Where Immortals Once Walked

His body slowly sank downward. A man trapped in a quagmire had no way to fight off enemies. He Lingchuan casually pulled out a lightness talisman and slapped it onto himself, and his sinking immediately slowed.

This was an essential item for hunters in the Fu Realm, originally used to counteract its quadruple gravity. Its effect lasted only a few dozen breaths. But now that He Lingchuan used it on himself in the mortal realm, his body suddenly became incredibly light and nimble. Even his steps seemed to float, and for the moment, he no longer sank.

Of course, with his weight suddenly altered, the speed and force of his saber strokes would change as well. Fortunately, he had practiced this during his earlier rehearsals, so he did not make any embarrassing mistakes now.

A glass creature shaped like a giant crocodile suddenly lunged up from below. Its body was ten meters long, no smaller than a true giant crocodile.

He Lingchuan had just finished applying the talisman when a bloody maw suddenly appeared before him, filled with dozens of conical teeth. He shifted sideways, holding the Soul-Stealing Mirror in his left hand like a shield, and smashed it fiercely into the creature’s lower jaw.

With a clang, he knocked the giant crocodile’s mouth crooked. Its enormous body tilted sideways and crashed heavily back onto the star ring.

But He Lingchuan was also shoved back three meters by the impact, his body sinking until the liquid glass reached his calves.

This was truly difficult. If he could barely stand, how was he supposed to fight?

The mirror suddenly warned him, “Watch out below!”

A swordfish-shaped glass aberrant creature had sinisterly circled beneath him. He Lingchuan did not even need to lower his head to know that it wanted to skewer him.

Even if he had to die, he had no desire to die like that. He Lingchuan had no time to curse. He swiftly grabbed something and stuffed it into the “quagmire” beneath his feet.

It was an oval black stone shaped like a heart, with a faint red glow showing through the cracks on its surface.

In less than the blink of an eye, it transformed into a black stone man over three meters tall. Its entire body was covered in tiny honeycomb-like holes, and sparks were leaping out of every one.

It appeared one step ahead of the glass swordfish and, quite naturally, lifted He Lingchuan onto its head.

The swordfish happened to accelerate upward from below, shooting out of the glass mire and striking the stone man squarely in the crotch with speed, precision, steadiness, and ruthlessness.

He Lingchuan hissed at the sight, clamped his legs together, and felt his scalp go numb. Good thing I reacted quickly!

Crack.

Several small chunks of stone were pried off the stone man.

But that was all.

It did not feel pain, after all.

The swordfish struggled twice, then dropped back into the star ring in low spirits.

This was the earthfire seed Juju had given He Lingchuan. At a critical moment, it could transform into a small avatar of Juju.

He Lingchuan had not expected to find himself in a “critical moment” the instant he entered the array eye and be forced to use the earthfire seed.

Like Juju, this thing was bound by the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array and could not attack anything belonging to the Heavenly Palace.

It could not “attack,” but passive defense was still allowed, making it perfectly capable of becoming a swordfish-blocking shield like this.

The stone man’s body was harder than diamond, unafraid of blades. At the same time, it was filled with honeycomb-like holes like lava rock, allowing it to stand on the mire without sinking. It was even more useful than He Lingchuan’s lightness talisman.

Juju had been watching this battlefield all along. As an old monster that had lived for thousands of years, it had far stronger control over chaotic situations and precision in countering enemies than He Lingchuan’s.

Several more aberrant creatures rushed in, one after another.

Riding on the stone man’s neck, He Lingchuan drew Fleeting Life and cut down two of them in succession. These two aberrant creatures were not as insidious as the swordfish and offered up their heads with ease.

Now that he had a foothold, he had room to maneuver. Once he drew his blade, his strikes were both fast and ruthless.

The mirror suddenly cried, “They’re not regenerating!”

He Lingchuan answered, “Mm, I can see that.”

The giant crocodile and swordfish that had ambushed him earlier had circled around after falling back into the star ring and came at him again. But the glass aberrant creatures he had cut in two did not recombine after dropping back in. Instead, they thrashed and struggled within the star ring, clearly in great pain.

Fleeting Life’s ability to cut “formless” things was still as effective as ever.

Once these liquid aberrant creatures were cut apart, they would not be able to reassemble for a while.

With that lesson before them, the other aberrant creatures seemed to grow wary as well. Their attacks against He Lingchuan were no longer wild charges but had changed into opportunistic strikes.

In other words, they started slacking off.

The threat from beneath his feet had just weakened when red light flashed repeatedly at the far end of the star ring. Immediately afterward, a large number of guards rushed out!

As expected, Star-Plucking Tower had sent people over at once.

Their bodies were covered in a faint glow. Clearly, they were unaffected by the star ring’s abnormal state and could run swiftly across the liquid glass. Those strange glass creatures did not so much as look at them.

They all had the same target: He Lingchuan.

Heh, trying to overwhelm me with numbers? He Lingchuan flicked his hand and threw out a crimson piece of amber. Before it even landed, it transformed into more than a dozen black spiders the size of sheep.

This was one of his hidden trump cards: Zhu Erniang’s spider blood amber.

Originally, according to the incantation Zhu Erniang had taught him, this amber could only transform into three bloodfang guards. But considering how complicated today’s battlefield was, the eyeball spider had simply taught He Lingchuan its other uses as well.

One of them was to unleash the monster energy within the amber and shape it into a small spider squad instead of the original three large bloodfang guards.

Although the power distributed to each one was weaker, they were better suited for group battles.

Over these past few months in Beijia, He Lingchuan had faced danger again and again, but had only used a single piece of spider blood amber when fighting Fan Sheng.

