Where Immortals Once Walked

Liao Shan did his best to coordinate and direct his forces, but the retreat was happening too quickly. In the end, the collapse could no longer be reversed, and Liao Shan had no choice but to accept the situation and personally lead his army northward in retreat.

The Andong forces did not return to their camp at Mount Hulu. The south gate force from Heishui City had already pressed forward and cut off their eastern route of retreat, so they simply could not head back that way.

The moment they began withdrawing, cheers erupted from the Heishui City army, their morale soaring!

He Chunhua immediately pressed his advantage and ordered his troops to pursue the fleeing enemy.

No one had expected this battle, fought with fewer troops against a larger force, to end in such a decisive victory. Since fortune had fallen their way, General He naturally intended to consolidate the result as quickly as possible.

For the long-term peace and stability of western Yuan, they had to hurt the Andong forces badly enough this time that they would remember the lesson!

Thus, throughout the night, the Andong troops fled ahead while the Heishui City army pursued from behind. One after the other, both forces followed the Hongya Route into the Panlong Desert.

The chase continued for six hours.

They fought as they ran, and along the way the Heishui City army swallowed up another three hundred-plus enemy soldiers.

The Andong forces could no longer endure it. Every time they reached a fork in the road, they split into smaller groups and fled in different directions.

He Chunhua had no idea which group Liao Shan was hiding in, so he had no choice but to divide his forces several times to continue the pursuit while personally leading the main body northward.

The Heavenly Palace, the State of Baling, and the other factions had originally intended to leave the Heishui City army and travel on their own, but now the Heishui City troops were also racing north, almost exactly along the same route they had planned to take.

It almost looked as though this army of more than a thousand men was escorting them into the desert.

Zhang Lianhai and the others were not pleased.

Yes, Heishui City had won, and yes, the Andong troops had fled in defeat.

But by now, they had realized that He Chunhua had still used them as weapons!

What decisive trump card? What elite strike force slipping behind enemy lines? It had all been a massive con!

He Chunhua had tricked them into facing the Andong army’s blades, spears, and arrows, using them as bait to draw away the troops guarding the camp so that the true raiding force could strike successfully in one blow.

Still, the battle had been won, so they could only swallow this loss in silence.

As a result, afterward, none of the factions had particularly friendly expressions whenever they looked at the He father and son.

He Chunhua remained as warm and cordial as ever, as though he could not see their resentment at all.

Only He Lingchuan knew that his father simply did not care how these people felt. Once they entered the Panlong Ruins, everyone would be competitors anyway!

Dawn was approaching, but the sky was thick with clouds, so they could not use the stars to guide their way. And unfortunately, even compasses had stopped working properly in the desert.

Yellow sand stretched endlessly around them, and the dunes themselves frequently shifted position. At this point, both the fleeing Andong troops and the pursuing Heishui City army only dared continue along the Hongya Route for fear of losing themselves in the Panlong Desert.

The Andong forces were exhausted beyond words, but the pursuing Heishui City troops were also starting to lose momentum. Their formation had grown loose and scattered.

Only a few hundred men remained on either side.

He Lingchuan noticed that He Chunhua was frequently whispering with Zhao Qinghe, and both men wore grave expressions.

He urged his horse over and asked, “What is it?”

“Chuan’er, you came at the right time.” He Chunhua pointed toward a forest of jagged rocks roughly a kilometer away. “Have you ever seen that rock formation before?”

Hundreds of massive stone pillars stood there in different shapes and sizes. The largest rose more than sixty meters high, while the smaller ones were only fifteen meters or so. Together, they formed a small stone forest amid the yellow sands.

If one turned the clock back 160–170 years, this area should have been a place of layered mountains and beautiful waterways. Now, however, only yellow sand and giant rocks remained.

He Chunhua had traveled the Hongya Route nearly a hundred times in both directions and remembered almost every detail along the way, yet he had absolutely no recollection of ever seeing this landscape before.

He Lingchuan stared carefully for a long while before sucking in a breath. “Nope.”

“Think carefully.”

