"What's wrong, Bai Zhou?"
At that moment, Fang Xiaoxia's nervous voice reached Bai Zhou's ear. "All of a sudden... did something happen?"
Bai Zhou started, then raised his head toward the girl before him, and found that it was not only the tense Fang Xiaoxia. Even Crow had a questioning look in her eyes. Seated where he had fallen, Bai Zhou frowned. "You... didn't see anything?"
The question was for Fang Xiaoxia, and for Crow as well.
"No." Fang Xiaoxia shook her head without a moment's thought, so hard she looked like a rattle-drum.
Crow seemed to consider, then looked at Bai Zhou with hesitation. "I... was I supposed to see something?"
Bai Zhou immediately looked down at the thorn ring on his index finger.
A bleeding arm. Spreading metal thorns. A golden pillar of light that pierced the heavens.
And that golden mark...
All of it stood vivid before his eyes. It could not possibly have been a hallucination in his mind.
The potion formula was far too detailed, the knowledge within it vast and profound. It was absolutely not something Bai Zhou had imagined.
Even now, inside his Fate Principle space, at the center of the Solar Fate Principle, that complex golden mark hung suspended above the other secret art marks, standing apart from them in sharp distinction.
Bai Zhou could not understand the mark's function or its use. But he had only to look at it once to know...
This was proof that he was king.
The last king of Rome!
Only, the mark seemed badly incomplete. Though its lines were already quite complex, to Bai Zhou's eye as an initiated ritualist many places in the pattern were obviously broken and missing.
Bai Zhou reasonably inferred that this mark might be only one-twelfth of some complete mark. When he gained the acknowledgment of all Twelve Giants and obtained the complete mark, he would truly set the crown upon his head and become a genuine "Roman emperor"!
At that thought, Bai Zhou's gaze moved again to the space above the crown.
There, a stretch of mottled, shattered, ancient and dim last words always hung suspended.
[Though the age of gods has long since broken, still we hope someone will don the crown bathed in blood, and become the new... King of Gold!]
"King of Gold..." Bai Zhou narrowed his eyes.
Become Rome's King of Gold?
On that day, Bai Zhou with the crown upon his head would also meet the shattering of those last words, and a gift the present him could not imagine. The way between was destined to be full of hardship. Setting aside the later words, which he could not make out at all, just the first few reasons for "acknowledgment withheld" were enough to leave Bai Zhou baffled.
"This is not one who resists injustice—acknowledgment withheld."
"This is not one who once brought salvation—acknowledgment withheld."
"This is not one fearless and towering—acknowledgment withheld."
What did "once brought salvation" mean? What did "fearless and towering" mean?
It sounded rather creepy.
If it meant salvation on the scale of saving Tinghai, then Bai Zhou had already done that. If it meant salvation on the scale of saving the whole world... Bai Zhou did not even know whether he would have the chance in this lifetime.
A savior still living was uncommon even in the storybooks about heroes.
As for resisting injustice?
Bai Zhou felt that his resistance against the Major was quite "resisting injustice," and yet he still had not gained the Golden Giant's acknowledgment.
Perhaps if Bai Zhou cut the Major down, there might be some slight hope of acknowledgment...
So Bai Zhou felt that becoming some King of Gold was far too vague and insubstantial. Only one thing was solid, and beyond all doubt—
Every future advancement of his upon the "Adventurer" pathway would probably fall upon this crown.
Just as the Trojan civilization had said: "Speaking only of the inheritance of the Adventurer pathway, there may be some gap between Troy and the strongest, the Roman Empire. But the ritualist inheritance is definitely Troy's strongest!"
As Troy's artificial intelligence, if it could bring itself to say "there may be some gap," then a gap that could not be ignored certainly existed. Perhaps this was why the Trojan civilization had not brought out knowledge of the Adventurer pathway, and had instead given the ritualist Bai Zhou the Celestial Pivot directly. According to the knowledge in the potion formula, this gap could not yet show itself at the Professional stage, but after the advancement of a major stage it could open in concrete form.
Adventurers who advanced with the aid of different potions might have unimaginable gaps between them.
