Chapter 855: An Inescapable Fate

Earlier, He Chunhua had entered the secret realm without realizing it, leaving Naluotian unable to contact him. Now that the secret realm had receded, Naluotian was impatient to speak with him.

The avatar Naluotian had sent down at He Chunhua’s request had vanished for no apparent reason. There was no way that Naluotian would simply let him off!

He Chunhua’s mouth was full of bitterness as he told his men, “Return to the oasis. Send people out separately to find the Rongshan group and the Andong group.”

The longer he delayed, the fiercer the god’s anger would burn.

No matter how highly He Chunhua thought of himself, he had no desire to offend “fate” itself.

If they found the Rongshan people, perhaps they would also find He Lingchuan.

Not long afterward, He Chunhua returned to the southern gate and led the Heishui City army out of the Panlong Ruins.

He had arrived full of ambition and confidence, only to leave utterly dispirited.

Only after they were gone did a group emerge from behind the dunes outside Panlong City. They were Qiu Hu and the other Rongshan disciples.

“We’re not going back to the oasis. We’re heading to Baiyuan Post Station.” Qiu Hu crushed the calico-cat mask in his hand, then burned the pieces. “The young master said that if we got separated, we were to wait for him at Baiyuan Post Station.”

* * *

Where was He Lingchuan?

Still inside the secret realm.

Before beheading Hé Jing, he had already pulled the Generous Pot out of the Red General’s gauntlets.

Hé Jing and the others had tugged and yanked at the treasure with all their strength without being able to move it even the slightest bit. He Lingchuan merely nudged it lightly with a finger, and it dropped straight into his hand.

Taking advantage of the chaos, he wrapped himself in Mountain Monarch Bo’s hide, bounded away from the battlefield in several leaps, and hid behind a cluster of half-collapsed low buildings.

Everyone else had joined the battle for the sake of the Generous Pot. He alone had gone there to kill.

When the king of the que beasts roared from nearby, He Lingchuan was examining the little pot in his hands.

It was small and looked entirely unremarkable.

He rubbed away some of the dirt coating its surface, revealing its true appearance underneath.

It was neither metal nor porcelain, and he could not tell what material it was made from.

Exquisite designs decorated the pot—flowers and birds, mountains and rivers. The moment He Lingchuan saw them, he could not help but laugh. “Just as I thought.”

He had seen this pot before in the Panlong World.

Most of the time, it sat on a display shelf in Zhong Shengguang’s sitting room. Whenever Zhong Shengguang sat down, the pot would be on his right.

Every time He Lingchuan visited, he saw it there.

Zhong Shengguang seemed rather fond of the thing, because it was always polished bright and spotless.

If this thing were really the Generous Pot, He Lingchuan would eat it!

A massive fist suddenly came crashing down from above. With a tremendous crack, the roof shattered into pieces.

The king of the que beasts had arrived, heading straight for his hiding place.

Bricks and stones rained down. He Lingchuan narrowed his eyes, sprang aside, and flung the pot backward at the creature.

The king of the que beasts did not bother dodging.

Splat.

The pot shattered cleanly against its body.

If He Chunhua, Bao Guanjie, and the others had witnessed this scene, who knew what they would have felt? As for Hé Jing, if he discovered that the “Generous Pot” he had died for was merely a fake, would sheer rage bring him back to life?

Thinking back, He Lingchuan remembered that the pot had always been held tightly in the Red General’s arms.

So could this be considered the Red General deceiving everyone, rather than the Generous Pot deliberately creating the ruse?

Tsk, so the Red General has that kind of mischievous streak too?

He Lingchuan ducked beneath a broken roof beam and sprinted outside.

He fled with remarkable agility, but the king of the que beasts had long legs and enormous strides, and it remained close behind him.

Hey, hey, wasn’t I promised that my personal safety inside this secret realm is guaranteed?!

They can’t go back on their word now.

He Lingchuan put on his mask as he ran, but when he emerged into the open, he discovered that no one was left around the Red General’s cenotaph.

More accurately, there were no living people left; only corpses littered the ground.

How did they all withdraw so quickly and so completely?

At the same time, something ahead lit up brilliantly, conspicuous against the darkness.

He Lingchuan looked up and saw that the Red General’s armor inside the grave was once again emitting dazzling red light.

The light felt warm and familiar, almost as though it were beckoning him over.

More and more que beasts were catching up from behind. He Lingchuan shifted his footing and sprinted toward the cenotaph.

The Generous Pot had a decent record of keeping its promises. This time, he chose to trust it again.

The king of the que beasts bounded after him in several enormous leaps, moving no slower than he did!

Just then, the Soul-Stealing Mirror in his robes suddenly shrieked, “Watch the green light! Watch out ahead—”

The moment He Lingchuan heard the words “green light,” a chill coursed through his body.

Sure enough, a point of green light shot out from behind the cenotaph and came straight at him.

Who knew how long it had been lying in ambush there? It was only slightly larger than a firefly and looked utterly insignificant, yet it radiated unmistakable malice. Most terrifyingly, it seemed to move slowly while actually traveling with incredible speed. By the time He Lingchuan first saw it, less than thirty meters separated them.

Thirty meters. For either side, that was no more than the blink of an eye.

He Lingchuan was horrified.

Naluotian’s avatar!

The avatar that had abruptly disappeared in the firmament, the one even the giant red figure had been unable to find!

While He Lingchuan had remained uneasy, it had vanished without a trace. Then, just when he thought everything had finally been settled, the damned thing appeared again!

Where did it hide all this time? And how did it get inside the Panlong Secret Realm?

Can I really not avoid this fate?

Even someone as strong-willed as He Lingchuan felt fear and despair seep deep into his bones at the sight of that tiny green light.

After planning for so long, where had he gone wrong?

