Chapter 228 — The Wish to Return Home
The Herdsman of the Wasteland · Page 1 of 4
Halfwit Monk and the others felt their scalps go numb. Even as they fled headlong, they saw the mountain shudder violently, countless stones whirling through the air; and out from among those stones drilled black tentacles, one after another — the root-feet of the Withered Silence Ridge Root Demon. The Nether Demon Cult had pinned her root-feet down beneath demon-suppressing black stone steles; and the many black steles by the lake and around the withered trees were what pinned down her head.
Now that the steles over her head had been toppled by Halfwit Monk and his companions, the root demon could bring her power to bear, and it was fearsome past all telling, setting the whole range of mountains trembling. As her strength went abroad, the steles that had pinned her root-feet flew up one after another and were shattered by her dreadful force.
"What common tree demon has strength like this? " Halfwit Monk blurted out.
"Did the Nether Demon Cult pin this tree demon down here on purpose, to do men harm?
" Suddenly several thick roots came coiling toward them, and hanging before each root were beautiful women, who giggled: "You want to leave?
You saved me, and I have yet to repay you.
Best stay, and become one flesh with me! " Qiu Yue flicked her sleeve, and countless insects flew out and hurled themselves at the roots. The insects swelled on the wind to a zhang and more in length, and fastening on the roots they gnawed with a crunching, grating sound — but every one of their sharp-toothed mouths was shattered, and they could not bite through at all.
Qiu Yue was startled. Then she saw that from the navels of the women hanging on the roots grew fine little rootlets that pierced one gu worm after another clean through, and in an instant nothing was left of the gu worms but empty shells, the flesh and blood within all gone. "The gu worms I raise can bite through even Yuan Soldiers," Qiu Yue cried, "and these roots are harder than Yuan Soldiers!
" One root came round behind them. Yuan Shan leapt up, sword pellet in hand, and stabbed as he sprang, running the woman on that root clean through; the blade spun and sheared off her head. The woman's head fell to the ground and at once withered into a lump of black charcoal shaped like a skull — but on the root, the headless woman grew herself a new head.
Yuan Shan was startled too.
He tried to cut the root in two, when suddenly another root stabbed at him like lightning and ran him through from behind, piercing his back and entering his body. Yuan Shan hastily urged his sword pellet, meaning to sever the root behind him; but all at once his body shriveled, and in an instant the flesh was gone from him, leaving only a skin.
The others had meant to go to his rescue; at the sight they fled in panic toward the mouth of the canyon. Behind them, above Withered Silence Ridge, numberless black tentacles waved without cease, and root after root seized hold of the peaks on either side and hauled her true body up from beneath the earth.
It was a monstrous thing, a vast tangle like a ball of thread, with countless roots trailing down beneath it. Its stirring was so violent that it roused the Xuanji ballistae on the mountains to either side.
The ballistae sensed the demon's aura, wound their own strings, and two enormously thick bolts of arrow-light came flying through the air and struck the Withered Silence Ridge Root Demon, which looked like nothing so much as a huge black ball. The demon gave a shrill, miserable scream, like numberless voices piled one atop another, and the sound set the surrounding mountains to avalanching without end.