Before the heavy mace could smash into He Lingchuan, a flash of blade light suddenly flared from the ruins and smoke below, dazzling like spilled mercury.
Swift as thunder, fleeting as a startled swan, it sliced straight toward his midsection in the blink of an eye.
Yet another masked figure—one devoid of the slightest killing intent before striking.
This was the real He Lingchuan.
He had used his clone to wield the shadow-projecting lamp and trap the lamp spirit, while he draped Lord Boshan's skin over himself to hide within the smoke, all to catch his foe completely off guard.
Having rested and gathered his strength for over a dozen breaths, man and blade had merged into one. Before Fusheng even touched flesh, a foot-long expanse of invisible gangqi had already sliced into He Jing's abdomen!
With He Lingchuan's sheer strength and Fusheng's razor sharpness, it was more than enough to sever his spine.
The reversal took place in the span of a finger snap. From not far away, Fu Liang and the others saw only a blurred silhouette flash past. Before they could even cry out in shock, He Lingchuan's sneak attack had already landed.
Most ruthless of all, He Lingchuan did not stop after his first strike. With a reverse slash, he swept the blade back toward He Jing's neck!
To any onlooker, it was ferocity incarnate.
Yet He Lingchuan had fought hundreds of battles; the moment the first cut passed through, something felt off. He Jing clearly hadn't dodged, but the blade had met none of the resistance of cleaving into flesh and blood.
In this world, life-saving tricks came in all shapes and sizes. Only lopping off He Jing's head would guarantee results.
However, the second strike went far less smoothly. He Jing reacted with blinding speed, raising one heavy mace to bring Fusheng's onslaught to a dead halt while sweeping the other purple-copper mace horizontally toward He Lingchuan.
A finger-length doll hidden within He Jing's robes flashed with dark light, then snapped cleanly in two at the waist with a sharp crack.
The death-substitute puppet had taken effect.
Entering the Panlong Realm was inherently fraught with perils, so He Jing had come prepared. Still, he never imagined he would have to burn through his ace in the hole, the death-substitute puppet, so quickly.
The fierce, bone-chilling blade gangqi that had sheared through his body left his back soaked in cold sweat.
Death-substitute puppets were exceptionally difficult to craft and required a long interval between uses. From this moment on, he would have to risk his own life.
He Lingchuan didn't attempt to parry the heavy mace. Tucking himself backward, he vaulted straight back into the smoke.
He wrapped Lord Boshan's skin tightly around himself once more. He Jing caught only a slight disturbance in the vapor before his enemy vanished.
Failing in one strike, he beat an immediate retreat.
He Lingchuan only wanted to scavenge whatever advantage he could. He had no intention of going toe-to-toe with the Heavenly Palace's Duyun Emissary right under the nose of the Que Beast King.
These fellows all kept backup measures up their sleeves; why should he needlessly risk his own neck?
Seeing him roll aside and simply vanish, He Jing's expression shifted slightly. He grabbed two massive stones from the ground and hurled them once more toward the blinding beam of the shadow-projecting lamp.
For the treasure thief to escape Mount Xu, he had to be slippery beyond measure and impossible to pin down. Right now, He Jing's most pressing concern was not hunting him down, but saving the lamp spirit and seizing the Dafang Pot.
This time, the obstruction finally worked.
Although the intense light still shone through the boulders, its power was greatly diminished.
He Jing urgently commanded the lamp spirit to pull away. However, the spirit had already been reduced to a faint, wavering golden blur within the glare. The moment the stones blocked the light, it dissolved with a faint hiss.
He was one step too late after all. The Everlasting Lamp spirit, painstakingly nourished on Mount Xu for two full centuries before taking form, had been sliced down to nothing.
As if struck by a sledgehammer, He Jing coughed up several mouthfuls of blood, unable to straighten his back.
