Where Immortals Once Walked

He had just turned away, which put him squarely in the line of fire.

Fortunately, with He Lingchuan’s warning still ringing in his ears, a chill shot through Mao Tao’s heart. That first arrow failed to take him by surprise, and he managed to whip up his blade in time to knock it aside.

In the next moment, the air was filled with the sharp hiss of arrowflight. This time, more than ten arrows tore through the dark at once.

He Lingchuan batted away those aimed at him, then immediately smashed a small bottle against the ground. The bottle shattered with a crisp crack. A thick cloud of white smoke burst out and billowed in every direction, swallowing the woods.

It was a smoke-bomb formula he had learned from Willow in the Panlong Dreamscape. He had Ling Guang refine several variants from that recipe. The one he had chosen to use just now behaved just like a proper smoke grenade.

When both sides were cloaked in origin energy and wielded magic, conjured mist did little to disrupt anyone’s vision. It was nowhere near as effective as a physical smoke bottle like this.

The forest had already been dim. Now, with white smoke spreading, the enemy’s sightlines were reduced to a minimum.

Shan Youjun had drawn his saber as well, but amid the chaos, He Lingchuan heard him grunt. It appeared that he had taken a hit.

Even the bo beast under He Lingchuan’s saddle flashed faint light across its flanks. Two arrows struck its haunches and bounced away.

When shooting a rider, shoot their horse first.

Fortunately, the bell strapped to the beast’s chest was itself a magical artifact. It could no longer produce sound, but its defensive power was superb.

Against origin energy, though, even that protection was badly eaten away.

Most of the arrows, however, had gone for Mao Tao. He managed to deflect two, which was already quick work, and another two were stopped by the protective magical artifact on his person before they could fully bite in. But the rest...

Out of the corner of his eye, He Lingchuan saw a flare of green light across Mao Tao’s body, which he then watched gutter out. The fingernail-sized jade charm at Mao Tao’s waist shattered with a brittle crack.

There were simply too many arrows, and each one had been coated in origin energy. The magical artifact’s protection burned out in an instant.

The remaining three arrows had punched in one after another.

All three sank into him with a sickening thud. He Lingchuan saw Mao Tao’s body jerk, and the jagged head of one arrow burst out through his back.

It was a horrifying sight.

“Mao Tao!”

Shock and fury surged up in He Lingchuan’s chest, but he only dared shout in a low, clipped voice. Through the smoke cloud and trees, he could already make out the silhouettes of multiple archers whose bows were drawn once more, arrows nocked and ready.

He jammed his heels into the bo beast’s sides, and the mount leapt forward like an arrow of its own.

In a smoke cloud like this, the only way to avoid becoming a sitting target was speed.

With his free hand, He Lingchuan reached back into his storage ring and pulled out a heavy crossbow. He had preloaded these bolts long before, allowing him to operate the crossbow one-handed now.

He was no longer the rookie he had once been. Even at full gallop, his aim held true. He fired twice in quick succession, each bolt finding its mark.

One archer’s right wrist exploded in blood. Another took a bolt straight to the throat.

The bo beast was too fast. To the archers, the smoke merely stirred, then a tall horse burst out of the whiteness. None of them had the time to draw and fire; they had no choice but to drop their bows and try to engage him in melee combat.

He Lingchuan’s saber came down once, and two of them froze where they stood.

He ran down a third man before those first two had even finished dying. Their torsos sheared apart a heartbeat later and slid from their legs, splattering the ground with blood.

That strike had carried all his rage—fast as lightning, sharp as a falling star, cleaving men and weapons alike into neat halves. The blade itself had not even touched the second soldier. The seething edge of cold light, extending a third of a meter beyond the metal, did the work for him, slicing through leather and bone as if through butter.

After cutting down four men, he found himself facing the enemy’s cavalry. A spear jabbed straight for his throat as the two mounts crossed.

As they flashed past each other, He Lingchuan’s saber flicked twice. The first stroke chopped the spearhead clean off. The second turned back like a swallow swooping in midair and took half the rider’s skull.

To the others, there had only been two flashes of icy light. Then the cavalryman was a headless corpse, slumping from his saddle.

Who would not be terrified by that?

