Chapter 852: The Divine Artifact That Could Not Be Taken Away

The pills that they had just taken were the kind of harsh, dangerous stimulants distributed by the Heavenly Palace. They could squeeze out every last bit of a person’s lifespan in a short time, making them appear astonishingly vigorous and powerful. Once the effects wore off, however, they would collapse like mud. Even if they survived, their bodies would be left depleted and weakened, and it would take at least two or three years of recuperation before they fully recovered.

Hé Jing glanced at the remaining child-keeper, irritation surging in his chest.

Of the four ghost children he had brought, only three ghost children had emerged. The strongest one had still shown no sign of movement. Otherwise, their party would not have been fighting from such a disadvantaged position.

At his urging, the red tiger launched a frenzied all-out assault on the king of the que beasts, completely disregarding its own safety.

The creature’s claws and fangs were astonishingly sharp, capable of tearing open even the king of the que beasts’ hardened ice armor. It was thrown aside several times, but it would simply whirl around and pounce back immediately. Its jaws never strayed far from the king’s throat and chest, and it could even breathe out black flames.

Twice, the king of the que beasts nearly had its chest pierced by the tiger’s spike-like tongue. Enraged, it roared several times, and ice began condensing around its left hand as though some kind of weapon were taking shape.

However, the Panlong Secret Realm still had a desert climate, not the icy environment where it was strongest, so the ice formed relatively slowly.

The red tiger seized the opportunity and blasted black flames into its opponent’s left eye, blinding it!

The king of the que beasts howled in pain, clutched its eye, and staggered backward two large steps.

With the red tiger tying down the king of the que beasts, the pressure directly ahead of the Heavenly Palace party suddenly eased. They immediately began forcing their way toward the cenotaph.

Twenty-seven meters remained.

Twenty meters.

Every small advance cost human lives.

Hé Jing flexed the ring finger of his left hand. His storage ring had an enormous capacity and could easily hold several tons of supplies. Taking in that massive block of ice would pose no problem either.

He only needed the dense beast herd ahead of him forced back far enough for him to get close.

Just then, the ice weapon in the king of the que beasts’ left hand finally finished taking shape. It was an enormous battleaxe!

Its design was extremely primitive, but the weapon was larger than an ordinary doorboard and undeniably possessed a razor-sharp edge.

The red tiger lunged in again. The king of the que beasts seized it and ripped it away, completely ignoring the large chunk of flesh torn from its own neck in the process. Then it raised the ice axe in its left hand and hacked downward with all its strength!

It pinned the red tiger directly inside the array of those from the Heavenly Palace, crushing one of the guards flat beneath it.

The ice axe slammed into the red tiger’s ribs. Everyone heard the crisp crack of bones breaking.

No one knew how many ribs had snapped.

But the tiger’s outer armor was genuinely hard. Even with the king of the que beasts’ strength combined with the sharpness of the ice axe, the blow still failed to cleave through it.

The beast king’s fury instantly soared. It raised the axe and began smashing down again and again in a frenzy.

Taking advantage of the opening, Hé Jing finally flashed forward to the edge of the cenotaph, completely disregarding the surging beast herd around him.

He pressed one hand against the enormous block of ice and silently commanded, “Store!”

The next instant—

Nothing happened. The massive block of ice remained completely motionless.

Sweat instantly streamed down Hé Jing’s forehead.

He tried twice more. However, the ice and everything sealed inside remained exactly where they were.

It... It’s not going in!

Why? It’s clearly neither too large nor too heavy!

A scream sounded behind him as another two guards died. In his urgency, Hé Jing suddenly remembered something. Storage rings could not take in living things, with the exception of vegetation, eggs, and similar objects.

Could the Generous Pot be alive?

Or is the Generous Pot so vast and profound in nature that it exceeds what the storage ring is capable of containing?

The most terrifying reality was now staring him in the face, and that was that he might have to physically grasp the pot with his own hands before he could take it away!

At that moment, two beasts fought their way over to his position.

Hé Jing shifted aside, and the red tiger’s back slammed into the solid ice. Several of its ribs were now broken, so it was far less agile than before. Before it could regain its footing, the beast king’s ice axe came chopping down along the same path.

