Where Immortals Once Walked

The azure fire at the tip of Zhu Erniang’s claw also began to burn, as though trying to devour her flesh.

“What domineering origin energy!”

Following the direction the arrows had come from, He Lingchuan saw two figures standing atop the mountain ridge. The one holding the bow was none other than State Preceptor Qing Yang!

At such a critical moment, the Heavenly Palace had even brought in its greatest expert at allocating origin energy. No wonder spirit rain had suddenly descended earlier, drenching Juju so badly.

The instant Zhu Erniang ducked away, State Preceptor Qing Yang immediately changed targets. Now, her arrows all flew toward Juju.

Her arrows were nothing like those of ordinary Heavenly Palace guards. Whenever one lodged in Juju’s body, great patches of lava around the wound would immediately darken wherever the azure light passed, then crumble away in flakes like coal dust.

Today, He Lingchuan finally witnessed firsthand how origin energy suppressed greater monsters.

To Juju, it was as though every arrow wound had suddenly necrotized. Only by pulling out the arrow and digging away the azure fire could new lava grow back into place.

That would ordinarily have been manageable. In the midst of a fierce battle, however, it was an enormous nuisance. Juju was simply too large a target, so State Preceptor Qing Yang could hardly miss.

In just a few breaths, she and Chenyuan formed an impeccable partnership. Whenever Chenyuan withdrew, she filled the opening; every arrow struck somewhere Juju had to defend.

With her interference, Juju’s movements slowed. It had to divide its attention to guard against her attacks, and Chenyuan’s severed arm gained the chance to grow back.

Juju’s fury rose from the depths of its heart. With a sweep of one hand, it hurled seventeen or eighteen lava bombs at her, packed together as densely as a meteor shower.

These were not casual blasts of lava. Each was nearly ten meters in diameter. To tiny humans, they were like a continuous barrage from heavy artillery, and their flames were actually platinum-white.

State Preceptor Qing Yang drew out her staff and struck it heavily against the ground.

An azure barrier spread out in time, protecting her and Bai Ziqi within it.

Every lava bomb smashed into the barrier. Dust flew everywhere, followed by a succession of countless detonations. Had such an attack struck people directly, even a hundred or more would have been reduced to nothing but slag.

State Preceptor Qing Yang was blasted several steps backward, her face going pale. She only had her staff. The many magical artifacts she usually relied on had not been brought with her, leaving her methods of attack and defense relatively limited. Now she could only endure Juju’s attack through sheer force.

To cultivators, magical artifacts were essentially stored and extended portions of their own abilities. State Preceptor Qing Yang had rushed to the battlefield empty-handed, and her performance was severely limited as a result.

Still, the barrier had not broken.

After the lava bombs exploded, they scattered into debris across the ground. Under Juju’s command, the fragments rapidly assembled into more than ten fire creature avatars. Juju was fed up with State Preceptor Qing Yang and intended to keep her too occupied to interfere further.

Before the fire creatures had even fully taken shape, State Preceptor Qing Yang rushed forward, destroying them one by one with a strike of her staff.

Every fire creature touched by her staff burst with a puff and broke apart, reverting to rubble on the ground.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Bai Ziqi also commanded his lamp spirit to transform and fly past the two giant beasts locked in battle, intending to seize the shrine back.

He Lingchuan hurriedly patted the spider monster’s head. “Lady Two!”

Zhu Erniang was cunning as well. She simply stayed hidden behind the rock wall, refusing to come out. With several sharp hisses, she sprayed strands of spider silk onto the stone base behind the shrine.

Then she gave a few skillful tugs—

The shrine was pulled by the silk and finally rolled down toward the lava pool!

Once it went in, it would become Juju’s spoils.

Unexpectedly, Chenyuan’s tail tip curled out in the middle of battle and caught the shrine in midair.

He Lingchuan was just about to curse when the shrine’s restriction activated, slicing Chenyuan’s tail to pieces.

Apparently, although Chenyuan was a ghost beast of the Heavenly Palace, the shrine’s restriction did not recognize it.

