Chapter 148 — Civil Strife
劍問蒼天 · Page 5 of 7
The others nodded slightly and scattered. Only the King of Hell remained in the air, gazing a few more times toward the source of the whistling. A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth; then he rose upward, vanished into the clouds, and was gone.
As the whistling grew louder and louder, the countless monsters surrounding the town all raised their heads and howled together. The various shrill sounds mingled with the stench of beasts and the faint smell of blood in the wind, raising gooseflesh on the skin.
In the dust there came a sudden rumbling, and the whistling stopped short. Light flashed in midair, and there—a huge beast in the shape of a fierce tiger leaped out from the dust. Seen from afar, the beast was tiger-shaped, and even on its brow there seemed faintly to be the character "king." Yet its body was immeasurably larger than an ordinary tiger, with sharp teeth and claws, and fur of many colors. Strangest of all was its tail, exceedingly long, seeming much longer than its body. Beside it, the fierce monsters around it were like kittens and puppies.
Mingli, hidden outside the town, frowned and murmured: "Chuwu! (Note 1)"
The town surrounded by the beasts was itself no more than a small, modest city. This beast demon, fully five or six zhang tall, standing before the city, had a tiger head that could almost reach above the walls. A heavy stench of blood came on the wind; the men on the wall were either frightened out of their wits or fled for their lives.
Chuwu gave two low growls, a savage light shifting in its eyes. Suddenly it let out a shrill cry, raised its thick foreleg, and smashed it straight down upon the city gate. Its sharp tiger claws pierced easily through the thick wooden gate. The common folk behind the gate, straining desperately to hold it shut, had not even realized what was happening before several were run through by the enormous claws; the rest, in utter terror, scattered and fled.
Chuwu roared loudly, its claws smashing down again and again. With several great booms, the broken gate collapsed. In an instant the whole city was filled with weeping, and outside the walls excited roars rose as well; countless beasts poured in, and in a twinkling it was a storm of blood and gore.
Chuwu had opened the gate for the other monsters, but did not enter itself to slaughter. It seemed to disdain such work. And at this moment it seemed to have noticed something: its tiger head turned, its huge body slowly twisting around, its nose sniffing constantly at the air as though trying to confirm something.
Just as Chuwu hesitated and searched, there came a great rumbling boom from the city wall before it. A section of the wall burst violently open, and Daoist Cang Yan broke through the gap, appearing directly before Chuwu. A yellow sword-gleam in his hand struck Chuwu's chest with the speed of thunder before the ear could cover itself.
Chuwu let out an earth-shaking roar, its whole enormous tiger body hurtling backward. But Daoist Cang Yan was, after all, a figure of many years' renown, a disciple of Qingyun, the foremost sect in the world today; his cultivation was no ordinary thing. Though Chuwu flew backward, there came a sound like tearing silk, and a great wound more than four chi long was opened across its chest.
Had it been an ordinary monster, such a wound would have killed it on the spot. But Chuwu was plainly no ordinary monster. As one of the thirteen beasts under the Beast Demon, its vitality and demonic arts far surpassed those of other common monsters. Though blood poured from its chest like a spring, Chuwu did not even glance at it; with a furious roar it pounced back in an instant, its speed and movement scarcely slower than before the wound.