A heavy impact rang out. A wound half a palm wide opened across the red tiger’s neck. Black blood sprayed everywhere, splashing onto the ice with a furious hiss—

The power of the black flames within its blood could corrode the solid ice.

Having finally broken through the armor and drawn blood, the king of the que beasts was greatly encouraged. It planted one enormous foot firmly on the red tiger and brought the huge axe down three more times in succession.

Each blow was more vicious than the last, all striking precisely at the wound on the red tiger’s neck.

The other Heavenly Palace guards attacked its back with everything they had, but it ignored them.

The final axe blow at last severed the red tiger’s neck bones. The remaining force continued into the ice behind it, leaving an axe mark more than a meter deep!

Victorious, the king of the que beasts threw back its head and roared, yanked the giant axe free from the ice, and swept it toward the battle formation.

The strongest opponent among them, the red tiger, was dead. The rest all looked like food to it now—one bite apiece, easy to swallow. The pufferfish-like ghost beast kept spitting poisonous fire at it to draw its attention, and only then did the king of the que beasts finally spare it any notice.

Remembering how this creature had also hovered in the air taking cheap shots while it fought the red tiger, rage surged from the depths of the beast king’s heart. It hurled several ice projectiles upward. The pufferfish-like ghost beast hurriedly dodged, but the king of the que beasts casually swept one hand through the air, creating a powerful gust that dragged the ghost beast directly in front of the massive snow beast.

Splat!

The king of the que beasts crushed it in one hand!

The resulting explosion was extremely violent, though tightly contained. Whether the Hetai had deliberately detonated itself or not, the blast caught the king of the que beasts completely off guard and hurled it more than thirty meters away.

Hé Jing immediately signaled to his disciple Fu Liang. The latter then drew an explosive arrow and fired it into the crack in the ice according to Hé Jing’s instructions.

The king of the que beasts had already split open a large fissure in the solid ice itself, and a great deal of the red tiger’s black blood had flowed into it, corroding deeper and deeper until the fissure became a pit. Seeing that the corrosion had already eaten more than halfway through, Hé Jing naturally would not let the opportunity pass.

The arrow struck true and flew directly into the hollow.

A tremendous explosion followed, and the upper layer of ice—

remained perfectly intact.

Solid. The ice created by the king of the que beasts’ ice seeds was truly solid, so solid that even explosives could not blast through it.

Seeing this, everyone felt their hopes dim.

Hé Jing had no choice but to throw out two divine fire talismans.

The Heavenly Palace’s talisman masters had sealed a thread of Juju’s true fire within the talismans for use against enemies. The effect was excellent; unfortunately, very few could be produced.

Hé Jing had already thrown out four or five while fighting the beast herd earlier. These were his last two.

The reason the Heavenly Palace party could withstand wave after wave of attacks from the beast herd was not merely their own formidable strength. They also possessed an endless assortment of magical artifacts, pills, talismans, and puppets to support them, fully demonstrating what it meant to be obscenely well-funded.

Watching from afar, He Lingchuan was practically drooling with envy.

But in a battle of this intensity, even the deepest stockpile would eventually run dry. By now, even Hé Jing had used up most of the treasures he carried. Naturally, the rest of the Heavenly Palace party was also running short.

It had to be said that anything produced from Juju’s flames remained as reliable as ever. True fire from the depths of the earth could burn virtually anything. The moment the two divine fire talismans were deployed, the solid ice began visibly melting.

It became a contest between ice and fire.

The king of the que beasts had just climbed back to its feet and naturally had no intention of letting Hé Jing continue setting fires and causing explosions undisturbed. It actually gouged out its own left eye, which had been ruined by the red tiger, and slapped it against the giant axe.

The giant axe immediately turned a bright, gleaming ice-blue.

Then it swung the axe downward and struck the ground three times in succession.

Each impact became the center of a thick layer of ice that rapidly spread outward in every direction.

The que beasts flourished in it like fish returning to water, and every Heavenly Palace member’s expression changed at the sight.

If this had happened within Beijia territory, such a large-scale indiscriminate divine technique might have looked terrifying, but it would have had relatively little effect on them. This, however, was the Panlong Secret Realm in western Yuan. Their numbers were small, and origin energy here was exceptionally thin, nowhere near enough to protect them.