The great majority of Adventurers who advanced on ordinary potions, even Heavenly Mandate Adventurers, would develop one defect or another at this stage, and might even face dreadful contamination impossible to fathom.
Like travelers walking a road at night along the edge of a pitch-black cliff: some felt the wind at the brink biting to the bone; some, careless for a moment, fell to the bottom and were smashed to pieces; and there were superior potions that helped an Extraordinary nail a railing along the cliff's edge... A Heavenly Mandate pathway was just such a thing. Only the potion Bai Zhou had obtained was described, in the potion knowledge, with every possible word of praise.
It styled itself the perfect potion, a royal secret art, the strongest Fate-Forging formula!
Being perfect, its defects and contamination were naturally the lowest as well. Thus its future ceiling was higher, and the Extraordinary pathway could be walked farther.
In any case, Fate-Forger would certainly not be the end of the Adventurer pathway.
At least Bai Zhou did not think that Deputy Director Liu, who stood above Level 6, and Troy's Scarlet Queen were on the same level.
With the crown, Bai Zhou's future advancement along the Adventurer pathway would require only that he work out how to gain the crown's acknowledgment... The feeling was rather subtle.
As Executor of Troy's history and heir to its civilization, he had instead become Troy's mortal enemy: the "one-twelfth reserve" of the Roman Empire's King of Gold.
"In my left hand, the strongest Celestial Pivot of the Trojan ritualist inheritance; in my right, the Roman Empire's royal Adventurer pathway, which it claims is perfect?" Bai Zhou blinked twice.
The essence of an entire age of civilization had, just like that, gathered wholly upon Bai Zhou alone.
If the Wolf Knight statue knew all this, the two emeralds serving as its eyes might just pop out on the spot...
If Bai Zhou were now to sacrifice the crown to the altar on his left wrist, Troy's history would likely erupt into a frenzy on the spot and heap everything it had upon Bai Zhou as reward.
Though he certainly could not possibly do that.
"In a place you cannot see..."
At last, faced with the puzzled eyes of Fang Xiaoxia and Crow, Bai Zhou gave a true answer, piece by piece:
"I've just had some incredible gains!"
"Gains?" Crow's brows lifted again.
"Could advancing to Level 5 still not be enough?"
She clearly could not imagine all that had happened at the Crown of Thorns, and only thought Bai Zhou was speaking of what he had gained from his trip into the Ruin Realm.
After all, a "place one cannot see," however one thought of it, ought to be the Ruin Realm.
Before her words had fully faded—
"Hum!"
The Celestial Pivot within Bai Zhou's body had already begun to turn.
Crow and Fang Xiaoxia could not see the Celestial Pivot, yet they could perceive with perfect clarity that the bearing of the man before them had changed all at once. His gaze had grown extraordinarily deep, and arcane symbols seemed to flow within it.
Time was pressing. Bai Zhou quietly circulated the Celestial Pivot and began, with all his strength, to deduce and learn the Hundred-Paper Corridor Ritual and the Lesser Amber Domain-Sealing Ritual. Of course, Bai Zhou was also using this to tell Miss Crow before him that her student, the ritualist Bai Zhou, had already initiated.
"This is...?" Crow's expression froze, just as expected, and then her pupils contracted.
"You've initiated!"
Even as she cried out in surprise, Crow raised her hand, and a ritual fell upon Bai Zhou.
Just as before, the two of them were now linked in thought. Bai Zhou could speak to her directly through his thoughts, without worrying that Fang Xiaoxia would hear.
"By a stroke of chance, I initiated through luck, and obtained the corresponding inheritance as well."
The arcane still flowed in the depths of Bai Zhou's eyes. He turned his head to look at her and explained, "Time waits for no one. I need this power."
"But the Spirit Pivot..." Crow's brows knit tight. With a whoosh her figure swept through the air and quietly drew near.
As the trench coat fluttered, the scent of coffee beans—bitter, with a faintly sweet finish—drifted, faint and elusive, past the tip of Bai Zhou's nose.
"What kind of inheritance? Did you construct a Spirit Pivot inside your own body?"
