"Whoosh!"
A savage, scorching blast swept past. The towering Oak Forest rustled thunderously in the wind, and the slender mushrooms beneath the trees were torn out by their roots, tumbling through the woods like mutated dandelions.
A cone-shaped stretch of open ground abruptly appeared in the Bewitching Forest, beginning where Zheng Qing and the two banshees stood. It was so vast that it almost divided the enormous forest in two. From the middle of the woods, they could almost see the pale blue-green mountain range beyond.
Fine ash drifted slowly down from the air, distorting the sunlight as it fell. The open ground was scorched black. Not a blade of grass, a mushroom, or a creeping insect remained on its surface. Every living thing had been wiped out by that savage blast.
Zhuzhu's little mouth hung open, her eyes wide and round. The terrifying sight had utterly stunned her.
Nikita's face paled slightly. Fear at how close she had come to death surged through her heart like a raging tide, wave after wave. A little closer, just a fraction closer, and she would have become part of that ash.
Zheng Qing's shot had passed right beside her ear. For an instant, the banshee had felt she was already dead. Fortunately, she was alive, still alive, with only a few strands of hair scorched and reeking from the ordeal.
Zheng Qing held the Remington shotgun. Its power had not surprised him, but a trace of delighted surprise still shone in his eyes.
The surprise was that, after firing, he had not collapsed limply to the ground as he had expected.
He had seen it clearly.
This time, when he fired, countless tiny golden runes had appeared on the pale blue gun. The King in Yellow's pinwheel-shaped symbols linked those runes together