Every Duyun Emissary was promoted from the ranks of the lamp wardens, and each had to form a bond with a lamp spirit early on. At the Heavenly Palace, the lamp spirit bathed in divine grace on the one hand and was nourished by his heart's blood on the other, forging a bond where they shared life and death. Now that the spirit had suddenly dispersed, He Jing's vital heart's blood was stripped away, triggering an immediate, violent backlash.
He had tempered and nourished his lamp spirit far longer than Zhang Lianhai had, so the blow he suffered was far more severe.
From Fu Liang releasing his arrow to He Jing's lamp spirit dispersing, not even ten breaths had passed—a dizzying flurry of events. Seizing the moment while He Jing was still hunched over in pain, the Que Beast King swatted him away with a massive paw, sending him flying like a stray ball.
Amid the Heavenly Palace attendants' gasps of horror, He Jing crashed into the nearby ruins.
By now, all the Heavenly Palace attendants had regrouped to fight off the Que beasts together. Fu Liang rushed into the rubble and helped He Jing up. "Emissary!"
Blood trickled from the corner of He Jing's mouth, and his cheek was swollen, but his external injuries were light.
His cultivation was profound; heavy as the Que Beast King's blow had been, it paled in comparison to the trauma caused by the loss of his lamp spirit.
"Where are the devouring children?" He Jing swallowed an elixir and swiftly regulated his breathing. "This Que Beast King is far stronger than I anticipated!" Its might was encroaching upon that of the Thunder-Wielding Behemoth that had battered Lingxu City not long ago. But voicing that assessment aloud would surely crush his allies' morale.
What infuriated him most was that the devouring children had failed to emerge in time, giving the enemy complete initiative.
Fu Liang jerked his chin toward the battlefield. "We tried several times and they refused to come out. We've finally awakened three of them."
It turned out He Jing had brought four Heavenly Palace acolytes on this expedition, known as "attendant boys," each bearing a monstrous tattoo across his back.
The moment he gave the order to awaken them earlier, the four had sat cross-legged on the ground, forming hand seals and chanting prayers with closed eyes.
After repeated attempts, the skin on three of their backs had begun to writhe. The tattoos started shifting, rising from two-dimensional ink into three-dimensional flesh until they turned into living creatures!
Yet these horrors could not fully detach from human skin until the final step: tearing open their host's back and crawling straight out.
To the beasts, the process was akin to a butterfly breaking from its chrysalis.
To the hosts, however, it was sheer agony, as though their internal organs were being ripped out alive.
No matter how steadfast the hosts' faith was, they could not endure such inhuman torment, rolling on the ground in desperate wails. Two of them were literally tortured to death by the pain before the monsters had even completely emerged!
From the backs of humans barely six feet tall crawled beasts ranging anywhere from two feet to over a zhang in height. They were called "devouring children."
The three beasts took vastly different forms. The smallest resembled a mantis with sharply tapered ends; when it tucked its legs together, the entire insect looked like a weaver's shuttle.
Small though it was, a single leap could carry it over thirty zhang, far too fast for the naked eye to track. Its method of attack was like a fired bullet striking an enemy's vitals, burrowing entirely into the chest or belly to devour the organs within.
The moment it was born, it leaped straight into the pack of Que beasts, boring holes through three monsters in succession within fifty breaths.
The second tattoo-turned-monster looked even stranger. With a single inhalation, it puffed up like a round ball, reminiscent of a swollen pufferfish. Yet a pair of wings vibrated at high frequency behind its back like those of a bee, allowing it to dart through the air with rapid shifts and pinpoint hovering.
The moment it emerged, it flew aloft, spitting green ghostfire orbs down at the Que beasts below in rapid pops.
Despite its small frame, the fireballs it launched were larger than watermelons. The toxic flames clinging to their surface adhered to prey automatically, burning until the Que beasts were reduced to charred husks.
Numerous Que beasts promptly conjured frost to coat their bodies. Yet the venomous fire specialized in boring into vulnerable openings—eyes, noses, and ears—to ravage their internal organs, driving them into shrieking agony.
