Where Immortals Once Walked

Chapter 537: Pursuing the Fugitives

“The eternal lamp within Star-Plucking Tower has burned without going out for four hundred years, always bathed in divine grace. Over time, that gave rise to a lamp spirit.” Bai Ziqi lowered the lamp spirit on his fingertip toward the ground. “It is the natural bane of evil yin spirits and evil qi. It hates evil with a passion.”

At once, white flames sprang up across the ground.

The constables standing nearby hurriedly jumped back, but the fire gave off no heat at all and did not burn anyone.

Then the lamp spirit floated outward in a wavering drift.

Wherever it passed, it left behind a small cluster of pale white flame on the ground.

“It will follow the trail of evil qi.” Bai Ziqi took the lead himself. “Come, this aura should be what Cheng Yu left behind.”

Following the trail of white fire, the group headed onward, and sure enough, it led toward the back hill. There, a cliff dropped off by about seventy meters. It was not very high, but it was steep, with an almost seventy-degree angle.

All the constables had ridden over on horseback. There was no way they could simply jump straight down.

He Lingchuan immediately said to them, “Go back the way you came down the hill and catch up as fast as possible.”

The lamp spirit had already drifted to about midway down the cliff and clearly had no intention of waiting. Fortunately, the white flames it left behind were conspicuous. Once the constables got down the mountain, they could follow those markers over.

As for Bai Ziqi and He Lingchuan, neither of them was troubled by the descent at all.

Their mounts were both capable of going almost straight up and down.

The spirit deer was at least somewhat cautious. The bighorn cliff ram, on the other hand, practically bounded all the way downward as if stepping on clouds.

In only three successive leaps, it reached the ground, even faster than the lamp spirit itself.

Its footholds had all been black crevices in the cliff face, places that looked as though no hoof should possibly be able to land, and yet it jumped with exuberant delight.

Once it landed, the cliff ram proudly tossed its head and kicked up its hooves.

See that? See that? That’s what practicality looks like.

It could understand human speech as well, and it certainly had no intention of letting that elegant, aloof spirit deer outshine it.

Bai Ziqi rode his spirit deer down to the ground, and then the two riders followed the lamp spirit onward.

There were footprints on the ground, and every white flame had settled right inside one. As soon as it illuminated them, He Lingchuan saw what was strange about them.

“These aren’t hoofprints. They’re not riding horses.” The prints looked like spread plum blossoms, the toes splayed wide, with claw marks at the tips. “Hm, wolf tracks.”

He had spent plenty of time in the company of rock wolves before. Naturally, he knew exactly what wolf tracks looked like.

Bai Ziqi said at once, “Cen Boqing released his wolf puppets and rode them. No wonder they managed to escape down the cliff.”

Otherwise, if the two had truly leaped down the cliff in panic, what mount would they have had waiting to carry them onward?

Judging by the direction of the tracks, they were heading for Yao Lake. He Lingchuan said immediately, “If they make it into the lake, we’re in trouble.”

Water was the best possible barrier. Divine techniques and spiritual sense used by land-dwellers were basically unable to penetrate its obstruction.

And Yao Lake was enormous, covering at least thirteen square kilometers. If those two slipped into the water, who knew from what stand of reeds they might emerge later?

Evidently, Cen Boqing’s wolf puppets were very fast as well. Even after pursuing them this long, Bai Ziqi and He Lingchuan still had not glimpsed the fugitives’ backs.

The low hill was not far from the lakeshore. They needed to speed up.

Bai Ziqi took out a golden-red jade case. It looked like one of the little rouge boxes girls used, and from it, he pinched out two small amounts of silver powder and sprinkled them over both mounts.

At once, He Lingchuan felt the bighorn cliff ram noticeably accelerate.

It was like going from 60 miles an hour straight to 80, with a powerful push at the back.

“Good stuff! What is this?”

Bai Ziqi smiled. “A gale spell. A trifling little technique.”

This spell wrapped mount and rider alike in circling breezes, pushing them forward. Not only did it offset part of their weight, but it also reduced head-on wind resistance. It was clearly extremely useful for travel.

And best of all, it had almost no side effects on the recipient.

