Whoosh! Whoosh!
The "leather ball" shot through the air up and down. The old toad sprang and leaped, pushed off with both legs, and suddenly vaulted out of the wooden tower, its shadow shifting onto the river’s surface. It spun like a top over a dozen times in midair before plunging roundly into the great marsh.
Splash!
The little Mirage Dragon blocked the spraying water and was about to look when a fiery red feather stabbed out from the surface, nearly jabbing into its nostril. It hastily retreated and coiled around Long E’ying’s forearm. Hearing “great fortune,” Long Binglin, who had been watching the divination from the side, grew even more excited than Liang Qu himself.
He stepped forward and helped the old toad up.
“Elder Frog, is it truly great fortune to counterattack the Dragon Palace?”
Exiled and adrift for decades, the Dragon Folk had long suffered under the Flood Dragon!
“Counterattack? Counterattack what?” the old toad snorted, spraying water mist from its nostrils.
It flicked the long crest feathers atop its head and shook the silver bell on its hand.
“Greedy fool! What do you take this elder for, some heaven-penetrating book that knows everything in the world? Whatever you ask, it answers?”
Struck by this sudden rebuke, Long Binglin broke into a sweat, at a loss for what to do.