At that critical instant, his wrist suddenly burned hot, forcibly wrenching his mind back into focus.

The mark of the Gale Army lit up, glowing fiery red in the darkness.

He remembered the Red General’s warning.

Did the Red General foresee this danger? Is that why she fought so desperately against the Generous Pot’s restraints to brand this mark onto my wrist?

But the green light was charging from the direction of the cenotaph. Before He Lingchuan could reach the Red General’s armor, he would probably collide with Naluotian’s avatar first.

He Lingchuan suddenly stopped and stared directly at the tiny green light.

To anyone watching, it would have looked as though despair had made him give up resisting.

Naluotian’s avatar abruptly accelerated, drawing a thin green line through the air. The king of the que beasts also caught up from behind, its enormous hand sweeping toward He Lingchuan.

Attacked from both front and rear, did he have a third path left?

The glow of Naluotian’s avatar was already reflected in He Lingchuan’s eyes.

It was too close.

Naluotian’s avatar would reach him before the king of the que beasts.

It had gone to tremendous lengths to evade the Generous Pot’s pursuit and had even taken a long detour to sneak back inside. Now it was finally about to achieve its goal!

In this contest involving so many different sides, there would ultimately be only one winner: Naluotian.

The skin-sack for its divine descent and the Generous Pot would both belong to it!

But the instant it lunged onto He Lingchuan, he vanished.

An illusion?

No! The brat instantly moved elsewhere.

With He Lingchuan gone, the king of the que beasts lost its target as well, and its sweeping hand continued forward toward the green light.

The light could not evade in time.

The king of the que beasts closed its enormous palm as though it had caught something solid, then stuffed it straight into its gaping maw—

Gulp.

It swallowed it.

Not far away, He Lingchuan reappeared inside the cenotaph, right beside the Red General’s armor.

From this angle, the armor’s tall, unyielding back looked almost like a living person.

When He Lingchuan had ambushed Hé Jing earlier, he had quietly tossed a ghost-shadow cicada shell into the grave. The lighting had been poor and the situation chaotic, so neither the Baling men nor Yuezheng Qing’s group had noticed such a tiny, inconspicuous, semitransparent cicada shell.

The Red General had instructed him to activate the armor at the proper moment, which meant he had to preserve his mobility and could not stray too far from it.

Sure enough, that contingency had now proven useful.

But when He Lingchuan saw the king of the que beasts swallow the green light, he was dumbfounded.

Wh-what was going on?

Did a beast released by the lid of the Generous Pot just swallow Naluotian’s avatar?

How does that make any sense?

Only two breaths passed before the king of the que beasts suddenly blasted two jets of white vapor from its nostrils and looked toward him with an oddly meaningful gaze.

Its pupils had turned a faint green.

Uh... There’s no way, right? He Lingchuan groaned inwardly. Even the lid of the Generous Pot can’t suppress Naluotian’s avatar?

Surely it’s not what I think, right?

“So you’re the little thief who stole the Generous Pot.” Under He Lingchuan’s incredulous stare, the king of the que beasts opened its mouth and spoke in perfectly clear human speech. “Who would have thought? My own skin-sack was the one who turned the Heavenly Palace upside down!”

Its gaze, its voice, and its manner of speaking were nothing an aberrant creature could possibly possess.

“Naluotian?” Sweat gathered in He Lingchuan’s palm.

The very outcome he had gone to such lengths to avoid had finally come to pass.

Calm by nature though he was, his heart could not help but beat faster. It was fear of something that felt predestined.

But after enduring countless dangers to reach this point, he would never give up easily. He Lingchuan slowly exhaled, stared straight at this so-called “god of fate,” and forcibly cast aside every useless emotion. “You can perform divine descent into a que beast whenever you want?”

Just great, the two separate problems facing him and the Generous Pot—Naluotian’s avatar and the king of the que beasts—had actually merged into one!

And the result did not seem as simple as one plus one.

Naluotian’s avatar chuckled softly.

After all the twists and turns, now that it had finally reached the point of confronting He Lingchuan face-to-face, it was in no hurry. As it laughed, the king of the que beasts began shrinking. Its white fur fell away, and its bestial features faded...

Within only a few breaths, the enormous snow-beast aberrant creature had transformed into a...

Human?

It had turned into an old man with white hair and a long beard, his broad sleeves drifting around him. He looked even more like an immortal sage than Sect Leader Xue of the Rongshan Sect.

His eyes, however, remained pale green.

“A que beast? This is Perfected Sanshui, an ancient immortal and one of the makers of the Generous Pot.” The old man, controlled by Naluotian’s avatar, drew a treasured sword from his sleeve, his movement graceful as fingers brushing across the strings of a zither. “After he passed away, the remnant of his soul was taken into the Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid and forcibly fused with the que beasts. He has been unable to find release for thousands of years.”

The Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid? He Lingchuan had just heard a new name. Is that what the lid of the Generous Pot is called? So the lid of the Generous Pot has its own name?

“Just now...” He Lingchuan’s throat felt dry. He had to swallow before he could continue. “Where were you hiding?”

He simply could not figure it out.

The shock in He Lingchuan’s eyes pleased Naluotian’s avatar immensely.

“Before the Generous Pot could deal with me, the Spirit-Sealing Treasured Lid took me away first.” It smiled faintly, then continued, “If communicating with it hadn’t taken so much time, I would have come in here to find you much earlier.”

Understanding dawned on He Lingchuan.

No wonder even the Generous Pot had been unable to find Naluotian. It had found itself a refuge first.

The lid refused to submit to the Generous Pot, and the struggle between these two divine artifacts had already been going on for a long time. For someone or something as intelligent as Naluotian’s avatar, there had indeed been an opportunity to exploit within that conflict.