Where Immortals Once Walked

Jiao Yu shook its head. General Ling leaned in, sniffed, and even licked it once. “I think it’s a mineral.”

He Lingchuan shot it a look. This old ram really isn’t afraid of getting poisoned, huh?

General Ling seemed to read the question in his eyes and answered matter-of-factly, “Poisons from rock and soil, metal, and medicinal herbs don’t affect us much.”

Good grief, so the drillwind beasts also have that as an innate advantage, huh? He Lingchuan used the tip of his knife to scrape at the stain, gouging off a fair amount of powder.

Red... stone powder? The color was a dark liver-red.

Haven’t I seen this somewhere before?

He called Big-Mouth Zhao over and asked, “What is this?”

Big-Mouth Zhao looked just as lost.

In a cave like this, having a little mixed ore isn’t exactly unusual, is it?

So He Lingchuan pulled a small vial from inside his robe, poured out a bit of dirt mixed with red powder, and said to Jiao Yu, “Smell this powder.”

Luckily, Jiao Yu did not know where the stuff had come from. It leaned in and sniffed seriously, then nodded. “Same kind. It’s the same as what you scraped off the rock. Where did you get this?”

“Just after I entered Chiyan territory, Fushan Yue and I killed a sheep-thief. This powder was stuck to him.”

Jiao Yu understood immediately. “So he’d been around here?”

“Very likely.” He Lingchuan scraped more of the powder from the rock and collected it. “When we get back, we’ll figure out what it is first.”

His mood lifted.

After so many days, he had finally gotten a usable lead.

Right then, a frantic bleat echoed down through the fissures from above.

He Lingchuan had spent enough time with the cliff ram to recognize its emotions. This call was full of sheer panic.

“Not good, something’s happening up there!”

The Soul-Stealing Mirror translated automatically, “Hurry up! There’s something down here! It’s behind you!”

He Lingchuan felt the hair on his back stand up.

The killer knew we were heading here?

Big-Mouth Zhao, of course, could not hear the mirror, but he was still startled. “W-we should go back!” He turned and started to run.

Jiao Yu and General Ling moved to follow, but He Lingchuan shook his head. “Why take the long way around?”

Daylight was already filtering down from above. They were separated from the surface by nothing but a thin fissure.

The trouble was that the fissure was narrow and half of it had collapsed under boulders.

He Lingchuan had brought a heavy hammer for today’s trip. He took it out of his storage ring and tried to smash it twice. A clatter of rocks and debris cascaded down, nearly burying him in dust and grit.

Big-Mouth Zhao could not help but say, “Lord, you can’t get out from here.”

This lord truly has no common sense. There are countless rocks of every size up there! If we dig out from below, we’re going to get crushed to death!

These pampered lords are less sensible than a common digging laborer!

Still, the space above did widen a little.

As Big-Mouth Zhao was talking, He Lingchuan tossed a palm-sized doll onto the rocks above.

With a soft pop, the doll expanded into a giant over three meters tall.

The golden-armored copper man made its reappearance.

Of course, down here it could only hunch like everyone else, assuming the exact same posture that He Lingchuan had adopted when he first entered the tunnels.

At its master’s command, it launched into a suicidal digging mode, ignoring the steady rain of falling stones.

If it only took superficial damage, it could regenerate quickly anyway.

Midway through, He Lingchuan even controlled it to dodge two boulders that came straight for its face.

After a frenzy of banging and crashing, the falling stones and dust nearly dyed it gray-white, but the light spilling into the tunnels suddenly grew brighter.

It had broken through.

“Up.” He Lingchuan jumped, tapped a toe on the golden-armored copper man’s shoulder, and shot through the opening to the surface.

The tiger and drillwind beasts copied him exactly.

Big-Mouth Zhao stared like an idiot, then had no choice but to climb carefully after them.

He Lingchuan did not linger once he hit the ground. He sprinted straight toward the cliff ram.

He found the spirit mount pawing frantically at a fissure with its hooves, as if trying to dig a hole big enough to plunge into.

However, the crack was too small, and it could not fit. It bleated in helpless panic.

“What is it?”

The Soul-Stealing Mirror translated, “There’s something down there. It’s probably the source of the fishy smell.”

Right, the cliff ram had been attacked previously, so it had likely caught the killer’s scent too.

He Lingchuan crouched and peered into the fissure. Something was indeed writhing below, and he even caught a glint of dark brown sheen.

So it really did come.

He Lingchuan drew the heavy hammer, poured strength into both arms, and brought it down with three savage blows.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Under that storm of force, the rocky crust cracked and broke apart.

He tossed in a bundle of glowgrass first to light the space, then jumped in after it.

Something slid into another tunnel.

He Lingchuan lunged forward in a single burst.

But the thing sank downward into the ground. Only the very tip of its tail remained outside.

General Ling shot past him, moving as fast as a gust of wind.

It saw the tip of the other party’s tail too and did not hesitate, lowering its head and thrusting, then hooking upward with its horns.

A drillwind beast’s neck-whip had tremendous force. It could easily hook up and fling even a giant rhinoceros. The creature underground was indeed hauled up by a long stretch, but the main body still did not surface.

Plap.

A long tail dropped to the ground, writhing on its own.

But it was not attached to anything.

It had actually severed its tail to escape like a lizard!

