11 The Dark Side

Duan Jian was shocked at the reaction from the blue-haired girl and started to explain, "I lost my cultivation during the examination fight against a dumb and stupid puppet!"

The blue-haired girl stared down at the insignificant Duan Jian and remained motionless. Her hands loosed their grip which sent the bloody meat in her hands falling on the wooden table.

With a swift motion she stood up and pounded her fists against the table. Each strike sent the table into an uproar, shaking in fright. Balefire-red blood was oozing out from her distorted mouth like a merciless hunter who had devoured her prey raw.

With her mouth still wide open, food showing in plain view, she kept staring at him. Her eyes turned to a deeper shade of hell-red and her breathing became fast and ragged.

Under gritted teeth she coldly pressed the words out: "I. *BURPPPP~* EAT. YOU. BETTER!"

The smell of undigested food assaulted Duan Jian's nose, turning the air into a vile and sickly odor.

The girl's face turned hell-red, her blood-red eyes formed to crescent moons, and she seemed as if she was about to pounce at Duan Jian at any moment.

Duan Jian wasn't willing to wait another moment to be devoured by her alive and sprinted for his life again. It seemed to him that no matter where he lands, he has to run for his life.

Entering deeper into the haunted woods, trees flashed by his vision and casket-black crows followed his every move, crying in their horrifying voice.

Suddenly, a flash of white entered the scenery in front of him. Sprinting out from the dark woods, a big grassland stretched out before his eyes, covering a large space in his field of vision.

The grassland was nearly entirely covered by small flowers. They were ghost-white and drilled like teeth out from the ground, biting into the scenery and leaving nasty scars behind.

Duan Jian couldn't take it anymore and accepted his fate. He fell to his knees sobbing and cried out towards the non-existent black sky, "JUST TAKE ME ALREADY!"

Just at that moment, the earth started shaking rhythmically; small stone crumbles fell from the sky or rather the ceiling. It felt like a gigantic monster came rushing towards him.

Duan Jian bit his lip and fire-red blood spritzed out. He bore his fingernails into the brown soil and banged his head against the ground.

He had enough. He already experienced two types of terror: Gross-Out: The chewing and chomping of savages in the woods, gobbling meat and grinding on bone; thick blood oozing out from the meal and spritzing in all directions, dying the table into a magma-red colour.

Horror: The creeping forest of heart-dead trees with bladder-brown leaves, crumbling to death by the slightest touch; a hair-raising smell drifting through the forest, assaulting you with a gag-reflex.

So, why not the third too? He waited for the terror to come.

The vibration in the ground became heavier and heavier, shaking all ghostly flowers in the field. A deep and greasy voice pounced at his sorry ears. "WE EAT YOU BETTER!! YOU KNOW!" shouted it at him.

With grinding teeth, crunching and gnashing on the teeth's surface, Duan Jian turned around and shifted his gaze at the source of the voice.

A fat and tall figure was rushing towards him. Nothing could stand in front of it: Be it flowers, earth, or stones; everything was supressed and shattered into the ground. All beneath it was decimated into nothingness.

"That is it! I have enough!" said Duan Jian and stood up again. He got into a battle stance and screamed at Bao Bo, "I WON'T LET YOU!!"

Even though Duan Jian earlier said that he had no cultivation anymore, it was a bland lie. The moon has two sides: a heavenly bright side, showered by the holy light of the sun, and a shadowy dark side, never seeing the light.

What the puppet of the examination fight devoured was his cultivation from the bright side. He still had the one from the dark side. But he was never willing to use it because it was a double-edged sword.

Not thinking more about it and looking at his 500-pound doom drawing nearer, he rammed his hand into the wet soil, piercing it to its core. His veins turned to a bat-black colour and darkness seeped out from his being. His eyes became like a crescent moon and turned his gaze glacier-cold.

Retracting his soil-ridden hand from the earth, he drew a cauldron-black spear out from it, as if the earth itself gave birth to this weapon. Standing tall along his spear, his black spear reached taller than him.

Carnal-black darkness seeped from the spear into the decaying air, turning it into a realm of shadows and sinners. A black-lipped mouth appeared at the spear. It stretched its slimy, grey tongue out, sniggered, and whispered to him, "Kiri-shi-shi-shi! Five souls or one soul?"

Duan Jian already knew the procedure and answered devoid of emotions, "Five souls."

The slimy tongue licked its lips and faded away from the black spear. A golden laurel wreath twice the size of his head floated above his head. With the darkness seeping out from his spear and his body, it was fed to the laurel wreath.

"This is it!! YES!" he howled and clutched his spear tight, his hand creeping around its body. His grin stretched wide across his face, revealing his ghost-white teeth. He lowered his military hat and opened his soldiery jacket, letting it flicker in the wind.

The inhumanly fat Bao Bo was not a long distance away. He was still running, his layers of fat jumping like a hysterical monkey up and down. Beads of sweat, or was it grease and oil, showered his body in a sticky colour.

Duan Jian lifted his spear, pointed its death-sharp tip at Bao Bo, and sprinted like a tempest forward.