It was no illusion. Bai Zhou truly heard the urgency in Crow's tone.
For Crow, this was quite rare.
"Of course not." Bai Zhou blinked. "That is the lowest grade of Spirit Pivot. You weren't willing to let me initiate by relying on that, were you?"
At his words, Crow fell abruptly silent.
"...So you already know these secrets?"
The hem of the pitch-black trench coat snapped in the cold mountain wind. Crow pressed her lips together, her face hidden in the shadow beneath the dim yellow streetlamp.
"You never told me any of this because you didn't want me to rush into initiation. I understand what you intended."
The thought Bai Zhou sent came slowly. "It seems this question has been troubling you all along."
"After all, theoretically speaking, with no school's foundation I can rely on, I have only this one road I can walk at present—the road with the least future among ritualists: constructing a Spirit Pivot within my own body."
Hearing Bai Zhou, Crow seemed to nod, yet the nod was so slight it amounted to nothing.
"You're right..."
Then she spoke at once:
"—But I simply refuse!"
Crow answered coldly. The obstinate voice carried an icy stubbornness, and beneath the tone lay a self-reproach not easily perceived.
"In truth I know... most ritualists are like this. They construct a Spirit Pivot themselves. Though breaking through to the second order is difficult, it is not wholly without hope."
"You... you are my disciple. You are a genius whose talent height of five chi and nine cun I watched come to be with my own eyes."
"I cannot watch you stop here like this. Still less can I, because of my own incompetence, let you sink into the crowd and become ordinary."
She raised her head. Her neck, like a white swan's, craned high as she looked at Bai Zhou and spoke word by word:
"—I cannot accept such a thing happening!"
The stiff tone was like cold, rigid stone. She was like a little girl who clearly had no way left, yet stubbornly insisted on putting up a strong front.
"Watching with my own eyes as you are forced onto the most mediocre road, I cannot sit by and do nothing."
"Even if what you say is right—I truly have no way, at present, to bestow an imprint upon you."
She lowered her head in self-reproach. "I taught you rituals, only to have you stop short of initiation... I have always felt guilty for the incompetence of so unworthy a teacher!"
Bai Zhou was speechless for a while.
To him, this side of Crow was... very unfamiliar.
"But you've already done very well, Teacher Crow." Bai Zhou slowly bent closer, raised his head to look into Crow's flickering eyes, and answered in earnest. "You must not blame yourself. Without you, I would have died long ago at Base 36."
"But fortunately, these problems have all been resolved now."
Bai Zhou temporarily stopped studying and digesting the ritual knowledge, and called to Crow, "Next, watch closely."
He circulated the Spirit Pivot again, and in the blink of an eye instantly cast several micro-rituals.
Micro-ritual "Super Agility," activate.
Micro-ritual "Adrenal Stimulation," activate.
Micro-ritual "Acceleration," activate.
Three micro-rituals in a row, formed in a single thought, opened across his body. The momentum about Bai Zhou quietly changed, as if a beast deep in a dense forest had opened its eyes, preparing to hunt.
Even Fang Xiaoxia sensed the change, let alone Crow.
Arcane runes flowed in the depths of Crow's eyes. At last, observing from so near, she found the anomaly upon Bai Zhou.
"You... this is a Spirit Pivot that came by imprint bestowal!" Crow cried out in surprise.
"Could an ordinary Spirit Pivot do this?" Bai Zhou nodded. "A legacy of the previous civilization. In the end, the profit was mine."
It could well be called a thoroughly candid answer. There was not a single false word in it.
Crow stood silent where she was.
After a moment of silence, she at last shook her head, caught between annoyance and amusement. "So it was I who worried for nothing."
What was this feeling, all of a sudden—that the child had in fact long since made good, and had secrets of his own, while the nagging old mother still instinctively thought the child good for nothing, and in need of her care...
Just then, lightning flashed across the sky. The gloom at the horizon was lit by the blazing bolt.
The dotted streetlamps winding up the road of Zhenlu Mountain answered the thunder in the sky. Seen from the summit, it was truly magnificent.
