劍問蒼天 - 第157章 秘密 - 翰墨軒

Above the gloomy house the ghost fire burned cold, its green light shining faintly down, and amid the dancing white bones Ming Li's figure too seemed gradually to take on a strange, grim air. Yet no matter what, to this point Mr. Ghost still had no way to deal with Ming Li. From within the coffin came a cold snort in Mr. Ghost's voice.

Suddenly the ghost fire in midair blazed bright, and the two giant bone arms cavorting in pursuit jerked to a halt; then came what seemed a mournful cry, and with a grating "crack-crack-crack-crack" the two great bone arms were split from top to bottom by countless fissures, and in an instant were shattered into numberless fragments, their edges razor-sharp, like a rain of bone filling the sky, or a swarm of man-eating bees, sweeping down upon Ming Li.

Zhou Yixuan and the other two went pale, and Xiaowan cried out in alarm. In that tiny gloomy house two giant arms had already been hard enough to evade; now that they had become a sky full of shattered bone, dense beyond counting, how could anyone dodge them?

Ming Li's face was cold as frost as he stared at the rain of bone. At the moment the fragments seemed about to reach him, he suddenly plunged at high speed from midair straight for the ground—so swift his figure was nearly a flash of lightning. The countless bone shards in midair checked abruptly; as though sentient, they gave a shrill cry in the air, arrested their momentum dead, bent about in midair, and gave chase.

In the blink of an eye Ming Li had reached the floor, but before his body had steadied he struck the ground with one hand, and his whole body went skimming low across the floor—and the direction he flew was precisely toward the coffin where Mr. Ghost was.

The ghost fire in midair quivered, then came smashing down like lightning, while behind him the countless bone shards came shrieking in pursuit like the wind. The gale set the whole room shuddering; Ming Li's clothes snapped and cracked in the wind. Yet at this moment, with a barrier before him and pursuers behind, he suddenly hurled forth the treasure in his hand—the Soul-Devouring Black Staff. With tremendous force, and driven by some uncanny power within, the Blood-Devouring Bead at the staff's tip swirled with dark red, every thread and fleck of blood-light kindling one by one—the very image of demonic power at its height.

Only, the direction the Soul-Devourer flew was straight toward the corner where Zhou Yixuan and the other two were hidden. Before Zhou Yixuan, Xiaowan, and Wild Wolf Daoist could react, they saw a streak of black light come rushing at them; before it even drew near, the air around them had turned deathly cold and strange, and a nameless demonic force seemed to tug at the very essence and blood within their bodies like a fiend in midair, as though it would burst out of their flesh.

In an instant the Soul-Devourer was upon them—thunk—and buried itself in the wall beside Zhou Yixuan's head, sinking in almost completely.

Zhou Yixuan turned ashen with fright, so shaken he even forgot to curse Ming Li. In a flash he felt a chill run from the top of his head down to his feet; that black staff beside his ear seemed to have invisible arms, trying to drag him over to it. Terror seized his heart; he strained to shift his body aside, and only then managed to gasp for breath.

And at that moment the bone shards that had filled the air and the orb of ghost fire, which had been surging like a landslide and a tidal wave, suddenly checked dead and hung凝固 in midair. A moment later, from within the wall came a faint grunt of pain, and a human-shaped clod of earth flew whole and complete out of the wall and lunged at Ming Li, while the countless bone shards, as though drained of their power, fell clattering to the ground—only the ghost fire, which seemed to burn a shade brighter still, flew back to hover above the clod.