Where Immortals Once Walked

This thing was one of Juju’s fire seeds. The instant it landed, it got to work with all its might. In the span of two breaths, it grew into a huge python as thick as a bowl and wrapped the aberrant creature tight from head to toe.

Earlier, Juju had once again been restrained by the grand array and could not directly attack the enemy. Now that the array eye had been broken again, both it and its fire seed had their abilities back.

How many things in this world could withstand the burning of true fire from the earth’s core? Even if this aberrant creature had copper skin and iron bones, it still could not. The fire snake coiled tighter and tighter, branding the aberrant creature with a sharp hiss, and He Lingchuan immediately caught the smell of something burning.

A few breaths later, the small aberrant creature toppled headfirst and stopped moving.

Its life force had already been near its end. Once it spent its last breath, it perished for good.

Only then did He Lingchuan climb back onto Zhu Erniang’s head and shout to Juju, “The Grand Spirit-Gathering Array has been broken! The rest is up to you!”

Juju chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep my end of the contract!”

They had finally regained the upper hand. The situation brooked no delay, and they absolutely would not give the Heavenly Palace time to react.

Zhu Erniang left the array eye and leaped into Juju’s palm.

Juju burrowed into the earth, and its enormous body and sky-reaching flames vanished in an instant.

Only the roaring flames on Kaiyang Peak remained as proof of its rampage.

Juju was a guardian spirit, and as it moved through Mount Xu, space itself could not bind it.

With the array eye clutched in its hand, the rock-fire aberrant creature’s control over temperature was precise. Though roaring flames wrapped its body, He Lingchuan and Zhu Erniang only felt a little dry heat.

Peering out through the gaps between the rock-fire aberrant creature’s fingers, He Lingchuan saw only darkness all around, with the occasional passage through flowing magma.

They were traveling through the mountain’s belly.

He Lingchuan could not spare attention for anything else. He swallowed several pills in a row and seized the chance to regulate his breathing.

The fierce battles and accidents just now had been only the prelude. What came next was the main event of his night!

After a few breaths, they once again saw the light of the world.

Juju had already reached Tianshu Peak and emerged from the lava pool beneath Star-Plucking Tower!

After letting out a loud laugh that rang like a declaration, it grabbed the array eye as a weapon and hammered Star-Plucking Tower with it.

It was worth noting that the defensive lightning array on the backup array eye’s outer layer had never vanished, because it had never been powered by the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array to begin with.

Juju was using it to strike Star-Plucking Tower’s barrier. This was attacking one Heavenly Palace masterpiece with another.

Now it was just a matter of seeing which masterpiece was more impressive.

For a time, lightning surged and raced across Star-Plucking Tower’s barrier, while the entire tower shone with radiance, illuminating the Chief Cloud Envoy’s ashen face.

Tonight’s raid had undergone twist after twist, two reversals in a row, but in truth, less than the time it took to drink a cup of tea had passed.

The reinforcements from below Tianshu Peak had not even reached halfway up the mountain. Whether Lingxu City’s main army had even begun assembling was still hard to say.

Star-Plucking Tower had fallen into dire circumstances incredibly quickly.

And as a result of that, Juju felt wonderfully satisfied.

The Splendid Mountains and Rivers Diagram had gone completely dim, meaning the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array had been fully destroyed. The thing that posed the greatest hidden danger to it was gone, and at last, it could stretch its limbs properly!

In a good mood, it smashed, looted, and wrecked with even more enthusiasm.

After it battered wildly another seventeen or eighteen times, the defensive lightning array on the array eye buzzed twice and shut down.

No one knew whether its energy was exhausted or the array had been broken.

What encouraged Juju was that Star-Plucking Tower’s barrier—the barrier that had resisted every attempt to break it—now wobbled twice like a soap bubble and gave up too!

Now, there was no longer anything standing between Juju and the gathered elites of Star-Plucking Tower.

“As expected, the Heavenly Palace’s own things are the best to use.” Juju threw away the array eye, laughed loudly, and reached a giant palm toward Star-Plucking Tower.