Even after thinking more carefully, the answer was still no.

Zhao Qinghe and several other personal guards also said they had never seen it.

He Chunhua’s expression darkened. “An unfamiliar landscape has appeared beside the Hongya Route. Can anyone tell me what’s going on?”

Everyone exchanged glances, but no one had an answer.

“The soldiers have already started talking. They’re saying it feels as though we’ve never traveled this road before,” said Zhao Qinghe. “My lord, do we continue the pursuit?”

He Chunhua hesitated as well.

Ever since the season of mad sand inexplicably vanished, the Panlong Desert had grown even stranger and harder to predict. Now, even Hongya Route, the road traveled by armies, had quietly changed.

One had to understand that an army had origin energy protecting it. Ordinary illusion arrays, ghost walls, and similar tricks could not fool their eyes, and most of the soldiers were locals as well.

Of all possible mistakes, taking the wrong road should have been the least likely.

And yet somehow, they had actually gotten lost.

Killing the enemy was important, of course. But for safety’s sake, should they turn back? Besides, the army was exhausted from the pursuit. They had entered the desert without preparing extra food or water in advance.

The moment He Chunhua reached that thought, he decided immediately. “We turn back.”

“Yes.”

Zhao Qinghe left to relay the order.

The Soul-Stealing Mirror tucked inside He Lingchuan’s robes asked, “You know what’s going on with the Hongya Route, don’t you?”

It had only acknowledged He Lingchuan as its master halfway through his travels and knew little about Heishui City or the Hongya Route. But if even the local natives had gotten lost, then there was definitely something wrong with this road.

With other people nearby, He Lingchuan could not answer openly. He merely gave a vague hum.

Of course he knew!

The Hongya Route familiar to He Chunhua and the people of Heishui City was actually the official road used by the Gale Army and merchants crossing the Panlong Desert more than a century earlier. Back then, countless branch roads and side paths existed. After Panlong City fell and the season of mad sand appeared, however, only a handful of official roads remained untouched by the wind and sand. Later generations collectively came to call those surviving roads the Hongya Route.

Those were the few routes the people of Heishui City had grown accustomed to traveling.

But after the season of mad sand disappeared, many of the branch roads buried beneath the sand would “occasionally” reveal themselves again.

Occasionally.

Other people might not know how to navigate them, but He Lingchuan obviously did.

During his patrols in the Panlong World, he had traveled these side roads back and forth countless times. He had even watered his horse and caught wild rabbits in the very stone forest He Chunhua had just pointed out.

Yesterday’s rivers and hills had become today’s mountains of sand.

No one present could possibly feel that transformation more deeply than He Lingchuan.

He had sweated and bled upon this land. And yet, in the blink of an eye, more than a century had drifted past.

All of it was gone now.

Setting those emotions aside, He Lingchuan knew very clearly that both the Andong troops fleeing ahead and the Heishui City army pursuing behind were, in fact, moving toward the Panlong Ruins!

And they were taking a shortcut.

That unseen force drawing them forward came from the Generous Pot.

Naturally, He Lingchuan said nothing.

Just then, a sandstorm suddenly swept across the desert.

The gale carried yellow sand like blades, slashing straight into people’s faces. In an instant, heaven and earth became a murky yellow blur, and a man could not see his own hand before his face.

Both forces ahead and behind were badly startled, thinking the season of mad sand had returned.

But there were no Three Corpses Worms in this storm, no wandering souls, and no heroic spirits of the Gale Army coming to claim lives.

It was nothing more than an ordinary sandstorm.

Yet in a desert, even an ordinary sandstorm could kill. He Chunhua had no choice but to order the army to rush into the stone forest roughly a kilometer away to seek shelter.

The rocks there were jagged and enormous. Some were broad and thick like screens, enough to block the violent wind and sand.

The gale came with tremendous force. Though it could not compare to the flesh-stripping winds of the Fu Realm, it could easily knock Skinny flat and bury him beneath the sand.

