Chapter 23
IT WAS PITCH-BLACK in the halls of the Yanluo Courts. Zhu Hong, unable to see a thing, wandered through the darkness, completely lost. The only trace of light came from the branch of the Great Divine Tree that Shen Wei had given her. Its soft white light formed an invisible shield around her, completely separating her from both the fearsome gui and the Chaos that threatened to swallow everything. The tender buds seemed even greener than before.
From behind her, someone urgently called her name. Zhu Hong turned to see Fourth Uncle tucked into a crack in Yanluo Courts, hidden carefully beneath a huge, familiar-looking scale—the Fuxi Scale, one of their tribe’s sacred objects.
It seemed he was injured badly enough that he was no longer able to maintain his human form. A glimpse of vivid green beneath him betrayed the presence of his tail.
Upon seeing her, Fourth Uncle addressed Zhu Hong sternly. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you go with the Guardian when he left? Doesn’t your precious little life matter to you?!”
He assessed the situation outside and emerged from the crack just long enough to coil his long tail around Zhu Hong and pull her back into it with him. Traces of blood lingered around his mouth. Pale with anger as he faced her, he snapped, “No other child in the whole tribe is as simpleminded as you! Don’t you understand what danger is, you stupid girl? Don’t you know to run?”
“I-I was worried about you…” Zhu Hong’s voice faltered.
Fourth Uncle interrupted her in a chilly voice. “I don’t need some little yao who can’t even transform properly to worry about me.”
As he spoke, he checked Zhu Hong over carefully, only to find that she didn’t have so much as a scratch on her. Confused but relieved, he finally said, “I see luck was with you.”
Zhu Hong held up the branch she was carrying. “The Soul-Executing Emissary gave this to me.”
Fourth Uncle froze, then took the branch and examined it. “This… This is from the Great Divine Tree? Why would he give such a thing to just anyone? What did he say to you?”
“He told me to plant it somewhere nice if both buds survived.”
Hearing that, Fourth Uncle’s expression changed. “That sounds as though he’s leaving his last words. The Great Seal is on the verge of breaking… Unless it already has?”
When Zhu Hong only gave him a confused glance, Fourth Uncle rapped lightly on her head and handed the branch back. “Fine, fine. Dumb people have dumb luck. Stow it safely away. It could wind up saving your life.”
Zhu Hong nodded at once, then made a small sound of surprise. She held the branch up in front of his face. “Fourth Uncle, quick, look!”
At the bottom of the branch, which was about two fingers thick, some of the dry bark had been pushed aside to reveal a spot of bright, fresh green. The branch had grown a third bud!
“What’s happening?” Zhu Hong gasped. “Didn’t Shen Wei say that in tens of thousands of years, it only ever grew two buds?”
“The name ‘Shen Wei’ is not yours to speak.” Fourth Uncle glared at her before continuing. “The Divine Tree atop Kunlun Mountain is as old as the Heavens and Earth. It’s the beginning of all living things. Back when Nüwa borrowed a branch from the Great Divine Tree to guard the entrance of the Place of Great Disrespect, there was murder in her heart, so the tree she planted was dead before it could even live. I wonder if this branch sprouting a new bud out of nowhere means that someone’s had a change of heart.”
Despite being in the most dangerous place, the two snakes were relatively safe. Guo Changcheng and Chu Shuzhi, on the other hand, were still clinging to life up on the bridge.
Seeing Guo Changcheng’s terrified expression, Chu Shuzhi fired his arrow without stopping to see what was behind him. The flying talisman summoned a bolt of lightning that came crashing down from the sky, piercing the gui beside Guo Changcheng. Then Chu Shuzhi spun around, whipping up a great curtain of rain with his arm, which was once again a bluish gray. The rainwater formed into a giant skull, about three meters in width, that nosedived to shield him.
Only then did Chu Shuzhi see what was behind him: the red-eyed monstrous youth who’d disguised himself in human skin and been revealed as a high-level gui. The “youth”—no, the gui—had swelled in size now, having absorbed the Chaos that had leaked from the cracks in the ground.
There had only ever been two Kings of the Gui. One had perished by blowing himself up while the other was hindered by Kunlun’s divine tendon and Shennong’s oath, becoming something that was not quite a god. The position was now vacant, and every high-level gui was frantic with the desire to claim it for their own.
With the Seal shattered, all the high-level gui were even more powerful than before. This one blocked Chu Shuzhi’s giant skull with a raised arm; a pinch of his fingers shattered it back into raindrops that splashed everywhere. An immense force struck Chu Shuzhi in the chest, sending his scrawny body flying right off the bridge. He began to fall toward the distant ground below.
Guo Changcheng didn’t stop to think. With no idea where he found the courage to act, he climbed over the railing and launched himself off the bridge toward Chu Shuzhi, as if committing suicide. The fanny pack he’d been clutching to his chest was left behind. The soul bottles it held all rolled out, scattering over the bridge’s surface.