Liao Shan did everything he could to coordinate and command, but his army routed too quickly, and the collapsing momentum proved impossible to reverse. In the end, Liao Shan had no choice but to yield to the situation and lead his troops north in retreat.
The Andongese did not return to the Hulu Mountain main camp because the Blackwater City force from the South Gate had surged forward and cut off their retreat to the east.
At their retreat, the Blackwater City army erupted in cheers, their morale soaring like a rainbow!
Riding the momentum, He Chunhua rallied his troops and gave chase to the fleeing enemy.
No one had expected that an outnumbered force could win such a clean, decisive victory. Under the circumstances, General He naturally intended to quickly consolidate his gains.
For the lasting peace and stability of western Yuan, the Andongese had to be beaten until it hurt—beaten into utter submission!
Throughout the night, the Andongese fled in front while the Blackwater City army pursued from behind. Along Red Cliff Road, one after the other plunged into the Panlong Desert.
The chase lasted a full six hours.
Fighting as they pursued, the Blackwater City troops devoured more than three hundred more enemies.
Unable to endure the pressure, the Andongese split into smaller groups to flee whenever they hit a fork in the road.
Unsure which group Liao Shan was hiding in, He Chunhua had no choice but to detach units to pursue the split groups while personally leading the main force continuing northward.
Factions like the Heavenly Palace and the Baling Kingdom had originally wanted to break away from the ranks, but now the Blackwater City army was also barreling northward at full tilt, heading in virtually the same direction they had planned.
It almost felt as if these thousand-plus men were escorting them into the desert.
Zhang Lianhai and the others were thoroughly disgruntled.
Although the Blackwater City troops had won the battle and it was the Andongese fleeing in panic, they had finally caught on: He Chunhua had used them as a cat's paw after all!
What trump card squad to settle the battle in one blow? What elite dagger thrusting behind enemy lines? It was all pure deception!
He Chunhua had simply conned them into taking the brunt of the Andongese blades, spears, and arrows, using them as bait to lure away the camp guards so the real raiding force could succeed in a single strike.
Still, the battle had been won, and they had no choice but to swallow this bitter pill in silence.
Consequently, the various factions showed nothing but cold looks to the He father and son along the way.
He Chunhua remained as warm and courteous as ever, acting as though he couldn't sense their resentment at all.
Only He Lingchuan knew his old man couldn't care less about how these people felt, because once they entered the Panlong Ruins, everyone would be rivals anyway!
Dawn was approaching.
Yet dense clouds blanketed the sky without a single star to guide the way, and even compasses failed in the desert.
Yellow sand stretched boundlessly in every direction, and dunes shifted constantly. At this point, the two forces locked in pursuit dared only follow Red Cliff Road to avoid losing their bearings in the Panlong Desert.
Not to mention the exhausted Andongese, even the Blackwater City pursuers were beginning to flag, their ranks stringing out loosely.
Both sides had only a few hundred men left.
He Lingchuan noticed that He Chunhua was frequently leaning in to murmur with Zhao Qinghe, both wearing grim expressions.
He urged his horse closer and asked, "What is it?"
"Good timing, Chuan'er." He Chunhua pointed toward a forest of jumbled rocks two li away. "Have you ever seen this stone forest before?"
Hundreds of rugged boulders in varying shapes stood amid the yellow sands, forming a miniature stone forest. The largest rose over twenty zhang high, while the smaller ones were only four or five zhang tall.
If time were rewound a hundred and sixty or seventy years, this would have been a land of picturesque mountains and waters. But now, only yellow sand and giant stones remained.
He Chunhua had traveled Red Cliff Road nearly a hundred times back and forth, remembering almost every detail. Yet he had no recollection of ever seeing this scenery.
He Lingchuan looked closely for a good while, then sucked in a breath. "Nope."
"Think carefully."
Even after thinking carefully, there was nothing.
Zhao Qinghe and several other personal guards also stated they had never seen it.
