Previously, he had entered the realm without realizing it, making it impossible for Nailuotian to contact him; now that the realm had faded, Nailuotian was desperate to speak with him.
The avatar that had descended to the mortal realm at He Chunhua's request had vanished without an explanation. It would be a wonder if Nailuotian spared him!
A bitter taste filled He Chunhua's mouth. He told his men, "Return to the oasis. Send people out in separate groups to search for the Mount Rong men, as well as the Andongese."
The longer he dragged this out, the fiercer the deity's wrath would burn.
No matter how arrogant He Chunhua might be, he had no desire to offend "Destiny."
If he found the Mount Rong disciples, he might find He Lingchuan.
Not long after, He Chunhua returned to the South Gate and led the Blackwater City troops out of the Panlong Ruins.
He had arrived in high spirits; he departed utterly despondent.
Only after they left did a group emerge from behind the sand dunes outside Panlong City—it was Qiu Hu and the other disciples of Mount Rong.
"We're not going back to the oasis. We head to Baiyuan Post Station." Qiu Hu crushed the calico cat mask in his hand to powder and set it ablaze. "Young Master said that if we got separated, we should wait for him at Baiyuan Post Station."
Where was He Lingchuan?
Still inside the realm.
Before beheading He Jing, he had already wrenched the Dafang Pot from General Red's gauntlets.
A treasure that He Jing and the others had pulled and tugged with all their might without budging had dropped right into his hand with a mere flick of his finger.
Taking advantage of the chaos, he threw on Lord Boshan's skin and bounded away from the battlefield in a few leaps, hiding behind a few half-collapsed, low-roofed houses.
Everyone else had joined the fray for the Dafang Pot; he alone was there to kill.
When the Que Beast King's roar erupted nearby, he was examining the pot in his hands.
The pot was quite small, with nothing remarkable about it.
He rubbed it with his hand, flaking away the grime and mud to reveal its true appearance beneath.
It was neither metal nor porcelain; he couldn't tell what material it was made of.
The surface featured finely carved patterns depicting flowers, birds, mountains, and rivers. At a glance, He Lingchuan couldn't help but chuckle. "Just as expected."
He had seen this pot before in the Panlong World.
Most of the time, it sat on the curio shelf in Zhong Shengguang's parlor. Whenever Zhong Shengguang sat down, it was right by his right hand.
Every time He Lingchuan visited, he saw it.
Zhong Shengguang seemed rather fond of it, as it was always polished clean without a speck of dust.
If this thing was the Dafang Pot, He Lingchuan would eat it right then and there!
Suddenly, an iron fist plummeted from above, smashing through the roof with a resounding crash.
The Que Beast King had arrived, heading straight for his hiding spot.
Masonry showered down around him. He Lingchuan squinted, sprang into the air, and whipped the pot right at the beast with a backhand throw.
The Que Beast King made no attempt to dodge.
With a sharp smack, the pot shattered cleanly against its body into pieces.
If He Chunhua, Bao Guanjie, and the others had witnessed this scene, who knew how they would have felt? As for He Jing, if he found out that the "Dafang Pot" he died for was a fake, would he be so enraged he'd come back to life?
He Lingchuan recalled that this pot had been cradled in the hands of General Red's battle armor all along.
Could it be said that General Red had fooled everyone, rather than the Dafang Pot acting of its own accord?
Tsk, did General Red really have such a twisted sense of humor?
He brushed past a snapped beam and dashed outside.
He fled nimbly, but the Que Beast King was towering, long-legged, and took massive strides, pursuing him relentlessly.
Hey now, he had been given a promise—his personal safety in the realm was supposed to be guaranteed!
It couldn't just go back on its word.
He slipped his mask on as he ran, but when he rushed out, he saw that General Red's Cenotaph was already empty.
Strictly speaking, there were no living people left—only a ground strewn with corpses.
How could the other groups have retreated so quickly and thoroughly?
At the same time, something ahead lit up, standing out starkly in the dark night.
He Lingchuan looked up and found that the armor of General Red within the cenotaph was once again glowing with dazzling red light.
The radiance was warm and welcoming, almost as if beckoning to him.
With more and more Que beasts swarming behind him, He Lingchuan shifted his footing and dashed toward the cenotaph.
The Dafang Pot didn't have a bad track record, so this time, he chose to trust it.
Bounding after him, the Que Beast King was not a fraction slower than he was!
Right then, the soul-snatching mirror in his breast pocket suddenly shrieked: "Watch out for the green light! Watch out ahead—!"
Hearing the words "green light," He Lingchuan felt his hair stand on end.
Sure enough, a beam of green light emerged from behind the cenotaph, pouncing straight toward him.
No one knew how long it had been lying in ambush there. Barely larger than a firefly and seemingly insignificant, it radiated intense malice. Worst of all, though it appeared slow, it was deceptively fast; He Lingchuan had only just caught sight of it, and the distance between them had already shrunk to less than ten zhang.
A mere ten zhang—was that not the blink of an eye for anyone?
He Lingchuan was horrified.
Nailuotian's avatar!
The avatar of Nailuotian that had abruptly vanished at the dome, eluding even the colossal red silhouette!
When He Lingchuan had been fraught with apprehension, it had been nowhere to be found; just when he thought the dust had settled, the damned thing had shown up again!
Where on earth had it been hiding just now, and how had it slipped into the Panlong Realm?
Was this truly a fate he could not escape?
Determined as He Lingchuan was, facing this speck of green light, he still felt a bone-chilling terror and despair.
After scheming for so long, where had it gone wrong?
