"No matter what, there must be a Mud Pill secret depository inside Yuan Qi!"
Divine sense swirled in Xu Ying's eyes. He sprinted toward Yuan Qi, shouting, "Xiao Qi, don't heal yourself yet! Wait for me! What, already healed? No, you're not!"
*Pfft!*
Xu Ying pointed from afar. A streak of sword qi pierced into Qinyan Cave, and blood gushed from Yuan Qi.
"Injured again? How careless of you! Xiao Qi, channel your divine sense and tune into that mysterious energy, and you'll be able to find your Mud Pill secret depository!"
Yuan Qi barely managed to choke back his sobs. Following Xu Ying's instructions, he carefully sensed the mysterious energy flooding into his body. Before long, the great serpent cried out in astonishment, "There really is a Mud Pill secret depository inside me! Could it be..."
He froze like a carved wooden idol or clay statue, muttering, "Could it be that I'm actually human? Did I transform into a snake demon?"
Xu Ying thought it over, utterly unable to follow the serpent's train of thought, and probed, "Yuan Qi, don't you think it's possible that demons also possess secret depositories?"
Yuan Qi caught on at once, saying sternly, "You mean this is a plot by the humans? In the pioneer civilization of our demon race, demons were the masters of civilization who taught humans how to open secret depositories and cultivate. Later, humans used deception to overthrow demon rule and cast our civilization into shadow. They erased demon history, sealed our kind away, and propagated the lie that only humans possess secret depositories! Ah Ying, what you really want to talk about is this tragic history of tears and blood, isn't it?"
Xu Ying pondered for a moment and shook his head. "I think there must be another reason why demons don't understand secret depositories, but it certainly isn't what you just said. Xiao Qi, three generations of your family have lived in Qinyan Cave for over three hundred years. Have you ever wondered where the mysterious energy that heals your wounds comes from?"
Yuan Qi had no idea.
Xu Ying smiled and said, "I'll take you to meet the senior who lives in the stone chamber. He is the source of that mysterious energy. Even the Zhou clan ancestor learned the profound mysteries of the Mud Pill secret depository from him."
He led Yuan Qi back to the Mud Pill Palace inside Qinyan Cave, walked up to the stone wall, and opened it.
Yuan Qi was filled with amazement. Having lived in Qinyan Cave for a hundred and twenty years, he had never known a stone chamber existed here.
"Finding this place is actually simple. Just trace the mysterious energy backward to its source, and you'll arrive here," Xu Ying said. "That senior's skeleton is right here... Wait, where did the senior's skeleton go?"
Xu Ying's eyes went wide as he searched every corner of the stone chamber. When he had come here last time, the skeleton had clearly sat there in meditation. He never expected that upon returning, the skeleton would have vanished into thin air!
Cold sweat rolled down his forehead as two possibilities crossed his mind: "Either the Zhou clan ancestor came here, or the skeleton walked off on its own!"
Yuan Qi chuckled. "Ah Ying, that's simple. The mysterious power in Qinyan Cave is still present, which means the skeleton must still be in the cave, just somewhere else. We only need to trace the mysterious energy upstream to find him."
He looked down at his wound, only to see it had already healed over. He glanced toward Xu Ying's thigh, tempted to strike it, but knowing he was no match for Xu Ying, he gritted his teeth and tore his freshly healed wound open again.
Xu Ying had originally intended to give him another strike. Seeing him tear open his own wound, he was filled with admiration. "Xiao Qi, why put yourself through that? You could have just let me help."
"You don't know your own strength. It's safer if I do it myself."
Yuan Qi promptly mobilized his divine sense, tracing backward along the trail toward the source of the mysterious energy. The bronze bell floated beside him, steadying his divine sense with its chimes to lend him a hand.
After a moment, Yuan Qi remarked, "Huh? I'm back here again! Strange, how strange! I thought I had traveled across boundless space and time to some alien realm, but after going in circles, I wound up right back here!"
