Where Immortals Once Walked

The pill was completely black and utterly unimpressive, but Dong Rui swallowed it in one gulp. Warmth quickly rose in his belly, spreading through his limbs; strength began to creep back into his body. If not for that, after all this flailing, wounds, and blood loss, he would have collapsed from exhaustion by now.

“This medicine of yours is actually not bad,” he admitted grudgingly.

He Lingchuan asked, “How do we get out of this jellyfish?”

Dong Rui certainly was not going to tell him. “Once we’re safe, you’ll naturally find out.”

“You really know how?” He Lingchuan sounded deeply doubtful. “You just about drowned in it earlier.”

To suffocate inside the body of an aberrant creature you personally created, now that would be a joke for the ages. Dong Rui’s face turned dark. “This is just a prototype. It still needs improvement! This is my first time... testing it.”

Truthfully, it was not even ready for trials. Half the details had not been finalized.

And the result of that was that it had nearly killed its own master by suffocation.

“How much longer are we going to drift?” They were essentially riding the river’s express train, shooting downstream.

He Lingchuan looked around. The current not only had not slowed, but it had even gotten faster. The river seemed narrower and more winding where they currently were.

“At the very least, we need to wait until the current calms down,” Dong Rui said. “Going out now is just asking to die!”

The giant jellyfish was often shoved under the surface. Down there was another, weirder world altogether, choked with debris he could and could not recognize, swirling past in wild, whirling currents. He Lingchuan saw animal carcasses sucked into undertows and whirlpools, dragged down without a trace.

If not for the giant jellyfish shielding them, not even the best swimmer alive could have survived this stretch.

Drop a full-grown whale into these floodwaters, and it would not stand a chance either.

Twice, they were wedged against mid-river reef rocks. Thankfully, the savage force of the torrent eventually squeezed the slick, slippery creature free.

He Lingchuan poked the sticky mass beside him. “How long did it take you to grow this thing this big?”

“Three to five months. This one and the others of its kind were only the size of a hat at the start.”

He Lingchuan did not bother asking why. Dong Rui’s brain could not really be said to run on normal tracks anyway. Still, he could not help but ask, “What did you mean by Thirty-Four? Is this jellyfish Thirty-Five then?”

“...Yeah.”

So this guy has modified at least thirty-five creatures, and he’s even given them serial numbers.

“What about that ghost ape? What number is it?” With nothing else to do except keep his mouth working, He Lingchuan went on.

“Seventeen.”

“But I’ve only seen you release four monster puppets.” That number included the jellyfish they were currently in.

“Most of them didn’t make the cut, so I destroyed them.” Dong Rui’s tone was sour. His shoulder was still killing him thanks to the guy in front of him.

“So only four successes?” He Lingchuan chuckled. “That’s a pretty lousy success rate.”

Dong Rui glared. “What are you trying to say?”

“That red liquid, what’s it actually for?”

That mutated phoenix tree had left a deep impression on the Yuan troops. To this day, even the medicine ape had not cracked the secret of that strange liquid.

He Lingchuan understood it would not be easy.

“None of your business,” Dong Rui snapped. He had never gotten the vial back after the brat in front of him had picked it up. “You lot couldn’t use it even if you tried.”

He Lingchuan heard the pride under the words. “So it only works on monster puppets?”

Dong Rui flicked him a sideways glance and refused to answer.

You already know, so why are you still even asking?

“It seems like some kind of blood,” He Lingchuan went on, not bothered by the cold shoulder. “Related to those ancient ghost beasts, right?”

Dong Rui’s eyelids twitched. “What do you know?”

“So am I wrong?”

Dong Rui sniffed. He lifted his chin as he said, “Ghost beasts are brutish and brainless, loyal to no one. How could you possibly compare them to my monster puppets?”

His own creations obeyed him like his own arms and legs. They were utterly tame and completely under his control.

“It sounds like you’ve done a lot of research on ghost beasts.”

Dong Rui said with undisguised contempt, “You amateurs learn two words and start sniffing around like bloodhounds.”

“Then let’s change the subject. Have you studied the Ferry-Crossing Ghost Mother?”

“Ferry-Crossing Ghost Mother?” For the first time, genuine surprise flared across Dong Rui’s face. “Where did you learn that term?”

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

“Where?” Dong Rui suddenly became tense. “Where exactly?”

“You first.”

Dong Rui stared at him for a good long while, as if weighing whether he was bluffing.

He Lingchuan was in no rush. “All I know is that it can plant its young in human wombs. One pregnancy, many offspring.” And it had brought no end of trouble down on Panlong City.

“I’ve only ever heard it called the Ferry-Crossing Holy Mother,” Dong Rui corrected, stressing the word holy. “Who’s the idiot who swapped holy out for ghost for you?”

He Lingchuan shrugged.

“But you did get one thing right. It can seed human mothers and make them bear its young.”

“So powerful? Do the two sides need direct contact?” Or is it some sort of remote implantation?

“Of course not!” Dong Rui shook his head. “If it needed to touch you, what kind of holy mother would it be?”

“Remote pregnancy, huh?” He Lingchuan could not help but marvel. “Why don’t we have that ability?”

“You’re not a god.”

