Chapter 89 — The Good Man and the Wild Dog
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 6
Before Xiaowan's shaken nerves had steadied and just as she was about to retreat, a sharp whistle sounded overhead. A figure in pale yellow, swift as lightning and bright as light itself, came racing down and flashed before her in an instant—it was Jin Pingyue.
Jin Pingyue's pretty face was grim. She swept her right hand, and purple qi surged up in a rush and plunged straight into the waters of the pond. An instant later came a thunderous roar as a surging wall of water was thrown high into the air, towering several zhang above the pond.
The black shadow was driven out by her sheer force—yet it still had strength to spare. It dared not face Jin Pingyue head-on, but it tumbled backward with the momentum of the water and landed with a splash among the waterweeds, where its body writhed and it swam forward with incredible speed, like a fish.
Everyone was stunned. The creature looked more or less human, but no ordinary person could move through water like that. Jin Pingyue's brows knitted slightly, but she did not give chase. The shadow of the monster was about to vanish into the thin mist at the far end of the pond.
At that very moment, however, the creature let out another hoarse, furious cry. Within the mist a faint glimmer of dark blue tinged with blood-red light flickered, and the monster immediately flipped about and flew back, as though it were utterly terrified of that dark-blue radiance.
But as its body hung in midair, it suddenly saw that the waterweed in the pond beneath its feet—lush and green but a moment ago—was withering at a rapid pace, spreading outward from below it in both directions and turning all to a scorched yellow; even the water's surface was faintly tinged with black. Only in the direction of Jin Pingyue did the waterweed remain unchanged.
The monster seemed to give a deathbed roar of fury, but in the end it dared not drop into the pond. It leapt through the air straight at Jin Pingyue, plainly staking everything on one last desperate lunge.
Xiaowan cried out in alarm: "Sister, look out!"
Jin Pingyue's expression did not change; a cold smile surfaced on her pretty face. As the black monster drew closer and closer, her lovely eyes flickered, her right hand rose, and purple radiance blazed forth. Those around could not make out what magic treasure lay within that dazzling purple glow—they only saw the purple light descend like a blade, cleaving straight down upon the monster's head. With a muffled "hou," the creature was blasted upward ten zhang into the air, then crashed heavily down, its limbs twitching. It looked done for.
Quiet gradually settled over the surroundings. The pond, so turbulent a moment before, now grew calm, and every eye turned to the monster on the ground—and then every person there, Jin Pingyue included, was struck dumb for a moment.
It was indeed a monster, but a monster in the shape of a human.
Like a human, it had arms and legs and four limbs; there were even tight-fitting garments on its body, though they were scanty, apparently for ease of movement in the water. The exposed skin was covered in patches of something that looked very much like fish scales.
But what shocked them most was its head—it was a fish's head. Lips, gills, even the eyes, which had no lids at all, were just like a fish's.
Now this fish-headed, human-bodied monster lay on the ground, blood flowing steadily from its mouth, its body utterly still. It appeared that Jin Pingyue's heavy blow had cleaved the life from it outright.
Xiaowan gazed at the monster on the ground and felt a genuine chill in her heart. She shrank back instinctively behind Jin Pingyue, who reached out and patted her shoulder lightly, murmuring a few words of comfort.
After a moment, two figures slowly emerged from the thin mist ahead. Though they came out together, they kept a good distance from one another, as if each still guarded against the other. They were Ming Li and Qin Wujiu of the Ten Thousand Poisons Sect.