Lost in thought, Nian Songyu and He Lingchuan ceased their barbed exchanges.
Perhaps luck had turned, for only a cup of tea's time later, another strange beast took the bait.
This creature had a bloated body like a hippopotamus, yet its limbs were fin-like, and its tail and neck were both exceptionally long. By comparison, its head was freakishly small.
Such a creature of low intellect would never let go once it took the hook, making it even easier to land than an earth dragon.
The only trouble was its sheer size; occupying a single walnut boat all by itself, its weight made the hull rock and tilt unsteadily.
Fortunately, the walnut boat was very close to the stone bridge. More than a hundred soldiers grabbed the towlines and hauled it onto the bridge by sheer force.
What followed was a scene of large-scale slaughter.
The men gathered buckets from the city's abandoned houses, bled the two beasts, and carried the blood into the temple bucket by bucket.
Enormous as cisterns, the beasts yielded copious amounts of thick, viscous blood that sent a sickening stench into the air.
Catching the scent nearby, He Lingchuan secretly hoped the Dafang Pot would not be too picky.
In front of the main hall, the pool water grew redder and redder.
Best of all, after pouring in more than thirty buckets of beast blood, the surface of the pool began to expand!
"It's working!" Overjoyed, Sun Fuping gripped the pool's rim so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "Keep going! Keep going!"
At last, after the final few buckets were emptied inside, the bloody water barely covered the entire basin floor, forming only a thin sheen.
Zeng Feixiong and his men set their buckets aside. "What now?"
"We wait!" Sun Fuping stared intently at the water. "Just wait!"
He Chunhua suddenly remarked, "The wind in the city stopped long ago."
At his reminder, everyone recalled that the omnipresent cold wind had indeed ceased. When had that happened?
The bright moon had retreated behind thick banks of clouds without anyone noticing, and the men all felt the city plunge into deeper gloom.
No sooner had He Chunhua spoken than a chain of small bubbles rose from the long-placid water, stirring faint ripples.
"There are holes underneath..."
Zeng Feixiong had barely asked when Sun Fuping hushed him, raising a hand to cut him off.
The vast square of Mitian Temple fell so dead silent that a dropped pin could be heard.
That in itself was abnormal.
Another string of small bubbles surfaced.
Sun Fuping lowered himself, leaning in for a closer look, when the water suddenly broke with a loud splash. Something leaped out, coming almost face-to-face with him!
The others caught only a blur of dark shadow, but that did not stop them from crying out in alarm.
Only Nian Songyu, He Chunhua, and a few others managed to get a clear look in that frantic instant. It was a wolflike monster with the head, limbs, and tail of a hound, yet its body was covered in coarse, chapped cracks resembling tree bark far more than animal hide. Its sunken eye sockets held no eyeballs, lit instead by points of crimson ghostfire!
The beast had emerged facing Sun Fuping directly, so it showed no hesitation in unhinging its jaws and lunging straight for his throat.
Its mouth could open a full hundred and twenty degrees, looking capable of swallowing a head whole. Given the proximity, Sun Fuping's head seemed forfeit in the blink of an eye to He Lingchuan.
Yet the National Preceptor proved his title, keeping his nerve in the face of peril. With a swift thrust, he jammed his staff right into the monster's face.
The beast head atop the staff parted its jaws, spewing out a brilliant ball of crimson fire with a loud whoosh.
The monster let out a shrill shriek of agony and vanished into thin air, utterly destroyed.
Nian Songyu started in surprise, then exclaimed with delight, "A resentful soul!"
The beast had possessed no physical form; it was purely a resentful soul.
People always assumed that resentful souls lurked within the shadows of the Panlong Desert to corrupt human minds, when the true culprits were Three Corpse Worms. This resentful soul was the first genuine article they had encountered since entering the Panlong Desert.
Its appearance thrilled Nian Songyu instead of unnerving him, for it meant they were on the right track!
Ashes dusted Sun Fuping's face, but before wiping them away, he bent down again to inspect the water.
He Lingchuan thought with wicked amusement that if the man leaned an inch lower, the next creature to surface could land right on his face.
By now, the entire pool was gurgling with bubbles, denser and more frequent.
It looked as though firewood burned beneath it, bringing the water close to a boil.
The spreading ripples reached the pool's edge without fading; instead, they strengthened as they rippled outward, eventually churning into rising waves.
Water crashed against the perimeter and surged back, agitating the pool even further.
Everyone's faces darkened.
If a single chain of bubbles heralded the emergence of one monster, then these dense, teeming bubbles meant...
Sun Fuping whipped around and roared at the crowd, "Take the Soul-Shielding Powder and kindle your life flames! Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick!"
Infused with true force, the shout boomed across the surroundings, deafening and plainly revealing his desperation.
The men sprang into action at once.
Fortunately, the hundred-plus soldiers who had taken part in the sand fishing had already swallowed the Soul-Shielding Powder; Sun Fuping, He Chunhua, and the rest merely needed to take theirs now.
The moment the little pill went down, Sun Fuping barked his instructions, "Hold your breath and stand by the pool's edge! Do not look back! These monsters are far harder to deal with than Three Corpse Worms!"
Those final words sent a chill through every heart.
Sun Fuping stressed once more, "Hold your breath! Hold it!"
No sooner had he spoken than the water exploded!
The scene resembled a volcanic eruption, the pool's surface serving as the crater, and the magma spewing forth was a countless horde of grotesque resentful souls!
Some resembled humans, some beasts, some plants, while others blended traits of all three, leaving living mortals unable to discern what they had once looked like.
Yet the souls burst out in such overwhelming numbers that no one had time to study individuals; all they could see was a magnificent plume of black smoke surging straight into the sky like volcanic ash, then scattering in every direction!
Most horrifying of all, each resentful soul opened its mouth and wailed, a high-pitched, piercing shriek soaked in agony and hatred.
Without needing a command, everyone covered their ears and clamped their mouths shut.
Yet the sound reverberated straight into their seas of consciousness, shaking their spirits and making their vision spin.
Most of the souls surged high into the sky, but a few circled twice above the main hall before sweeping back down!
No one dared draw even a sliver of breath.
National Preceptor Sun had not lied; these things seemed far more vicious and sinister than Three Corpse Worms.
With three tufts of life flame burning on each of them, the Soul-Shielding Powder did everything it could to mask their living aura.
Resentful souls wove through the crowd, but taking them for statues of clay and wood, they soon drifted away.
He Lingchuan looked up and saw that the circling wraiths blanketed the night sky, causing the weather to shift rapidly.
The wind rose.
Twenty breaths passed.
Forty breaths passed.
Thousands of souls erupted with every breath. In this short span, tens of thousands had poured forth, yet the souls continued to geyser upward without the slightest sign of slowing.
Outside Panlong City, the wind grew increasingly violent. One sand twister after another took shape, swelling from small funnels into colossal vortexes, one end reaching the heavens while the other swept the ground.
Between heaven and earth, nothing seemed to exist except wild sand and furious winds.
Though blinded by the swirling sand, the men rubbed their eyes and kept watching.
The wild sand season had accompanied most people of Blackwater City as they grew up, but how many had ever witnessed its true cause with their own eyes?
As time ticked on, the soldiers' faces turned redder and redder from holding their breath, swelling to the color of dark liver.
Chapter 40