Where Immortals Once Walked

He Lingchuan pulled the object out and found, to his surprise, that it was a copper tube inlaid with gemstones. At the top of the tube, a squat, strange beast had been carved.

Inside the tube, a faint red mist drifted and swirled.

A Dragon Punishment Pillar.

Hoh, and it’s even the Red General’s version.

He had once seen the Red General take out a sample with his own eyes and hand it to Zhong Shengguang and Shao Jian for examination.

This Dragon Punishment Pillar’s materials were clearly of a higher grade than the crude thing he had cobbled together with juluo tree branches and glass.

Of course, its capacity might also be different.

His rough, makeshift version had held far less than the official one. He had already handed that one over to the god Shinan.

But where had this one in front of him come from?

He Lingchuan patted the captive’s face. “Stop groaning. Where did you get this thing?”

The captive was still crying out from the pain in his leg and failed to answer.

He Lingchuan exhaled, then twisted the man’s shoulder out of its socket with a crack.

“Ah—!” The captive screamed again, his eyes rolling back.

He Lingchuan was truly worried the man might faint on the spot, forcing him to waste effort waking him up.

Fortunately, the fellow’s nerves were quite thick[1]. The next second, he was already gasping and begging for mercy.

At last, he understood how formidable He Lingchuan was.

“Where did you get this?” He Lingchuan shook the Dragon Punishment Pillar in his hand. “Don’t make me ask a third time.”

“M-my god bestowed it on me.” The man stammered, “I was told to perform delivery rites[2] for the souls of the dead on the battlefield!”

“Delivery rites?” One of He Lingchuan’s eyebrows rose in curiosity.

When he had marched with He Chunhua past Xinhuang Town, he had once captured an attendant of State Preceptor Shuang Ye. That man had also carried a Dragon Punishment Pillar to collect nightmare qi, and he too had claimed that he was gathering it to deliver the souls of the dead.

However, that attendant had fully believed his own explanation. The captive in front of him, on the other hand, was clearly making excuses.

Is delivering souls some sort of addiction to him? Does he have to rush to the freshest battlefield for it?

“Which god do you serve?”

The man hemmed and hawed for a long while, his eyes darting. “G-God Baizhantian!”

Sun Fuling had already come up beside them. At that, she lightly kicked him. “Liar.”

Her kick held very little force, but it jolted his injury, making him cry out in pain.

He Lingchuan looked up. “How do you know he’s lying?”

“My students have the same look when they lie,” Sun Fuling snorted softly. “They try to tell me their exercise book was burned during the bandit army’s attack.” She added, “Exercise books are expensive. Each person only gets one a year.”

“...Burned by what?” That excuse was outrageous, almost on par with some of his own.

“The bandit army’s fire arrows.” Sun Fuling lifted her chin toward the captive. “His expression is exactly the same.”

He Lingchuan studied the captive. “Do you not want your other leg either?”

The man waved his hands frantically. “I do, I do! Please, my lord, be magnanimous!”

“The god you worship?”

The man swallowed. “The one I worship is the god Bilu!”

Bilu!

The faint trace of amusement on He Lingchuan’s face vanished instantly.

Bilu is Naluotian!

Shinan had already told him that before Naluotian became a true god, its name had been Bilu!

No wonder Mitian and the Red General had never heard of Naluotian.

In this era, it was still only Bilu.

“Bilu’s attendants—no, I mean believers like you. Are there many of you?”

“I don’t know.” The man hurriedly said, “I’ve never spoken with other believers.”

“Then how did you come to worship it?”

“My family was poor and destitute. No matter what I did, nothing went right. Then, by chance, I went to Bilu’s temple, offered incense, and prayed. After that, everything suddenly began going smoothly. I could win money at the gambling house. On the road home, I ran into a landslide, and out of a group of forty people, I was the only one who survived...” The captive swallowed. “After that, the more I believed in the god Bilu, the smoother my life became. Then one day, Bilu suddenly bestowed me with a dream and told me to collect nightmare qi for it. When I woke up, this copper pillar was right by my pillow. It was a miracle! A miracle!”