The Northern Guard Kuixing Array bore the brunt of the attack. When the first wave of frost struck, three kuixing stones shattered immediately. By the time all three waves had passed, only two stones remained intact.

The array possessed defensive power and had blocked seventy percent of the freezing impact, but the remaining thirty percent still struck the Heavenly Palace guards.

Two of them were already exhausted and could no longer respond in time. Their protective magical artifacts shattered one after another, and within two to three breaths, the men themselves froze into solid ice sculptures!

The king of the que beasts did not fare well either. After those three tremendous strikes, its body had visibly shrunk by another two sizes. Blood streamed from all over it, while several strands of ghostly light escaped from its mouth and nose and were drawn into the Generous Pot.

Then it charged forward again with its giant axe, sweeping through the Heavenly Palace party.

The divine fire talismans burning against the solid ice had already exhausted their power.

They were only talismans, after all. Juju himself had not come.

Still, they had burned a large cavity into the ice, exposing one shoulder plate of the Red General’s armor.

There’s hope! Ignoring his injuries, Hé Jing lunged forward and raised his heavy mace, raining down blow after blow.

At this life-or-death juncture, he forcibly rallied his true energy and struck with all his strength.

Even from far away, He Lingchuan could hear the tremendous impacts. The commotion was no weaker than the king of the que beasts’ earlier ice shockwaves.

Crash! Crack!

Chunks of broken ice fell away. Half of the Red General’s armor had now been exposed, down past the ribs.

Hé Jing raised his mace to strike again, but suddenly his chest tightened, and his breath failed him.

Pfft!

He coughed up blood once more.

This time, the clots were black and mixed with bits of flesh.

The backlash from the destruction of his lamp spirit was still affecting him. On top of that, he had expended large amounts of true energy fighting the beast herd, and now he had forced out every last reserve of strength. These repeated heavy blows aggravated the injuries to his internal organs. Pain darkened his vision, and he nearly lost consciousness.

But at this critical moment, he absolutely could not stop. Hé Jing forcibly drew up another breath of true qi and struck twice more. At last—

The Generous Pot was exposed as well.

Hé Jing was overjoyed. He seized the pot by its spout.

He pulled. It did not move at all.

He pulled again, but still nothing.

What’s going on?

He followed the body of the pot downward with his eyes and discovered that the Generous Pot was not only encircled by the Red General’s armor, but the armored hands themselves were also gripping it tightly.

What exactly is preventing me from taking the pot? Is it the solid ice or the armor?

He could not tell, because the Red General’s gauntlets were still frozen within the ice.

Seeing the king of the que beasts turn back toward him, Hé Jing grew both furious and desperate. He raised his heavy mace and began smashing madly at the Red General’s armored hands.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Ice fragments flew everywhere.

With that kind of force, forget ice, even refined steel would have been hammered apart.

Despite that, he neither knocked off the gauntlets nor freed the Generous Pot.

Instead, ice began forming around the pot again.

The king of the que beasts’ ice seeds could grow and repair themselves automatically.

Now that the divine fire talismans had burned out, the entire block of ice would completely regenerate in less than the time it took to drink half a cup of tea.

Hé Jing’s only chance was to dig out both the armor and the pot together and carry the whole thing away.

Crack!

The final two kuixing stones shattered as well. The Northern Guard Kuixing Array was broken by the beast herd!

The Heavenly Palace party nearly lost their souls from fright.

They had exhausted almost every measure they possessed. Only four of them remained—not counting the unconscious child-keeper—while there were still at least 140 que beasts. Most despairing of all, the king of the que beasts was still alive.

Hé Jing abruptly turned and tossed his disciple a bronze talisman. “Activate the Lesser Mountain-Moving Array.”

Battlefields often had complicated terrain, so the Lesser Mountain-Moving Array carried by the Heavenly Palace was not drawn on the ground. Instead, it had been engraved onto plates of refined bronze, with two matching pieces forming a complete set.

That was also why the Heavenly Palace party had dared to advance so deeply into enemy lines. They had prepared an escape route from the beginning. If they could not win, they could always run.