Chapter 66 — The Vampire Fiend
劍問蒼天 · Page 5 of 7
In midair countless yin spirits cheered in unison, shrieking as they swarmed down, their greedy gaping mouths seeming to loom right before his eyes.
Zhang Qingyue's face went pale, his features seeming to twist. Enduring the pain, he formed a seal with his right hand and slashed swiftly before him. The dark iron staff leaped into the air with a "wu," flashing a wall of light, and the faint blue-green radiance flickered again and again.
The foremost few yin spirits could not check their rush and crashed straight into the dark shaft. Without even a shriek, they dissolved into wisps of smoke.
At the same moment Zhang Qingyue's body shook again. He glanced down and saw that the ghost claws, like blades, had already cut through his skin; bright red blood flowed out and dripped onto the black claws.
That fresh, sweet scent of blood! It spread through the air at once.
Zhang Qingyue froze for a moment.
The countless yin spirits shrieking and wheeling through the sky froze for a moment as well.
The light on the dark iron staff seemed, too, to tremble faintly—as if the breath that shared his very bloodline had been stirred.
A moment later the countless yin spirits clamored and swooped down upon that sweet body of flesh and blood. But there, where the wind blew bitter, someone raised his head and cried out. The dark iron staff came down; Zhang Qingyue caught it in one hand. Heeding the yin spirits above no more, he glared wide-eyed, and in those eyes a faint red light seemed to waver.
He drove it in!
Downward he drove it!
Through that ghost claw—and through his own blood!
The red blood clung to the dark shaft and seeped quietly in. Suddenly the red veins upon the dark iron staff all blazed alight together.
"Pu!" Deep in the earth there came a muffled sound. All the yin spirits above suddenly halted, their faces showing dread, as though before them stood the demon of legend that burns and refines yin souls.
In the darkness, it seemed only the light of the dark iron staff flickered.
In the distance, the red skull in the Vampire Fiend's hand suddenly gave a low, crisp crack, and a piece broke away from its right side.
The Vampire Fiend's face changed drastically. He jerked his head up—this youth had actually destroyed one of the life ghosts in his Five Ghosts Commanding Spirits formation. And there on the field, the four life ghosts, now missing a corner, clearly could no longer hold so many yin spirits; little by little some of the spirits were slipping free and fleeing.
The ground around Zhang Qingyue suddenly sank, fully half a foot deep, and the ghost claws gripping his feet slowly loosened and turned to foul blood that seeped into the earth.
But before he could draw breath, he heard the whole sky of yin spirits shriek in unison. He started in dread and was about to resist, when he saw that the countless yin spirits were in fact scattering and fleeing in all directions—white light flashing everywhere, ghost shrieks unending, yin spirits wheeling, red light streaking past...
Red light?
That red light, speeding through the countless white yin spirits, came like lightning, like flame, the skull flashing as it came—and in an instant it was before him. Zhang Qingyue was about to leap up, but a pain shot through his foot, pulling at the wound he had taken, and he lost his footing and could not dodge.
The red skull gaped wide, biting down like a ravening ghost. In his alarm Zhang Qingyue raised the dark iron staff to block it—but in that flash between lightning and flint, a withered hand thrust out from the skull's mouth, suddenly lengthened by three feet, five fingers hooked into a claw, and seized him hard upon the chest.
Zhang Qingyue's body convulsed. In that instant he saw the withered skin of the ghost hand suddenly fill out, as if blood were pouring into it, growing plump. In a moment his head swam, and he felt all the blood in his veins surge at once, flowing backward toward the wound on his chest.