Where Immortals Once Walked

The moment she fell, the Giant Thunderclap Beast rolled over her. He Lingchuan saw only a cloud of blood mist burst apart.

At a time like this, the giant beast had instead given her a quick end.

“Humans, heh. Fools!” Zhu Erniang had witnessed the whole thing and said with disdain, “I’ve never understood how anyone could willingly become a skin-sack for the gods.”

One of her eyes caught sight of He Lingchuan’s poor expression. “What’s wrong with you?”

He scratched the back of his head, his heart filled with sudden irritation. “Does everyone who becomes a skin-sack for the gods end up like this?”

“Obviously!” Zhu Erniang sneered. “The power of the gods is simply not something mortals can endure. Even if the compatibility is perfect, the gods will still wear the body out sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time!”

“There’s no god that can remain in the mortal realm for a long time?” God Baizhantian’s attitude toward its skin-sack had indeed been cold and brutal, treating it purely as a disposable item. He Lingchuan now knew that there were many gods, each with a different face. Surely not all other gods had the same attitude?

“Basically none.” Zhu Erniang explained, “Even outside combat, for a divine avatar to curl up inside a mortal body is like you wearing shoes several sizes too small. They pinch horribly and make you extremely uncomfortable. And where there is use, there is wear. It’s the same no matter how careful they are.” Zhu Erniang then gave a mocking laugh and added, “Besides, why would they be careful?”

“I thought they might enjoy life in the mortal realm.” He Lingchuan laughed at himself. “I heard the conditions in the divine realm aren’t good.”

“One man’s honey is another man’s poison.” Zhu Erniang gave him a sidelong glance. “In their own little worlds, each of them is a local overlord. Those worlds are born according to their will. How could they be worse than the mortal realm?”

“Oh?” He Lingchuan asked curiously. “They can create little worlds of their own?”

“Of course. Can’t you arrange your own residence however you like?” Humans really do have shallow experience. Well, it is only to be expected given their short lives. “They’re only casually arranging the space they occupy.”

Dong Rui suddenly cut in, “Hey, look at the Giant Thunderclap Beast! Where are those big fellows going now?”

Below, the Giant Thunderclap Beast had already killed Lu Shishi and taken its revenge. He Lingchuan had thought it would turn back and return to the Fu Realm through the Storm Gate.

After all, duonao beasts disliked the mortal realm.

Yet the beast herd had no intention of going home at all. After the Giant Thunderclap Beast at the front trampled Lu Shishi into mincemeat, it stopped briefly to sniff the scent, then suddenly continued charging south!

To the south lay Lingxu City.

Once the lord moved, its followers naturally followed.

Why would they... Unless— He Lingchuan understood. “It looks like someone still wants to further tonight’s gains and make Lingxu City even more chaotic.”

That person, of course, was still Fang Canran.

He had already killed, burned, and set off explosions. Surely he would not mind making things bigger, and bigger still, right?

“He’s too greedy.”

Dong Rui, however, cried out strangely, “Doesn’t that mean he wants us to take the blame for him?”

From Lingxu City’s perspective, every debt had its debtor. The Mount Xu invader had caused this entire disaster. He Lingchuan and Dong Rui had no way to defend themselves and explain that they only did the first half of the bad things. They could not just say that they had only smashed, burned, and wrecked Mount Xu, and that they had nothing to do with releasing giant beasts to attack Lingxu City afterward.

Fang Canran’s actions truly counted as a plan within a plan.

He Lingchuan merely sneered. “Who takes the blame for whom is still hard to say.”

The Grass Sea garrison, which the rampaging giant beasts had earlier scattered, had finally regrouped with great difficulty. Lingxu City’s reinforcements had also barely arrived—on this point, God Baizhantian had not been boasting. Although the Mount Xu invader and the spider immortal they were searching for had both disappeared, they could hardly ignore this herd of runaway duonao beasts charging across the scene, could they?

They wanted to force the beast herd back, but the duonao beasts had already started running. How could they stop so easily?

Several greater monsters tried to kill the Giant Thunderclap Beast. Once the beast herd lost its leader, it would naturally stop pressing forward.

But how could it be that simple?

The Giant Thunderclap Beast was also an overlord of the Fu Realm. Its hide was so thick that it was almost unbelievable, and the crimson lightning around its body could cancel out most divine techniques. Even origin energy could do nothing to it. It had just charged through a checkpoint, and a solid gate wall nearly five meters thick shattered the instant it touched it, as though it were made of paper.

The harassment from the various great experts only made the Giant Thunderclap Beast even angrier. Its rapid roars could be heard even within Lingxu City.

Yes, the beast herd was now heading straight for Lingxu City, and it was getting closer and closer.

By now, Lingxu City had probably figured it out too. The reason this Giant Thunderclap Beast could pass through the Storm Gate was likely that it had first laid eggs, then fought the beast tide, the sandstorm, and the nothing beast leader afterward. After suffering repeated heavy injuries, its strength had declined.

Its strength had weakened, which in turn allowed it to pass through the spacetime barrier.

But even a lord that had dropped in rank was still not to be underestimated. At this moment, the Giant Thunderclap Beast was driven by rage, unleashing the last fierce blaze of its life. Shockingly, no one could stop it.

More than twenty spellcasters arrived and jointly set up a combat array.

Their response to the mobilization was already astonishingly quick. Before the thunderclap beast herd arrived, they worked together to cast a mire spell on the road the beasts had to take.

These creatures were bulky and poor at jumping. Once they sank into the mire, they would lose speed.

Without speed, their impact force and destructive threat would fall by at least eighty percent.

From this, it could also be seen that the authorities had a decent ability to respond to sudden crises. Even with Lingxu City itself already in chaos, they were still able to deal with this herd of rampaging duonao beasts outside the city.