By its own wishes, it would not have wanted to tear all pretense of peace from the Heavenly Palace. After all, they were neighbors neither side could move away from. Unfortunately, it had a contract with He Lingchuan and had to seize the thing inside the shrine.

If these people had obediently let him rob them, how could things have grown this embarrassing?

The battle form manifested by Mount Xu’s guardian spirit, now completely free of its shackles, stood over 260 meters tall. It was the largest monster He Lingchuan had seen since arriving in this world.

A body of that size was simply unimaginable in the present era.

An aberrant creature nourished by true fire from the earth’s core still received heaven’s favor even in this era of waning spirit qi. That was true innate privilege.

Though the energy consumption was extremely high, being huge had its benefits. Its strength increased severalfold as well.

The guards of the Heavenly Palace kept loosing arrows at it. The arrows themselves did almost negligible harm to Juju, but origin energy clung to each one. Every hit was like being stung by a poisonous hornet, with origin energy burrowing deep into its body alongside the pain.

Ordinary people could die after being stung dozens of times by a swarm of hornets. Juju was not that fragile, but the origin energy invading its body was as stubborn as venom and did not dissipate so easily.

For now, it could still endure, not only because the other side’s numbers were limited, but also because after Juju’s earlier ambush, the Heavenly Palace guards no longer gathered in formation. They had broken into smaller units and scattered to operate separately.

There was no need for Juju to deal with them one by one. That would only play straight into the Heavenly Palace’s hands.

The troops from the Defense Palace were still climbing the mountain. It had already sent several little fire men to wage guerrilla attacks, doing everything possible to slow their ascent.

Juju decided to vent all its anger on the Heavenly Palace. Its fist fell like a meteor from the heavens—fast, vicious, and carrying an explosion with it. The people inside Star-Plucking Tower scattered in every direction.

That blazing fist was almost as large as the rooftop itself. Who would dare meet it head-on?

It had to be said that Star-Plucking Tower’s construction quality was exceptional. Countless arrays inside it were also operating on their own. Juju’s punch actually only destroyed half the roof.

Dissatisfied with such a result, Juju hammered down like a pile driver, bang, bang, bang, more than a dozen times, and finally smashed most of the building apart!

This ethereal, immortal-like pavilion, worshiped by countless people every day, was now being torn into pieces beneath its violent dismantling. The scene held a kind of cruel beauty.

However, dozens of divine techniques also flew out from Star-Plucking Tower, all aimed straight at Juju.

When the backup array eye had activated earlier, suppressing Juju once more, it had also bought the Heavenly Palace a buffer of several dozen breaths. Experts from the other peaks had rushed over to reinforce the palace, so Star-Plucking Tower’s defensive strength was now much stronger than it had been when the attack first began.

As Juju pushed aside the collapsing roof and reached for the shrine, the Chief Cloud Envoy pointed at more than ten archers behind him. The archers immediately went to the lamp guardians and dipped their arrowheads into a bit of candlelight.

When the roof collapsed, seven or eight lamp guardians had thrown themselves over the eternal lamps, shielding them beneath their bodies, and died for it. Still, four or five eternal lamps in the grand hall had been preserved. As soon as the arrowheads dipped into them, they took on a layer of eerie blue light.

Then the archers drew their bows and loosed their arrows at Juju.

With such a massive target, there was no reason to miss. Besides, Juju did not dodge at all and continued reaching straight for the shrine.

This so-called shrine was a structure inside the hall, shaped like a side alcove but without a roof. It stood three meters taller than the third-floor deck and ranked second only to the statue of Divine Majesty Lingxu. When the lamp guardians worshiped the shrine, they even had to climb a ladder.

Inside the shrine, two things were enshrined:

The Splendid Mountains and Rivers Diagram, and the divine object He Lingchuan had been yearning for—the lid of the Generous Pot.

At the sight, the divine envoys’ expressions changed drastically.

Earlier, no matter how Juju had rampaged under the instigation of outside invaders, they could still call it an internal dispute among their own. After all, they all knew Juju could not leave Mount Xu. The two sides could fight as they pleased, but in the end, they still had to make peace.