With a dark expression, He Chunhua said, "Unseen sights have appeared along Red Cliff Road. Can anyone tell me what's going on here?"
They looked at each other in dismay; none could offer an explanation.
"Murmurs are spreading through the ranks, saying this road feels completely unfamiliar," Zhao Qinghe said. "My Lord, do we keep chasing?"
He Chunhua hesitated as well.
Ever since the wild sand season mysteriously vanished, the Panlong Desert had grown even more bizarre and unpredictable. Now even Red Cliff Road, tread by entire armies, had quietly shifted.
One had to understand that with armies protected by origin power, neither bewitching formations nor ghostly wall traps could blind their eyes. Furthermore, most soldiers were locals, so taking a wrong path was the one mistake that should never have happened.
And yet, here they were, inexplicably lost.
Killing the enemy was important, but for safety's sake, shouldn't they turn back? Besides, the troops were worn out from the chase, and they hadn't packed extra food and water before entering the desert.
Thinking this through, He Chunhua made up his mind: "Let us turn back."
"Yes, sir."
Zhao Qinghe immediately went to pass the order.
In He Lingchuan's breast pocket, the soul-snatching mirror asked him, "You know what's going on with the changes to Red Cliff Road, don't you?"
It had acknowledged him as master halfway through and knew nothing of Blackwater City or Red Cliff Road. But if even the locals were lost, something was definitely fishy with this route.
With people nearby, He Lingchuan couldn't speak freely, so he merely grunted an ambiguous affirmation.
Of course he knew!
The Red Cliff Road familiar to the people of Blackwater City—including He Chunhua—was actually the official highway that the Gale Army and traveling merchants had used to traverse the Panlong Desert over a hundred years ago. Back then, it had countless branch roads and forks. After Panlong City fell and the wild sand season began, only a handful of roads remained untouched by wind and sand erosion, which later generations referred to as Red Cliff Road.
The routes the people of Blackwater City were accustomed to traveling were just those few.
However, now that the wild sand season was gone, the many forks buried beneath the sand would "occasionally" reveal themselves.
Occasionally.
Others had no idea how to navigate them, but He Lingchuan did.
Back when he patrolled the Panlong World, he had traversed these branch roads countless times, and he had even watered horses and caught wild hares in the very stone forest He Chunhua had pointed out just now.
Cangzhou in the past, mountains of sand today—no one present felt more deeply moved than He Lingchuan.
He had shed sweat and blood for this land, yet in the snap of a finger, a century had drifted by.
All of it was in the past.
Setting these thoughts aside, He Lingchuan knew very well that whether it was the fleeing Andongese up ahead or the pursuing Blackwater City troops behind them, both were actually heading straight toward the Panlong Ruins!
And they were taking a shortcut.
This unseen pulling force originated from the Dafang Pot.
Naturally, he kept his mouth shut.
Just then, a sandstorm abruptly whipped up across the desert.
Gales swept up yellow sand, scraping against everyone's faces. The world turned a murky yellow, and one could not see one's own hand before one's face.
Both forces, front and back, were terrified, thinking the wild sand season had returned. But in this wind and sand, there were no Three Corpse Worms, no vengeful wraiths, and no heroic spirits of the Gale Army demanding lives.
It was merely an ordinary sandstorm.
Yet in a desert, even an ordinary sandstorm could prove fatal. He Chunhua could only command the troops to rush into the stone forest two li away to take shelter.
Jagged rocks stood there, some as broad and thick as folding screens, capable of blocking the fierce gale and sand.
The wind blew with savage force. While it could not compare to the flesh-slicing, bone-scraping astral winds of the Fu Realm, it could easily knock a lean man off his feet and bury him beneath the yellow sands.
Most Blackwater City soldiers were locals, familiar with both the desert and Red Cliff Road. Reaching the shelter of the rock walls with great effort, they hurriedly took out cloths to wrap their heads, covered their faces, and crouched behind the giant boulders alongside their mounts.