He Lingchuan toyed with the Dragon Punishment Pillar. “It seems Bilu trusts you quite a bit. How many battlefields have you visited?”

In the Panlong World, almost a year had passed since Shao Jian had left with the large batch of Dragon Punishment Pillars produced by the Red General.

With his ability to act, he should already have begun scattering the Dragon Punishment Pillars across the world by now.

In other words, the gods had only just begun recognizing the function of the Dragon Punishment Pillar. Yet, the god Bilu had already seized the initiative and ordered its attendants to collect nightmare qi.

At a time like this, no god could have many Dragon Punishment Pillars on hand. Most likely, each had only one or two.

For this believer to receive a Dragon Punishment Pillar meant that he was one of Bilu’s diehard followers.

“Four or five battlefields, large and small.” The man spoke hesitantly. “I always wait until the fighting ends, then put on the victors’ armor and walk a few circles around the edge of the battlefield. No one pays attention to me. But I haven’t killed anyone. I really haven’t killed anyone! I only collect nightmare qi!”

There truly was no killing aura on him.

He Lingchuan fell into thought.

Whenever opportunity and a new tide first appeared, there were always those who arrived early and those who came late. Some seized the chance and ate great mouthfuls of meat. Others arrived too late and could not even drink the broth.

The same was true for gods.

There was no doubt that Bilu belonged to the fastest to react, among the first gods to stand at the crest of the wave.

Conversely, though, at this time it was probably still an unregistered wild god, perhaps even a minor god too weak to amount to much.

That was because Shao Jian, following Mitian’s request, would initially only distribute the Dragon Punishment Pillars among minor gods and wild gods.

For the gods of Lingxu City, as well as the other true gods and major gods, obtaining Dragon Punishment Pillars would likely come several steps later. They would have to wait until they noticed that the nightmare qi the Tianluo Star collected from the mortal realm had been continuously decreasing before they began investigating and pursuing the matter.

As the saying went, the larger the ship, the harder it was to turn.

When an organization was too large, its feelers became sluggish.

This window of time would be the period for the lesser gods to seize opportunity and grow with all their strength.

He Lingchuan also noticed another point: the captive had said that after praying to the god Bilu, his luck had begun improving.

In reality, his father He Chunhua also often said that his eldest son was a child of fortune. He had even insisted on bringing him along into the Panlong Desert.

Wait!

Back then, when He Chunhua went to the Panlong Desert, he had insisted on bringing He Lingchuan with him!

He Lingchuan rarely thought about the past, but recalling it now, his father’s move made his scalp prickle.

The Panlong Desert was a deathtrap. Why had He Chunhua insisted on bringing his eldest son there?

At the time, He Lingchuan had found it suspicious. No matter how Sun Fuping and Nian Songyu had deceived him, given He Chunhua’s personality, there was no way he would have failed to prepare a backup plan.

Looking back now, He Chunhua had brought his eldest son—that was, he had brought Naluotian’s skin-sack with him. Had his father originally intended, at the most dangerous moment, to invite the god to descend and save his own life?

Was that He Chunhua’s backup plan?

Fortunately, that trip had gone relatively smoothly. He Chunhua had not needed to use his backup plan, and He Lingchuan, ignorant and unaware, had escaped disaster by sheer heavenly luck.

“What’s wrong?” Sun Fuling placed a hand on his shoulder. “Your face looks terrible.”

“It’s nothing. Just a few realizations.” He Lingchuan drew his attention back to the matter before him. “Your name?”

“Peng... Peng Fang.”

“How did you know there would be a great battle here?” He Lingchuan looked east. “Did you come with Jintao’s army?”

1. Biologically, this does not make sense, but let’s just humor Madame Author. ☜

2. This is basically referring to sending/delivering souls off to the afterlife. Another way I could have translated this is soul-ferrying rites, though I feel like that would be more suitable for a Buddhist setting. ☜