At the three-thousand-year birthday banquet of the Queen Mother of the West in Yaochi, nine-phoenix pearl pendants swayed above the eight-treasure cloud-light throne. The Seven Celestial Maidens threaded their way through the banquet holding jade platters, upon which the Flat-Peach Mother Tree's peaches displayed eerie, sinister purple veins. I pressed my hand against the dark-iron folding fan at my waist—transformed from the Xiaotian Hound—while my Three-Pointed Double-Edged Spear cast a slender shadow across the cloud-patterned bricks.
"True Lord Erlang does not partake of the flat-peaches. Could it be you find Yaochi's celestial fruit too vulgar for your refined cultivation?" Queen Mother of the West's scarlet-painted fingernail grazed the rim of a golden goblet, causing the osmanthus wine offered by Chang'e to crystallize into frost between her fingers. A drop of black blood suddenly seeped from a faint, concealed seam along the neck of one of the Seven Celestial Maidens, sizzling into acrid blue smoke as it fell upon her celestial gown.
Sun Wukong sat cross-legged on his Somersault Cloud, scratching his ears and cheeks as his Fiery Eyes of Truth swept across the immortals. "Why does Old Sun sense a reeking stench from these peaches that wasn't here five hundred years ago?" Before his voice had even faded, the Heavenly King Duowen bit into the tip of a peach, and the golden juice splashing into a glazed cup transformed into squirming insect larvae.
Chapter 241