“What?” He Lingchuan blinked. “The Ferry-Crossing Ghost Mother is a god?!” That was the last answer he had expected.

He Lingchuan muttered, “So those were the children of a god? Why were they so ugly then?”

“You think all gods are beautiful?” Dong Rui rolled his eyes. “Have you met one?”

This man’s tongue is venomous. He Lingchuan decided not to argue. “No, but its offspring certainly don’t match the word holy in any way.”

“Ugly, are they?” Now, Dong Rui was focused. “How ugly?”

“Well, I saw them personally. They don’t all look the same. Some are vicious, some are nimble. Some are small and scrawny, some are only a bit bigger than a cat, and some are bulkier than either of us.”

“Yes, yes, those are ferry-crossing spawn!” Dong Rui nodded rapidly. “Legend says it can birth up to nine at a time, and each one is different.”

“I always thought only dragons had that kind of fertility,” He Lingchuan said. “Aren’t they the ones who are supposed to birth nine sons?”

“And who’s been feeding you that nonsense?” Dong Rui cut him off mercilessly. “If dragons bred that well, rivers and lakes would be crawling with them. Let me ask you, have you ever seen one?”

So this guy’s a nitpicker at heart.

He Lingchuan had indeed seen a dragon. He had seen one back inside the Panlong Illusion Realm. The black flood dragon had devoured the souls of the Gale Army and ascended to dragonhood.

Does that count? In any case, it’s not like I can bring that up. So he could only concede and say, “Fine, you talk too much. You win. Back to the Ferry-Crossing Ghost, er... Holy Mother. Why doesn’t it give birth itself? Why use human mothers as incubators?”

“Of course it can birth its own young.” Dong Rui’s tone turned analytical. “But by using human wombs, it can control where its offspring are born.”

“Control where they’re born...” He Lingchuan’s back went cold. “Don’t tell me it can make a woman thousands of kilometers away get pregnant?”

He was not thinking of anything lewd, only that Panlong City might never be able to catch the true culprit. The Ferry-Crossing Ghost Mother might not even be in the Panlong Wasteland at all.

“Thousands of kilometers away?” Dong Rui snorted. “That’s nothing. The god doesn’t even live in this world!”

He Lingchuan blinked, then he blinked again.

It’s not even in this world, and it can still get a woman pregnant?

Well, come to think of it, back in my original world, there were similar stories, weren’t there?

“The power of the gods is beyond anything you or I can imagine,” Dong Rui said with a sigh. “The more you learn, the more unfathomable they become. In the eyes of gods, we’re less than ants.”

“Don’t be fooled by the word holy in Ferry-Crossing Holy Mother. From what I’ve heard, it’s a low-tier god that’s still under the command of higher beings. And because its spawn are carried by humans, they’re born lacking in a certain sense, never as powerful as the children it bears itself. However, they’re better adapted to our world.”

“Better adapted?”

“Of course. They’re born half-human, half-divine. Our world doesn’t completely reject them. You’re actually lucky. You probably haven’t seen the strongest of the ferry-crossing spawn.”

He Lingchuan froze. “There’s a strongest one?”

“Of course. When tigers or wolves give birth to three or five cubs, some are strong, some are weak. The strong grow fast, while the weak often die. The Ferry-Crossing Mother has up to nine at a time, so that pattern is even harder to escape, but—” Dong Rui’s tone turned slow and faintly eerie as he continued, “for tigers and wolves, the firstborn is often the strongest, and the lastborn the weakest. For the Ferry-Crossing Mother’s children, it’s the exact opposite.”

“The earlier they’re born, the weaker they are, and the last one is the strongest?”

So the two I fought were the weaker ones?

“Earlier ones aren’t necessarily weak, but the lastborn will definitely be the strongest. It steals its siblings’ nourishment in the womb, forcing them out early. If they don’t get out in time, it’ll eat them. That last one will also have special traits.”

He Lingchuan, suitably humbled, asked, “Like what?”

“Like staying inside and refusing to come out!” Dong Rui snapped. “How would I know the specifics?”

He Lingchuan thought he already knew plenty. Information on gods was vanishingly rare in this time and age, so it was a wonder as to where the man had even dug it up.

More importantly, why had he gone looking? “How do you know so much about the Ferry-Crossing Mother, anyway?”

“I’ve seen ferry-crossing spawn myself,” Dong Rui said, letting out a sigh. “That’s why I went around collecting information. Still, it’s too hard. These days, records on the gods are pitifully scarce.”

For all his trouble, he had only pieced together this much.

He Lingchuan blurted, “Where did you see them?”

“In a cave,” Dong Rui said smugly. “But all I found were desiccated corpses. Unlike you, you managed to stumble on fresh ones.”

He felt he had already been generous, so he pressed, “I’ve told you enough. Where did you find ferry-crossing spawn?”

“Where I came from.”

Dong Rui blinked. “You mean that remote patch of nowhere? What’s it called again? Qian... something Commandery?” When his clients had briefed him, he had not even bothered to remember the name, as the place was simply too remote.

“Qiansong Commandery,” He Lingchuan said, perfectly straight-faced. “I saw them in Panlong City.”

“Panlong City?” Dong Rui perked up at once. “You mean that Panlong City? Zhong Shengguang’s Panlong City? Isn’t it a ruin now?”