劍問蒼天 - 第126章 巫妖 - 翰墨軒

The burning clouds of flame along the horizon gradually dimmed. Ahetai, hidden within the black clouds, fled from Qili Tong at tremendous speed.

Half an hour later, once he was certain no outsider was tracking him, he slowly descended from the clouds and returned to the ground, alighting in a valley.

By now the Li and Miao clans could be said to have destroyed each other, yet Ahetai seemed in no hurry to seek out the surviving Li tribesmen. He examined the black staff in his hand carefully; a mysterious shamanic power drifted faintly within its black shaft, sending the blood coursing ever warmer through the veins of this man of Li.

He could even picture the future: himself holding the Bone Jade and the Black Staff, commanding all the southern lands. The Great Shaman, once so glorious, was merely what he himself would be tomorrow. As for the panicked tribesmen, there was no need to worry overmuch. That clan chief was bent on revenge, so let him go slaughter to his heart's content; otherwise, with that brute's temperament, he would only be an obstacle to Ahetai's own mastery of the Li clan.

Ahetai gave a cold smile and clutched the Bone Jade Black Staff tightly to his chest. At this moment he feared nothing. Even the demon lord who had transmitted power to him, he no longer held in his eyes. Though he knew himself far from that demon lord's match, he and the Great Shaman alike knew the origin and the plight of that mysterious demon lord: unless the five sacred artifacts of the five southern clans were gathered together, the demon lord could never revive and be reborn from the Demon-Suppressing Cave in the Ten Thousand Desolate Mountains.

To think that even that demon lord—so terrifying that all the southern lands trembled at his name—was now played between his fingers! Ahetai was so excited he could not contain himself, and at last he threw back his head and laughed aloud.

The sound echoed through the night sky, echoed through the valley.

"Hahahaha, hahahaha..."

In the midst of his joyous laughter, a light patter of applause suddenly rose from the darkness on the other side of the valley, and at the same time a voice came drifting over, low and thin and faint: "Formidable, formidable!"

Ahetai's body jolted; he spun swiftly to look, but saw only darkness, nothing clear enough to discern. He shouted loudly, "Who is it? Come out!"

In the darkness two balls of crimson flame suddenly kindled, each as large as a bushel, and then came a low panting sound, like the growl of some great beast, drifting out from the dark.

Ahetai's expression changed drastically.

But the two crimson fires did not move; they merely glared at Ahetai from the darkness. Instead, from in front of those crimson fires, a figure in black slowly emerged from the dark.

The man seemed almost to flow out of the darkness itself, his whole body wrapped in black from head to toe, leaving only his two eyes exposed, hollow and utterly unnerving. And his body was stiff; he was not walking but floating two feet above the ground, suspended in the air.

Ahetai's pupils contracted, his face all the more tense, as though he had seen a malevolent ghost.

The man in black said slowly, "Ahetai, you have indeed not failed the expectations of His Eminence the Beast Sovereign. You have taken both the Bone Jade and the Black Staff."

Involuntarily Ahetai clutched the Bone Jade Black Staff tighter; the man in black saw the gesture, and behind him, at the two crimson fires in the darkness, there seemed to come another furious roar.

The man in black raised his hand slightly, and the thing behind him in the dark quieted somewhat. Then he said slowly, "Ahetai, from your manner it seems you do not wish to keep the promise you made to His Eminence the Beast Sovereign and hand these two sacred artifacts over to us."