That screech pierced the brain like needles, accompanied by bouts of tinnitus and dizziness.
He Lingchuan's response was simply to toss out the net in his hand.
Hadn't he only caught four earlier?
The net was plenty large, with lots of room to spare.
The distance between them was short, and his movement was swift; at least forty or fifty bats couldn't brake in time and plunged headlong into the mesh.
Praise had to go to the burrow spider's silk—guaranteed top quality. Even crammed with dozens more ferocious, rabid human-headed bats, the net held fast, without so much as a tear despite their frantic thrashing.
The remaining fifty or sixty evaded the net, splitting into two swarms to dive straight for He Lingchuan.
Standing atop a stalagmite, He Lingchuan felt the direction of the airflow.
These things were also flying with the wind.
Only when the first bat was about to slam into his face did Fusheng leave its sheath.
In the pitch-black cavern, a flash of light burst forth like a startled swan, like furious thunder; though it lasted only an instant, it swept across a three-zhang span directly ahead.
The ferocious blade light raged like tempestuous waves, grinding all the incoming bats to pieces.
Wave Slash.
The others tried to flee when they saw things going south, but they were still sucked into the blade wind and annihilated in an instant.
Once shredded, the bats didn't burst into flesh and blood; instead, they dissolved into black flakes that drifted through the air.
These things looked just like burnt paper money.
Looking directly ahead again, the monster had somehow lost two or three of the faces on its body, but an extra vertical eye had opened on its forehead.
The vertical eye was huge and bulging, taking up half the face and nearly crowding out the rest of the features.
As soon as it opened, it glared at He Lingchuan, its corners shot through with red capillaries.
Though he didn't know what this thing was capable of, it looked downright sinister. He Lingchuan had no intention of waiting around for it to cast a spell; raising his hand, he treated it to two more pellets.
The monster raised a hand to block, but the moment the pellets struck skin, two deafening booms erupted—
They exploded.
The newly released fire pellets from Yunling Island, also known as toss-cannons, worked like a charm.
When the acrid smoke cleared, he saw the monster blasted all out of shape, like play dough kneaded by a child. Its body proportions were completely warped—some parts stretched out long, others squashed short, and a huge chunk was missing from its shoulder where the fire pellets had hit.
Yet that vertical eye remained intact, perfectly whole.
It stared unblinkingly at He Lingchuan, and the creature even muttered, "Why can't I find it?!"
Find what?
It sounded like muttering to itself.
Right under He Lingchuan's nose, the thing actually began to regenerate.
The blasted portions began retracting, as if an invisible hand were molding it back into shape.
Immune to blades, immune to fire and water, able to self-heal—where was this thing's weakness?
The monster pressed a hand against the rock wall, and blue-gray moss began sprouting across the stone, spreading in all directions.
Something seemed to be squirming atop the moss.
Insects?
He Lingchuan didn't get a chance to examine it closely, for within two breaths the moss withered away, crumbling into black ash that drifted down and leaving the rock wall clean once more.
"Eh?" A look of surprise actually crossed the monster's hideous face. It slammed the rock wall even harder the next time, creating loud thuds.
Yet it was useless.
The moss it unleashed withered even faster this time, failing to spread even two feet.
He Lingchuan said at leisure, "Got any other tricks?"
Clearly, the creature wanted to unleash some wide-area ability, but for some reason, it had failed to work here.
A look of shock washed over the monster's face, and it suddenly plunged into the water.
He Lingchuan had kept his eyes glued to it the entire time; the moment it lifted a leg, he moved as well. He cleared the three-zhang distance in a single leap, swift as an arrow released from his sleeve, followed instantly by a Swallow Strike—Fusheng lashing out with a fully concentrated slash.
The monster should have been cut in half by that strike, but to his surprise, it clapped its hands together and caught the blade between its palms!
This thing could actually catch a bare blade? And execute it with remarkable proficiency, no less.
No matter how sharp Fusheng was, it was useless if it couldn't cut into flesh.
Next, the monster stretched its neck and gaped wide, lunging to bite He Lingchuan's head off.
A human neck had limited reach and normally couldn't stretch toward an enemy, but this creature's neck suddenly elongated like an egret's—long enough to tie in a knot if it tried.
Aside from that startlingly huge vertical eye on its forehead, its face looked fairly normal when its mouth was shut. But once opened, its jaws unhinged wide enough to swallow an embroidered ball whole.
Swallowing a human head would be no problem either, of course.
Inside, beyond two rows of fangs, lay an abyss as dark as a bottomless pit.
This was the stuff of nightmares; any ordinary person facing it would have been scared out of their wits.
Fortunately, the thing had been abnormal right from the start. Whatever bizarre stunts it pulled now, He Lingchuan remained unfazed. Before the gaping maw could snap shut over his head, his leg shot up, planting a kick right into its belly.
Yet the kick failed to send the creature flying; instead, his foot sank deep, as though stuck in a mire.
This thing's body was far too pliable.
Seeing the dark abyss of a mouth descending upon his head, He Lingchuan drove an uppercut straight into its chin.
Crack! He heard the sound of its two rows of massive teeth slamming together.
Then, both of them plunged into the water together.
Channeling his origin power, He Lingchuan made the blade glow with pale yellow light. With a twist of the blade, he severed the creature's hands.
