Where Immortals Once Walked

Out here in the middle of nowhere, there were not even paths, just tall grass and scattered rocks everywhere. A horse could not really stretch its legs and run. At best, it could pick its way forward at a cautious walk, barely faster, if at all, than He Lingchuan could go on foot.

He led the horse over a low rise, and a sudden warning prickled up his spine. The warning was sharp and immediate, as if the threat were right beside him.

I’m being hunted.

He Lingchuan did not show any signs of having noticed. He kept leading his horse, reins in hand. The heart-protecting mirror murmured from inside his clothes, “Hey. Something’s up.”

He gave the faintest “shh.”

Right then, the grass behind and to his right rustled, like wind combing through brush, or a rabbit skimming the tops of blades.

Here it comes.

He Lingchuan snapped his arm back and flung something without looking. In the same motion, he dropped and rolled, sliding under his horse’s belly.

A fierce tiger that was easily over three hundred kilograms burst out of the grass. Something that huge should have been thunderous when it leaped, yet it landed with barely a sound.

Wind follows the tiger, people said. Apparently, they were not wrong.

The beast had barely cleared He Lingchuan’s back when the object he had thrown smacked toward its nose. It raked at it with a paw, and the sharp hooks of its claws punctured it.

Pop.

Following a soft detonation, yellow smoke burst outward. Then came a stench so vile it was almost physical, exploding straight into the tiger’s face.

A tiger’s sense of smell was more than ten times that of a human. If the odor was unbearable to people, it was like being hit in the head with a club to the tiger.

It forgot all about killing. It bounded forward several steps to get away from the stink, then bent its head and gagged, retching audibly.

That reflex was not something it could simply tough out.

A figure flashed through the yellow haze. Holding his breath, He Lingchuan lunged out, Fleeting Life cutting cleanly toward the tiger’s neck.

He was just a moment away from finishing it when a second earth-shaking roar blasted from the grass.

Another striped figure launched out and slammed into him, hard enough to send them both tumbling.

Two tigers, a front-and-back ambush.

The roar was close, so close that it felt like thunder had clapped right beside his ear. His heart jolted, and his limbs locked up for an instant.

This was a tiger monster’s innate talent: Frighten. Timid prey could be frightened to death on the spot.

In the next blink, He Lingchuan and the tiger were rolling together.

The massive tiger head was less than a foot away. Its jaws gaped wide enough to swallow two human heads. Ten claws that acted just like spring-loaded blades shot out with a hiss, each curved talon nearly a third of a meter long, raking for his body.

A hit meant anything from being disfigured to being disemboweled. However, just as the claws came down, a flicker of red light flashed over He Lingchuan’s chest. The talons scraped him like metal, shrieking with a grinding, ear-splitting sound.

At the same time, the heart-protecting mirror against his chest trembled.

Its protective function had triggered automatically.

His stiffness lasted only a fraction of a second. His spirit and soul had traveled back and forth between the firmament and the earth for so long that it was tougher than that of most cultivators. Even taking the roar head-on, the “Frighten” effect broke in under a second, and his body snapped back under his control.

Another claw came in. He Lingchuan braced his saber and barely blocked it, then whipped the blade back in a counter-slash.

The tiger’s paw was cut.

If it had not yanked back fast, it would have lost half its forepaw.

They separated in a burst. Using the recoil, He Lingchuan flipped backward and threw a flying knife.

The tiger’s paw blurred, moving too fast to even properly track, and successfully smacked the knife out of the air.

However, He Lingchuan had actually only been aiming to create an opening with that throw, and that short moment was all that he needed.

He snapped his wrist and fired a grappling hook.

The tiger lunged again, but He Lingchuan had already used the cord of the grappling hook to spring upward. He planted two steps against the tree trunk and vaulted onto a high branch.

The other tiger—the one that had taken the stink bomb—had shaken off the worst of the stench, but it was still tossing its head in disgust. That stench lingered in its senses, leaving it uneasy in a way it could not explain.

The two tigers regrouped. The female tiger snapped at the male in a furious barrage, basically calling him useless. The male flattened his ears and took it.

Then he prowled in circles under the tree, looked up at He Lingchuan, and spoke in a human voice, “Leave the imperial nectar, and I’ll spare your life.”

He Lingchuan spread his hands. “Already drank it.”

“Liar! You don’t have the scent of someone who’s taken it!”

The female tiger roared and said, “Eat him now while there’s still time!” Dawn had just broken. Anything that had swallowed imperial nectar became a tonic of its own. Eating him was still a huge gain.

He Lingchuan said mildly, “I thought the monsters of Beijia believed in reason.”

The tiger laughed. “Look at where you are first. If you want reason, go back to the city!”

Out here, right after an imperial nectar eruption, the only “reason” that mattered was sharp teeth and stronger claws.

It wrapped its forelegs around the trunk and shot upward, climbing so fast it was practically running straight up the tree.

If it had wings, the big cat would have been good at everything.

He Lingchuan fired a pair of darts. The tiger did not even bother dodging, confident in its defense. And rightly so, the darts failed to even pierce its hide.

He Lingchuan’s brow furrowed.

The two tigers had not used a single divine technique. He had assumed that they were holding back, but it seemed that they had simply dumped everything they had into brute physical refinement.

For strength-type monsters, that was the whole point. They simply had to focus on making themselves tougher, faster, and deadlier.

The Great Dao was simple. Once your skin was thick enough and your claws were sharp and fast enough, all a cultivator’s fancy tricks were no different from paper.

Fortunately, He Lingchuan already had the heart-protecting mirror in hand. He waved it toward the charging tiger.

They were close now, and it was full daylight. The tiger immediately saw its own huge head in the mirror.

