Chapter 37 — Strange Eyes
劍問蒼天 · Page 2 of 6
And now the man lying dead on the ground before them, this vampire who was said to be the sole heir of the Bloodsucking **, had in the blink of an eye been drained of every drop of essence and blood. From what the two of them knew, such cultivation far surpassed that of the dead vampire, Jiang the Third; even the legendary Old Fiend of Bloodsucking, they suspected, might not command such power. Yet looking at this young man of the Qingyun Sect before them, there was no trace whatever of the sinister, warped aura that clung to practitioners of the Bloodsucking school.
The Wild Wolf Daoist eyed Zhang Qingyue. "Are you a disciple of the Old... the old senior of Bloodsucking?"
Zhang Qingyue was taken aback. "What old senior of Bloodsucking?"
The Wild Wolf Daoist's dog mouth opened, and his long tongue lolled out and curled around. Watching him, Zhang Qingyue could not help but think of Big Yellow, the great dog on Dazhu Peak back in the Canglan Mountains. But even as the thought crossed his mind, a shrill shriek came from somewhere behind the cavern, a flying sword flashed, and a figure in black came tumbling out of the darkness, his face streaked with blood. He struggled on the ground a few times, and it was plain he would not rise again.
Zhang Qingyue suddenly came to his senses. His fellow disciples were fighting for their lives, and here he stood chatting with these Devil Sect fiends — what a fool he was! At once he sprang up, meaning to go to their aid.
The Wild Wolf Daoist and the tall man saw Zhang Qingyue's body suddenly move, and both started, thinking he meant to attack without warning; they braced at once. But Zhang Qingyue had no sooner moved than he let out a strangled cry, his face contorting, and dropped back down, half-kneeling on the ground, gasping and hissing through his teeth, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
In his urgency, Zhang Qingyue had forgotten that the small dark-red fork was still lodged in the flesh of his shoulder. The instant he moved, pain knifed through him to the very marrow, and he dropped back down hard. The bleeding, which had briefly stopped, now welled up again from the torn wound.
Seeing such a golden opportunity, how could the Wild Wolf Daoist and the tall man let it pass? Better to kill and be wrong than to spare and regret. Malice kindled in their eyes, and the flying sword and the fangs in their hands began to glow once more.
But at that very moment a clear, ringing cry came from behind them. Amid the motley lights of the darkness, a blaze of dazzling blue suddenly flared — brilliant, resplendent, in an instant beating down every other gleam. Within the blue radiance, Tianxuan swept proudly from its sheath, and behind it, hanging in midair, stood Lu Xueqi, peerless in bearing, her robes whipping and streaming in the wind.
As the Wild Wolf Daoist and the tall man gaped, the divine sword Tianxuan's blue light surged, shaping itself into a colossal blade of blue that came crashing down into the darkness. At once a host of motley lights flew up to meet it, but the moment they touched that vast, pure blue they were annihilated into ash and smoke. Wild shrieks rang out; five or six figures sprang from the shadows. With a thunderous crash the blue blade struck the stone wall, sending rubble flying in a display of terrifying force. Nearly every one of the figures that had leapt out was wounded. At the same moment, Qi Hao's Frost Ice Sword flashed white and came charging in from the flank; wherever its sword-glow passed, several Devil Sect followers were frozen into blocks of ice. Zeng Shuyan, flying sword at speed, shattered them one by one.
The tall man before Zhang Qingyue and the Wild Wolf Daoist exchanged a glance, and at once abandoned Zhang Qingyue and charged forward, summoning the yellow flying sword and the grey fangs together to check the assault of Qi Hao and Zeng Shuyan.