Chapter Eighty-Five: You’re the Real Glutton

But just as Thunderbolt's fist was about to collide head-on with the blazing light, a thunderous roar suddenly erupted from the sea.

The cry carried irritation, delight, and even a trace of bewilderment. As it rang out, the already frozen surface of the ocean exploded with a deafening blast. Ice shards, mixed with grains of sea sand, whirled through the air, glittering beneath the golden sunlight in a dazzling storm of brilliance.

Cloudfelt only saw a flash before a dark shape seemed to break free of the boundaries of time and space, appearing before Thunderbolt in an instant and smashing fiercely into the white light.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Within the succession of earthshaking detonations, shockwaves nearly visible to the naked eye, carrying fragments of sea ice, swept violently outward in all directions. Thunderbolt was the first to bear the impact and nearly lost his footing. Yet this was undoubtedly the perfect chance to escape. He stamped hard, then borrowed the force of the shockwave and hurled himself away with it.

But the blast was simply too powerful. Even after retreating, Thunderbolt could not fully dissipate its force. He was thrown dozens of meters away before crashing heavily to the ground.

Fortunately, his body was extraordinarily tough, and he suffered no real injury. The others were not so lucky. All seven were blasted more than a hundred meters back, each spitting a mouthful of blood before hitting the ground and falling still.

Thunderbolt sprang up with a carp flip, staring tensely ahead.

He was not unfamiliar with that roar. Before the great heavenly tribulation of his Nascent Soul completion had descended, that same voice had appeared once before. But then, for some unknown reason, it had suddenly gone quiet. And now it had reappeared out of nowhere. What exactly was it?

He knew his companions were all injured, but this was no time to worry about that. Already there was the inexplicable threat of divine punishment bearing down on him, and now another uninvited guest had arrived. Judging by the scene, this newcomer was formidable as well. If it was an ally, that would be one thing; but if it had come in hostility...

Dozens of meters away, the collision was still raging. The overwhelmingly oppressive white light kept striking down from the sky, yet for reasons unknown it seemed to smash into something each time and rebound in vain. The ice fragments in the air had already become a swirling cloud of powder, whirling through the sky. Even with Thunderbolt's keen ears and sharp eyes, he could not make out the slightest thing at the center.

Quietly, he summoned his divine sense and carefully sent it through the snowy mist, hoping to discover what was happening. But the moment his awareness entered the core of the fog, that same deeply displeased roar sounded again.

The cry that shook heaven and earth rang out, and in the next instant the white light in the sky seemed to be forcibly snapped in two by something. An odd ripple passed through the void, and the light that had moments ago seemed boundless and irresistible vanished in an instant.

His divine sense collided hard with something utterly inexplicable. A stabbing pain surged into his sea of consciousness, and Thunderbolt grunted, retreating several steps before the pain and nausea finally subsided.

But it was precisely that fleeting instant of contact that allowed him to glimpse the center of the snowy mist.

What he saw was so unbelievable that his eyes nearly popped out.

A mouth.

Yes, Thunderbolt was certain he had not misseen it. He had truly, unmistakably seen a mouth.

A blood-red mouth.

A gaping maw a full yard across.

Even more unbelievable was the fact that this mouth was actually eating something. And what it was eating was none other than the white light descending from the heavens.

In front of that mouth, the white brilliance no longer seemed like a terrifying divine punishment at all, but like the most exquisite delicacy under heaven. The mouth opened wide, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of the white light that crashed against it. Whenever a little of it splashed or escaped, the mouth would instantly shift shape, snapping it up with a swift gulp.

More bizarre still, the mouth was not picky in the least. It swallowed everything without distinction, not only devouring the white radiance but even taking in the snowlike mist that swirled through the air. Its movements were so quick that it darted through the fog in all directions, leaving afterimages behind.

The moment Thunderbolt's divine sense collided with that mouth, he even felt that it was trying to swallow his awareness whole. If his divine sense had not retreated fast enough, it would surely have been doomed.

And just as the white light dispersed and his awareness hurried back into his painful sea of consciousness, Thunderbolt could almost distinctly "see" that mouth puff out a bubble and give a contented belch.

"What the hell is this thing?" Thunderbolt stared in dumbfounded shock.

At last the snowy mist dispersed. The dazed Thunderbolt's vision blurred, and suddenly he found something directly in front of him: a huge mouth, less than an inch from his face, exhaling hot breath in puffs.

"Holy hell!" Thunderbolt jumped in fright and took a small step back. Only then, once he had put some distance between them and looked more carefully, did he realize that it was not merely a mouth, but a head.

Yet that made the sight even more terrifying, because the head was absurd beyond reason. More than a meter long, ninety-nine-point-nine percent of it was taken up by a single huge mouth. That mouth jutted forward like a wolf's or a dog's, with two rows of sharp fangs gleaming coldly within.

Elsewhere on the head were only a pair of nearly invisible little ears and two pea-sized eyes, each radiating a ghostly green chill.

Hmm? No, that was not all. There was a body too.

But the body only made Thunderbolt laugh and cry at once. It was less than two inches long in total, of which a full inch was a shaggy tail. Its diameter, though, was surprisingly large, nearly as big as the head itself. Beneath it were four tiny legs, each less than half an inch long.

Altogether, the fellow before him looked almost like a meat patty that had been flattened by brute force.

Ridiculous as that appearance was, even a little amusing, the bristling hair, the eerie green gaze that seemed almost tangible, and above all the lightning-quick movements and the effortless manner in which it had withstood divine punishment all reminded Thunderbolt at every moment that this thing was absolutely no ordinary creature.

But what exactly was it?

Thunderbolt anxiously searched his memory for every myth and legend he had ever heard of or read about in books. Then, when his gaze fell on that mouth that occupied nearly the whole body, and he recalled the greed with which it had gnawed away at the heavenly punishment, a flash of inspiration struck him, and two words burst out of his mouth:

Gluttonous Beast.

The Gluttonous Beast, one of the legendary dragon's offspring, said to resemble a wolf and to be possessed of boundless appetite. It appeared on bronze vessels as the gluttonous-beast pattern. Because it could also drink water, ancient people carved it at the center of bridges to ward off floods that might otherwise submerge them. According to folk legend, it was so bizarrely gluttonous and insatiable that after devouring everything it could eat, it eventually ate its own body, leaving only its head and earning the reputation of being "all head and no body."

At the thought that the other party might very well be this creature from legend, Thunderbolt, despite his astonishment, also let out a long breath of relief: whatever else, this was at least a creature from his own country's legends. Surely kin would not strike kin. Or rather, a dragon of his own land would not strike one of his own people, would it? Besides, they were all descendants of the dragon. Surely there ought to be some small measure of ancestral affection between them.

"Besides, it's just a dumb glutton. It shouldn't be too hard to deal with?" Thunderbolt thought in a jumble of chaotic nonsense. He muttered something under his breath without meaning to, and the instant the words left his lips, he knew he had made a mistake.

Sure enough, a furious roar rang straight through his mind, shaking his sea of consciousness.

"You are the glutton! You are the one without a brain!"

In the midst of that roar, a gaping blood-red maw suddenly opened wide, and two rows of gleaming fangs lunged viciously for Thunderbolt's throat.