In the nick of time, a sudden searing heat flared on his wrist, forcibly yanking his senses back.
The Gale Army insignia lit up, glowing fiery red in the darkness.
He remembered General Red's instructions.
Had she foreseen the danger he would face, and thus fought so hard past the Dafang Pot's resistance to brand the insignia into his hand?
Yet the green light was lunging from the direction of the cenotaph; before he could touch General Red's armor, he would likely collide with Nailuotian's avatar first.
He Lingchuan came to an abrupt halt, staring at the speck of firefly-like light.
To all appearances, he seemed so desperate that he had abandoned all resistance.
The Nailuotian avatar's speed abruptly surged, trailing a thin green streak through the air. The Que Beast King also closed in, its gigantic palm scooping down toward He Lingchuan.
Pinched from front and behind, did he have a third option?
The glow of Nailuotian's avatar was even reflected in He Lingchuan's eyes.
Too close.
Nailuotian's avatar was faster than the Que Beast King after all. Having gone to great lengths to evade the Dafang Pot's hunt, then deliberately taking a roundabout route to emerge, it was finally about to achieve its desire!
In this contest of multiple contending factions, there would ultimately be only one winner—it, Nailuotian.
Both the divine descent vessel and the Dafang Pot were its!
Yet just as it lunged onto He Lingchuan, the latter suddenly vanished.
An illusion?
No, that wasn't it! The kid had repositioned himself in an instant.
With He Lingchuan gone, the Que Beast King lost its target, and its sweeping palm caught the light instead.
The speck of light had no time to dodge.
The Que Beast King clapped its massive palm shut as if gripping something solid, then shoved it straight into its gaping maw—
Gulp. Swallowed down.
Not far away, He Lingchuan's figure appeared inside the cenotaph, right beside General Red's battle armor.
From this angle, the straight, steadfast silhouette of the armor's back looked just like a living person.
When he ambushed He Jing earlier, he had quietly tossed the ghost shadow cicada slough into the burial chamber. The light had been dim and the situation chaotic, so neither the Baling men nor Yuezheng Qing's group had noticed such an inconspicuous, translucent little cicada slough.
General Red had instructed him to activate the armor at the right moment, which meant he had to remain mobile and couldn't stray too far from this treasure.
Sure enough, this contingency plan had paid off.
Yet watching the Que Beast King swallow the speck of light, He Lingchuan was equally dumbfounded.
Wh-what was going on here?
The monster dispatched by the pot lid ate Nailuotian's avatar?
What sort of twist was this?
In merely two breaths, the Que Beast King snorted two plumes of white steam from its nostrils, and its gaze toward him turned profound and meaningful.
Its pupils had turned a faint green.
Uh, no way? He Lingchuan groaned inwardly. Even the Dafang Pot lid couldn't suppress Nailuotian's avatar?
It couldn't be what he was thinking, could it?
"So you are the little thief who stole the Dafang Pot." Under He Lingchuan's incredulous gaze, the Que Beast King opened its mouth and produced a perfectly normal human voice. "Who would have thought that my vessel would turn the Heavenly Palace upside down!"
Its gaze, its voice, its manner of speech—none of these belonged to a monster.
"Nailuotian?" Sweat beaded on He Lingchuan's palms.
The very scene he had tried every trick to avoid had ultimately arrived.
Calm though he was by nature, his heart couldn't help pounding wildly—the fear of "predestined fate."
However, having weathered countless perils to reach this point, he would not give up easily. He Lingchuan slowly exhaled, looking straight at this so-called "fate," fighting to banish every useless emotion. "You can descend into a Que beast at will?"
Well done. The two great troubles facing him and the Dafang Pot—the celestial god avatar and the Que Beast King—had actually merged into one!
And the result seemed far more dangerous than simple addition.
Nailuotian's avatar chuckled softly.
Though it had suffered twists and turns, now that it had reached the point of a direct showdown with He Lingchuan, it was in no hurry. Amid its laughter, the Que Beast King's body shrank smaller and smaller, its white fur shedding and its bestial features fading...
In less than a few breaths, the giant snowman monster had actually turned into a...
Human?
An old man with white hair, a long beard, and flowing sleeves, looking even more ethereal and transcendent than Sect Master Xue of the Mount Rong Sect.
His eyes remained a pale green.
"A Que beast? This was Master Sanshui, a remnant immortal of antiquity and one of the Dafang Pot's creators." Controlled by Nailuotian's avatar, the old man drew a sword from his sleeve, his movements as fluid and graceful as plucking the strings of a zither. "After he passed into meditation, his remnant soul was gathered into the Qianling Treasure Lid, forcefully fused with a Que beast, unable to find release for thousands of years."
The Qianling Treasure Lid? He Lingchuan heard a new term. Did this refer to the Dafang Pot lid?
Did the lid of the Dafang Pot have its own name as well?
"Earlier, you..." He Lingchuan's throat was dry; he had to swallow hard before he could continue asking. "Where were you hiding?!"
He had been completely unable to fathom this question.
He Lingchuan's stunned gaze gave Nailuotian's avatar immense satisfaction.
"Before the Dafang Pot moved against me, the Qianling Treasure Lid spirited me away first," it said with a smile. "Had communicating with it not taken up quite some time, I would have come in looking for you much sooner."
He Lingchuan had a sudden flash of realization.
No wonder even the Dafang Pot couldn't track down Nailuotian—as it turned out, it had found sanctuary first.
The lid refused to submit to the Dafang Pot, and the struggle between these two divine artifacts had persisted for ages. As clever as Nailuotian's avatar was, it could indeed find an opportunity between them.
Chapter 847