The green fire on the tips of Zhu Erniang's claws flared up as well, seeming to devour flesh and blood ravenously.
"Such domineering origin power!"
He Lingchuan looked in the direction the arrow had come from and saw two figures atop the ridge. The one raising a bow was none other than National Preceptor Qingyang!
In this dire crisis, the Heavenly Palace had summoned this master of manipulating origin power. No wonder that sudden deluge of spiritual rain had drenched Juju so severely earlier.
With Zhu Erniang ducking away, National Preceptor Qingyang immediately shifted targets, directing all her arrows at Juju.
Her arrows were nothing like those of ordinary Heavenly Palace guards. The moment one struck Juju, wherever the green light washed over, large chunks of magma around the wound instantly grew dull and crumbled away like coal dust.
The suppression that origin power exerted over great demons was something He Lingchuan had finally witnessed firsthand today.
To Juju, it was as if the arrow wounds abruptly suffered necrosis; only by plucking out the arrows and gouging away the green flames could new magma regenerate in their place.
Under normal circumstances, it would have been manageable, but in the heat of a ferocious battle, it was a massive headache. Given its colossal size, it was nearly impossible for National Preceptor Qingyang to miss.
In just a few breaths, she developed flawless coordination with Chenyuan. When Chenyuan fell back, she pressed forward, every arrow forcing Juju to defend at all costs.
Under her interference, Juju's movements slowed, forced to divert attention to guard against her. Chenyuan found an opening to regenerate its severed arm.
Fury erupted from Juju's core. With a sweep of its hand, it flung seventeen or eighteen magma bombs at her, clustering as thick as a meteor shower.
These were no casual volleys; each bomb was thirty feet across. To a tiny human, it was like a rapid barrage of cannon fire, and the flames were even platinum-white.
National Preceptor Qingyang drew her staff and brought it down heavily onto the ground.
A green barrier expanded just in time, shielding her and Bai Ziqi within.
The magma bombs smashed entirely against the barrier, sending dust flying, followed by countless chain detonations. Had these struck exposed flesh, even eighty or a hundred people would have been blasted to pieces.
National Preceptor Qingyang was jolted back several paces, her face pale. She had only a single staff; none of her usual handy magic artifacts were with her, leaving her offensive and defensive options rather limited. Right now, she had to rely on sheer raw force to weather Juju's onslaught.
For practitioners, magic artifacts were essentially the storage and extension of personal abilities. Having rushed to the battlefield empty-handed, National Preceptor Qingyang's performance was severely constrained.
Yet the barrier, after all, held.
After bursting, the magma shells shattered into a field of rubble, which quickly assembled under Juju's command into a dozen fire monster clones. Utterly sick of National Preceptor Qingyang, it intended to keep her too busy to interfere.
Before the fire monsters could fully form, National Preceptor Qingyang rushed in, striking them down one per blow of her staff.
Every fire monster touched by her staff shattered with a soft poof, collapsing back into rubble on the ground.
Seizing this opportunity, Bai Ziqi manipulated his lamp spirit to morph and fly past the two battling behemoths, aiming to snatch back the shrine.
He Lingchuan hurriedly patted the spider demon's head. "Erniang!"
By now, Zhu Erniang was being equally sly. She simply ducked behind the rock face without venturing out, spewing several strands of spider silk with sharp hisses that adhered to the stone base behind the shrine.
Applying a clever yank—
Tugged by the silk, the shrine finally tumbled down, rolling straight toward the magma pool!
Once it fell in, it would become Juju's prize.
Who would have thought that in the midst of battle, the tip of Chenyuan's tail curled and caught the shrine out of midair.
Just as He Lingchuan was about to curse, the ward on the shrine flared with power, shredding its tail to pieces.
Evidently, though Chenyuan was a ji beast of the Heavenly Palace, the restriction on the shrine did not recognize it.
He Lingchuan watched a cloud of blood mist burst from Chenyuan's tail, and the shrine continued to fall.
