Dissolution

"Your gourd was probably close to starving to death!"

Zhang Xuezhou called Rong Tianding out of bed to help, then took the purple-gold gourd while keeping a sufficient distance from Yi Shuo.

He sensed it for a while and felt a faint vitality in the gourd.

This life was different from the vitality of an ordinary seed. Zhang Xuezhou could not sense the vitality of a millet seed, but he could sense the gourd. It was a faint force like that of a living creature.

Not only did this force let the gourd sway slightly, but Zhang Xuezhou could even feel it trembling and pulsing like a heartbeat.

"Could this thing be a gourd demon?"

Zhang Xuezhou hung the gourd on the Green Rock Wooden Staff, and it clung tightly to the staff like a baby that had found its wet nurse.

As doubt stirred in Zhang Xuezhou's mind, the snow beneath the Green Rock Wooden Staff rapidly hardened where it touched the staff. The purple-gold gourd, meanwhile, slowly began to grow from the size of a palm, like a mosquito sucking blood.

"What does this gourd do?" Zhang Xuezhou asked.

"I don't know what it does either," Yi Shuo said, quickly shaking her head. "I've carried it for several years and watched it grow smaller and smaller. This is the first time I've seen it grow bigger."

"This is the first time I've seen a gourd that can grow bigger and smaller," Rong Tianding muttered. "How can a gourd grow like that? It feels like a monster."

"Demons and evil beings are what Chang'an City fears least," Zhang Xuezhou said. "If Yao Qi were rolling off this gourd, I'm afraid a Demon-Revealing Mirror would wipe it out in a single strike."

Zhang Xuezhou rarely practiced Zou Bugui's rather useless