Chapter 93: The Mutant Demon Dragon

A vast swarm of bird-men surged toward us. Above the summit, a dense black mass hung a hundred meters overhead, so numerous that they blotted out the sun. I only felt gust after gust of chill wind sweeping past; it was the air churned up by their beating wings. I drew my thin outer garment tightly around me as the wind grew stronger, rushing down from above, and the fire below the cliff was fanned into an even fiercer blaze. It all felt strangely familiar, as though I had seen this scene somewhere before.

The silver-armored man who called himself Crimson stood in the center of the summit, looking up at the bird-men. Then, all at once, Crimson struck.

A fierce flame burst from his right hand. Even from five or six meters away, I could feel the searing heat. In an instant the fire swept through a wide mass of bird-men. Under such temperatures their feathers were instantly reduced to flying ash. One by one, the wingless bird-men tumbled from the sky into the inferno below. They struggled a few times and then fell still.

The remaining bird-men saw the situation turn against them and hurried upward, climbing to a higher altitude. Looking again, I saw that all of them had fled into the high air. The bird-men, each originally about half again as large as a normal human, now looked no bigger than wild pheasants. Seeing this, I let out a breath. So the bird-men were nothing much after all.

But matters were far from as simple as I had thought. Once the bird-men rose to a certain height, they launched their counterattack. Their feathers transformed into sharp arrows, raining down like a torrent. I did not know what sorcery they had used. Those light feathers now seemed as heavy as iron. Before long, the summit was packed with feathers of every size. Though I had protected everyone with a barrier in time, the feathers still broke through it, and the Nine-Tailed Fox’s arm was pierced.

I reinforced the barrier and tore off a strip of cloth, preparing to bandage the Nine-Tailed Fox’s wound, but Murong Xue stopped me. She took out a small bottle from her waist. I knew it contained medicinal powder. With this miracle healer here, why should I worry? I shifted my gaze back to Crimson, but when I turned around, I no longer saw him. The summit was already filled with feathers, and Crimson had vanished. What an odd man. If he was going to help, why not see it through? So I would have to clean up this mess myself.

I pushed the barrier’s power to the limit and said to Feather Realm, "You take care of the two of them. I’m going up to have a look."

Feather Realm nodded. The Nine-Tailed Fox glanced at me as if she had something to say. I met her eyes and signaled that I was fine. I did not know whether she understood, but I stepped straight out of the barrier and flew into the sky. As I rose, I had to dodge the bird-men’s feathers all the while. In one careless moment, I was hit too. I yanked the feather from my shoulder and was about to fight the bird-men to the death when I saw someone ahead.

The silver-armored man, who perhaps should now be called Crimson, stood facing the bird-men in midair. Countless feathers clattered and whistled toward him, yet he remained calm. And indeed, he had every right to be. The feathers stopped as if blocked by an invisible wall three meters in front of him. I could not stay calm. The bird-men were too many; we were already surrounded on all sides. I hurried over to Crimson’s side.

I said to him, "Thank you, Crimson. I thought you’d already left. There are too many of these bird-men. Maybe we should try negotiating with their leader."

Crimson smiled faintly. "I don’t think negotiation would do any good. If you want to try, I won’t stop you."

Hearing that, I knew negotiation was impossible. We had already killed so many bird-men—what was left to talk about? Trying to justify ourselves would only make things worse. Crimson unleashed another blast of blazing fire and wiped out a large cluster of bird-men. The rest scattered. Just as he was about to attack again, he suddenly froze and fixed a wary gaze on the sky in the distance. I followed his line of sight, but all I saw were a few cottony clouds. Nothing else.

That guy still had the leisure to admire the scenery. I formed a barrier around us both. The moment it was complete, the auspicious clouds in the distance rippled. From within the cotton clouds shot out a thing utterly black, black as ink. When I looked more closely, I realized it was the black dragon I had killed at Black Dragon Pool. It looked exactly the same. As it drew nearer, and I saw its eyes, I was certain of it: this was the demonic dragon I had killed with my own hands. It had come back to life.

Crimson grabbed me and rapidly retreated. After putting some distance between us and the bird-men, he set me down. The bird-men had already stopped attacking, because the demonic dragon had begun a massacre among them. Every bird-man that came near it was torn apart on the spot. The dragon devoured them piece by piece, while blood drifted down from the sky. After a long cry from within the bird-man ranks, the army of bird-men withdrew at once. Even the few who flew more slowly were swallowed into the dragon’s belly.

In a matter of moments, the bird-men had vanished completely, as if they had never come. Crimson and I stood in the void. He had also formed a barrier, though his was white, while mine was black. He said to me, "Don’t move. Look at that dragon’s eyes. It has mutated."

At his words, I studied it closely. The demonic dragon seemed unable to see us at all. After swallowing the last bird-man corpse, it glided back and forth before us, as if searching for something. One of its eye sockets was deeply sunken, while the other eye was tightly shut. The places where scales should have covered its body had become uneven masses of flesh. On its back I even saw a hole the size of a washbasin. Its spine and ribs were plainly visible.

"How could it end up like this?" I asked Crimson. I was certain he must know what had happened. His answer was simple.

"This demonic dragon was already dead. After being infected by the virus, it mutated."

When he finished speaking, he vanished with a whoosh. That fellow really was something, just disappearing like that. Since the bird-men problem had been dealt with, I should head back to the ground. This mutated demonic dragon was too unsettling to look at.

On the summit, Murong Xue was applying medicine to the Nine-Tailed Fox. When they saw me descend, the others looked up.

"Watch your back!" the three of them shouted in unison.

I shifted sideways at once, only feeling a fierce gust brush past my body and slam into the summit. The mountain itself was not large to begin with, and under the impact of the mutated demonic dragon, the summit began to shake violently. I hurried to pull Feather Realm along and called Murong Xue and the Nine-Tailed Fox to fly away from the peak. Perhaps the dragon had overexerted itself, for its huge head was driven deep into the mountain body, while the rest of it still struggled madly. Its thrashing grew more and more violent. At last, a crack appeared three meters below the summit. With a thunderous roar, the summit collapsed. The dragon and that enormous slab of mountain plunged into a sea of fire.