Crow looked at Bai Zhou, then raised her head toward the wind and rain filling the sky.
In truth, someone had long since needed no one else's shelter. She simply had not noticed before.
He had long since become his own lighthouse, and could even stand upon the summit and light the faint glow upon others.
For example...
Crow glanced at the still-bewildered Fang Xiaoxia. Her lashes trembled once, the meaning unclear.
The Bai Zhou of now could already illuminate others.
Perhaps, on some day yet to come, Bai Zhou would also be able to illuminate the darkness around himself...
The thought flashed and was gone. Crow quickly composed her face and raised her hand.
Several drops of the rain around them evaporated out of thin air, turning to hazy vapor that wound about Bai Zhou.
A familiar icy coolness covered his cheeks. As always, Crow's slender fingertip came to rest once more upon his forehead.
"Water."
Crow recited softly:
"Purify the unclean."
A coolness like clear water entering the throat flowed through his whole body. As the SCE ritual ran through its full sequence, Crow also examined the condition of Bai Zhou's body.
"Truly robust." A frame that looked thin nonetheless nearly made Crow click her tongue.
One could not say there were accumulated hidden injuries, or dreadful hidden dangers. One could only say that the Bai Zhou of now was more powerfully built than a polar bear. Every inch of muscle, every cell, radiated vigorous life.
In the course of this, Crow also felt the change the Celestial Pivot had brought to the spirituality throughout Bai Zhou's body.
"This astonishing degree of liveliness and solidity is comparable to a second awakening of Fate Principle. It is indeed a Spirit Pivot seed of imprint-bestowal grade." Crow's brows lifted slightly. "But—"
"Isn't it a little exaggeratedly strong?"
Crow's own Spirit Pivot had also come by imprint bestowal. Its quality was extremely high, and its origins were considerable.
But Crow remembered that when she had first received her imprint and initiated, the change in the spirituality within her seemed less obvious than the change in Bai Zhou's...
What Bai Zhou's spirituality had looked like before, Crow had watched with her own eyes. But now...
The thought made even Crow shake her head and deny it at the first moment.
"Perhaps it is a Spirit Pivot particularly skilled at stimulating spirituality, with a special gift in the natural workings of life." In the end, Crow found a reason that fit.
Accompanied by several wails and dissipations of black-qi contamination, the SCE ritual also drew to its close.
Fang Xiaoxia at the side took all of this in, and only thought Bai Zhou himself was doing something important.
So she stood obediently to one side beneath a black umbrella and did not speak, big eyes blinking as she watched the ritual proceed upon him. Hazy mist and rain ringed the youth's figure, making him appear deeply mysterious.
With two claps, Crow patted her palms together and brushed the crystalline droplets from her fingertips.
"Good. Now I confirm that you are the genuine Bai Zhou, original and unaltered, and that there is no hidden danger upon you."
"It must be said, you always give people surprises they never expect—especially every time you make a trip to the Reflected Ruin Realm and come back out."
"I am almost ready to wonder whether the Reflected Ruin Realm of now, and the Reflected Ruin Realm I once visited, have already changed beyond recognition."
She spoke as if with feeling:
"In any case, you have now advanced to a Level 5 Heavenly Mandate, and have also become an initiated ritualist. Facing the storm about to fill the city, you will naturally have a full one to two times more chance of winning."
"The Major, the Zijing Group, the official investigators, and still more 'big figures,' like Deputy Director Liu, whom the Major has drawn into his net."
Counting off on her fingers the great enemies Bai Zhou was about to face, Crow's calm voice rose clear through the pattering wind and rain.
"Six hours remain until dawn. A storm fills the city. One careless moment, and a huge wave can slap a person down to the seabed."
"The last moment before dawn." Such was her appraisal.
"—Are you ready, Bai Zhou?"
When she raised her head, however, she saw that Bai Zhou was already cracking his wrists, imitating the white-coats of Base 36 at their chest-expanding exercises. Sinews and bones rang all through him, like tigers and leopards roaring. Not a thread of fear could be seen on his face.
He had of course heard Crow's question. But he heard still more the cry of that spear deep in his Fate Principle space.