Zhu Erniang suddenly said, "Someone is controlling this beast."
"Yeah." Otherwise, heated up in a frenzy of combat, why would it deliberately reach out its tail to snatch that thing?
In the span of less than a breath's delay, Bai Ziqi's lamp spirit arrived and reached for the shrine's base.
A lamp spirit could change shape at will; this time, it took the form of a ghost whose body was indistinct, only its hands clear and able to elongate and stretch.
Having wised up, it dared not touch the ward either, instead gripping the shrine's base to hoist it upward.
If that thing was snatched back by the Heavenly Palace, wouldn't all be lost?
Discarding all thought of safety, He Lingchuan leapt onto a giant rock, pulled an object from his robes, and aimed it at the lamp spirit.
Immediately after, an astoundingly bright beam of blazing white light shot forth, completely engulfing the lamp spirit!
This was the shadow-projecting lamp He Lingchuan had retrieved from the formation core of the Spirit Gathering Grand Formation. Mount Xu had used it to project the star chart on the spider immortal husk's belly; its brightness, intensity, and penetrative power were naturally peerless.
He Lingchuan even felt it was like a laser beam.
Most importantly, He Lingchuan had witnessed Zhu Erniang use it against a lamp spirit earlier, and the result had been an instant kill!
Using it against Bai Ziqi's lamp spirit now should be the perfect remedy.
Sure enough, the moment the light hit it, the lamp spirit's form and color faded rapidly, as though on the verge of dispersing into the white light the very next second.
However, its power was far greater than that of the smaller lamp spirit from before, and it struggled desperately within the beam.
Right then, He Lingchuan felt a tingle between his brows—a sudden warning of danger.
There was no time to dodge. Without a second thought, he slammed down his heavy shield and tucked himself behind it. National Preceptor Qingyang's two arrows arrived immediately after, striking squarely against the face of the shield.
With a resounding bang, an explosion went off.
The immense force sent He Lingchuan and his shield flying backward, slamming violently into the cliff face.
The soul-snatching mirror shrieked, "Ow, ow, ow—it hurts—!"
It had suffered terribly tonight, blocking dozens of attacks in succession, and now had to endure an ambush from National Preceptor Qingyang.
The webbing between He Lingchuan's thumb and index finger tore from the shock, and his left arm went numb, barely able to lift.
National Preceptor Qingyang's archery was fierce, but He Lingchuan felt the "welcome" he had received upon first entering Panlong City had been even fiercer.
That arrow had nearly given him PTSD.
The question was, National Preceptor Qingyang didn't look like a martial practitioner—how was her archery so potent?
Or was it because her skill at manipulating origin power was so extraordinary?
Amid the chaos, another question nagged at He Lingchuan:
National Preceptor Qingyang had clearly shot two arrows, so why had there been only one explosion?
Just as the thought crossed his mind, the mirror suddenly cried out, "Look out right in front of you!"
The instant it spoke, a bowl-thick green serpent emerged from the top of the shield, snapping straight toward He Lingchuan's throat!
This serpent was manifested from green light, its fangs an inch long. Nothing good could come from being bitten by it.
National Preceptor Qingyang's second arrow had manifested this very thing.
The explosion of the first arrow was merely a distraction; the second arrow was the true deadly strike!
Moreover, the green serpent was barely a foot away from He Lingchuan!
He Lingchuan reflexively wanted to throw the shield aside.
Yet a fraction of a second before he threw it, the green serpent seemed caught by something and yanked downward violently—
With a whoosh, it vanished from He Lingchuan's sight.
He gave the shield a shake. The green serpent... was gone?
"All right, stop shaking it," the mirror's exhausted voice came through. "I pulled it into the mirror world. The moment it entered, it dissolved." Once severed from National Preceptor Qingyang, that sliver of divine ability dissipated.
Ducking behind the boulder, He Lingchuan patted the shield and exhaled a long breath. "Good job."
The soul-snatching mirror's inner world had been tidied up reasonably well; occasionally, it could pull small things inside.
