"Cut the crap."
Shi Po forced the three words out between its sharp teeth.
"All right."
Meng Jiu nodded, his tone as calm as if he were agreeing to the simplest of requests.
"Then let's begin."
"Hmph!"
With a cold snort, Shi Po thrust its forelimbs against the ground, springing its entire malformed torso into the air.
It did not stand upright, still holding its four-legged posture after springing up.
Only its forelimbs left the ground while its hind limbs kicked off, sending it lunging at Meng Jiu like a venomous scorpion darting from a crevice in the rocks.
The five bone claws on its forelimbs spread open. The grayish-white bone spikes at their tips gleamed coldly in the sunlight, with faint traces of dark green ghost fire swirling around their points.
Meng Jiu did not move.
He gently lifted the bamboo pole in his hand, tracing a tiny circle before him with its tip.
The circle was only the size of a washbasin, yet it blocked Shi Po's incoming path precisely outside its bounds.
The bamboo tip left a ring of pale green light along its path, with faint, fine patterns of bamboo nodes flowing within it.
Shi Po's bone claws struck the ring of pale green light.
It had expected to hit a rigid barrier of Sword Qi.
But the instant its bone claws sank into the light, it felt an extremely supple resistance, like punching a leather sack filled with water, dissipating most of its force.
Its forelimbs sank half a foot into the light before a gentle rebounding force pushed them back.
That rebounding force was neither fierce nor violent, yet it was so dense and continuous that there was no way to exert any strength against it.
"Bamboo?"
Shi Po's forelimbs landed back on the