Taking advantage of that opening, several wisps of black smoke rose from the monster and darted into the water.
Behind He Lingchuan, they morphed into water ghosts. Their hair instantly grew into dense, tangled waterweed, wrapping around his ankles and arms and pulling him toward the bottom with astonishing force.
In front of him, the monster threw its entire body forward.
Ganging up to bully him with superior numbers?
He Lingchuan's brow twitched. A shadow manifested behind him, wielding twin sabers, and dispatched a water ghost in a single slash.
His avatar had emerged.
Seeing how dangerous it was, the third water ghost turned and fled.
With the bindings gone, He Lingchuan's arms were instantly freed, and he slashed straight at the monster ahead.
The timing was impeccable, almost as if the creature had stepped forward intentionally to catch the blade.
He Lingchuan cared most about that giant eyeball; with the monster's neck stretched thin, it was severed in one clean cut.
Even underwater, he could hear its agonizing wail.
...
In an inn three hundred zhang away.
The curse master had remained kneeling before the idol, muttering incantations. The three sticks of incense burned at an alarming rate, nearly reduced to stubs within roughly fifty breaths.
He had to constantly light new incense to ensure the stream of smoke never broke.
These three were already halfway gone before his eyes.
He opened his eyes and was just about to light more when, with a soft snap, the three sticks of incense snapped without any wind and fell onto the table.
What was this...?
The curse master was stunned. The swirling smoke inside the room suddenly coalesced back into the form of the idol. It first glared at the broken incense on the table, then demanded of the curse master, "What kind of offering did you give me?!"
"A human," the curse master answered reflexively. "Though he holds an appointment from the Crown Prince, he's a foreigner and cannot use origin power!"
If He Lingchuan had origin power protecting him, the curse master never would have summoned an evil entity like this.
"Wrong! It's not that simple!" the smoke snarled irritably. "Wait until I get back—I'll settle scores with you then!"
With that, it shot out through the window with a whoosh, kicking up a miniature tempest in the room.
Several sheets of white paper on the desk behind flew everywhere in the draft.
The room's haze settled back into calm as the smoke drifted out the window. The curse master knew that the entity had gone in person.
All he had to do was continue offering incense.
Yet his mind was far from calm. With the idol's power, ambushing an obscure, defenseless human ought to have been effortless, shouldn't it?
Even if it had only sent an avatar earlier, it still shouldn't have failed.
What in the world was happening now?
...
Though the monster was covered in faces, the one on its neck was the most important. At this moment, it couldn't care less about He Lingchuan and ducked down to retrieve its head.
It was worth noting that once its head was severed, the monster's body reverted to normal size—its neck shrank back, and its torso ceased stretching.
Seeing this, He Lingchuan had an idea. He grabbed the monster's shoulder and hurled it out of the water before the weird face on its chest could shift over to bite him.
Though the creature looked scrawny, it was ridiculously heavy in his grasp; He Lingchuan felt as if he were hauling up a massive wild boar over three hundred jin, not a person.
Fortunately, true energy surged through his arms, and with a solid foothold on a nearby stalagmite, he managed to execute the throw.
With this heave, the monster landed near the rock wall.
Backhanding his weapon, He Lingchuan hurled Fusheng with a sharp swish, pinning the monster to the stone wall.
Without a head, it couldn't shapeshift, preventing it from sliding off the blade.
Only then did He Lingchuan swim off in relief to locate the head.
Looking around, the head was nowhere to be seen.
His heart skipped a beat, and he dived toward the bottom.
Swimming a couple of rounds by the illumination of the fluorescent grass, he discovered that the monster's head had actually sprouted a new body—this time long, thin, and limbless.
It plunged relentlessly toward deep water; having no limbs did not stop it from swimming at blistering speed.
By then, the avatar had dispatched the last water ghost. Finding itself close to the head, it fired a sleeve arrow without hesitation.
Fearing the creature might catch the arrow in its mouth, He Lingchuan aimed the shot at its wild, matted hair instead.
Sure enough, the arrow pinned the head's wild hair into a nearby rock crevice.
He Lingchuan dove down as well, took the saber from his avatar, and lopped off its newly grown body before grabbing the head and floating upward.
With the head in hand, he still had to go up and deal with the body.
However, when he breached the surface and held up the fluorescent grass to look, he was startled once more:
A mass of dark brown vines, thick and thin, had grown out of the rock wall at some unknown point, binding the monster's body tightly.
It was thoroughly hogtied.
Though the monster struggled, pinned by Fusheng, it could go nowhere.
Taking a closer look, He Lingchuan felt they didn't look like vines after all, but rather like...
Tree roots?
Because countless tiny root hairs sprouted from them.
What plant could produce so many roots in an instant?
The roots were here, but where was the plant itself?
Tracing the roots back to their source, He Lingchuan found they seemed to originate from a fissure in the rock wall directly overhead.
Clearly, it had come for the monster.
Some root tips had even pierced straight through the monster's skin, sucking away relentlessly like they were drawing nutrient broth.
The few faces remaining on the monster's body tried to flee, but they were pinned fast by the root system. A faint cyan glow radiated from the root hairs, keeping them from dissolving into black smoke to slip away.
Chapter 488