Where Immortals Once Walked

Sixth Arc: Demon Nest

Trapped in the flood, only two words flashed through He Lingchuan’s mind: It’s over.

So Wen Daolun’s character-divination came true in the end. Encounter water, run for my life. I should’ve turned around the moment I reached the Han River.

But there was no medicine for regret. All he could do now was jam a turtle pearl into his mouth.

The pearl let him breathe underwater for a while, buying him time so that he would not drown right away. Once inside his mouth, it shrank obediently to the size of a quail egg and did not block his breathing.

Perhaps it was because he had brushed past death too many times, or perhaps it was because he had quite literally died so many times in the dreamscape, but his fear of it was thin by now. At this moment, his mind ran at full speed, calculating every possible way to claw his way out of this desperate situation.

A crashing wave slammed a massive floating log toward them. It smashed straight into the giant bird, knocking the poor beast out cold.

The impact shoved the bird forward on the current, while Dong Rui and He Lingchuan were left behind.

Instinctively, both men lunged and grabbed the trailing end of the log. They watched, helpless, as the bull and the giant bird were swept away, drifting farther and farther until they vanished into the boiling distance.

“Thirty-Four!” Dong Rui spat river water, his face twisting with fury as he gnashed his teeth and said, “My Thirty-Four is gone! Why do I always run into you, you walking disaster?!”

“If you hadn’t—ptui!” He Lingchuan opened his mouth and took in a full gulp of muddy water, coughed twice, then finished, “If you hadn’t plotted against my father and me, would you be in the river right now?”

This slippery bastard before him had relied on his winged mount to pick fights, provoke them three times over, and then flee whenever things went sour.

Now the giant bird was gone, but He Lingchuan could not exactly feel happy about it.

So this is how it ends? Drowning with this weirdo as my only company?

The rotten log the two of them clung to was probably drifting downstream at sixty or seventy kilometers an hour. Counting on someone else to rescue them under these conditions was a fantasy.

He quietly thumbed the trigger and reeled his sleeve arrow back in. If an opening appeared later, he wanted that weapon ready. The line snagged on branches and debris several times, and it was only Li Fubo’s excellent craftsmanship that allowed the mechanism from jamming and dying on him.

One hand dug into the log hard enough that his fingertips sank into the soaked wood. Meanwhile, with the other, he carefully worked at the cable of the sleeve arrow while his eyes scanned the surroundings. He did not have a single breath to spare.

Everything in the flood moved at different speeds—some debris floated slowly, while others shot past like arrows.

It seemed that He Lingchuan’s luck had yet to completely run out. Meanwhile, Dong Rui was not so fortunate. First, a floating root caught him in the ribs, then a stone bounced off his head. His nose was running blood, and his skull hummed like a struck bell.

The torrent hurled all kinds of debris at them, and so they barely dared open their eyes.

One stone, skipping through the waves, knocked Dong Rui’s mask flying.

The two men were shoulder to shoulder on the log, close enough to feel each other’s breath. He Lingchuan turned his head, caught a glance, and almost lost his grip. His eyes bulged at the sight of the other party’s face. “Oh, hell...”

Dong Rui’s face was utterly ruined.

From the bridge of his nose upward, he looked almost normal, but everything below his philtrum was a disaster.

It was like the lower half of his face had been made of paper and someone had pinched it in.

Both cheeks had collapsed inward, his mouth was oddly warped, and the skin had a bluish-black undertone.

He barely had any teeth left, so it was no wonder his speech had always sounded a bit strange. Honestly, it was surprising that his words did not just end up as whistles.

This was because the lower half of his face lacked support, and even the area beneath his eyes had sunk a little.

He looked like a wax figure that had half-melted and hardened again. It was uncanny from afar and downright horrifying up close. Any child who saw him in the middle of the night would probably scream themselves hoarse.

He Lingchuan’s shock was written plain in his eyes. On a normal day, that look alone would have made Dong Rui blow his top, but right now, he had no attention to spare for wounded pride.

He glanced back over his shoulder, and his soul almost left his body.