Now, however, Juju was reaching for the divine object!

What did that mean?

It meant that Juju’s outbreak this time had a clear target. It had come for the lid of the Generous Pot!

It also meant that the invaders had some connection to the Generous Pot.

Anything connected to the Generous Pot touched the heavenly gods’ reverse scale. With this move, Juju had truly stabbed the hornet’s nest.

Dozens of arrows soaked in the tears of the eternal lamps struck true without exception, all hitting the back of Juju’s hand.

Blue frost spread rapidly from the points of impact. In only three breaths, Juju’s hand was frozen into a lump of blue ice!

The roaring flames on the surface of its fist were abruptly replaced by frost.

“Graaah, that hurts, that hurts!” It hated the power of the gods most of all. Human origin energy came only second!

Juju was also astonished. Normally, when it fought while drawing on the earthfire, how could a little frost pose any danger to it?

Yet this frost was surprisingly stubborn. Even Juju felt its hand freezing.

It directly swung its frozen hand across the entire shrine.

Unexpectedly, black light flashed over the shrine.

What shattered was not the shrine, but Juju’s fist!

The rock-fire giant roared in anger. Though its palm had been frozen stiff and did not possess its earlier power, the restriction over the shrine was far too tyrannical.

It had not even known such a thing existed.

The Heavenly Palace and the heavenly gods had truly turned their own lair into something harder to breach than a turtle shell!

It had not suffered such a heavy injury in a long time. If it had not sworn an oath, it would have wanted to retreat right then.

Yet just then, He Lingchuan’s voice sounded beside Juju’s ear. “Dig it out. Pack it up and take it away!”

Heh, that kid sure knows how to order me around!

Juju grumbled inwardly, but the boy was right. The restriction could protect the shrine, but it could not protect the stone wall behind the shrine.

For ordinary enemies, these measures already counted as top-tier protection. If it were He Lingchuan or some other greater monster arriving in person, their only options would have been to think of ways to break the restriction, deceive it, or steal the divine object from within.

But Juju was obviously no ordinary monster, and it had plenty of crude but effective methods.

It grabbed at the stone wall behind the shrine with one hand. As easily as digging into tofu, it tore the entire shrine away from the wall in a few quick motions. The bedrock behind it was thick, and the restriction still could not reach Juju.

By now, Juju’s severed hand had grown back whole. Cupping both hands together, it carefully lifted out the entire shrine.

While Juju broke free of its restraints and unleashed its might, Bai Ziqi had not been idle either. He turned and raced toward the Heavenly Palace’s prison—

The Molten Palace.

The guards came forward to meet him, but Bai Ziqi ignored them, charging directly into the deepest part of the dungeon.

State Preceptor Qing Yang was leaning against the wall and gazing outward. From her angle, she could not see exactly how Juju was rampaging, but the fiery light radiating from the rock-fire giant illuminated the entire Tianshu Peak. How could she not notice?

“Qing Yang.” There was no time for pleasantries. Bai Ziqi was blunt. “The Lord Emperor has drafted a decree temporarily restoring you to your post as State Preceptor so you may resist the foreign enemy.” After saying this, he tossed her a command token.

State Preceptor Qing Yang turned and caught it.

This was the very token she had surrendered when she was imprisoned. To have it returned to her at this moment left her heart filled with a hundred tangled feelings.

In Lingxu’s time of crisis, the first person that the Lord Emperor thought of was still her.

“Come.” Bai Ziqi opened the cell door. Without another word, she followed him and rushed out. “Has Juju rebelled?”

Otherwise, why would the world outside be lit with flames?

The last time Mount Xu had seen a scene like this was more than ten years ago, before the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array was completed.

“Mm. Juju was incited by foreign enemies, and it’s now attacking the Heavenly Palace,” Bai Ziqi said tersely. “It has broken free of the Grand Spirit-Gathering Array’s restraints. The Lord Emperor has already issued an edict stripping it of its post as guardian spirit!”