Xu Ying grew tense as Yuan Qi continued, "The source leads back into the water. I'm following it... The water is so deep, so cold. Still diving... still diving, there's no light around anymore... It's too deep, still diving. Wait, I hit the bottom! I think I touched something. It's very smooth, huge, with serrated edges, like a giant seashell..."
Both Xu Ying and the bronze bell were startled. What Yuan Qi's divine sense had touched was clearly not the white skeleton they had seen in the stone chamber.
*Huge, like a seashell—what could it be?*
Just as Xu Ying thought of this, Yuan Qi's voice drifted over again: "This thing is bigger than a table, two or three zhang wide, with very sharp serrations... Wait, there's another one beneath it, half-overlapping with this one, also massive and smooth. Huh, there's another one next to it..."
Xu Ying frowned slightly, wondering what it could be, when his gaze suddenly fell upon Yuan Qi.
He stared at Yuan Qi's scales. Yuan Qi was more than ten zhang long, and each of his scales was the size of a bowl, layered over one another across his entire body, leaving only the dragon horn atop his head unscaled.
*What Yuan Qi touched looks very much like scales... They are scales!*
Xu Ying's hair stood on end. He shouted urgently, "Lord Bell, pull Yuan Qi's divine sense back immediately! There's a colossal monster hiding at the bottom of Qinyan Cave!"
Without a second thought, the bronze bell tolled at once. Soundwaves rippled down to the cave floor in an instant, catching up to Yuan Qi's divine sense and pulling it back.
The moment its chime touched Yuan Qi's divine sense, it also brushed against something else. Relying on the echoes, the bronze bell instantly "saw" the creature's outline clearly.
They were neatly stacked, massive scales with razor-sharp, serrated edges. Each scale spanned twenty-six or twenty-seven feet wide, until at a certain point, the scales abruptly shrank.
And where the scales ended, a colossal pupil—more than ten times larger than a scale—was staring faintly at Yuan Qi's divine sense, as if observing what this little creature intended to do!
"Run!"
Having retrieved Yuan Qi's divine sense, the bronze bell vibrated and cried out, "The big guy at the bottom of the cave is awake!"
With his divine sense back in his body, Yuan Qi had barely recovered from his shock when he blurted out, "I still have so many books at home..."
The bronze bell darted into the back of Xu Ying's head ahead of him and yelled, "Your home is about to be obliterated, and you still care about books? Ah Ying, run!"
Xu Ying took a stride forward, bursting out of the Mud Pill Palace. Yuan Qi abandoned all else and surged after him. As they dashed past the pool before the palace, the pool suddenly swelled upward, the water bulging into a massive dome as though some enormous beast were thrusting against it from below!
By the time Xu Ying and Yuan Qi sped past the pool, the water level had already risen above the Mud Pill Palace, nearing the cavern ceiling. The violent surge of water whipped up fierce winds that blasted them from behind, making them feel as if howling gales were hounding them forward.
Behind them, covered bridges and walkways shattered one after another.
The colossal creature was rising from the water's depths!
Xu Ying and Yuan Qi bolted onto the stone bridge just as a deep, drawn-out roar echoed from beneath the water. Its frequency was extremely low, yet it made their internal organs shudder!
They dashed along the stone bridge, watching a massive body swim beneath them, drawing closer and clearer with every passing second.
"Jump!" Xu Ying roared.
One human and one serpent leapt forward together, plunging into the water and swimming frantically through the great fissure.
Behind them, surging waves completely submerged the cave-within-a-cave inside Qinyan Cave. Immediately after, the great fissure behind them burst apart, and Mount Wuwang shuddered violently, as though the colossal creature had brushed against the mountain while swimming, rocking the entire peak.
