Chapter 102 — Little Grey
劍問蒼天 · Page 7 of 9
By now the struggle between the Yellow Bird and the Blackwater Mystic Serpent had reached a fever pitch. The serpent's aim was clear—to seize that small cup of spirit medicine—but the Yellow Bird would never suffer it to touch the prize, and so it no longer took to the air but perched upon the trunk; the two giant beasts circled the tiny wooden cup, snapping and pecking, hissing and roaring without end, yet for the moment, each held within the other's sphere of power, neither could stoop low enough to reach the medicine.
Xiao Hui, hidden beneath the wooden platform, was frightened at first, but by degrees it found that the two great creatures were only fighting desperately overhead and never came down, so it quietly poked its head out to watch. And in that one glance it saw that the screen of light which had shrouded the wooden cup had vanished along with the collapse of the Heaven Emperor's Treasure House.
Xiao Hui crept slowly up onto the wooden platform and, raising its head, looked upward: high in the air the serpent's head and the bird's head thrust and pecked, battling with abandon, and from time to time huge scales and feathers drifted down like rain.
The monkey scratched its head, blinked its eyes, and looked down; there beside it in the wooden cup the liquid lay like water, mirroring its own shape, and a single small stone floated upon the surface, somehow not sinking, translucent and clear—what it was, none could say.
It stared at the wooden cup a few moments, then suddenly flopped over it, thrust its head into the cup, and began gulping, glug, glug.
Glug, glug, glug glug...
The Blackwater Mystic Serpent and the Yellow Bird, which a moment ago had been fighting to the death, the two giant beasts whose battle a moment ago had shaken heaven and earth and changed the color of the winds and clouds—suddenly both seemed frozen stiff.
Glug, glug, glug glug...
This thin, tiny sound was utterly negligible amid countless dreadful crashes, yet for some reason, all at once everything in heaven and earth fell still, leaving only this somewhat comical sound of a monkey drinking water.
The cup was small, holding no more than half a cup of liquid, and the monkey Xiao Hui quickly drained it; then it raised its head and glanced about. High in the air, the Blackwater Mystic Serpent looked down, seeming not yet to have grasped what had happened, then raised its head to look at its sworn foe the Yellow Bird across from it; and the Yellow Bird, in almost identical fashion, looked at Xiao Hui, then at the Blackwater Mystic Serpent.
...
Tsk, tsk.
Suddenly there came another odd sound; the Blackwater Mystic Serpent and the Yellow Bird looked down at once, and saw only that Xiao Hui had stuck out its tongue and smacked its lips twice, then shook its monkey head—plainly the water in the cup had not tasted good at all, far inferior to the delicacies its master had once cooked in the kitchen on Dazhu Peak of Canglan Mountain; Xiao Hui was most dissatisfied. Then its monkey eyes turned, and it saw that though the water in the cup was gone, there remained a small, glimmering stone lying quietly in the wooden cup; it simply picked that up too, tossed it lightly into the air, opened its mouth, and—ahm—swallowed it down in one gulp, like a human eating a peanut.
...
In the distance, Facheng and the others broke out in a sweat!
Suddenly, with a roar and a shrill cry, the Blackwater Mystic Serpent and the Yellow Bird charged down in a rage together, serpent head and bird beak smashing toward this poor little monkey; Xiao Hui turned pale with fright—even the fur on its head stood on end—but there was nowhere to flee, so by instinct it flattened itself face-down on the wooden platform and clutched its head with both hands.