He Lingchuan saw a cloud of blood mist explode from Chenyuan’s tail, and the shrine continued to fall.

Zhu Erniang suddenly said, “Someone is controlling that monster.”

“Obviously.” Otherwise, with its head heated by battle, why would it have deliberately reached out its tail to grab that thing?

In the brief delay of less than a breath, Bai Ziqi’s lamp spirit arrived and reached for the shrine’s base.

A lamp spirit could change its shape at will. This time, it had taken on the form of a ghost. Its body was vague and indistinct, while only its hands were clear, and they could stretch and extend.

It had learned its lesson and did not dare touch the restriction. Instead, it gripped the shrine’s base and pushed upward.

What would happen if the shrine were snatched back by the Heavenly Palace?

Disregarding his own safety, He Lingchuan leaped onto a huge rock, pulled something from his chest, and aimed it at the lamp spirit.

The next instant, a dazzlingly bright beam of blazing white light shot out, enveloping the entire lamp spirit!

This was the shadow-piercing lamp He Lingchuan had picked up from the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array’s array eye. Mount Xu had used it to project the star map on the Spider Immortal’s shed husk, so its brightness, intensity, and penetrating power were naturally first-rate.

He Lingchuan himself thought of it as a laser lamp.

More importantly, he had personally watched Zhu Erniang use it against a lamp spirit before, with instant and lethal results!

Using it against Bai Ziqi’s lamp spirit ought to be exactly the right remedy.

Sure enough, the instant the beam struck the lamp spirit, its form and color immediately faded, as though it would dissolve into white light at any moment.

However, it was stronger than the small lamp spirit from before and continued struggling within the beam.

Just then, a numb sensation prickled between He Lingchuan’s brow. A warning of danger came abruptly.

It was too late to dodge. Without hesitation, he swung out his great shield and crouched behind it. State Preceptor Qing Yang’s two arrows arrived one after the other, striking the shield’s surface.

Bang!

One of them exploded.

The tremendous force blasted He Lingchuan and the shield backward together. He crashed hard against the mountain wall.

The Soul-Stealing Mirror shrieked, “OOWWW—!”

It had suffered terribly tonight. It had already blocked dozens of attacks, and now it had to take State Preceptor Qing Yang’s ambush as well.

The web between He Lingchuan’s thumb and forefinger split open from the impact. His left arm went numb, and he could barely lift it.

State Preceptor Qing Yang’s archery was formidable too, but He Lingchuan still felt that the welcome he had received when he first entered Panlong City had been even fiercer.

Those arrows had nearly left him with PTSD.

The problem was that State Preceptor Qing Yang did not look like a martial cultivator.

How is she so skilled in archery?

Or is it just that her ability to allocate origin energy has reached such an absurd level?

Even amid the chaos, another question occurred to He Lingchuan.

Wait, she clearly fired two arrows. Why was there only one explosion?

The thought had barely crossed his mind when the mirror suddenly cried, “Watch directly ahead!”

The instant it spoke, an azure snake as thick as the mouth of a bowl emerged from the top of the shield and sprang violently toward He Lingchuan’s throat!

The snake had been formed from azure light. Its fangs were nearly three centimeters long. Being bitten by it would certainly lead to nothing good.

This was what State Preceptor Qing Yang’s second arrow had transformed into.

The first arrow’s explosion had only been a feint. The second arrow was the true killing blow!

And the azure snake was now only thirty centimeters away from He Lingchuan!

His first instinct was to throw the shield away.

However, a heartbeat before he could swing his arm, the azure snake seemed to be caught by something and violently yanked downward.

With a whoosh, it vanished from his sight.

He shook the shield.

The azure snake... is gone?

“Alright, stop shaking me.” The mirror’s weary voice came through. “I pulled it into the mirror realm. The moment it entered, it dissolved.” Once it lost its connection to State Preceptor Qing Yang, that bit of divine technique dispersed.

Sheltered behind a large rock, He Lingchuan patted the shield and let out a long breath. “Well done.”

The Soul-Stealing Mirror’s mirror realm had been put in decent order now. Occasionally, it could take in small objects.

