Chapter 849: Enemies Meet

He Chunhua asked him, “Did you see Chuan’er?”

Zhao Qinghe shook his head. “What do we do n—”

Before Zhao Qinghe could finish asking the question, a chain of explosions erupted behind them, each blast more thunderous than the last.

The two men were horrified and could only stare at each other in silence.

He Chunhua steadied himself and pointed toward the ruins to the west. “Run there! Quickly!”

There was a dried-up river channel there, with places too narrow for the larger aberrant creatures to enter.

Most importantly, it was less than a kilometer from the center of the fighting.

The two had barely reached the riverbed and hidden themselves when thunderous rumbling came from overhead. Who knew how many aberrant creatures were charging along the street above their heads, shaking loose clouds of dust that rained down on them.

They had all been drawn over by the explosions and the roars of the king of the que beasts.

The two men held their breaths, not even daring to sneeze.

A battle between creatures of such terrifying power was raging at the Red General’s cenotaph. He Chunhua had no way to involve himself anymore.

But every battle had to produce a result. With the snipe and clam locked in struggle, He Chunhua still wanted to remain nearby and see whether he might get the chance to play the fisherman.[1]

* * *

The moment his invisibility spell was broken, Hé Jing knew there would be no easy resolution today.

Fortunately, he had prepared more than one contingency. Pointing at the king of the que beasts, he shouted, “Go!”

The lamp spirit circling above the four of them rushed forward and transformed before the que beast could swat it away, once again taking the classic form of a gigantic multiheaded serpent.

Each section of its body was thick enough that three or four people together could barely encircle it. Six or seven massive coils tightened at once, wrapping the giant beast securely from head to toe.

The giant beast pulled hard at the serpent, but its body was extraordinarily elastic, stretching like rubber without ever loosening its grip.

The eternal lamp spirit Hé Jing had nurtured was more than a single level stronger than Zhang Lianhai’s.

He shouted again, “Open it!”

Two serpent heads positioned beside the beast’s ears took advantage of the instant it opened its mouth. One bit down from the left and the other from the right, wrenching its jaws apart with all their strength.

Before Hé Jing even had to give the order, Fu Liang flicked three black spheres the size of goose eggs from his hand, sending them with perfect accuracy straight into the giant beast’s mouth.

The beast pitched forward, trying to spit them out, but the three objects detonated first.

Several explosions boomed in rapid succession. Fu Liang and the others even saw flames erupt from the creature’s throat.

Without their protective vigorous qi, the blast wave alone might have knocked them off their feet.

The giant beast reeled backward from the explosions, then crashed to the ground like a collapsing mountain pillar.

The strongest fortress was often easiest to breach from within. This creature looked thick-skinned and heavily armored, with an absurd amount of vitality, so Hé Jing had decided to take a shortcut. Unexpectedly, his very first attempt succeeded.

But the moment everyone saw the direction in which the beast was falling, they nearly cursed their luck.

Directly behind it lay the Red General’s cenotaph. The creature landed in exactly the wrong place, covering the burial mound completely!

A faint ghostly light then emerged from its body and shot straight downward beneath it.

Hé Jing formed a hand seal, and the gigantic serpent formed by the lamp spirit began burrowing beneath the giant beast, trying to retrieve the Generous Pot in its jaws.

The serpent possessed a tangible body in this form, but no matter how hard it shoved, it could not budge the giant beast.

There was only a small gap near the creature’s neck.

Helpless, Hé Jing murmured an incantation. Under his control, the gigantic serpent collapsed back into a single point of golden light and flew toward that gap.

Just as it was about to slip through, the giant beast lying only a short distance away suddenly opened its eyes.

The sight made everyone’s skin crawl.

The king of the que beasts was not dead!

Before anyone could react, it spat a blast of frost qi directly at the golden light.

Tiny ice crystals mixed with bits of violet-red flesh instantly condensed into sixteen mirrors. They formed above, below, left, right, and at every other side, surrounding both the giant ape and the lamp spirit.

Not only the Heavenly Palace party, but everyone secretly watching from nearby felt a chill run down their backs:

None of them expected the aberrant creature to actually be capable of using divine techniques, and with astonishing proficiency at that!