Against the wrath of heaven, mortals could do nothing but pray for the sandstorm to pass quickly.
...
After raging for four full hours, the sandstorm finally subsided.
The men crawled out from the mounds of sand, every face caked in dust and dirt, sand even clinging to their eyelashes.
He Chunhua shook the yellow sand from his cloak, looked all around, and froze in shock:
"Where is Red Cliff Road?"
They had been traveling along Red Cliff Road the entire time, but now that the storm had passed, an endless sea of sand stretched in all directions—Red Cliff Road had completely vanished!
Was it buried by the sand?
He Chunhua immediately dispatched scouts to reconnoiter in several directions.
Officers continuously came over to ask about the next plan.
Everyone wanted to know which way to go. The men had pursued the enemy all night; exhausted and parched, they desperately needed rest.
A scout hawk in the army took to the sky. After circling for a long time, it swooped back down and said, "Nothing but desert for thirty li around. There is no road."
He Chunhua asked it, "Can you fly back to Blackwater City?"
The hawk replied that it could not; its sense of direction seemed to have malfunctioned.
Before long, the ground scouts returned to report that no trace of Red Cliff Road could be found anywhere.
The road seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
The Andongese were nowhere to be seen either, presumably just as lost as they were.
Even someone as alert and composed as He Chunhua felt a flash of bewilderment in this moment.
The defense of Blackwater City had resulted in a resounding victory; they could have returned in triumph. But where was the road home?
He Chunhua immediately went to consult Zhang Lianhai, hoping to see if the Heavenly Palace had any means of extricating them from this predicament.
"Direction?" Zhang Lianhai sneered faintly. "My lamp spirit never loses its way. But we have elsewhere to go and have no time to accompany you on your way back!"
Just as He Chunhua was about to persuade him, Qiu Hu abruptly spoke up, "You haven't tried it yet—how do you know it still works?"
The attendant behind Zhang Lianhai retorted, "Nonsense! The Everlasting Lamp spirit of our Heavenly Palace possesses wondrous and infinite power. You people know nothing!"
Beside them, Elder Ling Jinbao of the Jianyang Sect gave a dry cough. "Why not broaden our horizons and show us?"
Left with no choice, Zhang Lianhai took out a platinum candle from his robes, lit it, and whispered to the lamp spirit that drifted upward, "Point toward Blackwater City."
The lamp spirit floated up into the air, drifting left and swaying right, giving no answer for a long time.
Everyone watched eagerly, waiting for it to pinpoint the direction.
Finally, the lamp spirit drifted back and shrank into a tiny ball atop the candle, casting light on Zhang Lianhai's unsightly grimace.
Crossing his arms, Qiu Hu asked, "Can it find the way?"
Zhang Lianhai's attendant was in disbelief. "T-That's impossible..."
Having long been nurtured by offerings in the Heavenly Palace, how could the Everlasting Lamp spirit fail to discern direction over a minor anomaly? How could this Panlong Desert be so bizarrely strange?
Zhang Lianhai's face was as dark as still water.
Fortunately, a sentry not far away suddenly shouted, rescuing him from his embarrassment:
"Movement ahead!"
The crowd clambered out from behind the stone walls to look. Far in the distance ahead, a vibrant crimson beam of light shot straight into the heavens.
Day had already broken by now, yet that pillar of light shone even more brilliantly than morning clouds.
Soon, an anomaly appeared in the sky—the mirage of an inverted city materialized once more.
Zhang Lianhai and the others immediately declared, "We are heading there."
Needless to say, everyone knew the Panlong Ruins lay in that direction.
The various factions whistled to gather their comrades, preparing to break away from the Blackwater City army and head toward the crimson light.
He Chunhua's thoughts spun rapidly, and he asked He Lingchuan, "Chuan'er, what do you think? Should we follow the crimson light forward, or look for another way home?"
Chapter 819