And if a small object did not want to enter, it could forcibly drag it in.

However, He Lingchuan also noticed two cracks on the shield. It would likely need to be nurtured for some time afterward before it could recover.

Tonight’s battle had simply been too intense.

The beam from the shadow-piercing lamp shifted away. The lamp spirit narrowly escaped destruction, but after He Lingchuan’s interruption, it could no longer support the shrine.

This time, the shrine finally fell into the lava pool, sending up several large, bubbling bursts.

This series of changes had all occurred within only a few breaths. The battlefield was raging, and everyone was too busy to attend to anything else, but the shrine had ultimately sunk into the lava pool.

Bai Ziqi’s veins bulged in fury.

He Lingchuan clenched his fist tightly.

Good!

With the shrine in the lava pool, the initiative was back in their hands!

Was this not what they had fought desperately for?

Even while battling, Juju kept an eye in every direction. Seeing this, it breathed a sigh of relief. Ignoring the fact that Chenyuan had bitten down on its shoulder, it grabbed the beast in a bear hug and plunged into the lava.

Being exposed to the ice rain was far too painful. On top of that, Chenyuan kept clinging to it in battle while State Preceptor Qing Yang aided the monster with hidden arrows. Juju had also discovered that the places struck earlier by Star-Plucking Tower’s archers still contained candlelight that had transformed into light snakes, constantly boring deeper into its body!

Not to mention that the Heavenly Palace’s divine servants and guards had never stopped attacking it.

Even someone as strong as Juju could not bear so many layers of attack. It urgently needed earthfire to heal itself.

Beneath the lava was its most favorable main battlefield. Moreover, the ice rain could not reach it there.

Yet Juju soon discovered that even the heat of earthfire could not help it destroy the opponent before it.

Chenyuan was actually unafraid of true fire from the earth’s core!

The long fur covering its body did not burn away at all. It swam through lava and magma as freely as though it were moving through a pool of water.

Juju was shocked, then deeply indignant.

So the Heavenly Palace had guarded against it all along. They had somehow acquired this fire-resistant ghost beast.

It seemed that even if Divine Majesty Lingxu could not descend into the mortal realm, this battle would still be difficult to win.

“This is getting troublesome.” He Lingchuan said to Zhu Erniang, “Find somewhere to hide, quickly.”

Previously, the two giant beasts had stood in front of them, and no one paid attention to them. Now that both of them had entered the lava pool, only they and Star-Plucking Tower remained, facing one another through the thick fog.

Once the fog dispersed, if they were still exposed to the Heavenly Palace’s sight, they would have to endure its boundless wrath!

Great minds thought alike. He Lingchuan had only just spoken when Zhu Erniang slipped behind the mountain and quickly withdrew from the battlefield beneath the cover of the fog.

“...” As expected of an ancient monster. Its survival instincts are first-rate. “Lady Two, are you and Juju really both monster immortals from the Ancient Era?”

Juju had practically shouldered every attack from the Heavenly Palace and State Preceptor Qing Yang by itself. At the same time, Zhu Erniang hid and dodged, choosing only the best strategy among the Thirty-Six Stratagems[1]: escape.

Though both were supposedly half-immortals now, the gap in their strength seemed rather large.

Zhu Erniang said irritably, “I have only just awakened, and I can only use the small amount of remaining power inside my shed husk. You’re comparing me to a rock-fire aberrant creature born and nurtured by heaven and earth? Even in the Ancient Era, the many immortals of the Grand Return Sect had to treat it politely!”

Juju’s arrogance had not been cultivated in a day or two.

He Lingchuan came to a realization. Even among monster immortals, individual differences could be immense.

Zhu Erniang asked him, “You said someone would be waiting to receive us. Where are they?”

“I can only withdraw after I get the divine object.” He Lingchuan asked the little fire man on his shoulder, “Juju, how are things beneath the lava pool?”

“We’re still working on it!” Juju’s irritated voice came through the little fire man. “Making a contract with you this time was a damn loss! Get to Tianji Peak first, the place where we met last time!”

1. This is an actual book, The Thirty Stratagems (三十六计只). ☜