Kassava was racking his brains over how to drag out this dangerous infiltrator who had sneaked into Black Horn City disguised as the Great Horned Rat God Envoy, chop him into mincemeat, and bury him beneath the Mandala Tree.
Suddenly, he heard the heavy tap of a cast-iron cane striking the ground behind him.
Kassava's heart jolted. He hurriedly turned around and bowed with utmost respect. "Lord Black Tooth!"
He could not help but be respectful.
Though the newcomer looked old and hunched, his body wrapped in a black hooded cloak as though a gust of wind could knock him over, and though he needed a cane weighing several hundred pounds merely to keep his balance—
This priest named Black Tooth was one of the Bloodhoof Family's greatest legends of recent decades.
Twenty years ago, Black Tooth had not been a priest.
He had been the Bloodhoof Family's most powerful warrior.
Even Kassava Bloodhoof had grown up listening to tales of how Black Tooth had slain a nine-headed dragon amid the fiercest whirlpools of the Turan River during flood season.
And Black Tooth's original reason for killing that nine-headed dragon had been neither to rid the people of a menace nor to slaughter it for meat.
He had merely heard that a nine-headed dragon could regenerate without limit. As long as one of its nine heads remained, even if all the other eight were severed, new heads would grow back in an instant, just like a lizard's tail.
Black Tooth had wanted to know whether that was true.
"If a nine-headed dragon can truly regenerate without limit, I'll catch one and raise it in the family temple. Then I'll have fresh dragon brains to eat every day."
That was how Black Tooth explained his purpose.
In the end, over three