High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1220: Chapter 282 Tree

”The young people of today really are...”

The silver-haired old lady, donning a wide-brimmed pointed wizard hat, floated in mid-air, gazing down at the struggling young witches below her. She paused, tapping her dragon-headed cane, ’really are’ lingered for a long time, but she never did find the right word.

In the end, she simply sighed, ”They really are audacious.”

”Weren’t you the same when you were young? Back then, you stole the headmaster’s keys, sneaked into the Black Prison to find someone, and the chaos you caused wasn’t any less than these youngsters,” the Yellow Flowered Cat commented from between the Black Cat’s ears, with an air of elderliness.

The silver-haired old lady shot the Yellow Flowered Cat a sidelong glance.

The head of her dragon-headed cane suddenly swelled, came to life, turned around, and let out a ferocious roar at the Yellow Flowered Cat, then slowly shrank back to its original size. The entire process was done in one fluid motion.

The Yellow Flowered Cat’s whiskers twitched, its eyes narrowed, its ears flattened, and its head slightly turned away from the direction of the roar.

The Black Cat too was startled by the dragon’s roar, and the blood and flesh he had barely managed to control, now intimidated by the dragon’s presence, seemed to freeze in the roar’s resonance, finally calming down. He felt he had regained control over his body.

Compared to the two cats, Satoguya’s reaction to the dragon’s roar was even more pronounced.

The bat-like ears atop its head instantly retracted and pressed back against its forehead; the golden eyes on its body took on a silver sheen amid the roar, and the golden hue solidified considerably, turning into pieces of amber.

The dragon’s roar was not yet over.

The Yellow Flowered Cat raised its paw and slashed the sky with a claw.

The earth rumbled, a brilliant sun tore through the ground, slowly rising; a trembling, broken moon escaped the shackles of toadback, returning to its heavenly position; with neither sun nor moon inverted, the small world of the Secret Realm suddenly stabilized a bit more.

The figure of Satoguya became even more ephemeral.

But this was not the end.

Almost at the same moment, the silver-haired old lady raised her hand to draw Jiang Yu’s Beretta Double-Barrel shotgun, which was strapped to his back, into her own hands. She pulled out the two longest dragon teeth from the mouth of the cane’s dragon head and stuffed them into the gun’s chamber.

She then took aim at Satoguya’s eyes and fired.

”Bang!” ”Bang!”

Two gunshot sounds, almost simultaneous, reached the Black Cat’s ears. Two dragon tooth bullets, wrapped in electric light, roared as if they were thunder itself, hurtling straight towards those yellow, bulbous eyes.

Just two tiny specks of light, yet they emitted a fierce aura of destruction, an aura Zheng Qing was very familiar with. Thomas had used a similar Thunder Curse during their encounter with a Pig Demon in the Great Ming Pavilion; last year, during Moon Hunting, a similar aura had appeared in the Hunting Ground.

”Yin Qilei!”

The Black Cat murmured to himself, and suddenly looked up into the sky.

Above the small world of the Secret Realm, where there had been nothing but empty sky, a mass of thick clouds had gathered at some unknown time, with thunder rolling within them, and electric flashes weaving through them. A breeze blew in from the void, languid and aimless, brushing past every living thing in the small world.

The Black Cat caught the scent of scorched air.

It was the smell of the air being ignited, the smell of thunder’s wrath. He instinctively clamped his mouth shut, and his ears flattened with a swish. If not for his paws still entangled by the tentacles of the huge toad in front of him, he would have covered his ears with them.

”Whew...”

A warm breeze brushed the Black Cat’s cheek.

The Black Cat did not know what the others were feeling, but he found his entire body enveloped in a state of tingling numbness. Silence pervaded the surroundings, and even the Secret Realm’s small world seemed to hold its breath.

Two points of electric light seized the attention of the entire world, seemingly slow but actually swift, descending toward the crouching monster.

Satoguya finally abandoned its ’divine lethargy’ state, its eyes wide open, belly drawn in, as its broad mouth suddenly expanded dramatically, instantaneously enveloping half of the world.

From within its mouth, there was nothing but pitch-black, akin to the deepest colors of the Starry Sky. There was no tongue, no esophagus, only a vast emptiness and darkness that made the heart shortcut and breath quicken. Zheng Qing faintly perceived that behind that darkness lay an infinite number of departed souls, shadowy and elusive, now brushing against this little world with that enormous maw.

In the next instant, the two points of electric light fell into the gaping mouth of Satoguya.

The darkness dissipated abruptly, and in the void, two strands of vitality appeared. Stimulated by these threads of life, the long-dead souls screamed, shedding their smoky soul-garb to become transparent and clean.

But from the depths of the darkness, endless lost souls seemed to surge forth, moment by moment, a massive quantity of darkness settled upon those points of life, and moment by moment, countless cleansed, transparent spirits broke free from the darkness.

Then, Satoguya closed its mouth.

Rumble sounds emanated from within, which with the passage of time, grew weaker and eventually inaudible.

”Burp...”

Its belly visibly swelled and then retracted. The Outer God belched heavily, reopened its mouth, and expelled a huge, transparent spiritual body. These were the soul fragments purified by vitality, now free from the corruption of the Outer God. To Satoguya, these clean and pure soul fragments were like poison.

So it spat them out.

A slender branch shot diagonally through, and hundreds of green leaves unfolded at once, catching the translucent soul fragments. In the blink of an eye, those fragments merged with the green leaves.

The branch slowly retracted.

But it had already caught the attention of all the Wizards present.

The branch had extended from the hand of Elena.

By the time the Black Cat took note of this fact, the Gypsy Witch had transformed into a bizarre little tree. It was not even a full three meters tall and was about a decimeter thick. The Witch’s legs had become broad tree roots, deeply rooted in the soil; her skirt had turned into dense air roots extending into the void, like sturdy ropes binding Korma’s body, holding her firmly in place, preventing her from being pulled into the plunging emptiness by the Power of the Pact.

The branches spread out in all directions, reminiscent of a Witch stretching out her arms and fingers. At the tip of each branch hung a piece of fruit, faintly resembling the Sun.

There was also a beauty like a snake, coiled around the trunk, her head drooping and eyes closed, her wine-red wavy hair cascading down one side.

The red glow in the Black Cat’s eyes intensified.

His figure uncontrollably grew bigger once again, and the Secret Realm’s small world began to groan under the strain. In the air, mottled cracks emerged, dense and numerous, like a shattered mirror.

”Bang!”

Two figures, one yellow and one black, tumbled through, breaking the threshold of the Secret Realm’s entrance and abruptly barging in. The yellow figure shuddered slightly before landing atop the Black Cat’s head, merging into one with the Yellow-Flowered Cat. The black figure staggered to its feet, shaking its head as if still unclear about what had just happened.

Why would a cat take issue with one for simply receiving offerings from believers?

And where was this place?

The Country of Cats?

What was the deal with that huge black cat?