Aberrant creatures from other worlds often possessed innate abilities, but the divine techniques born from those talents were generally straightforward and crude, never this intricate. The Giant Thunderclap Beast, for example, was naturally able to command lightning, but their attacks consisted of little more than summoning bolts and thunderstorms—simple, direct, and brutally effective.

As far as anyone knew, only monsters and cultivators were capable of manipulating spells and techniques with this many variations.

Yet the leader of the que beasts was now proving through its own actions that it could do the same.

That was simply unreasonable.

Whenever the eternal lamp spirit’s reflection appeared in one of the ice mirrors, a sliver of its golden light was siphoned away.

It darted left and right, trying to break free, but wherever it went, a mirror waited directly ahead. If it crashed into one, it would stick fast. All it could do was weave carefully between them, avoiding their surfaces.

But the array of mirrors was rapidly contracting inward, leaving the lamp spirit less and less room to maneuver.

And yet it could not break through the encirclement.

The lamp spirit struggled desperately, transforming into countless shapes in moments, only for the mirrors to tug it apart from every direction, each stealing away a little of its essence.

It was easy to imagine the final outcome. Eventually, all sixteen mirrors would close together, and every surface would reflect the lamp spirit at once.

At that point, it would probably be sliced apart piece by piece.

Who would have imagined that an aberrant creature with such an overwhelmingly powerful body and such a crude, brutish appearance could not only play dead, but also cast spells?

Hé Jing felt a chill creep through him.

Even he had fallen for the trick. Defeating this aberrant creature would be far more difficult than he had originally estimated!

“Break the mirrors!”

“Release the ghost children! Now!”

He immediately adjusted his tactics and issued two decisive orders.

“Yes!”

Four attendants instantly sat cross-legged on the ground, closed their eyes, and began praying.

The attendant behind Hé Jing drew his bow and fired three arrows in a triangular formation.

The king of the que beasts casually raised an arm to block them, but the three arrows split apart in advance. Three became six, then six became twelve. The arrows even altered their trajectories in flight, leaving the target no way to anticipate them.

In the end, all twelve arrows struck. Most hit the king of the que beasts directly, while three struck the ice mirrors.

A chain of explosions followed. Each blast covered only a modest area, but packed considerable force—

Before entering Panlong City, Hé Jing had already learned that these aberrant creatures specialized in powers of ice and cold. Fire attacks would therefore inflict greater damage, so the attendant’s arrows had been imbued beforehand with flameburst spells.

Smoke and dust billowed outward, and the king of the que beasts was forced back one step. It shook its head and arms, but the areas struck by the flamebursts remained completely intact, with only faint gray scorch marks on its fur.

The three ice mirrors, however, shattered on impact.

The lamp spirit seized the opening and shot through the gap, racing straight toward the Red General’s cenotaph.

The Generous Pot!

That supreme treasure had been its objective from the very beginning.

Once the Generous Pot was in hand, the crisis would resolve itself, and Hé Jing would have rendered a monumental service.

But at that exact moment, a person suddenly appeared out of nowhere in front of the Red General’s armor and the Generous Pot, directly blocking the golden light.

It was a literal man appearing from thin air. One moment there was nothing, and the next he was simply there without the slightest warning.

The lamp spirit paused.

Fortunately, it possessed no emotions and could not be startled. It merely tried instinctively to go around him.

Unexpectedly, the man suddenly produced an object that looked half lamp, half mirror and shone it toward the spirit—

A brilliant beam of white light burst forth and enveloped the lamp spirit. The spirit darted left and right, but remained trapped inside the intense radiance. Its body gradually faded like steam dissipating into the air.

It was far stronger than Zhang Lianhai’s lamp spirit, so it lasted considerably longer inside the light.

The explosions from the Heavenly Palace attendant’s arrows had filled the surrounding thirty meters with thick smoke and dust, yet this brilliant beam pierced straight through every obstruction, extending for several hundred meters like a laser without dispersing in the slightest!

Hé Jing’s eyes went wide open, and he cried out involuntarily, “The shadow-piercing lamp!”

The instant that unmistakable beam appeared, Hé Jing, as a senior member of the Heavenly Palace, recognized it immediately. It was one of Mount Xu’s supreme guardian treasures, the shadow-piercing lamp used in the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array to project the star map!