Ever since he had come to the present world, the long-silent phantom of the spear had given off a faint tremor.
The tremor was not easy to notice. Yet the mere spreading of a few rings of invisible ripples set Bai Zhou's Sea of Ignorance surging with rolling waves.
Every inch of muscle all over him gave off a faint sting, and yet, invisibly, seemed washed and purified, like fine steel hammered further still.
Plainly, this keen spear from the Xiluo Empire—after nailing a demon dead atop the walls of Heishi City two millennia ago—had once again, after so long, sensed the scent of a demon.
If fate had always worn something of a cold scowl toward Bai Zhou, and wind, rain, thunder, lightning, setbacks, and tribulations had simply given him a beating... then now this stepmother called fate had been firmly nailed, by this ancient spear, to Bai Zhou's side!
"The Major clearly will not let this rest. I don't believe that, before he dies, he will do nothing to me and Fang Xiaoxia."
"But..." Bai Zhou's eyes lowered slightly. "Let him make whatever move he likes."
"My answer will always be: I am ready."
"Ready at any moment to deliver him the death fate has ordained."
As he spoke, there was a thud.
Bai Zhou had already mounted that pedal tricycle, and called for Fang Xiaoxia to get on.
Like a knight raising high a lance with its edge fully bared, mounting the swift horse fate had ordained, and, after one neigh of that horse, fleeing to the ends of the earth with the princess of a fallen kingdom.
More precisely—
it was raising the lance toward the hand behind the curtain and his great army, and launching an unstoppable charge of vengeance.
"Sit tight! Hold on!"
Bai Zhou gave the girl behind him that caution, then set off.
This was no place to linger. That arrow just now had already drawn the attention of the whole city. He had to get Fang Xiaoxia down the mountain at once.
Cabbage leaves laid down as a cushion sat beneath the girl. Fang Xiaoxia gripped the rim of the tricycle's cart, her eyes blinking as she looked at Bai Zhou's back.
"Bai Zhou, you said just now that you went to a world no one else knows of."
The girl asked softly, "Then what did you gain there?"
The way down was faster than the way up. The scenery beside them retreated in a rush. Upon the lightning-swift tricycle, Bai Zhou, pedaling as if his feet trod wheels of wind and fire, blinked.
What had he gained?
Advancement to Level 5. The imprint bestowal of the Celestial Pivot. The altar emblem. The spear's keen edge. The crown's acknowledgment. And the choices of two civilizations...
Those terms, never heard of before, and the vast, mysterious, brand-new world behind them, had all, on this night, slowly opened their gates toward Bai Zhou.
"Tonight, I'm actually the same as you."
Beneath the boundless gloom that filled the sky, sweeping through the swaying mountain wind and rain, Bai Zhou gave Fang Xiaoxia his answer:
"Each of us has a new world that has opened its gates for us."
Facing that brand-new world, they would mount the tricycle—
and set out once more.
Facts proved that Bai Zhou's timely withdrawal was entirely correct.
The summit of Zhenlu Mountain.
Not long after Bai Zhou had left, uninvited guests arrived upon the summit one after another.
A strange hum echoed through the sky above the peak.
A Night Raider Type-III armed helicopter swept through the rainy night. Its spinning rotors tore the torrential curtain of rain over the summit.
Figure after figure dropped one after another, leaping straight down from the helicopter.
The wind snapped. All of them wore combat uniforms, helmets covering their faces tight. Enchanted rifles stood with rounds chambered, and the momentum about them was extremely sharp.
In an instant the none-too-large platform of the summit was filled with a killing air.
Only the two in the lead wore no combat gear, but outlandish dress. The spirituality about them was extremely active as they frowned and looked over the surroundings.
One of them was small and thin, dressed in black, like a thief and like a bandit. Crouched to the ground, he resembled a curled-up mouse. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed a few times.
"Such a dense reaction of lightning..."
The thin man sniffed about and spoke his analysis aloud:
"That arrow was shot from here. No mistake!"
Before his words had fully faded.
A glowing green ray streaked past the edge of the sky, level with the Night Raider Type-III armed helicopter overhead, then slowly descended.
