Chapter 323 — The Root-Tendril Monster Attacks

Shen Mu was briefly taken aback. "A lot of girls bathing?

What kind of pleasure is there to be had in a desolate mountain wilderness like this. . .

wait.

I have run into girls bathing in a desolate wilderness before!

" A memory struck him all at once, and he could not help shuddering. He muttered, "It can't be that old monster, can it?

No, impossible.

It could never have survived so long in the ruins. I am simply being suspicious!

Still, to be safe, we had better take the long way around.

" Suddenly a voice rang out from behind them, clear and ringing: "Fellow Daoist, life is long, and where in it shall we not meet again? " Shen Mu turned and looked.

Yu Bochuan was leading a great host of True Heaven Palace adepts charging toward them, and fast. As those True Heaven Palace adepts raced along, they worked their arts, and one great tree after another tore itself up from the ground and became tree giants, striding forward at the same headlong run. At the same time the earth rumbled and shook, rocks flew, stones rolled swiftly onward and massed together into stone giants.

Even the hill beneath Shen Mu's feet was trembling, dirt sifting down with a rustle, and the boulders within it gathered higher and higher as a hill giant slowly climbed to its feet. "Looks like there is nothing for it but to fight our way through!

Let us hope it is not that old monster!

" Shen Mu gave the order, and the dragon qilin charged straight ahead. The hill beneath their feet had already risen; fire-clouds churned beneath the qilin's hooves as it ran along the arm of the hill giant.

The vast hill giant turned and swung its other arm down at them.

The dragon qilin sprang into the air, and behind it came a crash like the sky collapsing and the earth splitting apart: the hill giant's two arms had struck each other, and both snapped off, sending countless stones flying in all directions!

Shen Mu looked back.

The stones had no sooner struck the ground than they went rolling along with a rumble, as though they had grown legs of their own, tumbling ceaselessly back onto the hill giant's body, and before long the two arms had grown out again.

"Palace Master, the supreme arts of your True Heaven Palace are truly extraordinary! " Shen Mu praised from the bottom of his heart.

Xiong Xiyu marshalled her remaining dharma power, hooked a hand behind her and lifted; at once a shrill, wretched screaming rose from within the hill giant, and streaks of blue light flew out from the giant body formed of that hill, scattering into smoke and vanishing on the wind. The hill giant collapsed on the instant, its huge boulders rolling down until it was a hill once more.

"That spell is remarkable!

" Shen Mu's eyes lit up.

"Will you teach it to me? " Xiong Xiyu hesitated a moment, then nodded. "You are the benefactor of my daughter and me.

If you wish to learn it, of course I will pour out everything I have. " Shen Mu smiled. "I will not take it for nothing.

The True Heaven Palace is a holy land of the Western Lands, so I too will give you a cultivation method at the level of a holy land's foundational teaching in exchange. But first, let us leave this place! " The dragon qilin raced on, the two white bats circling round and round them, sending out sonic waves from time to time that knocked the True Heaven Palace masters pursuing them out of the air.

The bats urged, "Long Pang, hurry, hurry!

" "Be quiet! " the dragon qilin roared in fury.

"I am already going all out!

" Fire suddenly blazed fierce within its body; its flesh grew larger and larger, becoming a colossal beast over forty zhang long. Once it broke into a gallop it was like wind and lightning, and in a few breaths it had crossed the peaks ahead and arrived at the lake the white bats had spoken of, the one where so many girls were bathing.

The lake was exceedingly clear, like a transparent gem set among the mountains; from the surface one could see the lakebed ten zhang and more below. There were no water plants in the lake, and no swimming fish either; it was clean beyond imagining.

Yet on the shore, trees stood in neat rows all around the great lake; on several of them hung pink and white garments, and trousers and skirts as well.

By the water's edge lay a number of embroidered shoes, pink-soled, with peonies stitched upon the toes, so vivid they seemed ready to drip.

From the lake came the laughter of women, the sound of splashing, and a song tender and lovely beyond words, like a holy land of the mortal world. The dragon qilin, bursting in uninvited, was quite startled.

At heart it could not bear to shatter the tranquility of the place, and it bellowed in a loud voice, "Ladies in the lake, get to shore at once! " "Eek! " The girls in the lake saw this enormous creature intrude and cried out one after another.

One girl, plucking up her courage, raised a pale arm and tittered, "Big fellow, come down and play! " Shen Mu looked at the women in the lake, his face ashen, and hurriedly urged, "Long Pang, it really is the old demon of Withered Ridge!

Go, go, go around! " It was not Yu Bochuan and the others he feared, but that root demon of Withered Ridge, the old monster the Heavenly Sage Cult had suppressed there!

"The old demon of Withered Ridge? " The dragon qilin was startled, every scale on its body standing on end with a shh-shh-shh, nearly piercing through Xiong Qi'er's feet.

It hurried around the lake, running for all it was worth, its speed rising in a straight line, far outstripping what it had been before!

And behind them the mountain ridge was rumbling and shaking, its rock bursting and flying, one boulder after another tumbling ceaselessly down the slope; plainly Yu Bochuan and the True Heaven Palace masters were working their divine powers, trying to turn that great mountain into a mountain giant to attack them!

This mountain stood far taller than the other hills, its peak graceful and elegant, and if it became a mountain giant, a single stride would carry it six or seven li, and it would catch them with ease!

Just then that graceful mountain collapsed all at once, its rock shattering, and out of the mountain's body rolled countless pale bones, numberless skeletons both human and beast, heaped into a mountain! So many bones had been buried within that mountain, hollowing it out almost entirely to store them, that Yu Bochuan and the others behind could not help but be stunned.

"What thing ate so many people and strange beasts? " Yu Bochuan had no time to ponder further. He said sternly, "The bones have spirits!

Work the secret art and slay Nai Kui!

" The crowd worked their arts, and the countless bones scuttled swiftly into place, assembling into a white-bone giant tall as a mountain, which strode into the lake. Yu Bochuan and the others soared into the air and alighted upon this white-bone giant. The women in the lake could not dodge in time; several were crushed underfoot. Riding the white-bone giant, Yu Bochuan and his people walked across the lake in pursuit of the dragon qilin racing along the shore. Just then the lake waters suddenly churned, and hundreds of women flew up out of the lake into the sky, each trailing behind her a dark, heavy tentacle, crying out with one voice, shrilly: "Heavenly Sage Cult Master!

" Pa-pa-pa — The great crashes came without pause. The white-bone giant beneath Yu Bochuan's feet was severed, twined round by one dark tentacle after another and squeezed tight; the giant burst apart, and countless bone fragments shot wildly in every direction.