The spider immortal’s molt was certainly important, but without the shadow-piercing lamp, the star map could not be projected at all.

During the upheaval at Mount Xu several months earlier, the spider molt and the lid of the Generous Pot were stolen, and the shadow-piercing lamp within the array eye vanished as well.

In other words, the appearance of the shadow-piercing lamp meant the treasure thief was here too!

The culprit who had orchestrated the destruction of the Star-Plucking Tower, thrown Lingxu City into chaos, and dragged the Heavenly Palace’s prestige through the mud was right before his eyes!

If Hé Jing had already been determined to obtain the Generous Pot, then the appearance of the shadow-piercing lamp made his blood boil.

Watching his own lamp spirit struggle helplessly inside the beam, Hé Jing grabbed a massive chunk of broken wall and hurled it toward the light source while shouting, “Ghost children, come at once!”

At the same time, he pushed off with one foot and charged toward the source of the light.

A gigantic palm descended from above. The king of the que beasts had noticed him and intended to swat him flat like a fly.

At the critical instant, Hé Jing suddenly twisted his body and skimmed past the edge of the beast’s palm, riding the wind generated by its swing like a paper kite and gliding forward.

The movement was graceful and elegant. In agility alone, he was no less nimble than He Lingchuan using the Swallow’s Return movement technique.

Bang!

The chunk of broken wall shattered. Through the rolling smoke and dust, Hé Jing saw a man standing ahead, holding the lamp-like object in his arms, his face concealed behind a mask.

The intense beam projected from the mirror in his arms trapped the lamp spirit.

The king of the que beasts seemed to understand that the beam was helping it enormously, because it made no move to attack the masked man.

“You wretched thief!” Hé Jing hurled a violet-bronze mace at him.

The weapon spun through the air with the faint rumble of wind and thunder. It carried enormous weight and force; anyone struck by it would have their tendons snapped and bones shattered.

Hé Jing did not expect the blow to actually injure his opponent. He merely needed to force the man to shift position, as that would interrupt the beam and free the lamp spirit.

However, He Lingchuan had no intention of moving. Instead, he threw out his mirror shield.

Clang!

Shield and mace collided with a tremendous crash.

At the same time, Hé Jing himself rushed forward, intending to block the beam with his own body.

A single breath of time; he only needed one breath. If the light were interrupted for even a single breath, the lamp spirit could escape!

But the king of the que beasts seemed to bear some personal grudge against him. It opened its mouth and blasted another stream of frost qi his way.

Without the lamp spirit’s protection, Hé Jing had no choice but to dodge.

He had barely retreated two steps when shards of ice erupted from the ground where he had just been standing, packing the area densely like arrows.

If he had dodged even a moment later, he would have been turned into a hedgehog.

Immediately afterward, the king of the que beasts swung a palm larger than a doorboard straight at him.

Hé Jing roared in fury, “Where are the ghost children?!”

At that moment, the violet-bronze mace automatically returned to its master’s side. Hé Jing was still airborne and on the verge of being caught by the king of the que beasts, seemingly about to repeat Zhang Lianhai’s fate. However, he gripped the heavy mace and swept it backward as though rowing an oar through water. His body then abruptly accelerated and shot through the gaps between the king of the que beasts’ fingers.

Even during the escape, he did not forget to swing the mace, smashing it heavily into the king of the que beasts’ middle finger.

Crack!

The crisp sound of breaking bone rang out. Even with the beast’s incredibly thick, tough body, it still roared in pain.

Seeing this, He Lingchuan was somewhat surprised. He had not expected Hé Jing, a man who controlled lamp spirits, to also be a martial artist, and not merely an ordinary one. His cultivation was profound, and he could command the wind as well.

Every cloud envoy He Lingchuan had encountered before had placed the bulk of their abilities in their lamp spirits, and Bai Ziqi had been no exception.

Hé Jing spun once in midair and shot straight toward He Lingchuan. His movements were extraordinarily fast, and he could even accelerate midway through them, as though someone behind him had suddenly shoved him forward with tremendous force.

This was an applied form of the Wind-Dancing Art, known as “adding momentum to the wave.”

1. From the Chinese proverb, in the fight between the snipe and the clam, the fisherman has the best of it. Similar to the other proverb, involving a cicada, mantis, and oriole. ☜