fantasy novels Chapter 975: Play the Music
Chapter 975: Play the Music
Chapter 975: Play the Music
Dawn would soon come to the Forbidden Sea, but right now it was still night. Darkness covered everything, like a hidden god sending godly power out. The water was black, as was the sky. In the end, it was hard to tell if that god was overhead or under the surface of the water. Was the color of the sea invading the sky, or was the sky crushing down into the sea?
In the end, it didn’t matter to the various species that inhabited the Forbidden Sea. Day and night were the same to them.
On the surface of the black water, boats could be seen bobbing up and down. In the sky, birds soared through the darkness hunting for food.
And on the seafloor... the severed hand was moving at top speed. Occasionally, it was clearly visible, and occasionally it would become a blur. Whenever that transition occurred, it was when the hand was teleporting a great distance. Any sea beasts it encountered would wither in an instant as their godliness and life force was absorbed like nutrients by the hand, lending it additional speed.
Additionally, everywhere it went, everything went silent. All sound was suppressed by its godly authority. It knew that though sound was its own weapon, it was also the weapon of its pursuer.
Unfortunately... no matter how much it accelerated, that gruish pursuer who could take away sound was always there. No efforts to shake him amounted to anything. And the distance between the two of them was decreasing. That was because Xu Qing wasn’t just using the godly authority of sound to boost his speed.Nôv(el)B\\jnn
Misfortune could aid him as well, plus the violet moon. In fact... the mutagen in the Forbidden Sea itself was an aid to Xu Qing, at least to a certain extent. His fleshly body was terrifyingly shocking.
Therefore... after another incense stick’s worth of time passed, the sea water around the severed hand suddenly filled with vines made of water. The vines swept out noiselessly to block the hand’s path forward, and its path of retreat. The hand turned to flee in a different direction, but the water vines shifted to block that route as well. In the blink of an eye, every path was obstructed. Endless vines made of water appeared, encircling the severed hand and fusing with each other.
The hand tried to break free, but there was no end to the vines, and eventually it had to stop moving. As a result, it was quickly surrounded by so many vines of water that it became like a cocoon on the seafloor.
A sealing.
That only lasted for a few breaths of time before the hand finally managed to break free. The vine cocoon collapsed, and a rumbling sound echoed out for the first time during the chase. The boom only lasted for a moment before the hand took the sound away. Unfortunately, it was too late.
Almost as soon as the rumbling occurred, Xu Qing stepped out of the sound in bizarre fashion to stand right in front of the severed hand.
The sageheaven god vine emerged from the vines of water, sending out emotional fluctuations to indicate that it had succeeded. Then it became another host of water vines that sealed the hand. Little Shadow wasn’t willing to fall behind, so it spread out to cover the seafloor in all directions. The poison of Xu Qing’s god curse then emerged, making the seawater even blacker than before.
Having accomplished these things, Xu Qing looked at the hand with gleaming eyes. This hand was critical to his goal of calling to the dragon chariot.
Stepping forward, he stomped his foot onto the hand. As he did, the hand’s eye flashed with red light, and ghostly figures flew out into the open. Once again, the howl of evil ghosts echoed out. At any moment, deadly music would erupt.
“I’m the only one allowed to make any sound here,” Xu Qing said calmly. The moment he spoke the words, the howling of the ghosts stopped. The sound had been taken away and crushed.
The severed hand shivered. Then its eye became even redder than before, and a teardrop of blood emerged from it. Terrifying might pulsed off it as it shot toward Xu Qing like an arrow. The teardrop caused the water to boil around it as it bore down on him with venom, madness, and boundless hatred.
Xu Qing shimmered with light and prepared to unleash immortal light. But then his eyes glittered. Dispelling the light, he advanced, allowing the red teardrop to slam into him. It made no sound.
Xu Qing shivered as a stabbing sensation filled him. But nothing else happened. Nothing short of an Imperial Sovereign could do anything to shake his fleshly body, or make him feel like his soul and body were being separated.
He lifted his foot and again stomped down onto the severed hand. He let the red light surge, and allowed the evil ghosts to appear around him. He even let the hand perform an incantation gesture with its fingers.