And if the small things were unwilling, it could drag them in by force.
However, He Lingchuan noticed two cracks running across the shield; it would probably take some time to repair later.
Tonight's battle had been far too intense.
With the shadow-projecting lamp's beam shifted away, the lamp spirit escaped destruction, but because of He Lingchuan's disruption, it failed to keep hold of the shrine.
This time, the shrine finally tumbled into the magma pool, sending several large bubbles gurgling to the surface.
All of this had transpired within a few brief breaths. The battlefield was in a frenzy, everyone occupied to their limits, yet in the end, the shrine sank down.
Across the way, veins popped furiously on Bai Ziqi's forehead.
He Lingchuan pumped his fist tightly. Yes!
With the shrine in the magma pool, the initiative was firmly in their hands!
Hadn't all this bloody fighting been for exactly this?
Keeping watch in all directions amid the fierce battle, Juju breathed a sigh of relief. Ignoring Chenyuan sinking its teeth into its shoulder, it clamped its arms around the beast and plunged straight into the magma.
Being exposed to the freezing rain was excruciatingly painful, to say nothing of Chenyuan's relentless clinging and National Preceptor Qingyang's snipes. Furthermore, Juju had discovered that where the Zhaixing Tower archers had struck it earlier, the candlelight had transformed into light serpents that kept boring into its body!
Not to mention that the attacks from the Heavenly Palace's divine attendants and guards had never ceased for a moment.
Battered by so many layers of attacks, even a being as powerful as Juju could not endure indefinitely and desperately needed the subterranean fire to heal.
Beneath the magma was its greatest home turf, and down there, the freezing rain could not reach it.
Yet it soon realized that the scorching subterranean fire could not help it eliminate this opponent either.
Chenyuan was actually impervious to the subterranean flames!
The long fur coating the creature was not singed in the slightest; it swam through the magma as freely as if in a swimming pool.
Juju was both shocked and indignant:
It turned out the Heavenly Palace had been wary of it all along, having somehow procured this fire-repelling ji beast.
It seemed that even without Holy Venerable Lingxu descending into the mortal realm, this battle would be no easy victory.
"Now we're in trouble," He Lingchuan said to Zhu Erniang. "Find a place to hide, quick."
Earlier, with the two behemoths blocking the view in front, no one had paid them any mind. Now that both had plunged into the magma pool, only they and Zhaixing Tower remained, staring at each other across the dense mist.
Once the mist cleared, if they were still exposed to the Heavenly Palace's view, they would have to bear their boundless fury!
Great minds think alike; the moment he spoke, Zhu Erniang had already ducked behind the ridge, rapidly retreating from the battlefield under the cover of the thick mist.
"..." Truly an ancient demon, unmatched in her survival instincts. "Erniang, are you and Juju really both ancient demon immortals?"
Juju was tanking virtually all the attacks from the Heavenly Palace and the National Preceptor single-handedly, while Zhu Erniang was ducking and sneaking around, choosing only the best of the thirty-six stratagems—running away.
Though both could be considered half-immortals right now, the gap in strength between them seemed a bit wide, didn't it?
Zhu Erniang snapped in annoyance, "I just woke up, and I can only use the meager power left in my husk. How can you compare me to a rock-fire monster born of heaven and earth? Even in ancient times, the many immortals of Dahuan Sect had to treat it with the utmost respect!"
Juju's pride hadn't developed overnight.
He Lingchuan had a sudden realization. It seemed that even among demon immortals, there were vast differences from one individual to another.
Zhu Erniang asked him, "You said someone would back us up. Where are they?"
"I have to get the divine relic before we can pull back." He Lingchuan asked the little fire figure on his shoulder, "Juju, how's it going at the bottom of the magma pool?"
"Still working on it!" Juju's irritable voice came through the little fire figure. "Entering into a pact with you this time was a total loss! Head for Tianji Peak first—the place we met last time!"
Chapter 695