He Chunhua asked him, "Did you see Chuan'er?"
Zhao Qinghe shook his head.
"What do we do now?"
Before Zhao Qinghe could finish his question, a string of deafening explosions erupted behind them, staggering in their sheer might.
Shocked, the two stared at each other in silence.
He Chunhua steadied his nerves and pointed toward the ruins to the west. "There! Quick!"
A dried riverbed lay there, offering hiding spots too cramped for massive monsters to enter.
Most importantly, it was less than three hundred zhang from the center of the battle.
The two had barely reached the riverbed and tucked themselves away when a rumbling clamor rolled overhead. An unknown number of beasts thundered along the street right above their heads, shaking loose a shower of dust.
They had all been drawn by the detonations and the Que Beast King's enraged roars.
The two held their breath, not daring even to sneeze.
With titans clashing at General Red's Cenotaph, He Chunhua stood no chance of getting involved.
Yet every fight produced an outcome. With the snipe and the clam locked in combat, He Chunhua wanted to stay and see if an opportunity might arise for the fisherman to claim the prize.
***
With their invisibility art shattered, He Jing knew this day could not end well.
Fortunately, he had prepared for contingencies. Pointing at the Que Beast King, he barked, "Go!"
The lamp spirit hovering above the four of them lunged forward. Just before the Que beast could swat it away, it shifted shape, once again assuming the classic form of a multi-headed giant serpent.
Each section of its body was as thick as three or four men could encircle with outstretched arms. Six or seven serpentine bodies constricted together, binding the colossal beast fast.
The behemoth yanked violently at it, but the serpent bodies were remarkably elastic, stretching out like rubber without ever slackening their grip.
The Everlasting Lamp spirit He Jing nurtured was more than a cut above Zhang Lianhai's.
He shouted once more, "Open!"
Seizing the moment the beast parted its jaws, two serpent heads positioned near its ears snapped onto either side of its mouth and wrenched outward with all their strength.
Without waiting for He Jing's order, Fu Liang flicked his wrist and threw three black spheres the size of goose eggs, pitching them squarely into the monster's maw.
The giant beast dropped forward, trying to spit them out, but the three devices detonated prematurely.
A series of deafening booms tore through the air; Fu Liang and the others could even see flames erupting from its throat.
Had it not been for their protective astral qi, the shockwave would have sent them flying.
Blown backward by the blast, the giant beast collapsed like a toppling gold mountain or a felled jade pillar, crashing heavily against the earth.
The strongest fortresses were often breached from within. Seeing how thick-skinned and heavily armored the creature was, He Jing had sought to take a clever shortcut, never expecting his very first try to succeed.
Yet seeing the direction it fell, everyone inwardly cursed their foul luck.
General Red's Cenotaph lay directly behind the beast. As ill luck would have it, its collapse smothered the burial mound completely!
Immediately afterward, a faint wisp of eerie light emerged from its body and dove straight beneath it.
He Jing pinched a seal, sending the giant serpent formed by the lamp spirit burrowing underneath the beast to retrieve the Dafang Pot in its jaws.
Having assumed a serpent's shape, it possessed physical form, but no matter how hard it pushed and nudged, it could not budge the giant beast.
Only a narrow gap remained beside the monster's neck.
Left with no choice, He Jing murmured a command, and under his control, the giant serpent dissolved back into a speck of golden light, darting toward the beast's neck.
Just as it was about to slip into the gap, the beast inches away suddenly opened its eyes.
The sight sent a chill down everyone's spines:
The Que Beast King was not dead!
Before anyone could react, it spewed a blast of frigid vapor toward the golden light.
Tiny ice crystals mingled with purplish-red flesh and blood instantly condensed into sixteen mirrors, surrounding the giant ape and the lamp spirit from above, below, left, and right.
Not just the Heavenly Palace group, but everyone lurking nearby in hiding felt cold sweat break out on their backs:
This creature could actually use divine abilities—and with such mastery!
