Chapter 857: Psychological Warfare

Even in the middle of battle, Naluotian’s avatar remained perfectly clear-headed: merging with Perfected Sanshui was only a temporary expedient. If it wanted to escape alive, or if it wanted to truly seize the Generous Pot, then it still needed a suitable skin-sack before it could bring its genuine divine power to bear!

But this was inside the Generous Pot, which was enemy territory, so the battle had to be decided quickly. Every additional second that dragged on worked against it.

The three giant pythons had failed to crush the Red General’s armor, but they had pinned He Lingchuan firmly in place, leaving him unable to move even a step.

The black serpent Xiliu opened its jaws to bite, and a bone-deep chill spread through He Lingchuan from the depths of his soul. Faced with those fangs, he somehow felt completely exposed and defenseless.

To make matters worse, Naluotian’s avatar was attacking as well. With both arms bound, He Lingchuan was effectively fighting four opponents at once, and the pressure on him soared.

The two beast-head ornaments crouched on the armor’s shoulder plates suddenly flashed red and sprang to life. One resembled a golden toad and actually leaped straight into the open maw of the black serpent.

Gulp.

It went right down its throat, leaving even the giant serpent momentarily stunned.

But then, countless red threads immediately appeared throughout its semitransparent body, as though parasites had suddenly hatched inside it. The black serpent reacted as though it had been thrown into a vat of boiling oil, writhing in such agony that its belly rolled upward. How could it possibly spare any attention for attacking He Lingchuan’s soul now?

Within only two to three breaths, the black serpent had turned completely red, and even its eyes were now blood-red.

The other shoulder beast charged toward Naluotian’s avatar, swelling rapidly as it moved. It had bulging eyes, a huge mouth, fan-like ears, a lion’s body, a long tail, and a pair of wings growing from its back. He Lingchuan immediately recognized it as the aberrant creature carved atop the Dragon Punishment Pillar. He had never learned exactly what species it was; it looked somewhat like a Qiongqi and somewhat like a Chaofeng[1]. In the blink of an eye, it grew to more than six meters long, its blood-filled maw opening to an unnatural width as it lunged at Naluotian’s avatar, seemingly capable of swallowing both man and sword whole.

Perfected Sanshui, under Naluotian’s control, halted in midair and somehow generated force to rebound backward. He planted the tip of his sword against the beast’s lower jaw and pushed, launching himself more than sixteen meters away.

He Lingchuan had seen Zhu Daniang use this kind of midair maneuver before. Apparently, it was a standard technique among immortals.

At the same time, Perfected Sanshui hurled his treasured sword. It transformed into a streak of light and continued straight toward the back of He Lingchuan’s neck.

Everything happened in an instant. The red serpent—the black serpent from earlier—suddenly sprang up and blocked the sword’s path to He Lingchuan, taking the sword strike itself.

The sword possessed the power to slaughter gods, and the resentful spirits within the black serpent were exactly the sort of entities it destroyed. It was practically friendly fire on an absurd scale. The giant python was severed into two sections at the point of impact. Its rear half disappeared, but the front half immediately turned around and continued charging at Perfected Sanshui.

With the black serpent Xiliu no longer binding him, He Lingchuan flipped his wrist and sliced the head clean off the pink-gold water python.

Water was ordinarily formless, but Fleeting Life specialized in dealing with creatures like this. The pink-gold python’s head simply refused to grow back.

The final pale blue python coiled around the Red General’s head and face, but He Lingchuan raised his mirror shield, smashed it into the serpent’s head, and shouted, “Take it in!”

The blue python was actually sucked inside.

The mirror shrieked in terror, “Aaaah! Don’t just throw random things in here!”

Its interior also contained a self-contained secret realm, a small world of its own, and it had only been repaired less than half a year ago. The mirror had absolutely no desire to let a giant blue python inside to turn the place upside down again.

Regardless, the threat posed by all three pythons had now been completely neutralized.

With the armor’s assistance, He Lingchuan had dealt with them calmly, countering each move in turn before kicking every problem right back at Perfected Sanshui.

This was, in essence, a contest between the power of nature and the power of man.

In the outside world, perhaps the former would have held the advantage. But this was inside the Generous Pot, within the Panlong Secret Realm! Aside from its initial ambush, Naluotian’s avatar found it difficult to gain any meaningful advantage.

Yet even as it fought, it continued trying to persuade He Lingchuan, “You’re still too young. You have no idea what an unbearable burden the Generous Pot really is. Perfected Sanshui personally helped forge it, yet even he later wished desperately to destroy it. A divine artifact feared by gods and immortals alike is absolutely not something you can control!”

He Lingchuan found that amusing. “And you can?”

Naluotian’s avatar did not get angry. It merely asked, “You can’t actually command the Generous Pot, can you?”

He Lingchuan answered with a smile that contained no warmth whatsoever. “And yet people can still make use of it. Zhong Shengguang, for instance. And—”

“Mitian? Heh, and look at how they ended up. Look at what happened to the State of Yuān.” Since He Lingchuan had ties to the Generous Pot, there was nothing strange about him knowing Panlong City’s history. Naluotian’s avatar continued, “And there’s no need to even mention those who came before them. Not a single one met a good end. That, too, is the power of fate.”

He Lingchuan scoffed. “Were their fates tragic and their endings heroic because of the Generous Pot itself? Wasn’t it because you heavenly gods exterminated everyone in your path, casually destroying states and massacring cities? Wasn’t it because you gods devoured the flesh and blood of common people to nourish yourselves, then shamelessly called it divine grace?”

Naluotian’s avatar paused before saying, “You trust the Generous Pot so much. Then do you even know what it wants you to do? Do you know what it intends to do to you?”

