At the startled cry, everyone immediately looked around. A patch of strange color had suddenly appeared on the water wall to their right. At first they could not make out its hue, but as the glow gradually sharpened, they saw a pale blue shape twenty or thirty feet tall drifting through the unfathomable darkness beyond the wall, sending ripples of eerie light through the water.
The two or three hundred riders who had followed Xing Yan here were all elite monster soldiers and spirit generals. Yet by now, apart from the seasoned old minister Wangxiang and little Qiong Rong, who feared nothing in her life except her brother's anger, nearly everyone-including Xing Yan and the young lord of Pengze-was like a bird startled by a bowstring. At the appearance of that mysterious, uncanny glow, they immediately tightened their grips on their weapons and held their breath, watching for its next move.
Only a moment later, the shimmering water surged. Without making a sound, the bright blue monster under everyone's gaze broke through the wall!
Only then did the sharp-eyed among them see that the long blue thing swaying limply from side to side was a strange creature resembling a squid or octopus. Its half-transparent body was rounded and billowing like an umbrella canopy. An eerie blue radiance suffused it, with bright silver specks drifting inside like stardust. Beneath it hung hundreds upon hundreds of slender, whiplike tentacles, all gleaming silver and blue as they flailed wildly through the clear water.
Needless to say, with their nerves already stretched taut, Xing Yan and his companions were hardly inclined to show this charging monster any courtesy. As the blue-glowing octopus burst through the wall to attack, a colorful storm of spells had already hurtled toward it. After a flurry of humming blasts,