The situation developed exactly as they expected. The beast herd did not notice the broad mire directly ahead. Led by the Giant Thunderclap Beast, they plunged straight into it.

By the time they realized something was wrong, the wet, soft mud had already swallowed their legs up to the roots and reached their bellies.

With no way to exert force underfoot, the thunderclap beasts could only remain trapped in the mud, bellowing furiously.

The people of Lingxu City all breathed a sigh of relief.

Watching the excitement from Mount Xing, Dong Rui said with no little regret, “Ah, is that the end of it?”

The words had barely left his mouth when the Giant Thunderclap Beast suddenly turned its head toward the little grove, as though it knew the spellcasters who had set up the array were hiding there.

It let out a low roar, and several thick bolts of blue-violet lightning fell from the sky, striking the grove with a series of cracks.

The distance was too great, so He Lingchuan did not know what the scene inside the grove looked like, but he imagined it could not have been pretty.

However, that great expanse of mire remained, and the beast herd was still trapped within it.

Lingxu City’s army arrived. Taking advantage of the beasts’ inability to move, they began killing them quickly.

For a time, violet blood splashed everywhere, nearly dyeing the mire violet.

The Giant Thunderclap Beast saw its subjects being slaughtered, and its little eyes turned blood-red. It suddenly let out several steam-whistle shrieks.

These roars were exceptionally loud, and even the residents of northern Lingxu City could hear them.

The beast herd immediately began roaring along with it.

He Lingchuan remembered now. Back in the Fu Realm, when faced with the beast tide and the invasion of the giant sandstorm, the Giant Thunderclap Beast had also made this kind of roar that was like a declaration.

Immediately afterward, lightning surged from every thunderclap beast’s body.

The members of the beast herd were packed close together, so the lightning snakes crackled and traveled between them, as though linking every giant beast together.

Then the Giant Thunderclap Beast, as their leader, charged forward with all its strength, and the other members followed closely.

At first, their feet sank deep into the mud, and every step was difficult. But as the lightning around the giant beasts grew brighter and brighter, these flesh-and-blood machines actually began moving forward.

At first, they inched forward bit by bit. Then their speed grew faster and faster!

Dong Rui could not help but rub his eyes, but Zhu Erniang saw clearly. “Those things are floating!”

At the very front, the Giant Thunderclap Beast had already crawled out of the mire. Enduring the blinding glare of the lightning, He Lingchuan looked carefully and discovered that the giant beast’s four feet were not actually touching the ground. Instead, they maintained a tiny distance above it.

Good heavens, they can levitate?

Because the Fu Realm’s gravity was too great, thunderclap beasts weighed far less than human-realm creatures of the same size. In addition, they had a special substance inside their bodies: floating stones.

This thing had originally evolved in duonao beasts so that they could resist gravity. Added to that, the Giant Thunderclap Beast was naturally a master at manipulating thunder and lightning—

Under its leadership, several hundred thunderclap beasts of the entire herd actually hovered above the ground and charged across the entire mire.

The other types of duonao beasts were not so lucky.

On Mount Xing, He Lingchuan murmured, “They can do that?!” Being able to control thunder and lightning really is wonderful.

Dong Rui gave an impressed cry, his eyes shining. “Impressive, impressive. That’s definitely something worth researching!”

He Lingchuan had personally entered the Fu Realm and had read information on thunderclap beasts, yet he had never heard that they could do something like this.

Lingxu City’s army had probably never heard of it either, because when they saw the thunderclap beast herd start running again, they were somewhat at a loss.

Perhaps Lingxu City’s hunters had never dared provoke the Giant Thunderclap Beast Lord in the past and truly did not understand it well enough. They had not known this locomotive could actually pull its fellow creatures out of the mire together.

This was the strength of a lord-level beast—oh, though it had now dropped in rank.

In any case, the beast herd once again charged grandly toward Lingxu City.

The commander of the Tongxin Guard, Fan Long, suddenly arrived from who knew where. His mount, a black bo beast, was astonishingly fast. After several bursts of speed, it overtook the Giant Thunderclap Beast and rushed to the front, intending to see who exactly was setting the rhythm for this rampaging beast herd.

He knew very well that someone must have deliberately lured the Giant Thunderclap Beast out of the Storm Gate to stir up trouble for Lingxu City.

In the end, he discovered that the giant beasts were chasing more than a hundred Grass Sea guards and were galloping wildly on horseback, while twenty or thirty scattered soldiers among them were fleeing toward Lingxu City.

“Turn!” he roared. “All of you, turn west!”

With his arrival, the soldiers finally found their backbone and obediently turned their horses west.

But the giant beasts did not turn with them. They continued charging straight toward Lingxu City.

Fan Long’s heart chilled.

The thief muddying the waters isn’t among these scattered soldiers?

But there’s no one leading the way ahead.

What exactly is drawing the Giant Thunderclap Beast toward Lingxu City?

He searched ahead for a long time, then his gaze focused on the sky, and his heart sank into an ice cellar.

Could the one holding the bait be a bird monster? That would be troublesome.

Once the duonao beast herd started running, its earth-shaking momentum surpassed an earthquake. The flocks of birds in the nearby forests had all been frightened into the air and were circling above with cawing cries. Thus, the sky was no more peaceful than the ground. Moreover, it was still deep into the night. To accurately pick out the one causing trouble from among thousands upon thousands of birds was impossible!

He Lingchuan and the others remained on Mount Xing, watching as the beast herd pushed forward like a bulldozer. Any house it met, it flattened. Any tree it met, it snapped. Any person it met...

Anyway, they directly opened a broad road for themselves.