Monsters from otherworldly realms did not lack innate gifts, but the abilities born of those gifts were straightforward rather than refined. The Thunder-Wielding Behemoth, for instance, commanded thunder by nature, but its attacks were merely summoning lightning and thunderstorms—blunt and brutal.
So far as anyone knew, only demons and cultivators could weave such elaborate patterns into their arts.
Yet the Que beast chieftain had just proven through action that it could as well.
That was simply unreasonable.
The moment the Everlasting Lamp spirit's figure appeared in an ice mirror, a sliver of golden light was siphoned away.
It darted left and right trying to break out, but wherever it rushed, a mirror blocked its path; colliding with one meant being trapped fast. It could only dodge with extreme caution, striving to avoid being reflected.
Yet the mirror formation contracted inward at high speed, leaving less and less room for the lamp spirit to maneuver.
And worse, it could not smash through the mirrors' encirclement.
The lamp spirit struggled frantically, shifting through countless forms in an instant, yet the mirrors tugged and tore at it, each taking a piece.
One could well imagine that when all sixteen mirrors drew flush against one another, every surface would capture the lamp spirit.
At that point, the lamp spirit would likely be sliced to ribbons.
Who could have guessed that a monster with such a massive build and brutish look would actually play dead—and even cast spells?
He Jing watched with mounting dread.
Even he had been outsmarted. Defeating this creature was far harder than he had anticipated!
"Break the mirrors!"
"Release the Devouring Children, immediately!"
Adjusting his tactics, he decisively barked two orders in succession.
"Understood!"
Four acolytes immediately sat cross-legged on the ground, closing their eyes in prayerful incantation.
Behind He Jing, an attendant drew a bow, loosing three arrows in a triangular formation.
The Que Beast King swiped lazily to block, but the three arrows split early—three became six, six became twelve, their trajectories twisting and weaving to leave no room for defense.
All twelve arrows struck true. Most were absorbed directly by the Que Beast King, while three struck the ice mirrors.
A chain of explosions followed at once. Each blast had a small radius, but considerable force—
Before entering Panlong City, He Jing had known that these monsters possessed strong innate affinities for ice, meaning fire attacks would deal greater damage. Thus, his attendants' arrowheads had been imbued beforehand with the Flame Burst Art.
Amid the billowing smoke, the Que Beast King was pushed back a step. It shook its head and arms; the spots hit by the flame bursts were completely undamaged, with only a faint dusting of ash upon its fur.
Yet three ice mirrors shattered with loud pops, and the lamp spirit seized the opportunity to slip through the gap, streaking straight toward General Red's Cenotaph.
The Dafang Pot!
Its goal had been this supreme treasure all along.
As long as the Dafang Pot was secured, the crisis would resolve itself, and He Jing would have achieved tremendous merit.
Yet right at that moment, someone popped out of thin air before General Red's armor and the Dafang Pot, standing squarely in front of the golden light.
It was truly a living person conjured from nowhere, appearing with a whoosh without the slightest warning.
The lamp spirit paused.
Fortunately, it possessed no emotions and felt no fright; it simply made an instinctive move to bypass him.
But then the person suddenly produced an object that looked part lamp and part mirror, and shone it right at the spirit—
A dazzling beam of white light burst forth, engulfing the lamp spirit.
The lamp spirit lunged left and right, yet remained trapped in the blinding beam, its form gradually fading like melting butter.
It was stronger than Zhang Lianhai's lamp spirit, allowing it to endure longer in the bright light.
The smoke from the Heavenly Palace attendants' exploding arrows had shrouded ten zhang around them in thick dust, yet the moment this blazing beam erupted, it pierced through all obstruction, extending over a hundred zhang like a laser, concentrated and unyielding!
He Jing's eyes widened, and he cried out, "The shadow-projecting lamp!"
The moment the signature beam appeared, He Jing, as a senior official of the Heavenly Palace, recognized it immediately. This was one of Mount Xu's crowning treasures, the shadow-projecting lamp used within the Spirit Gathering Grand Formation to project the star charts!
