Chapter 861: A Killing Through a Killing

That was an extraordinarily valuable experience.

Perhaps that’s the goal I should strive toward in the future?

He had only taken a few steps when his limbs suddenly felt as heavy as lead, exhaustion washing over him.

The Red General’s armor placed an enormous burden on the body. It was not something one could wear casually.

Besides, the battle against Naluotian’s avatar had actually consumed a tremendous amount of mental energy. His nerves had remained taut from beginning to end, his mind calculating every possibility.

Now that he could finally relax, He Lingchuan could not help yawning.

Against a cunning opponent like Naluotian, how could he make it lower its guard and send down an avatar? He Lingchuan’s answer was to make Naluotian believe every step of the journey to Panlong was dictated by itself, making it think the greatest dangers in the Panlong Ruins came from the Heavenly Palace and the Generous Pot, not He Lingchuan.

In short, he had to incite its greed until it overwhelmed its caution.

And sometimes, the most skilled hunter had to appear in the guise of prey.

He Lingchuan tapped the divine bone necklace. “Hey, you didn’t digest Naluotian’s avatar, did you? Otherwise, all the effort I put in today will have been wasted!”

Why had he gone to such lengths to set this trap in the first place? It was all to trick Naluotian’s avatar into coming inside and imprisoning it.

Imprison it, not kill it!

A heavenly god could only maintain one avatar in the mortal realm at a time. Now that Naluotian’s avatar was trapped inside the Generous Pot, so long as it remained alive and undestroyed, Naluotian’s true self would be unable to perform divine descent into the mortal realm again.

After all, the slot was occupied.

That was why He Lingchuan remained completely unconcerned even though he knew the divine seal mark in his sea of consciousness had not faded.

As long as Naluotian’s true self could not descend into the mortal realm, it would have no way to deal with him in the future.

And because a skin-sack could not be transferred and another god could not remove the mark, none of the other gods could covet He Lingchuan’s body as a skin-sack either.

Given that He Lingchuan himself had no way to erase the divine seal mark, this was the best compromise available.

As usual, the divine bone necklace gave no response.

He Lingchuan was not particularly worried. The Generous Pot might never communicate with him, but it generally followed rules and behaved reasonably. Just look at the Panlong Secret Realm this time; it let human adventurers in directly, yet intercepted the heavenly god’s avatar in the ocean. That alone showed that it had quietly cooperated with He Lingchuan’s plan.

He even added considerately, “When you have time, remember to let me see it with my own eyes. That’s reasonable enough, right?”

Between imprisoning Naluotian’s avatar and fusing completely with the Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid, the Generous Pot was probably insanely busy at the moment.

He Lingchuan simply sat down and circulated his energy for two whole cycles before he finally felt his body recover somewhat, no longer as though it had been completely hollowed out.

The moment he stood up, he noticed a faint glimmer from the ground not far away.

What’s that?

He walked over and picked up a small yellow seal.

Turning it over, he found a shallow groove on the bottom. It was not deep, but it was very fresh.

“The Heavenly King Seal?”

Perfected Sanshui had used this very seal to suppress him earlier, only for it to be knocked away by the Red General’s black spear.

He Lingchuan had assumed it was merely a magical artifact manifested by Perfected Sanshui. He had not expected it to be a genuine treasure.

Even the Red General’s combat power combined with the Gale Army’s origin energy had failed to destroy this seal. A personal weapon belonging to a great ancient immortal really was something else.

It should be worth quite a bit, right?

He Lingchuan wiped the blood and dirt from the seal, then bowed as he raised it toward the sky. “Many thanks, Perfected Sanshui.”

Since he had already started, he might as well go all the way.

He began cleaning up the battlefield, collecting the belongings left behind by the dead.

They were useless lying here anyway. Better that they follow him from now on.

He would treat them well.

Then, lodged between some rocks, he found Perfected Sanshui’s token.

“Oho, now this is treasure!”

Three pythons were carved on the token—one black, one gold, and one blue. The moment He Lingchuan saw them, he knew these were the same three river pythons that had fought him relentlessly earlier.