The Xun Province riders in front of him scattered away in all directions. An occasional arrow still flew from the smoke cloud, but he either evaded or swatted them from the air. None so much as grazed him.

They were agile and capable soldiers, but facing the combined force of the bo beast’s charge and Fleeting Life’s killing edge, they could barely put up a proper defense.

This was the gulf between someone at the level of a general and a soldier.

Even He Lingchuan himself had not realized how far he had come. Step by step, he was starting to show the bearing of a true general.

Suddenly, someone shouted, “That’s the man who wounded General Baili!”

At last, someone had recognized him.

Among the men Hong Chenglue had left behind in ambush, several had followed Baili Qing in his attack on Xinhuang Town, and they had seen for themselves how their general had fallen. In the swirl of white smoke and confusion, they had not truly recognized He Lingchuan until he had reaped several lives in quick succession.

Shan Youjun shouted at He Lingchuan, “Behind you!”

He Lingchuan felt the faint ripple of disturbed air behind him.

He threw himself flat and pressed himself against the bo beast. Something streaked low over his saddle, a red blur sweeping past where his head had been a heartbeat before. If he had not ducked in time, it would have knocked him clean from the horse.

The thing dipped its head mid-air, jaws snapping for his throat. He twisted aside, and it snapped on empty air instead, upper and lower fangs clacking together with a sharp crack.

Only when it landed did he get a good look at what it even was.

It was a giant red cat with long and thick limbs. Every part of it looked built for explosive leaps.

Shan Youjun shouted, voice tight, “It doesn’t take damage from blades!”

He himself was fighting another giant cat. Blood striped his body in several places. The creature’s hide glowed faint green. It took every one of Shan Youjun’s attacks head-on, not bothering to dodge at all. His blade passed straight through it, as though cutting nothing but mist.

This thing doesn’t have a real body?

No, that can’t be right. It’s only when it’s flashing past that its form turns incorporeal. It should simply be entering some formless state, or something like that. And because its master has reinforced it with origin energy, Shan Youjun’s origin energy-infused weapon can’t truly harm it.

Their strengths must be cancelling each other out.

The blood cat was insanely fast. When it ran, it left only an afterimage behind. Several times, it almost took Shan Youjun’s eyes or tore out his throat.

He noticed something else in the heat of battle. The creature’s wrinkled skin was not fur at all. Its skin was actually made up of faces stacked on top of one another.

These faces were human, male and female, young and old, each with distinct features and expressions. Some were laughing, some were furious, some were weeping, and some were frozen in a silent scream.

He Lingchuan did not recognize what they were, but these creatures were actually known as chang spirits.

With the sun having already dipped beneath the mountains, it was the perfect time for them to come out and wreak havoc.

While Shan Youjun struggled to hold the blood cat at bay, a shadow slipped up behind him. A long-handled halberd thrust straight for his back.

It was Tao Ze, the Xun Province officer commanding the ambush.

A chill swept up Shan Youjun’s spine. He knew he was done for, but he had no time to turn.

At that exact moment, a spear came flying in from ahead, shaft humming. It whipped past his ear so close it nearly sliced it off and smashed into the halberd’s tip with a ringing clang, knocking it off line.

He Lingchuan had directly thrown Rising Dragon, turning it into a javelin.

This was a standard technique in the Gale Army; every man there had to master it. As a patrolman in their reserves, he had drilled it endlessly. What he had just thrown was not a spear so much as a full-length lance, and while it did not yet match Xiao Maoliang’s legendary throws in force or grandeur, the accuracy and power were more than acceptable.

Rising Dragon struck away the halberd, deflecting the strike, then veered aside and drove itself into a tree with a solid thunk.

The blood cat he faced had not bothered to dodge his attack. It had been arrogant enough to believe itself beyond harm.

That arrogance cost it dearly.

With a single sweep of Fleeting Life, he cut the creature neatly in half.

The giant cat did not bleed, nor did it shriek. It simply hit the ground and crumbled into ash. But all the faces that had been pressed into its body peeled free at once, rising into the air and swirling outward as a storm of howling wrathful spirits.

Tao Ze’s halberd was called Red Tiger. The souls of those who died beneath its edge had likely been sucked into its metal and then packed into the pair of chang spirit blood cats to fuel them with an endless stream of power.