The final tattoo beast looked far more normal:
A crimson tiger nearly a zhang tall at the shoulder.
Its bulk was far greater than Jiao Yu's.
Yet it had neither striped markings nor fur. Instead, it was covered entirely in hard, pangolin-like scales, each bearing a sharp spike at its center. Anyone daring to swat it with a bare palm would end up with dozens of bloody holes punctured clean through.
After crawling out of the human body, the third tattoo beast's first act was not to charge into battle, but to swiftly devour its own host.
By now, He Lingchuan had slipped far away under the cover of Lord Boshan's skin, finding a safe vantage point to watch the battle from afar. Looking at the monstrous beasts, he felt a flicker of quiet astonishment.
*Monsters?*
He didn't recognize the other two, but the flying, pufferfish-like creature was something he had seen in an illustrated compendium back in Panlong City—a monster called a "hetai." He had taken a couple of extra looks out of curiosity at the time, but he didn't recall it possessing the ability to spit toxic fire.
*Ji beasts?*
He watched as the scaled crimson tiger pounced onto a burly Que beast, which braced itself to meet the charge with sharp horns. In the next breath, the crimson tiger spat a red object from its maw, driving it violently into the Que beast's forehead.
A gaping hole burst into the Que beast's head, and it collapsed in a shower of blood.
Even with He Lingchuan's sharp eyesight, he barely caught that what shot from the tiger's mouth wasn't a hidden projectile, but a tongue—except its tip was like an ice chisel, capable of darting out up to four feet.
Anyone meeting it head-on risked having their skull pierced clean through by an ice pick!
Tiger demons rarely possessed such bizarre talents. Having spent plenty of time around Dong Rui, He Lingchuan's mind naturally turned to ji beasts.
The Heavenly Palace possessed colossal ji beasts like Chenyuan, capable of matching giant fire creatures like Juju; it would hardly be surprising if they also kept smaller varieties suited for wider applications.
What he did not know was that within the Heavenly Palace, these ji beasts were known as "devouring children," normally kept asleep in secluded sanctuaries.
On one hand, the Dafang Pot was thoroughly enigmatic, making He Jing's mission both paramount and fraught with danger; on the other hand, the celestial gods were unwilling to descend in divine manifestations, as losing an avatar would weaken their own power. Thus, the Heavenly Palace had ordered He Jing to bring devouring children along, to be unleashed as potent fighting assets should he encounter dire peril.
No ji beast was easy to command or control, and devouring children were no exception. If the Heavenly Palace wished to transport them elsewhere for battle, the simplest method was to seal them within human bodies—specifically within attendant boys—nourished by human essence, blood, and flesh.
This kept them in deep slumber within the vessels without needing massive amounts of food.
Of course, a ji beast of Chenyuan's colossal scale could never fit into any mortal vessel.
To release devouring children, medicinal stimulants had to be administered three shichen in advance. The beasts would then linger in a groggy, expectant state until He Jing gave clear orders, whereupon they would tear through the flesh and emerge.
The very first thing they did upon emergence was devour their vessel to replenish their nutrients, much like certain birds or insects eating their shells.
He Jing tossed a crimson pill—in reality, a blood bead—to each beast as nourishment before pointing toward the Que Beast King. "Hold it back, and bring that pot to me!"
The Dafang Pot still lay within the burial mound.
Why hadn't the treasure thief taken it? He Jing could only assume the thief still needed everyone trapped here and was unwilling to end the Panlong Realm prematurely.
Even though it was bait, He Jing had no choice but to bite the hook.
He Lingchuan, however, turned his gaze to the final attendant boy.
The other three attendant boys had died violently when the ji beasts burst from their bodies, yet this last one remained unharmed. Could the ji beast on his back be asleep and refusing to wake?
He Jing struck the boy's back several heavy blows to coax the ji beast out, but to no avail.
Chapter 842