A tiger monster was not unfamiliar with mirrors, but then the reflection winked at it and leaned in to sniff.

The tiger froze.

Eh? That, that doesn’t look like me.

What was reflected on a mirror was a tigress. It had a rounder face, bigger eyes, and sharper teeth. Most importantly, it was younger and prettier than the rough, scruffy mate it had waiting below.

The male tiger went slack-jawed.

The female tiger shot past him up the trunk, saw him get tricked again, and raked his back leg in pure fury.

If this idiot had not gotten tricked earlier, the two of us would already be splitting imperial nectar right now!

She did not even have time to figure out why her mate had gone stupid. She opened her jaws and lunged for He Lingchuan’s heel, and, at that moment, two figures dropped from a neighboring tree and smashed straight into her.

The ambush landed.

Two mandrills, each possessed by an evil ghost, slammed into the tigress’ midsection like cannonballs. Caught completely off guard, she rolled off the trunk and hit the ground with them.

They tore into each other immediately. The roars of the tigress and the shrieks of the mandrills shook the forest as dead branches flew and wet mud sprayed everywhere.

However, even with two of them, the mandrills were not a match for a tiger. In three exchanges, one had its neck snapped clean through. The evil ghost riding it burst free at once and shot back into the mirror.

While that was happening, He Lingchuan, still up in the tree, fired two sleeve arrows into the tigress. These were magical bolts personally refined by Grandmaster Li Fubo, and they were built to punch through defenses. Unlike earlier, his projectiles did not merely get bounced off.

One bolt struck her back, the other her foreleg. Beyond the wound itself, the impact burned like fire. She howled in pain.

He Lingchuan saw what he had been waiting for. Around each wound, a line of blisters swelled up almost immediately, like mushrooms sprouting from a rotten stump. He nodded in satisfaction.

He had smeared the sleeve arrows with some burrow spider venom that Zhu Erniang had given him. If the blisters were not lanced and drained within a few breaths, the toxin would spread through the blood, dissolving muscle and paralyzing its prey.

He dropped to the ground and went to fight the tigress directly.

The moment he dropped down, the rhythm of the battle changed. The tigress no longer had the space to deal with the poison. Her body quickly grew heavy, so heavy that she could barely lift her paws.

She could only roar for the male tiger to help her.

The male, who had been standing there in a daze, finally sprang down from the tree and lunged toward He Lingchuan.

For a split second, the tigress felt relief.

Then the male tiger ran past her, suddenly whirled, and slammed her down instead.

Two bites, two brutal twists.

He tore out her windpipe and snapped her neck.

The tigress died with her eyes open.

She could not see the evil ghost now possessing the male tiger.

Earlier, the mirror’s illusion had scrambled his mind. With his defenses shaken, the evil ghost had been able to slip in far more easily.

He Lingchuan approached the dead tigress and let the heart-protecting mirror draw out her soul. Shaking his head, he said, “Guess you two weren’t big on marital harmony.”

The male tiger, which was controlled by an evil ghost, had killed his mate, but he had not resisted much at all. Even now, he was licking his chops, tasting her blood like it was a delicacy.

As He Lingchuan stood, the mirror urged, “Search her! She might be hiding imperial nectar!”

Tiger and leopard monsters could store things in their teeth. And even if she had already swallowed imperial nectar last night, it had only been a few hours. Refining medicine from her body would still be extremely valuable.

He Lingchuan glanced up at the sky. “No need. Leave her for the next guests.”

Several white cranes were already circling overhead, clearly watching what had happened below.

The spirit rain had already ended.

If he tried to keep collecting and leave now, he would be harassed nonstop.

When the tigers had lunged earlier, he had thrown a stink-bomb, and his horse had bolted.

Well, this terrain isn’t suited for a horse anyway. Losing it really isn’t worth mourning.

He Lingchuan abandoned the tigress’ corpse, activated his movement technique, and vanished into the forest.

Before he left, he tossed an eyeball spider onto a nearby trunk and ordered it to hide and watch the show.

The trees here were tall, and the underbrush was thick. It was the perfect cover for anyone trying to disappear.

The male tiger also slipped into the woods and vanished.

The crow perched nearby went frantic. It wanted to chase He Lingchuan, but it did not dare get too close. It could only circle overhead again and again, trying to pick up his trail.

Down below, the fight had ended. The crane monsters circled a few more times, then dropped to the ground and started pecking at the tigress’ corpse.

Anything that had eaten imperial nectar now had spirit qi saturating its flesh. Under normal circumstances, those crane monsters would never get a chance to feast on tiger meat.

But they ate with zero manners, squawking and bickering, making a spectacle instead of quietly taking their winnings, so it did not take long before they drew in vultures.

Then came a pack of more than twenty ape monsters, each one as large as a mandrill.

These were far more domineering. They wanted the kill to themselves, so they went to war with the bird monsters.

Fifteen minutes later, the ground was carpeted with bodies. Only a few bird monsters survived, flapping away in ragged retreat. The ape monsters lost three and had seven injured.

But as the victors, they got to gorge not only on the tiger but also on the dead birds.

And then humans arrived.

No one knew how many clashes and killings took place around Three-Heart Lake that day. Normally, humans and monsters were not quite this violent, quite this unhinged. But under the influence of imperial nectar, everyone had gone bloodshot with greed, fighting without restraint, almost without self-preservation, until only death stopped them.

He Lingchuan was simply grateful that he had slipped away early.

If he had stayed, it would have turned into endless waves of opponents. As an outsider, he would not have been able to keep up forever.

And now, at long last, the black-clad youth and his group finally reached the shores of Three-Heart Lake.