Behind them, branches, logs, broken carts, and corpses were sweeping down from upstream in an endless wave, and it was catching up.

“We’re doomed,” He Lingchuan muttered after a brief look. The last bit of denial slipped away. They had already been swept into the middle of the Han, so they were more than thirty meters from either shore. There was no chance of reaching land.

Not a single rock jutted above the surface. There was nothing to grab onto, nowhere to climb.

Dong Rui suddenly fumbled something out, thinking to himself, Fuck it, might as well!

He quietly dunked it into the water, then pretended his hand slipped. “Oops!” he yelped, and let go of the log.

The current grabbed him at once and threw him aside.

He kept kneading what he held in his hand, breathing in short, sharp spurts. “Hurry up! Come on, hurry up!”

It was a transparent, gelatinous blob, almost like the stone flower jelly He Lingchuan liked to eat. Up close, though, it looked more like a slug—slimy, with obvious feelers.

Whatever Dong Rui was doing to it, the thing began to swell in size.

It was initially the size of a chicken egg, yet it was soon as large as a coconut.

It works! It really works! Delight flashed across Dong Rui’s eyes. He shot He Lingchuan a triumphant grin. “See you! No, never see you again!”

They were already six meters apart. With his life-saving treasure taking effect and a safe distance between them, he finally relaxed. Once this thing carried him away, he could watch this little brat drown with his own eyes.

Except that he had not accounted for one thing.

He Lingchuan had been watching him the whole time.

The moment Dong Rui’s smile cracked open, He Lingchuan lifted his hand.

Chnk!

The sleeve arrow he had just reloaded fired again.

This time, no wave slammed in to knock it off course. Dong Rui was bobbing along helplessly and had nowhere to dodge. The arrow hit him clean in the shoulder and punched straight through.

The cord behind it snapped taut.

He Lingchuan braced and pulled hard, trigger clicking. The wind tore away Dong Rui’s scream as he was dragged back against the current.

This time, the river itself helped, as an eddy swirled at the right moment and shoved them toward each other.

Within a few breaths, they were face-to-face again.

But this time, Dong Rui was on the verge of blacking out from pain. He Lingchuan bared his teeth in a grin. “Don’t be scared. I’m here to save you.”

He had seen every suspicious move Dong Rui made. A man who was fond of his own life would not suddenly “lose his grip” on a life-saving log. He was sure that Dong Rui had some plan in mind.

To Dong Rui, that smile might as well have been an evil demon’s.

Aren’t we both in the water staring death right in the face? So why the hell isn’t this brat panicking like a normal person? Why has he been watching me like a hawk the whole time?

Meanwhile, the thing in Dong Rui’s hands swelled faster and faster.

By the time the tug-of-war between them stabilized, it had gone from coconut-sized to the size of a millstone. There was no hiding it now.

He Lingchuan glanced down and saw the strange object, and instead of being alarmed, he was delighted.

So this is your lifeline?

If it could save Dong Rui, it could certainly save him. Worst case, he would hog the whole thing and squeeze Dong Rui out.

But the creature continued to expand at a frankly alarming rate.

When it finally finished inflating, it had become an oval mass over three meters across, one side rounded, the other flatter, with a fringe of uneven tendrils dangling below.

Strangest of all, both men ended up inside it.

The creature was completely transparent. He could see Dong Rui’s expression crystal-clear—just as Dong Rui could see his.

This is...

He Lingchuan craned his neck, looking around. His body felt as though it were stuck in deep mud. No matter what direction he pushed, there was nothing firm to brace against.

They were both suspended inside this jelly-like thing.

The more he looked, the more it resembled—

Isn’t this just an oversized jellyfish?!

Whatever it was, its body was astonishingly elastic. Debris slammed into it, yet they all simply glanced off.

It was absurdly bouncy.

The jellyfish drifted downstream with the current. The belt of floating wreckage soon caught up and then tore ahead. To He Lingchuan and Dong Rui, it felt like riding a raft. The creature’s thick jelly insulated them from the worst of the impacts. Massive clumps of debris surged past them like runaway trains.