The spider immortal's shed husk was important, of course, but without this shadow-projecting lamp, the star chart could never be displayed.
Months ago, during the crisis at Mount Xu, both the spider husk and the Dafang Pot lid had been stolen, and the shadow-projecting lamp at the formation core had suffered the same fate.
Conversely, the appearance of the shadow-projecting lamp meant the treasure thief was here as well!
The culprit who had orchestrated the damage to Zhaixing Tower, the unrest in Lingxu City, and the utter disgrace of the Heavenly Palace was right before his eyes!
If He Jing had previously been determined to claim the Dafang Pot, the appearance of the shadow-projecting lamp made his blood boil with fury.
Seeing his lamp spirit struggling endlessly in the blinding beam, He Jing grabbed a large chunk of ruined wall and hurled it toward the light source, roaring, "Devouring Children, come quickly!"
With a push of his toes, he surged toward the light source as well.
A massive hand dropped from the sky. The Que Beast King had noticed him and intended to swat him flat like a fly.
At the critical moment, He Jing suddenly twisted his body, grazing past the edge of the Que Beast King's palm and gliding forward like a kite on the wind stirred by the strike.
The motion was elegant and effortless; in terms of nimbleness and agility, it was in no way inferior to He Lingchuan's Returning Swallow footwork.
With a crash, the chunk of wall shattered. Piercing through the billowing dust, He Jing saw someone standing ahead cradling the lamp, wearing a mask upon his face.
The beam of bright light shot from the mirror in his arms, pinning down the lamp spirit.
The Que Beast King seemed to know that this bright light was doing it a great favor, so it made no move to attack him.
"Insolent rat, how dare you!" He Jing hurled a purple-copper mace at him.
The weapon spun through the air, humming with the faint roar of wind and thunder. Imbued with crushing force, anyone struck by it would have their bones snapped and tendons severed.
He Jing did not expect this blow to injure his foe; so long as it forced him to shift his stance, he could rescue the lamp spirit from the glare.
He Lingchuan had no intention of budging, simply hurling his mirror shield to meet it.
A resounding boom rang out as shield met mace.
At the same time, He Jing himself charged forward, intending to block the light with his own body.
Just a breath—if the light was broken for even a single breath, the lamp spirit could break free!
Yet the Que Beast King beside them seemed to have a personal vendetta against him, opening its maw to blast a plume of icy chill toward him.
Deprived of the lamp spirit's protection, He Jing had to dodge aside.
Barely had he taken two steps back when the ground where he had just stood was peppered with sharp ice arrows.
A second later, and he would have been turned into a pincushion.
Right after, a palm larger than a door plank from the Que Beast King came swinging in a violent slap.
He Jing bellowed in fury, "Where are the Devouring Children?"
By then, the purple-copper mace had automatically returned to its master's side. Suspended midair, He Jing seemed on the verge of being seized by the Que Beast King, about to meet the same fate as Zhang Lianhai. Yet he swept the heavy mace backward—as if pulling an oar through water—and accelerated in a sudden burst, slipping right between the beast king's fingers.
Even while doing so, he did not forget to swing the mace, smashing it hard against the Que Beast King's middle finger.
With a crisp snap, tough and thick-skinned as the monster was, it could not help howling in pain.
Watching this, He Lingchuan was somewhat surprised. He had not expected He Jing, who commanded a lamp spirit, to be a martial artist as well—one possessing not only deep cultivation, but also the power to master the wind.
The Duyun Emissaries he had seen before relied entirely on their lamp spirits for their abilities, and Bai Ziqi had been no exception.
Wheeling around midair, He Jing surged straight toward He Lingchuan. His movement was blisteringly fast and could accelerate midway through, as though someone had given him a mighty shove from behind.
This was an advanced technique of the Wind Dance Art, known as "Riding the Surge."
Chapter 841