Chapter 38 — The Abyss of the Dead
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 8
Seeing the two of them in dire straits, Zhang Qingyue charged forward at once. The big man saw him coming, turned his head slightly, and loosed another red beam that hurtled straight at Zhang Qingyue.
Zhang Qingyue had no way to retreat. He had seen what had become of Qi Hao and Zeng Shuyan, yet with the moment upon him there was nothing to be done; he could only grit his teeth, summon up his Black Iron Staff, and go to meet the attack.
In midair the red beam clashed with the Black Iron Staff, which gave off a faint dark blue glow, and scattered in an instant. Zhang Qingyue felt a surge of great force rush at him through the air; his body shook once, but he felt nothing else amiss. He hastened to examine the staff, yet the black, ugly thing was exactly as it had always been, with no red mark upon it.
Ugly as the Black Iron Staff remained, Zhang Qingyue was overjoyed, and quickly stepped forward. But the fiends of the Demonic Sect some distance away were all startled and turned to look; the big man gave a cry of "Eh?" and another red beam shot from his giant eye.
The Black Iron Staff rose to meet it; blue and red light collided in the air, and after a moment the red light dispersed and the staff quivered once, but was otherwise unharmed. Zhang Qingyue's heart eased. Ugly as his staff might be, he thought, the old saying held that a lowly life clings hardest; surely this magic treasure was much the same. His two senior brothers' immortal swords were handsome and noble, but they were not so tough as his own humble thing.
Such jumbled thoughts flashed through his mind, but his feet did not pause; he pressed slowly toward the big man. By now the man's erstwhile ease (which, what with that horrifying giant eye in his face, had only ever looked disgusting) had vanished without a trace. Most of his attention fell upon the one who seemed weakest, Zhang Qingyue; against Qi Hao and Zeng Shuyan he sent red beams to block their advance, while at Zhang Qingyue he loosed them in an unbroken stream, whistling through the air.
With every flash of red light Zhang Qingyue was plainly hard pressed, yet the black, ugly staff simply would not suffer harm, and the murderous reek that clung to the red beams seemed to have no effect on the youth at all. Under the gaze of all present, Zhang Qingyue pressed forward, one step at a time.
In a matter of moments a faint sweat had broken out on the big man's brow. In his heart he could not for the life of him understand it. The Crimson Demon Eye, which he had spent three hundred years of toil and blood to cultivate, worked wonders against the great treasures of the immortal sects — so why was it helpless against this common-looking Black Iron Staff?
Yet how could he know? The Crimson Demon Eye was indeed mighty; loosed against Qi Hao's and the others' immortal swords, its bloodthirsty, murderous breath could truly defile their immortal aura, and using the blades themselves as a conduit, it would slowly drive that murderous breath into their bodies, so that from the very first he stood on undefeatable ground. But Zhang Qingyue's ugly-looking Black Iron Staff was another matter: it had been forged from the Blood-devouring Pearl, the most vicious thing the Demonic Sect had ever possessed, and the nameless black rod of unknown origin from the secluded valley behind Dazhu Peak, fused together with Zhang Qingyue's own vital blood as the medium. If one spoke of murderous breath alone, the Blood-devouring Pearl surpassed that Crimson Demon Eye by untold times, to say nothing of the nameless black rod, whose vicious aura was a match for the Pearl's own.