This was unlike the battering charge ability built into drillwind beasts, which allowed them to launch a short explosive rush, but put a heavy burden on their own stamina.

“I see them!”

In the faint light between heaven and earth, two rapidly moving figures appeared ahead.

The fugitives were indeed riding large wolves.

Strictly speaking, these so-called wolf puppets were a full size smaller than He Lingchuan’s rock wolf. Their frames were large, but they were gaunt and lean. Still, carrying a rider posed no problem to them at all. Their eyes flickered with ghostly light, and their fur was dry and dull.

To be precise, they were wolf corpses driven by dead souls, preserved by special treatment so that the bodies did not rot.

The distance between hunters and prey had shrunk to under thirty meters.

Bai Ziqi drew a breath and shouted, “Cen Boqing, stop! I am a Cloud Envoy of Lingxu City!”

At the sound, Cen Boqing looked back. The moment he saw Bai Ziqi, his face changed drastically.

The special envoy from Lingxu City has already arrived?! And he’s actually traveling together with He Xiao!

That’s a cloud envoy, a divine attendant of the gods!

Among those mixed into Lingxu City’s circles, who did not understand what such people were, what methods they possessed, and what they represented?

In that instant, Cen Boqing was so terrified that his whole body went rigid.

It was an entirely instinctive reaction, beyond his control, and even the wolf puppets under the two men slowed.

Beside him, Cheng Yu was horrified. “Hey! Are you trying to die?”

The lake lay just ahead, and they were on the verge of escaping into open life. Meanwhile, the pursuers were drawing closer and closer. How could he not be burning with anxiety?

Bai Ziqi’s voice rang out again, filled with authority. “If you do not stop, the punishment will be increased to the utmost severity!”

Yet that warning was worse than if he had said nothing at all. Cen Boqing gave a shudder, and his head suddenly cleared.

From the moment Commander Lu had shouted as he led troops into the Cen Residence, Cen Boqing had known that Uncle Wu had already confessed.

But as long as Uncle Wu died by “accident,” then even with a written confession in hand, Crown Prince Yue might not truly be able to bring him down. That was why Cen Boqing had tried so hard to escape.

Who would have thought the special envoy from Lingxu City had already arrived, and by the look of things had very likely already examined Uncle Wu?

Then he was finished. He could not retract anything, and he could not wash himself clean.

If he were taken back now, death was still the only end. Cen Boqing shouted, “Mr. Cheng, we need to do something!”

In truth, Cheng Yu did not need the order. He had already moved first.

He did not care one bit about some cloud envoy. Anyone obstructing his escape was an enemy.

The curse master hurled a cloth doll no larger than a palm into the air with all his strength. Once it rose more than twenty meters above the ground, it transformed into an azure-kerchief laborer summon that was more than three meters tall and came crashing down.

He Lingchuan and Bai Ziqi had both been sped up by the gale spell, so the thirtys between them vanished in an instant. They arrived just beneath the azure-kerchief laborer summon as it was crashing toward the ground.

He Lingchuan saw one of its giant feet descending straight down toward his head and slapped the cliff ram’s horn. “Charge!”

The ram had been with him long enough that it was not foolish enough to think he meant for it to slam into the azure-kerchief laborer summon directly. Hearing the command, it immediately activated the bell hanging around its neck.

Bai Ziqi saw the rider and mount blur into an afterimage, instantly crossing the fifteen meters ahead!

This was the marvelous function of the bell that General Ling had once given the cliff ram. It could briefly borrow the innate ability of a drillwind beast.

In the next moment, the azure-kerchief laborer summon slammed into the ground with a thunderous crash, throwing up dirt and shaking the earth so violently it was hard to keep one’s footing.

Apparently, it weighed no less than He Lingchuan’s own golden-armored copper guard.

But He Lingchuan was already behind it now, still racing after the two fugitives.

The spirit deer did not have any comparable gift. Bai Ziqi gave it a light pat on the head, and the great deer sprang with all four hooves, leaping over seven meters in a single effortless arc.

How could a huge-bodied and slow-moving opponent such as this possibly trap a spirit deer?

Without waiting for Bai Ziqi’s command, the spirit deer was already about to slip past it in pursuit.