Xu Ying and Yuan Qi's minds were completely blank; their only thought was to swim forward with everything they had. As a giant serpent, Yuan Qi was exceptionally fast in water, but Xu Ying executed his newly learned True Cultivation of the Ba Snake, using supernatural power to channel the force of the water so that he was not a fraction slower than Yuan Qi!
Yet behind them, the water level within Qinyan Cave rose drastically. A massive creature smashed through the stone walls, swimming rapidly after them beneath the water!
Ever since the Netherworld's invasion had brought dramatic changes across the land, Mount Wuwang had grown taller and Qinyan Cave had expanded. But that colossal beast was larger than even Qinyan Cave, causing the cavern walls to continuously fracture and widen under its bulk while stalactites fell from the ceiling in heaps of rubble!
Inside Xu Ying's mind, the bronze bell shouted, "The one beneath the water is most likely the true master of the Mud Pill Palace! That skeleton was just a decoy! He's far bigger than the big guy I suppressed in the well! Run faster, he's catching up!"
***
At the foot of Mount Wuwang, the sorrowful old man sighed and looked up toward the mountain.
"This time, even if I have to pinch his nose and force it down, I will make him drink these ten bowls of tea," he muttered softly.
Suddenly, a look of surprise crossed the old man's face as he turned toward the other side of the mountain. There, Regional Inspector Zhou Heng of Yongzhou was approaching, leading a retinue of extraordinary figures.
Zhou Heng held an exalted status as a military commissioner presiding over a region, yet at this moment, he could only walk on foot.
He was enormous and fat, three times as wide as an ordinary man, with a protruding belly. He usually panted after walking only a few steps, yet now he dared not even breathe too loudly, leading the way ahead with a cautious smile.
He possessed formidable supernatural powers, having managed to escape pursuit by the white-robed Nuo immortal, and could fly through the sky or burrow through the earth at will. But right now, he dared not use a single art.
All of this was because that person was neither riding a carriage nor flying with supernatural power.
Even the reigning emperor could not have commanded such deference from him; only one person could make him behave like this. That was the Zhou clan ancestor.
The Zhou clan ancestor was a youth with black hair and white eyebrows. A heroic air still lingered between his brows, showing not the slightest hint of someone three to four hundred years old.
The sorrowful old man spotted him from afar, and the youth noticed him immediately. As their gazes met, the old man's face grew even more sorrowful, and he halted his steps toward Qinyan Cave.
After a moment, the Zhou clan entourage walked up. From a distance, they saw the sorrowful old man sitting upright beneath the cliff of Mount Wuwang. Before him stood a table, two chairs, a teapot, and two teacups.
Regional Inspector Zhou Heng was about to step forward to question him when a gentle voice spoke from behind: "Heng'er, step back. He is an old acquaintance of mine."
Zhou Heng felt a chill and thought, *The Ancestor's acquaintance?*
The white-browed youth said, "Go to Qinyan Cave and invite Young Master Xu to come out. I shall meet with my old acquaintance."
The retinue complied and proceeded toward Qinyan Cave without pausing.
The white-browed youth stepped forward, took a seat across from the sorrowful old man, lifted the teapot, and lifted the lid to peer inside. He poured a cup for the old man, but poured none for himself.
"The teapot contains Meng Po soup. Everyone thinks that when I met with a great tribulation back then, I almost fled to the Wangxiang Platform to take refuge, only to devise a countermeasure through my wits and thus avoid it. What they don't know is that, forced by desperation, I truly did go to the Wangxiang Platform."
The white-browed youth smiled faintly. "Back then, I fathomed the profound mysteries of life and death within the Wangxiang Platform, yet could not walk out of it. It was only after meeting you, following in your footsteps, that I walked out of the Wangxiang Platform and avoided dying there."
The sorrowful old man remained deeply furrowed in gloom. "Little Friend Zhou possesses deep fortune, astonishing willpower, and a lofty Dao heart. You are one of the few who were not entranced by Meng Po soup. You walked off the Nai River Bridge without drinking it."