Most Heishui City soldiers were locals and were familiar with both the desert and Hongya Route. After struggling their way beneath the rock walls, they hurriedly wrapped cloth around their heads, covered their faces, and crouched behind the giant stones together with their mounts.

Against the might of nature, there was nothing humans could do except pray for the storm to pass quickly.

* * *

The sandstorm raged for four hours before finally ending.

Everyone crawled out from beneath piles of sand, coated from head to toe in dust. Even their eyelashes were filled with grit.

He Chunhua shook the yellow sand from his cloak, looked around, and froze. “Where’s the Hongya Route?”

They had been traveling along the Hongya Route the entire time.

Yet after the sandstorm, all they could see around them was an endless sea of sand.

The Hongya Route had vanished!

Has it been buried?

He Chunhua immediately dispatched scouts in several directions.

Officers kept coming over to ask for instructions on what to do next.

Everyone wanted to know where they were supposed to go from here.

The soldiers had chased the enemy all night and were now exhausted and thirsty. They needed rest.

The army’s hunting falcon flew into the sky and circled for quite some time before descending again. “Within fifteen kilometers in every direction, there is nothing but desert. There’s no road.”

He Chunhua asked, “Can you fly back to Heishui City?”

The falcon said no. Its sense of direction seemed to have failed as well.

Before long, the ground scouts returned and reported that they had found no trace of the Hongya Route anywhere.

It was as though the road had disappeared from the face of the earth.

The Andong forces had vanished too, presumably as lost as they were.

Even someone as alert and composed as He Chunhua looked briefly bewildered.

The defense of Heishui City had reached this point and was already an overwhelming victory. They should have been able to return home in triumph. But where was the road home?

He Chunhua immediately sent for Zhang Lianhai, hoping the Heavenly Palace might have a way to escape their current predicament.

“Direction?” Zhang Lianhai gave a faint, almost mocking smile. “My lamp spirit never gets lost. But we still have somewhere to go. We don’t have time to accompany you back!”

He Chunhua was just about to persuade him when Qiu Hu suddenly said, “You haven’t tried it. How do you know it still works?”

The attendant behind Zhang Lianhai retorted, “Ridiculous! The Heavenly Palace’s eternal lamp spirits possess endless wondrous abilities. What would ignorant people like you know?”

Elder Ling Jinbao of the Jianyang Sect coughed lightly. “Why not let us broaden our horizons?”

Zhang Lianhai had no choice but to take the white-and-gold candle from his robes and light it. Then he murmured to the lamp spirit floating up from the flame, “Point out the direction of Heishui City.”

The lamp spirit rose into midair. It drifted left, then right. But even after quite some time had passed, it gave no answer.

Everyone stared at it expectantly, waiting for it to identify the direction.

Eventually, the lamp spirit flew back and curled into a tiny ball atop the candle, its glow illuminating Zhang Lianhai’s dark expression.

Qiu Hu folded his arms. “So?”

Zhang Lianhai’s attendant looked incredulous. “I-it can’t be...”

The eternal lamp spirit had spent years receiving worship and incense in the Heavenly Palace. How could a little supernatural interference possibly make it lose its sense of direction? How could the Panlong Desert be this strange?

Zhang Lianhai’s expression was dark as ink.

Fortunately for him, a sentry nearby suddenly shouted, breaking the awkward silence, “Something’s happening ahead!”

Everyone climbed out from behind the rock walls and looked.

Far in the distance, a brilliant scarlet beam of light shot straight into the sky.

Day had already broken, yet the beam was even more dazzling than ordinary dawn clouds.

Soon, another strange phenomenon appeared overhead.

An upside-down city emerged in the sky once again, like a mirage.

Zhang Lianhai and the others immediately said, “We’re going there.”

There was no need to explain. Everyone knew the Panlong Ruins lay in that direction.

The various factions whistled to gather their people, preparing to separate from the Heishui City army and head toward the crimson light.

Thoughts flashed rapidly through He Chunhua’s mind.

He turned to He Lingchuan. “Chuan’er, what do you think? Do we follow the red light, or find another way home?”