The battle had barely ended when this fellow arrived. If he hadn't been traveling with the army, he couldn't have gotten here so fast.
"Y-yes, that's right." Cold sweat beaded across Peng Fang's forehead from the pain. "Over the past few days, more and more people were gathering in the garrison towns across the Yin River. It looked like war was brewing to me. Oh, I'm not from Jintao, but I know some medicine, so I was hired on as an army medic."
He Lingchuan gave an affable, genial smile. "How do you usually communicate with God Bilu?"
"His Eminence occasionally summons me in dreams."
"What about in reality?" When He Lingchuan chatted with Shi Nan, there was no need to enter a dream.
"In reality?" Peng Fang looked completely blank. "Then I wouldn't know. The deity only visits me at night."
He Lingchuan gave a noncommittal hum and waved the Dragon-Torture Pillar at him.
"In that case, pass a message for me. I want to meet Bilu. If he wants this back, he'll have to come find me himself."
Just then, two logistics soldiers happened to walk past. He waved them over, pointing at Peng Fang on the ground. "Carry him down for treatment and lock him up separately from the other prisoners."
Peng Fang breathed a sigh of relief, thanking him repeatedly as he was carried back toward the city.
Right at that moment, several claps of thunder suddenly rumbled across the sky, shaking the hearts of all who heard it.
He Lingchuan looked up. A thin layer of clouds had gathered over the night sky at some point, and snakes of lightning darted along their edges.
Under his watchful gaze, lightning flashed three or four more times in rapid succession.
The dazzling glare lit the sky and the wispy clouds brilliantly.
"What is...?" He Lingchuan's pupils shrank.
Above the thin clouds, he actually saw an incomparably immense, whale-like silhouette swimming slowly across the expanse.
The stretch of wispy clouds was already vast, yet this giant whale practically filled it end to end.
He asked the soldier beside him, "Do you see that?"
"The... the clouds?" the soldier asked, bewildered.
"What's above the clouds."
The soldier stared intently for a few moments, then shook his head apologetically. "Commander, I... I don't see anything, except for the clouds and the lightning."
Could it be an illusion? He Lingchuan stared fixedly at the cloud cover. The colossal entity was still there, only it had swum from one thin cloud into another, rolling and undulating brazenly.
Meanwhile, a small, cloudless patch of the night sky was unexpectedly a faint reddish hue—as if a piece of canvas had been inadvertently peeled back, revealing the base coat underneath.
Yet set against the pitch-black celestial dome, this minuscule anomaly was utterly inconspicuous.
A faint red?
What a familiar color.
While He Lingchuan was still wracking his brains, that small patch of sky was swallowed by swift-drifting clouds.
Footsteps sounded behind him. It was Sun Fuling. He turned and asked, "Did you see the anomaly in the sky?"
"I saw it." Sun Fuling gave a soft laugh. "How strange. Isn't it a bit early in the season for thunder?"
Hearing this, He Lingchuan looked at her closely. "Perhaps spring has come especially early this year?"
"That would be a good thing." Sun Fuling poked his arm with a finger. "By the way, isn't your business still unfinished?"
"My business?"
She reminded him, "Why did you come out here in the first place?"
"Right, right." He remembered at once. "I was escorting Master Sun home, and just happened to catch a spy on the way!"
With that, he resumed his unfinished duty, and the two walked toward home, chatting along the way.
As a final arc of lightning streaked through the air, He Lingchuan looked up and saw the giant silhouette turn and head deeper into the clouds, vanishing from sight in an instant.
The celestial dome had long since regained its calm, leaving behind only the sound of wind rustling through the trees.
The more He Lingchuan thought about the colossal creature in the sky, the more familiar it seemed.
Wasn't that the giant red silhouette from inside the Dafang Pot?
Only, it had always roamed the ocean. Why would it appear above the clouds of Panlong City?
A strange thought occurred to him.
Since the Panlong world was also within the Dafang Pot, was that giant red silhouette swimming around the perimeter of the Panlong world?
Normally, He Lingchuan couldn't see such a boundary, let alone catch a glimpse of the creature's figure.
Yet tonight was an exception.
Had something happened inside the pot?
Come to think of it, he had gone to immense trouble to reclaim the lid of the Dafang Pot and make the divine artifact whole again, but he still had no idea what that entailed.
Surely the Dafang Pot should have undergone some change?
That corner of the celestial dome exposed earlier had clearly looked like a bug—because he had actually glimpsed what lay outside the Panlong world, if only for a few short breaths.
Based on his experience in the other world, such an occurrence likely signified a system error.
Why would the Dafang Pot, restored to its original state with its lid, suffer from a problem like this?
The pot had always felt to him like a silent living creature. It ought to possess a will of its own, yet it never spoke to him directly.
What kind of mischief was it secretly up to now?
Sun Fuling noticed him continually glancing up at the sky. "What's wrong? What is there to look at up there?"
Now there were only gray clouds—no stars, no moon.
"Nothing," He Lingchuan said with a smile. "I was just wondering: what truly determines 'Nailuo'?"
Sun Fuling asked curiously, "What is Nailuo?"
"Fate." He looked at Master Sun. "'Fate' in the divine tongue."
She didn't take it seriously. "Just looking at the sky makes you think of fate?"
"Isn't there a saying: 'My fate is determined by me, not heaven'?" He Lingchuan exhaled a plume of white vapor. "Yet looking at all the living beings out there, whether in Panlong City or Yuheng City, everyone seems to walk within the shackles of destiny."
Sun Fuling disagreed. "Even if they broke free, you wouldn't know. It's not as if you could witness every single one of their lives firsthand."
He Lingchuan started to speak, then stopped himself.
How could he not see it? Zhong Shengguang had tried so hard, General Red had tried so hard, and the soldiers and civilians of Panlong City had fought so hard, yet in the end, none of them had changed the final outcome of annihilation.
"So what is it that decides and alters fate?" Naturally, he thought of himself as well.
"On the surface, the fate of the weak is decided by the strong. How long a pig in a pen lives depends on when the butcher raises the blade. How long the Xiji Kingdom lasted depended on when we decided to make our move. Look, it's already gone now." Sun Fuling blinked. "Of course, if that's the only way you look at it, the answer is far too bleak."
"Oh? Please enlighten me, Master Sun!"
"This isn't an exam question. How could there be a ready-made answer?" Sun Fuling let out a soft laugh. "Still, I think that rather than racking your brain over it, you're better off taking action and trying for yourself. Once you succeed in changing fate—whether your own or someone else's—the answer will come naturally."
Changing his own fate, changing another's fate... Did this "other" refer to Sun Fuling, or the soldiers and civilians of Yuheng City?
He recalled what National Preceptor Qingyang had said about the eventual end that befell the owner of the celestial centipede bone flute.
Right now, she was standing beside him with a captivating smile, as though none of the world's misfortunes could ever touch her.
He Lingchuan pondered for a long while before finally nodding.
He cast another glance at the sky.
...
Not only was Peng Fang held in solitary confinement, but a medic soldier also came by to reset his dislocated joint and splint his broken bone. The salve applied to his wounds was soothingly cool, drastically easing the pain.
Someone even brought over piping-hot food—unexpectedly complete with one meat dish and two vegetables.
Chapter 737