But then the azure-kerchief laborer summon suddenly broke apart, turning into an enormous mass of small, black things.

This was small only in relation to the laborer summon’s original body, of course. In truth, each one was about the size of a goose egg. They looked like beetles, but impressive ones. They had glossy black shells, as well as upper mandibles shaped like a stag’s antlers or a pair of shears, nearly two centimeters long, and lined with tiny serrations.

He Lingchuan glanced back and was startled.

Aren’t those stag beetles?

A pair of shears on their foreheads, strutting arrogantly at everything in sight. Back in Heishui City, no child mischievous enough to cause trouble would willingly provoke such things. If your fingers had been clipped bloody by them twice, you learned your lesson.

The problem was that the stag beetles in Heishui City were only the size of peanuts. These were upgraded, enlarged versions. One snap of those serrated jaws and they could probably cut your toes clean off.

At a glance, there had to be at least 20,000 of them.

Worst of all, their shells were so hard they feared neither blades nor flame, and they could ignore protective vigorous qi outright.

So the outward form of that azure-kerchief laborer summon had only been a disguise. The cloth doll was actually a beetle nest. Normally, the stag beetle swarm, controlled by its insect king, merely disguised itself in human form, able to run and jump like a person. Only at a critical moment did it reveal its true nature.

This was even worse than kicking a hornet’s nest. With a deafening screech, the swarm of stag beetles surged toward Bai Ziqi’s mount, blotting out the sky.

He Lingchuan felt his scalp prickle. With a casual flick, he threw out a medicine pouch and then accelerated again to continue chasing the fugitives ahead.

The pouch contained insect-repelling medicine Willow had once compounded, highly effective stuff. In the real world, He Lingchuan had mixed a few pouches by the same recipe so that he would not be bitten while traveling through the wilderness.

The pouch hit the ground and burst at precisely the right moment, right in the middle of the beetle swarm, releasing a cloud of yellow mist.

After that, He Lingchuan did not look back.

The Cloud Envoy of Lingxu City ought to be a person of considerable ability. Surely he could protect himself, yes?

No need for He Lingchuan to worry overmuch about him.

The lakeshore was now looming ahead, but after the cliff ram launched three successive charges in a row, the distance between him and the fugitives shrank to about seventy meters.

He Lingchuan aimed at the large wolf beneath Cen Boqing and sent Fleeting Life flying straight out.

The wolf puppet was agile enough. It twisted aside and dodged.

Fleeting Life curved sharply and flew far away, seeming to vanish.

Cen Boqing was frantic, glancing back again and again to watch Bai Ziqi’s movements, while Fleeting Life circled in from the side and came in viciously through his blind spot.

The wolf mount suddenly went lame, lost its balance at once, and crashed headfirst into the dirt.

Fleeting Life had sliced off one of its hind legs.

Now the only one still fleeing for his life was Cheng Yu.

His face was as pale as joss paper, and it was hard to tell whether his earlier injuries had flared up again. He turned and shot He Lingchuan a glance, then suddenly shouted, “Sink!”

The ground beneath the bighorn cliff ram’s hooves abruptly softened and collapsed into mire.

Looking at Cheng Yu again, He Lingchuan saw that the short staff in his hand had kept its tail in contact with the ground the whole time. Silent and unnoticed, he had been turning the earth along the wolf puppet’s route into mud pits.

A curse master was still a spellcaster. At a critical moment, so long as the right divine technique was used, even a very simple spell could save one’s life.

No matter how well the cliff ram could leap and spring, its hooves still needed some solid ground to spring off of. Now they were sinking into mud and could not pull free. With no better choice, He Lingchuan launched himself off the ram’s back and pursued on foot.

However, Cheng Yu was already only about seventeen meters from the lakeshore, and at the same time, he thrust a hand into his robe. Clearly, he still had one last move in reserve.

Then seven meters, then three...

Just as he was about to dive into the lake, a huge white fireball suddenly crashed down directly in front of him, at least ten meters across.

The instant it struck the ground, it exploded in a blinding white brilliance.

In the dead of night, when intense light erupted suddenly, any normal person’s first instinct would be to turn away, lest their eyes be blinded.