A powerhouse above Level 6, his whole body wrapped in a curtain of green light, hung suspended above the two leaders just like that.
"Deputy Director!" A chill struck both men's hearts, and they saluted the newcomer.
"Where is the man?" This big figure above Level 6 looked all around and spoke in an indifferent voice.
The thin man hurried to answer. "I opened a Spirit-Intent Domain to survey the surroundings. That man should have only just gone down the mountain. He surely hasn't gone far!"
The big figure nodded and gave a terse order. "Pursue!"
A thunder of footsteps. Everyone answered as one.
With a rustle, a rope ladder dropped at once from the helicopter, swaying on the wind. The armed personnel caught hold of it, about to climb back up.
Just then a voice drifted down from the sky and, mixed with the wind and rain, reached every ear on the summit, clear.
"Why do busybodies who don't know their betters always like to disturb other people's dates?"
"Who's there!" the big figure roared.
Everyone looked up at once, searching about for the speaker.
"There—in the sky! There's someone in the sky!"
Someone cried out. The rest looked where the sound pointed, only to find that upon the helicopter overhead a silver-haired old man was waiting beside the cabin door.
He stood there with elegant ease, looking down on them all. His white suit was spotless amid the slanting, rolling rainstorm. Even the rope ladder just now had been lowered by him, as if he were waiting for honored guests to board.
"He's already taken control of our helicopter!" The armed personnel jumped down from the ladder at once, on full alert.
Dark muzzles rose one after another. Specially made machines hummed into operation. Points of infrared light gathered in a patch upon the old man's chest, setting off, each to the other's advantage, the ostentatious red rose pinned there.
The old man seemed forever calm, as if nothing could move him in the slightest. "That child still seems wary of me... He may even think I'm waiting for him at the foot of the mountain. In fact, I reached the summit long ago."
"—But we will have a chance to meet. For example, he will certainly want this."
In the old man's hand was clutched a peculiar paintbrush. Its translucent tip streamed in the wind. It was plainly far from ordinary.
An Extraordinary weapon, beyond all doubt.
An Extraordinary weapon in the shape of a paintbrush.
"Now..."
The old man lightly straightened the tie at his chest, then leapt down from on high and landed, light and easy, on the summit ground, without so much as a speck of dust kicked up.
And so he fell within their layered encirclement.
Shadows stretched long across the ground. The old man surveyed them all at his ease and, faced with the encirclement, said instead:
"Now, you are surrounded by me."
"I hope you can stay here and keep an old man like me company for a while... After all, once a person grows old, he hopes someone will stay and talk with him." He spoke with a chuckle, the words mild yet brooking no refusal. "It needn't be long. Only until that student of mine leaves the range of your pursuit."
"The fated date between mortal enemies, and the play of a gentleman rescuing a beauty—this is the most brilliant graduation answer my student has ever turned in to me. A performance this grand—how could it brook you idlers spoiling the show?"
"Stop this charade!" The Deputy Director suspended in the air shouted harshly. Terrifying green light erupted all about him.
The pressure of one above Level 6 pressed down like a substantial tide, covering the whole summit. The man had already struck without hesitation:
"State your identity! Otherwise you will be deemed hostile and eliminated on the spot!"
The old man's figure vanished soundlessly from where he stood.
No—not vanished. He was simply faster than ordinary sight could catch.
As if an old fellow were strolling at leisure in a park, the old man threaded among the armed personnel at an easy pace. Each time he raised a hand, someone collapsed at the sound.
"My identity?"
The old man shook his head. His voice was gentle past all reason, as if he were facing a student raising a hand with a question in class.
He thought a moment, then answered in earnest:
"A... retired old teacher, just passing by?"
Whoosh.
"Swift as wind and lightning" was not enough to describe the speed of this tricycle.
The wind howled at their ears. Fang Xiaoxia, seated on the cabbage cushion, was stirred to the depths. Bai Zhou, pedaling, was instead abnormally tranquil.
After all he had been through in Zhuluoji, it was still this tricycle, pedaled through a whole night, that felt familiar and solid to him.
