same dark-red trident, seizing the moment when Zhang Qingyue's guard had slackened, striking him down from behind.

Zhang Qingyue saw that the trident's color, dark red before, now seemed to brighten, as if it had woken at the smell of blood. He gave a low groan and would have reached to pull it out—when suddenly, as the bloodstain on the trident deepened, a shadow in the darkness seemed to rise from the weapon out of nothing, and then clung fast to Zhang Qingyue's back.

The master of that dark-red trident, it seemed, was lodged within the weapon itself.

Zhang Qingyue felt dizzy and reeling, with no strength to shake off the fiend at his back. And now, besides the pain, there came a numbness and itch at the wound—there must be deadly venom on the blade. He glanced from the corner of his eye but could not see the fiend's face behind him; he saw only the two hands gripping his shoulder, withered and filthy, reeking with a stench too foul to bear.

Far off, a burst of wild laughter rang out; and behind him came a sinister voice: "You stinking whelp of the Canglan Sect—you brought this on yourselves. Be a good boy and give me your essence blood!"

Before Zhang Qingyue could make sense of his words, he understood from what followed. The fiend in the shadow opened its great mouth wide and sank its teeth into the left side of Zhang Qingyue's neck, drinking deep—and at the same moment, the dark-red trident grew brighter still, as though it too were drinking blood.

Zhang Qingyue was terrified beyond measure. He felt all the blood in his body rushing toward his throat, a light, floating sensation stealing over him, the strength draining slowly from every limb. Even the Dark Iron Staff in midair he could no longer sustain; it dropped.

In that dazed moment, he suddenly seemed to be back in the past, in that secluded valley.

In that nightmare!

The Dark Iron Staff fell from above his head and landed before him, giving off a faint blue light, as if summoning something. Zhang Qingyue seized it, and at once felt the chill of the staff surging and roiling, like a fury unleashed.

The blood still poured from his body, drunk away by the fiend. Zhang Qingyue could hear nothing of the outside world now. He gathered the last thread of strength in his whole body, like a cornered beast fighting for its life, and drove the blue-glowing Dark Iron Staff with all his might into the fiend behind him.

The Dark Iron Staff was blunt and edgeless, yet now it went through that living flesh as though through bean curd, driving in without the slightest resistance.

The fiend at his back shuddered and stopped drinking. As if unable to believe it, it turned its head to look at Zhang Qingyue—and Zhang Qingyue, in that same instant, saw him.

In the gloom, it was like the low, cold laughter of some netherworld demon, and like the heartbeat of someone in the dark. Zhang Qingyue's hand upon the staff felt the pulse beat after beat—like the flow of blood through the veins, and like the exultation of demons!

The light upon the dark-red trident dimmed swiftly. Behind, the endless darkness came rushing in.

In the instant the darkness swallowed Zhang Qingyue and the fiend, Zhang Qingyue, half-swooning, saw a sight he would never in his life forget.

That foul face, wrinkled all over yet still fleshy, shriveled away in a moment; flesh and blood turned to withered skin drawn tight over bone.

The next instant, the darkness closed over him.

What was lost was restored. An inexhaustible power poured from the body of the Dark Iron Staff and merged into his own.

Zhang Qingyue came back to his senses, and stood there frozen. The wound at his shoulder still throbbed, but the gushing blood had already been stanched by that unknown power—though to this young man, just now, none of that mattered in the least. In his mind, only one thought churned over and over:

What have I done? What have I done?