Feilian did not scream. The corner of his mouth twitched, then he grabbed his ruined left arm with his right hand and yanked hard, tearing the entire arm off at the shoulder. Black blood gushed from the severed shoulder, splashing across the sand and corroding it into tiny smoking pits. He tossed the torn arm onto the ground, glanced at it, then raised his head to look at Sun Wukong.
His expression was strange. He was not in pain, nor was he angry. He was smiling. His slit-like lips parted, revealing dark red gums and two rows of yellowed teeth. He was smiling happily, as though he had finally received something he had been waiting for a long time.
"Monkey," he said. "Your staff really is heavy."
Sun Wukong pulled his Golden Staff from the sand pit, its tip coated in black blood and grains of sand. He gripped it with both hands and held it across his body. His golden eyes fixed on Feilian, without contempt or anger, holding only the pure focus of someone treating the other man as an opponent worthy of taking seriously.
"Your hand really is shattered," Sun Wukong said.
Feilian's smile deepened. He released his right hand, and fresh flesh began to sprout from the wound where his arm had been severed. The flesh was black, like countless tiny worms wriggling out from the edge of the wound. They intertwined, wove together, and fused. Slowly, layer by layer, a new shoulder grew, then an upper arm, an elbow, a forearm, a wrist, and finally fingers. The entire process took fewer than ten breaths.
The newly grown left arm was a little thinner than the original and paler in color, as though it had not fully matured yet. But Feilian flexed his fingers—five of them,