The situation before him was critical. This was not the time to hold anything back.

The instant these spiders appeared, the glass’s high heat scalded them into shrill squeals. Fortunately, Zhu Erniang was an ancient greater monster and had endured countless harsh environments. A hard layer of keratin immediately formed over the tips of each spider’s legs, giving them excellent insulation.

Of course, that alone could not completely block the glass’s intense heat, so they poured a large amount of air into the tips of their claws. It was like a temporary air cushion, not only insulating them from the heat but also helping them run over the viscous glass sea without sinking.

More than a dozen spiders charged forward, spraying acid and webbing at the guards.

As for the aberrant creatures in the glass sea, they avoided them the entire time, as if they knew their own attacks were ineffective against them.

In the blink of an eye, two guards were knocked down by spiderwebs.

The webbing was extraordinarily soft and tough, layered four times over. Even though the guards carried origin energy, they still had to struggle and cut at it several times.

He Lingchuan flipped over and jumped onto the back of one spider. The spider spread its eight long legs and actually scuttled over the bodies of the two captives.

It grabbed one of them and hurled him fiercely toward the great sphere at the center of the star ring—the transparent prison that confined Zhu Erniang’s immortal molt.

Everyone watched helplessly as the captive smashed against the sphere. There was only a sharp hiss and a burst of exploding sound. Lightning flashed, and the guard burst into a cloud of blood mist.

“What the actual fuck!” He Lingchuan could not help swearing aloud. This great sphere looked quiet, unremarkable, and entirely uncharged, yet it had secretly been covered with such a ferocious array. It had clearly been set up to trick people. “The lightning pool!”

If he had not already heard the term “lightning pool” from both Zaifu Kua and Juju, he would have been stopped cold right here.

Piu.

Another spider guard fired a poisonous spike at the sphere.

In the next instant, the poison needle was reflected back, moving more than twice as fast as before.

The spider guard dodged, and the spike happened to hit another enemy behind it. The man fell without a sound, his whole body going rigid, with several strands of electric arcs flickering over his skin.

The name lightning pool was truly misleading, making people think it was a vast body of water. In reality, it referred to the surface of the great glass dome at the center of the star ring, which was completely covered by extraordinarily powerful lightning, with not a single blind spot!

But there was good news here as well. While the Heavenly Palace guards could walk on the surface of the star ring and avoid attacks from the glass aberrant creatures, they could not ward off lightning.

Is it because lightning-warding magical artifacts are rare, and the “lightning pool” is just too powerful?

He Lingchuan had the spider guard step on the remaining captive, using him as a springboard, and leap high into the air!

Zhu Erniang’s spider guards possessed almost every special ability of the burrow spider species. Besides spinning silk, weaving webs, spraying acid, and gliding over water, the exceptional jumping power of jumping spiders was indispensable.

The unlucky fellow was stomped straight into the glass sea. The red glow around his body popped and shattered, and he screamed as he was scalded alive.

The spider guard, meanwhile, covered ten meters in a single leap and landed directly on a point of the star ring less than a meter from the glass dome.

He Lingchuan had a lightning-warding talisman, but the spider guard did not. It had to be careful.

Guards were still rushing in without end, and even a few powerful monsters had charged inside. These spider guards would not hold out for long.

Time was precious. Without another word, He Lingchuan took out “Zhu Daniang’s eye socket” and began to play it.

Yes, Zhu Daniang’s eye socket was that xun. Though it had nine holes, Zhu Erniang had personally sealed one and told He Lingchuan to open the last hole after finding her spider molt.

He Lingchuan had waited and waited, and the moment had finally come!

He did not forget to undo the seal on the ninth hole.

Strangely enough, this xun usually had an excellent tone, and He Lingchuan could already play it with real feeling and melody. But now that all ten holes were open, no matter how he blew into it, he could only produce a hissing sound.

It was like a snake flicking its tongue, or a cat hissing. But He Lingchuan, who had heard burrow spiders roar before, knew that this was Zhu Erniang’s sound!

Now what?

He waited full of expectation, anticipating help to descend from the sky.

After going through such hardship to reach this place, Zhu Erniang ought to put in some real effort too, right?

Yet nothing happened.

The molt inside the glass sphere remained perfectly still.

The eyeball spider jumped again and again on his shoulder, meaning: the sphere is sealed. This time, playing the xun probably doesn’t count. You have to break it open first!

He Lingchuan cursed.

Sure enough, things can’t be so simple.

He had given it a try, and the attempt had failed.

He did not grow discouraged. Instead, he pulled out the frost talisman Li Qingge had specially made and threw it at the glass dome.

It had been refined from frost pellets condensed by nothing beasts in the Fu Realm, and its effect was far more than merely a level above that of an ordinary frost talisman. If he wanted to deal with the liquid glazed gold, nothing less than this would do. To dig out those frost pellets, He Lingchuan had nearly left his life behind in the Fu Realm.

With a soft bang, the frost talisman had not even taken effect before the glass dome actually bounced it away.

The reflection array activated.

And the instant the frost talisman was flung out, it was directly blasted into a cloud of ice shards—

The power of the lightning pool had activated.

“Ugh...” He Lingchuan froze. “Seriously?”

For the frost talisman to take effect, it first had to stick to the glass dome.

But the glass dome had a reflection array and the power of the lightning pool. It did not allow anything to get close at all!

If the frost talisman could not take effect, how was he supposed to deal with the glass dome?

With those two buffs stacked together, this was an infinite dead loop. The problem was, he was running out of time! The spider guards could not hold on for long, and enemies were still rushing over at high speed.