He Lingchuan glanced at General Ling instinctively.

That old ram’s burst speed just now had been ridiculous. It had been like a spear hurled straight at its target. Paired with those sharp horns, it was a battlefield ambush weapon of mass slaughter.

In truth, this was a drillwind beast’s innate ability: Charge. Once it locked onto a target within about twenty-seven meters, it could reach it almost instantly.

Of course, this was only the case if there were no obstacles.

If this were their first encounter, He Lingchuan honestly was not sure he could dodge it.

Monsters did not need intricate techniques the way humans did. They only needed to refine their innate abilities to perfection. General Ling’s “Charge” had already reached the third level, which meant that it could charge three times in succession, each strike faster and stronger than the last.

By the third charge, it was nearly invisible to the naked eye.

* * *

By the time Jiao Yu arrived, He Lingchuan and General Ling were both already busy studying that long tail.

It was brownish coffee-colored, hairless, and composed purely of flesh. At the moment, it was still twitching on the ground.

Jiao Yu reached out with a paw to prod it, then snapped his paw back. “There’s slime!”

“This is what I cut off that thing just now,” said He Lingchuan. “It should be the tail tip.”

The tail end had two holes, both of which were punctures made by General Ling’s horns.

“Why isn’t there any blood?”

“There is. It’s just mixed into the slime,” He Lingchuan said thoughtfully. “Like when you chop an earthworm into pieces.”

“So it’s an earthworm?”

He Lingchuan shook his head. “I saw a reflection through the fissure. Its surface should be hard and smooth.”

Jiao Yu looked back along the route they had come. “There’s slime all along the ground.”

“It leaves a trail as it moves.”

“It moves with slime, has a hard and smooth part, hairless, and soft-bodied...” Jiao Yu didn ot need to think long. “Could it be a snail that became a monster?”

“That seems very likely.” He Lingchuan stored the battle trophy away. “But what does it have to do with that dead sheep thief?”

No one had an answer.

He Lingchuan followed the slime trail backward and discovered the aberrant creature’s direction of travel led toward the porcupine monsters’ nest, toward the very area where they had been earlier.

“This thing came for us,” he said coldly. “It planned to ambush us.”

But the cliff ram exposed it. Seeing its chance was gone, it slipped away.

Jiao Yu hesitated. “Could it have been a coincidence? Just an accidental encounter?”

“Based on Pockmarked Wang’s description, it attacks by ambush on rainy nights, lying in wait for prey to come to it. The night my mount was attacked, it was pouring rain as well.” He Lingchuan sighed. “But it’s clear and bright today, and the underground area here is rather dry. That doesn’t match its usual pattern. So it’s very likely that it came specifically for us.”

General Ling sneered. “Let it come. I’ll teach it that once it comes, it won’t leave.”

Jiao Yu said seriously, “No. If it dares come here, it must have something to rely on.”

Man and tiger returned to the surface. The cliff ram stepped forward and gently nudged He Lingchuan with its head.

“Thank you,” He Lingchuan said, stroking its curved horn with genuine gratitude. “That aberrant creature was probably already lying in wait below, just waiting for us to return the way we came. You ruined its chance to strike us by surprise.”

Even though Jiao Yu carried origin energy, He Lingchuan was not arrogant enough to assume they could not be taken down.

This aberrant creature had committed crimes everywhere and succeeded again and again. It must have some extraordinary trick.

Leaving everything else aside, were those hundred-plus porcupines really that easy to deal with?

If He Lingchuan himself faced a hundred enraged porcupines, and he had no tricks and no numerical advantage, he would only have one option: hug his head and run for his life.

Hunting the killer, only for the killer to set an ambush on the only path back, lying in wait with its favorite method for them to walk into it... just imagining it made the skin crawl.

It had been close. They had almost fallen into the trap, and the danger had come without warning.

The cliff ram rubbed against his hand, as if to say it was nothing.

The drillwind beasts, who normally looked down on the cliff ram as weak and only fit to be a human mount, came up now and bumped heads with it too, offering thanks.

Only then did Big-Mouth Zhao finally scramble up, panting, and ask, “What happened?”

“The killer planned to ambush us.”

“What?!”

He Lingchuan ignored him and went to retrieve the golden-armored copper man. “Lead the way. We’re going back to Youtian Town.”

* * *

The return trip was smooth, without the slightest mishap.

On the road, He Lingchuan, Jiao Yu, and General Ling exchanged their conclusions.

For the creature to appear at the porcupine nest, either that place was its habitat, or it had come specifically to ambush the Crown Prince’s special envoy.

Considering the porcupine nest was relatively dry, while a creature like that should prefer a damp, moldy, shadowy environment, the man, tiger, and ram all felt the second possibility was far more likely.

Which then led to the next question: how did it know they would go to the porcupine nest today?

Either it had followed them the entire time, or someone had leaked the Crown Prince’s special envoy’s whereabouts.

And the only people who knew He Lingchuan’s itinerary were those few men at last night’s banquet.

If they investigated them one by one, they would get something.

At last, the investigation was moving forward. Even Jiao Yu looked eager now. Its whip-like tail cracked against the carriage loudly.

Casework was usually dull as clues either did not match or led nowhere, and tracking down why a single bird had vanished was like searching for a needle in a haystack. But now, it seemed like things were finally about to get a lot more interesting.