Clenching his right hand into a fist, he launched a fist strike. The fist seemed Undying, but the reality was that Xu Qing had altered it. By adding Within the Nine Springs, which Master Seventh had taught him, it made the blow even more of a combination of illusory and corporeal. As before, there was no sound.[1]
The hand tumbled backward. The reality was that its battle prowess wasn’t on the same level as its sound-manipulation powers. Using Natural Sounds Welcome the Moon to summon the rotting moon was the most formidable thing it could do.
Maybe if Xu Qing didn’t have the godly authority of sound, then facing this gruish severed hand would have been very challenging, and would have required much more brute force. But right now... the hand was like a toothless snake. It was being forced to use methods it wasn’t skilled at to engage in combat.
It was easy to predict who would win and who would lose. After enough time passed for an incense stick to burn, Xu Qing’s powerful fleshly body and sound-seizing abilities overwhelmed anything the severed hand could produce. He just kept advancing and launching blows.
***
The breathing echoed into the inner sea.
Xu Qing sat cross-legged on the seafloor, meditating. In front of him was the severed hand embodied as the musician, still playing Natural Sounds Welcome the Moon. The music was elegant and soul-stirring.
As Xu Qing listened, he could sense that his godly authority of sound was more dazzling than ever. At the same time, he felt a sensation of regret within the music as the rotting moon faded away.
Time passed. In the blink of an eye, more than half a month went by.
During those twenty days, Xu Qing remained in place on the seafloor. Natural Sounds Welcome the Moon didn’t play continuously. Instead, the music drifted out every day when the sun set. It happened over and over again.
Eventually, Xu Qing could sense that the water was changing. It was colder than before, and the currents were stronger. It seemed like some colossal entity was approaching. When that happened, he knew that he had succeeded. The bronze dragon chariot was approaching from some unknown direction.
Xu Qing kept waiting patiently.
In contrast, Little Shadow was getting very anxious. When the god vine showed up, it sensed danger. When the broken hand showed up, that sensation grew more intense. Therefore, it took the initiative to emit some crunching sounds during the daytime whenever Natural Sounds Welcome the Moon wasn’t playing.
Seven more days passed.
***
As the temperature dropped and the waves grew bigger, organizations that operated in the area could sense that something was happening. For safety’s sake, most of them refrained from going out onto the open sea.
And yet... there are some types of danger that will come whether or not you try to avoid them....
There was a species called the Seaspirits who lived on a specific island in the Forbidden Sea. They had a population of only a few thousand, which meant that they had no other option than to be a subsidiary species to one of the larger species on one of the larger islands. At the moment, the fire of catastrophe was burning on their island.
The fire was red. Blood stained the ancestral land of their species. Corpses of their species were piled everywhere. They included men and women, old and young. There were even newborn infants among them. All were dead.
The son of Floating Fiend from the Vivifiend holy land sat on a stone hut, enjoying the scent of blood in the air.
“Smells lovely,” he said.
His nine dao protectors were currently extracting the hearts from all the corpses. Seaspirit hearts came in the form of a type of crystal. The Vivifiends had marked that crystal as an excellent material, and a few thousand would be worth quite a hefty sum. Before long, the crystals had all been collected. Fire raged, and the entire area crumbled into ash. No evidence was left behind.
Floating Fiend’s son stood, took out a map to check where the next set of materials could be obtained. That was when his palm suddenly flickered. He looked at it, and his eyes flashed aggressively, all while a smile broke out on his face.
“That fast? I already found the killer? Well, let’s go take a look. I’m curious what he looks like.”
Floating Fiend’s son smiled, stood, and headed over the horizon. His nine dao protectors followed wordlessly.
The wind grew stronger.
1. Xu Qing got Within the Nine Springs in chapter 217. It was previously mentioned in chapter 809, but before then, it hadn’t been used since chapter 417. ☜
2. The word spoken here is an imperial form of address, indicating that both the speaker and the person being spoken to, the brother, are members of the imperial family. He could be a prince or an actual emperor, that much is not clear just from the form of address. In the ‘imperial capital’ arc, the imperial family members would often address each other in this manner. ☜