The white-browed youth chuckled. "The last time I met you, you were borrowing tea on the Nai River Bridge. And now that I meet you again, your teapot still holds Meng Po soup. What matter could compel you to borrow tea time and again?"
The sorrowful old man said, "A minor matter. Little Friend Zhou, why have you come to this new territory in such grand fashion?"
The white-browed youth replied with a smile, "A minor matter."
The sorrowful old man sighed. "It can hardly be minor, can it? Your lifespan is nearly exhausted. How could your coming here be a minor matter?"
The two stared at each other.
***
Inside Qinyan Cave, the Zhou clan Nuo master scouting ahead shouted, "My Lord, the criminal Xu Ying and a giant snake are charging straight toward us!"
Zhou Heng laughed. "Just an insolent brat—isn't capturing him as easy as turning over a hand? Step aside, I'll take him myself!"
Behind him, the Zhou clan experts dispersed.
Zhou Heng held his breath and focused his attention. Sure enough, he saw Xu Ying and Yuan Qi rushing madly toward them. His spirits surged, and just as he prepared to strike, he suddenly saw torrential floodwaters filling all of Qinyan Cave behind Xu Ying. Within the waters, some colossal behemoth was thrashing, smashing the cavern into continuous collapse!
Faced with such a scene, even Zhou Heng, a Grand Nuo, could not help but feel terrified.
That creature in the water was far thicker than Qinyan Cave itself, slamming into the mountain until it shook and cracked. The aura it emitted instantly crushed Zhou Heng's imposing presence, instilling in him a dreadful horror akin to Mount Tai crashing down to crush his Dao heart!
Without a second thought, Zhou Heng spun around and fled. Nobody would have expected that a regional inspector who had eaten himself bloated and fat could run so fast at a time like this.
An instant later, the rest of the Zhou clan fled for their lives alongside Zhou Heng!
Outside, the white-browed youth was still locking eyes with the sorrowful old man when an earth-shattering roar erupted. Qinyan Cave exploded, Mount Wuwang shook violently, and figures burst out from the shattered cave, hurled into midair by billowing blast waves.
Then the mountain cracked open, and floodwaters erupted from within. A clarion roar echoed through the clouds as a mountain peak sprouted before Qinyan Cave.
Xu Ying, Zhou Heng, and the others crashed to the ground and fled in panic. Looking back, they saw a mountain peak bearing down on them. It was the subterranean beast burrowing through the earth, and that peak was likely its dorsal fin!
The corner of the white-browed youth's eye twitched. He rose abruptly, landing behind the fleeing crowd and before the fin, and declared loudly, "Granny Yu, protect Young Master Xu and escort him away from here! I shall meet this great creature!"
Among the crowd fleeing for their lives was an old crone, hunched and decrepit. Hearing his words, she chuckled slyly, leapt into the air, and gave chase in the direction Xu Ying was fleeing, calling out with a laugh, "Young Master Xu, our Zhou clan means no harm!"
She drew a silk handkerchief from her sleeve and tossed it with a flick of her wrist. The handkerchief flew straight toward Xu Ying, growing larger and larger, its coverage expanding until it blanketed a hundred mu of mountain forest!
As Xu Ying sprinted beneath the handkerchief, he watched the surrounding trees and rocks rapidly expand.
He instantly realized: the trees and rocks weren't growing larger; he was shrinking at terrifying speed!
*A Zhou clan Nuo art—scattering beans to form soldiers, reversed! This Zhou clan old crone is formidable!*
Xu Ying's body quickly shrank to the size of a soybean. Rocks he could once step over now towered like ten-thousand-fathom mountains, and ordinary bushes loomed like mythical colossal trees!
Watching the charging mountain peak, the white-browed youth smiled faintly. "I ought to call you Master, shouldn't I? When I entered that stone chamber all those years ago, I even kowtowed to your withered bones."
Chapter 43