Chapter 40 — Reunion
劍問蒼天 · Page 4 of 6
Zhang Qingyue shuddered from head to foot. He would sooner have died than ever imagined that one day he would become fertilizer for a tree; such a death was truly hard to accept.
But the arrow was already on the string: he was indeed being drawn inch by inch toward that great maw, the stench growing heavier, and in the blink of an eye cold sweat streamed down Zhang Qingyue's forehead.
He was nearly at the maw's edge when Zhang Qingyue, he knew not whence finding the strength, gave a violent wrench and braced his feet against the trunk to stop his progress. Alas, the tree demon's strength was beyond all ordinary measure; the branches jerked a few times, and Zhang Qingyue's strength gave out at once, and he was borne to the very lips of the maw.
A thick, rank stench struck him full in the face — who knew how many living things this tree demon had killed. In this moment with death a hair's breadth away, Zhang Qingyue struggled for his life, swung his hand up with all his might, and drove the only weapon at hand — the black iron staff — into the trunk beside the tree demon's maw.
Upon the black iron staff, and above all upon the round bead at its tip, a faint cyan glow arose.
The blunt, crude black iron staff, swung by Zhang Qingyue against the tree demon's body, proved like a divine blade: it sank clean through the tree demon's exceedingly hard trunk as easily as a knife through melon. In that instant every branch of the tree demon, dancing across the sky, suddenly froze still.
Zhang Qingyue was startled himself — and at the same time a sudden fear rose in his heart.
A familiar, icy sensation coursed through his whole body, and then brought with it a new breath of life: threads of warmth flowed from the black iron staff into Zhang Qingyue's body — just as before, when Zhang Qingyue had fought the vampire Jiang the Third in the ancient cavern of ten thousand bats.
Zhang Qingyue hung there in midair, stunned!
He stared numbly at what was unfolding before him. The tree demon, so arrogant and savage, so invincible but a moment ago, had only to be pierced by a single ugly-looking black iron staff — and its vast body, so out of all proportion to that staff, withered with astonishing speed. Every branch and bough, even the trunk itself, seemed drained of all its moisture: shriveled, curled, leaves falling like a pelting rain. After one last great roar of its life, the whole great tree crashed down — and then it crumbled away to nothing.
Zhang Qingyue dropped to the ground and sat there blankly. He did not even need to exercise his qi to know that the warm currents the staff had drawn in were of great benefit to his body; the damaged meridians, nourished by this newly come warm breath, had largely recovered.
He looked at the black iron staff in his hand. In the gentle circulation of its dark cyan glow, it was as though the staff had eaten its fill: it gave off a light of perfect contentment. Especially along the shaft, where the blood-threads had once been faint, they now shone bright as though gorged on fresh blood, red and vivid, bearing a hint of menace.
"Clatter" — the somewhat fearsome black iron staff slipped from Zhang Qingyue's hand, struck the ground, bounced twice, and lay still.
Parted from Zhang Qingyue's palm, this wondrous black rod seemed to have lost its parasitic host: all its light vanished at once, and it became a plain, ugly, ordinary black stick.
Zhang Qingyue drew a deep breath. His heart surged with turmoil; only one voice echoed through his mind: What is this? What is this?
Just then a cry of pain came from Lu Xueling in the distance. Zhang Qingyue started awake and turned to look. Lu Xueling was beset by countless yin spirits and the pig-headed beast; her whole body seemed to have taken a heavy blow, and she flew backward, her robes stained crimson over a great expanse — at a glance, plainly badly wounded.