He Lingchuan exhaled slowly. Phew, saved.

But then he noticed that Dong Rui’s face had turned a hideous shade of blue. Bubbles streamed from his mouth as he clawed upward frantically.

He’s... drowning? Or maybe suffocating?

However, He Lingchuan felt perfectly fine himself.

He focused on his own breathing. The inside of the jellyfish was mostly liquid—eighty or ninety percent water, with only a thin fraction made up of the sticky gel. Right now, Dong Rui was essentially trapped inside a sphere of water with no way out. How could he not suffocate?

He thrashed with everything he had and managed to drag himself up by maybe a meter. The breath he had been clinging to was on the verge of giving out.

He stared at He Lingchuan in disbelief.

How is this brat breathing so easily? Does he have some underwater breathing technique?

He jabbed a finger at himself, flailing, reaching desperately toward He Lingchuan.

The meaning could not have been clearer. He was desperately asking for help!

He Lingchuan flashed him a bright, sunny smile and spread both hands.

If this bastard had not picked at them over and over, the two of them would not have ended up in the river together. Now getting a front row seat to the man’s slow-motion drowning was oddly satisfying.

Dong Rui realized that the other man was perfectly content to watch him die and croaked, as best he could, “The jellyfish is poisonous! If you don’t save me, you die too!”

Sound carried through water. He shouted twice in a row. The words were warped, but He Lingchuan caught the meaning.

The jellyfish is poisonous?

Given that this thing was one of Dong Rui’s concoctions, the claim was not hard to believe. He Lingchuan also knew well enough that some jellyfish were poisonous.

Better to assume it’s true.

He Lingchuan sighed.

When he thought about it, he realized he had no idea how long this oversized jellyfish would float them along. He did not particularly want to soak in corpse-infused river water for days, nor did he want to open his eyes every time and be greeted by the sight of a bloated, dead face staring at him from just a little bit away.

He especially did not want to be greeted by the other party’s face. It was as ugly as sin.

So he took out another turtle pearl and waved it at Dong Rui, then gave the cord a tug.

This time, Dong Rui understood and did not resist. He started clawing toward He Lingchuan like a drowning man lunging for a pier.

They were originally only about two meters apart, so the gap vanished quickly.

Dong Rui all but snatched the turtle pearl out of He Lingchuan’s hand and rammed it between his own teeth.

He Lingchuan watched him suck in a deep breath. The near-spasming twitch of his limbs settled.

The two of them stared at each other in awkward silence as Dong Rui’s suffocated-purple complexion slowly faded back toward normal color.

After a while, Dong Rui finally opened his mouth and rasped, “Let’s not fight in here. We settle our accounts after we get out!”

The liquid inside the jellyfish was still flowing and seemed to exchange slowly with the outside water, just at a much slower rate. He Lingchuan muttered, “Antidote?”

“As long as things stay calm between us, I’ll give it to you before we leave,” Dong Rui panted. “It’s a slow poison. You won’t die for two or three days.”

He saw He Lingchuan’s eyebrow twitch and hastened to add, “I’ve got over a hundred different medicinal materials on me. The antidote has to be mixed on the spot. If you kill me now, you’ll have no idea which ones to use.”

He Lingchuan had no way to verify whether it was true, so he could only treat it as if it were.

Dong Rui pointed to the sleeve arrow lodged in his shoulder. “Can you take this out now?”

Only then did He Lingchuan help remove the arrowhead.

Thankfully, the wound was small. Instead of tearing off a strip of cloth and binding it as He Lingchuan expected, Dong Rui pulled out two pieces of something that looked like snow fungus and pressed them directly over the puncture.

The moment he applied them, they adhered tightly to his skin and formed a seal, blocking the water. If that wound had stayed open in the river, it would have been no different from slitting his wrists, and he would have slowly lost blood until he eventually died.

When Dong Rui tried to dig out a medicine bottle, He Lingchuan stopped him cold. Who knew what monstrosity he might try to bring out next?

He Lingchuan tossed him a pill instead. “To stop the bleeding. Swallow it.”