As if, so long as he rode it and pedaled with both feet, single-minded, he could leave time and death far behind.
"There may be people waiting for me at the foot of the mountain..."
Bai Zhou thought of Picasso, and of that former principal whose side was unclear and whose motives were mysterious, and grew heavy with worry. "I have to be ready for a fight."
However.
Before he had reached the foot of the mountain—when the tricycle had only just been pedaled to the slope's middle—a sudden upheaval burst forth.
Boom.
In the distance, in the infernal sea of fire where Longluo Private High School stood, no one knew what anomaly had occurred. A pillar of light shot abruptly into the sky.
A scarlet pillar that made the heart pound, wrapped about with a will of blasphemy and madness, like a giant spear thrusting up from the depths of an unnameable abyss, pierced heaven and earth with a crash!
It brutally churned apart the heavy clouds that were pouring down rain, and violently gouged a hideous hole in the night sky above the city of Tinghai.
"Putting on a show this big..." Bai Zhou's pupils contracted. A solemn chill rose in his heart. He reckoned the Major truly had no intention of living past tomorrow.
This, at a glance, was a do-or-die...
Rumble!
A roar like thunder spread across the heavens. Surging scarlet light ringed the surface of the dreadful pillar that pierced heaven and earth. That light churned and writhed like a living thing, and then, amid a deafening vibration, split where it stood!
Several translucent scarlet giant pythons broke free of the pillar. Their enormous bodies seemed made of pure spirituality. They wound through the night sky, a sight of extreme grandeur.
Blasphemous, complex runes crowded every scale. The mere unconscious sway of those huge bodies drove the wind and rain around them back, turning it to a vibrating vacuum.
Then, in one and the same instant, the hideous, mad "heads" of all the giant pythons turned as one!
They looked toward Zhenlu Mountain.
They looked toward Bai Zhou.
They had found Bai Zhou!
The Major had locked onto Bai Zhou's position!
At the same time, as if sensing the breath of a demon pressing near, the spear deep in Bai Zhou's Fate Principle space trembled at the sound.
Holy white radiance flowed over the icy surface of the scarlet spear, as if, provoked, it were eager to show its divine might. Bai Zhou even seemed to hear at his ear the roar of hymns and horns.
A screech.
The piercing scrape of tires split the silence of the mountains. The tricycle swung sideways and, along a perilous arc, drifted to a stop at the cliff's edge.
Dust flew. Gravel sprayed. It was as if a youth had reined in a horse there.
The wind and rain filling the sky drew back around the several sky-piercing giant pythons.
Beneath the shocked gaze of the whole city—which could see, and yet could not understand—the giant pythons and the "white egret" upon Zhenlu Mountain, the Major and Bai Zhou, this pair of mortal enemies ordained by fate—
across a distance of more than a hundred kilometers, had already begun to trade blows through the empty air.
"Coming faster than I imagined..."
"What are these giant pythons? How far has the clash between the officials and the Major gone?"
A mutter rose at the bottom of Bai Zhou's heart:
"The Major is in such a hurry to find me. Clearly the officials have already forced him onto a road with no retreat."
"Then... across so great a distance, now that you're driven to the wall, what will this last desperate trick of yours be?"
The youth seated on the tricycle's saddle shielded behind him Fang Xiaoxia, curled on the cart bed and shivering.
Bai Zhou's calm face was lit from afar by the glaring scarlet radiance of the sky-piercing giant pythons.
In a single night, he had watched with his own eyes a little shrimp leap free of the green duckweed, unbound from then on, its shackles gone.
Now, perhaps it was his turn.
Fortunately the youth was long since no longer what he had been. He had mounted his warhorse in full array. Even a battered old tricycle, under him, put forth a magnificent momentum, as if a thousand armies and ten thousand horses followed behind.
The demon's giant pythons had already cast their locking gaze across half the city.
Halfway up the mountain, the white egret ought to take wing.
If there was no escaping it—
Bai Zhou's eyes were bright, his gaze keen as a blade leaving the sheath.
"Then prepare to fight. Only death will end it!"
Chapter 213