Now that one of the chang spirits had been destroyed, the wrathful spirits imprisoned inside its body burst free. Blind with grief and hatred, these spirits flung themselves at the living all around them in wild, indiscriminate wrath.

They had dwelled in the chang spirit for so long that they had picked up some of its traits. They were shapeless most of the time, only condensing into something solid at the instant they attacked.

The nearby Xun Province soldiers had never imagined the situation would turn on them. In the blink of an eye, four men went down. One had a wrathful spirit pour into him through his mouth and nose, raking his brain to shreds from the inside. Another had strips of flesh torn out in ragged mouthfuls, screaming as he was devoured alive.

Even Tao Ze was taken aback. He could only grit his teeth and withdraw the origin energy he had been channeling into the chang spirits.

When the faint light vanished from around those wrathful spirits, they could no longer breach the origin energy cloaking the Xun Province troops, and they were then deflected, lost cohesion, and eventually faded out. The wrathful spirits no longer posed a threat to the troops.

What Tao Ze could not understand was how He Lingchuan had managed to cut down the blood cat so easily. When a chang spirit was not in the middle of an attack, it maintained a formless soul body. In such a state, mortal steel should never be able to even touch it.

He had no way of knowing that the Fleeting Life treasured saber carried an ability known as Void-Breaker, which was specifically designed to strike at things without flesh or bone. Chang spirits were exactly that kind of target. Why would Fleeting Life treat it any differently from other such targets?

With Tao Ze’s support withdrawn, the remaining blood cat’s pressure on Shan Youjun vanished. As a mass of wrathful spirits, it posed little threat to soldiers wrapped in origin energy.

Shan Youjun took a deep breath, then turned and charged straight at Tao Ze.

By now, the white smoke cloaked the entire battlefield. The Xun Province troops were wary of the saber in He Lingchuan’s hand and did not dare rush in blindly.

Seizing the moment, He Lingchuan swung down from the bo beast and sprinted to Mao Tao’s side. His friend’s breath was now as thin as a thread. He pried Mao Tao’s mouth open and shoved a life-preserving pill inside.

He knew this medicine all too well. When the leopard monster had knocked him off that cliff, half a pill had kept his heart beating for two full hours. It had saved his life. It was rare enough that even gold could not easily buy it.

The pill dissolved on contact with his tongue, but Mao Tao could not enjoy its miracle.

Mao Tao stared at He Lingchuan, pupils blown wide, and with everything he had left, he pushed out a few ragged words, “Go... just go!”

His eyes glazed over as soon as he finished.

No medicine could bring back the truly dead. His heart had been punched clean through. The fact that he had even lasted this long was already a miracle.

Shan Youjun shouted, “Time to go!”

With the enemy upon them, he did not shout “Master,” but the meaning was there.

Two Xun Province soldiers had already put whistles to their lips. The shrill, piercing notes cut through the trees, echoing across the whole mountainside.

Hong Chenglue’s unit was not far. They would hear and rush to reinforce.

Two men against hundreds, they were not the Red General, so staying meant certain death.

Gritting his teeth, He Lingchuan reached out and gently closed Mao Tao’s staring eyes. Only then did he vault back into the saddle and drive the bo beast straight at Tao Ze.

In size, the bo beast was no larger than an ordinary warhorse. But its acceleration left common mounts in the dust. Within ten meters, it was already at full speed.

Tao Ze was still locked in combat with Shan Youjun. The smoke was thinning. Soon, his own men would be able to rush in and overwhelm the two Xia Province fighters. But suddenly, wind screamed in his ears.

He Lingchuan and the bo beast slammed toward him like a thunderbolt.

Tao Ze had already heard his soldiers shouting earlier and knew that this young man was the one who had crippled Baili Qing, even having done so in a single strike. He had not personally been at the scene of the battle, so he did not know that back then, He Lingchuan had only triggered Fleeting Life’s Army-Breaking ability through a fluke. He only knew that his own strength fell far short of Baili Qing’s.

At this moment, he was trapped in a duel with Shan Youjun. His heart lurched into his throat. He did not dare take He Lingchuan’s strike head-on.