They had all suffered heavy damage in the battle, however, and would need some time to recover before they could be released again.

This was one of Perfected Sanshui’s signature magical artifacts. It had spent thousands of suffocating years with its master inside the Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid, yet it had astonishingly not perished.

Unfortunately, as heaven-and-earth spirit qi declined, magical artifacts could no longer display their full power either.

Otherwise, at their peak, those three giant serpents had supposedly possessed the combined might of three great rivers. Even with the Red General’s armor, He Lingchuan probably could not have withstood them.

He searched the other corpses as well. Whether Baling men, Andong men, or miscellaneous adventurers, most were actually quite poor. Taken together, everything they carried barely amounted to ten taels of silver. The Heavenly Palace party, however, was genuinely wealthy. The gold, silver, and jewelry He Lingchuan stripped from their bodies alone were worth more than 7,000 taels of silver, and there were dozens of magical artifacts whose value could not yet be estimated.

Sure enough, killing people is the fastest way to get rich.

He picked out Zhang Lianhai’s candle and held it toward the divine bone amulet. “Want it?”

The Generous Pot had previously shown interest in Deputy Cloud Envoy Bai Ziqi’s candle and lamp spirit. He Lingchuan had simply been unable to deal with them at the time.

The divine bone amulet refused nothing and swallowed it in one bite.

He Lingchuan shrugged and continued searching.

Hé Jing also possessed a pale white-and-gold candle. As a cloud envoy, his treasures were naturally of a higher grade, and He Lingchuan decided to keep this one for himself.

He also recovered the Big Dipper Kuixing Array[1].

All of the array artifacts themselves were intact. Unfortunately, the kuixing stones had all exploded during the battle.

This array combined offense, defense, and replenishment in one. The Heavenly Palace party had relied on it to withstand more than a dozen waves of que beast attacks, and He Lingchuan had been terribly envious while watching.

Hm, I’ll keep it just in case.

Maybe he would have a chance to replenish the kuixing stones later.

He also removed several large-capacity storage rings from Hé Jing’s fingers. The rings alone were already worth a fortune. Still, inside the rings were large quantities of supplies, a complete set of bronze talismans for the Lesser Mountain-Moving Array, and command tokens controlling several dried-corpse monster puppets.

“I’m rich. I’m rich.” He was short on money anyway. The Heavenly Palace really is full of good people!

Then he discovered a particularly unusual corpse.

Hé Jing had brought four child-keepers, but only three had successfully summoned their ghost children. The final ghost beast had never emerged to fight because its host had secretly taken medicine.

Judging by Hé Jing’s reaction, that ghost beast must have been quite powerful. Unfortunately, it never got the chance to help the Heavenly Palace turn the battle around.

It should still be hidden inside the child-keeper’s body lying here on the ground.

He Lingchuan tried to store the corpse inside a storage ring but failed.

As expected, storage rings could not take in living creatures.

He checked the corpse’s pulse and was surprised to discover that the child-keeper still had a thread of breath.

He’s actually alive!

That was truly unexpected. The child-keeper’s eyes and brain had been badly damaged by the flame from the pale gold candle. By all logic, he should have died on the spot. At the time, Hé Jing had been in such a hurry to force out the ghost beast that he had not cared about the man’s life at all.

Although the ghost beast had remained asleep, once its host died, it would lose its source of nourishment. Just as a starving person would go searching for food, once hunger woke it, the creature would naturally break free and seek something to eat.

Whether this one was simply an exceptionally deep sleeper or not hungry enough, no one knew. Even after Hé Jing died, it still had not shown itself.

With his brain destroyed, the child-keeper would certainly never wake again, but his body was somehow still clinging to life. Perhaps that was also thanks to the ghost beast inside him.

A living ghost beast is still extremely valuable. How should I deal with it?

He Lingchuan immediately thought of something and patted the Soul-Stealing Mirror. “Take it in!”

The mirror contained a small world of its own. Taking in a few living creatures was no trouble.

The Soul-Stealing Mirror spat out several drops of clear water, which turned into foam the moment they hit the ground.

He Lingchuan looked puzzled. “What’s this?”

“Perfected Sanshui’s blue python!” the Soul-Stealing Mirror complained. “You shoved it into me and then completely ignored it! It spent ages thrashing around inside my small world!”

Only after Perfected Sanshui vanished did the serpent disappear as well.

“Did your small world hold up all right?” Ever since the mirror started following him, it had received plenty of benefits. Its inner world should have improved as well and no longer be quite so fragile.

“...More or less. It died quickly.” The mirror silently took in the ghost beast’s skin-sack. “What do you want this thing for? If it wakes up, it’s going to make trouble for me too.”

“A toy for Dong Rui.” Monster puppets and ghost beasts worked along similar principles. Dong Rui would probably grin from ear to ear when he saw this thing.

He Lingchuan had only just straightened back up when he noticed the dirt and gravel on the ground beginning to dissolve into black smoke.

Looking around at the surrounding buildings, he saw the broken walls, bricks, and roof tiles also transforming into smoke, wisps and strands drawn as though by a summons toward the Red General’s cenotaph.

The Soul-Stealing Mirror cried, “This secret realm is collapsing! No, it’s dissolving!”

It housed a small world of its own, so it had more authority on this subject than anyone.

He Lingchuan walked alone through the ruins. Around him, an entire world was breaking apart.

The underlying color of the sky gradually turned pale red.

It was surreal, desolate, and magnificent.

This was the final moment of a secret realm, the end of a world unknown to anyone outside it. How many people in the world would ever have the fortune to witness such a sight?

He Lingchuan understood that the secret realm he had entered two years ago with Sun Fuping, Nian Songyu, and the others had been this very same one.

It had completed the handover between Zhong Shengguang and the Red General, served as the battlefield where the Generous Pot refined the Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid, and become the trap in which He Lingchuan ensnared Naluotian’s avatar.

Its purpose had been fulfilled; hence it could finally leave the stage.

He Lingchuan closed his eyes.

Yet the thought that arose in his mind was:

What about the Panlong World?

Is it, in essence, the same as this secret realm? How would it eventually reach its own conclusion?

* * *

After He Chunhua led his troops back to the oasis, he immediately ordered tents to be erected.

The army medic came over to treat the wound in his shoulder blade.

The tent flap was rolled up. He Chunhua stared silently at the rising sun in the east.

Naluotian’s idol had remained hot against his chest the entire time, but he ignored it.

Basin after basin of bloodstained water was carried outside, yet whether because of the medicine’s sedative effect or simply his state of mind, he barely felt the pain.

After escaping the Panlong Secret Realm and once the initial relief of surviving had faded, his eldest son’s sweeping, impassioned tirade began replaying automatically in his mind.

Was that really Chuan’er?

If not, then why’d he risk his life to save me several times before?

If it really was him, then the change over the past year and a half is truly astonishing. He went from a spoiled wastrel on some backwater frontier into a man capable of becoming a pillar of the state.

The way he speaks, the way he handles matters, even the look in his eyes when he regards others... He’s changed completely.

But isn’t that exactly the kind of son any father dreams of? A son capable of great things, willing to shoulder responsibility, someone who could bring glory to the family name.

Chuan’er has grown up, after all.

Children who suddenly came to their senses and matured overnight were hardly unheard of. As the saying went, nothing was more precious than a prodigal son who turned back.

Why couldn’t he, He Chunhua, have two outstanding sons?

The army medic said softly, “My lord, the wound has been treated. It would be best if you remained lying down and did not move today.”

The new day had only just begun, yet He Chunhua looked utterly exhausted. “Leave.”

He sent everyone out.

Zhao Qinghe understood his intentions. He first helped He Chunhua sit upright, then took out an incense burner and lit seven sticks of incense. After setting up a barrier for him, he lowered the tent flap to keep the wind from getting in.

He Chunhua sat alone inside the tent. Only after thinking for a very long time did he finally take out Naluotian’s idol and begin murmuring a prayer.

1. This should just be the Northern Guard Kuixing Array. ☜