He Lingchuan said nothing. He knew Naluotian’s avatar was deliberately dodging the heart of his accusation. But the two sides were fighting fiercely, and he could not be bothered wasting thought on a rebuttal.

He did not know. No one did, because the Generous Pot almost never communicated with anyone.

“Then how can you be so certain you won’t follow in the footsteps of those before you?” Naluotian’s avatar seized the opportunity to press its argument. “You understand nothing about the Generous Pot’s true power. I’ll say it again, a divine artifact like this is not something you are capable of controlling. If you cannot control a divine artifact, then you will instead be dragged down by it. That was the case for the King of Yuān, as well as the case for Zhong Shengguang. You will be no exception.”

“And how much do you truly know about Mitian? Do you really think that it lends you power and helps you oppose me purely out of kindness? Naive!” Naluotian’s avatar spoke rapidly. “Mitian already lost long ago! But its hatred and madness will still drag you into eternal ruin!”

He Lingchuan immediately followed the opening it had given him. “Why exactly would Mitian do that?”

He deliberately avoided asking anything specific. He merely asked why Mitian would “do that.” Naluotian’s avatar would have to decide for itself what “that” meant.

Sure enough, it answered, “The hatred between Mitian and Lingxu runs deeper than the ocean. Everything it does is not merely revenge; it also wants the other side’s submission. Whether it was inciting Panlong City or inciting you, everything has been for its own selfish interests. You are nothing more than innocent sacrifices.”

He Lingchuan asked, “What about you? Do you have a grudge against Lingxu too?”

“No.”

“Then why are you secretly opposing the gods of Lingxu as well? Don’t tell me that isn’t for your own selfish interests?”

Naluotian’s avatar laughed in irritation.

It had not been chatting with He Lingchuan while fighting out of any kindness or desire to answer his questions. Its purpose was to sow discord.

It had already noticed that He Lingchuan’s excellent performance while wearing the armor came from his extraordinarily high compatibility with it. Man and armor seemed almost able to read one another’s thoughts.

This was its opponent’s home ground, and He Lingchuan had the armor strengthening him, so on the surface it looked as though he held every advantage. Yet Naluotian’s divine seal mark was still inside him and had not been erased. That alone proved He Lingchuan was not nearly as powerful as he appeared!

More importantly, Mitian itself—the existence Naluotian feared most—had still not appeared.

From what Naluotian knew of Mitian, it was not the sort to wait until everything had been settled before finally making an entrance. So did Mitian simply not want to appear, or was it unable to?

After merging with Perfected Sanshui, Naluotian had learned that the Panlong Secret Realm was also governed by its own rules.

Hm, so Mitian has no way to appear here and can only lend its power to this brat?

At that thought, Naluotian’s avatar relaxed considerably. This skin-sack isn’t even twenty years old. That’s exactly the age when people are impulsive, restless, and easily swayed. As long as I can persuade him to harbor even the slightest doubt or suspicion toward Mitian, his perfect rapport with Mitian’s armor would collapse, and he would no longer be able to wield that immense divine power so effortlessly.

No matter how powerful Mitian’s armor was, someone still had to wear it before it could unleash its full strength.

Yet despite all the words Naluotian had spent, He Lingchuan remained completely unmoved.

Either this brat’s will is as firm as bedrock, or Mitian has already bewitched him so thoroughly that he has become utterly obsessed and can no longer be persuaded.

There really were devout believers among the heavenly gods’ followers who were like this.

What Naluotian did not know was that the one lending He Lingchuan the armor was not Mitian at all, but rather the Red General.

And the one He Lingchuan trusted was the Red General, not Mitian.

Naluotian’s avatar had been trying to undermine the wrong relationship from the very beginning. No matter how hard it dug, there was nothing there for it to bring down.

The battle never stopped throughout their conversation.

His opponent was an ancient immortal combined with a heavenly god’s avatar. This was the first time He Lingchuan had ever challenged an enemy of such a high caliber. He was not lacking in battlefield experience; what he lacked was exposure to combat of this level.

Perfected Sanshui’s methods alone already exceeded the bounds of ordinary understanding. He possessed a move called the “Rift-Carving Technique.” With a single sweep of the Xiliu sword through the air, he could simultaneously tear open two spatial rifts—one beside himself and another anywhere within ten meters.

Perfected Sanshui could step into the opening beside him and emerge the next instant behind He Lingchuan, his sword already stabbing straight for his back!

In this post-immortal age, when divine techniques had declined, only the Lesser Mountain-Moving Spell could achieve a similar effect. Yet that spell could not open and close passages at will, and its cost was considerable.

Fortunately, the strange shoulder beast remained close beside He Lingchuan, shifting from offense to defense and repeatedly helping him resolve dangerous situations.

Once he got past his initial flurry of awkwardness, He Lingchuan quickly became more and more comfortable as the fight continued. He had not yet mastered the deeper uses of the armor, but wielding such concentrated power was not fundamentally different from fighting on the battlefield. The only truly outrageous difference was the speed of his movements. Without the Rift-Carving Technique to assist him, even Perfected Sanshui was beginning to struggle to keep up.

And the destructive force generated by both sides was somewhat... astonishing. The ground throughout the area had been blasted into pits and craters, as though subjected to concentrated bombardment.

Perfected Sanshui pushed the Rift-Carving Technique to its utmost flexibility. On one occasion, the shoulder beast followed him through a spatial rift. Perfected Sanshui simply wiped the rift closed behind himself, and the spatial seam sliced clean through half of the beast’s rear leg and half its tail despite its otherwise impenetrable body.

That was the true meaning of “rift-carving.” It was not merely a means of teleportation.

Fortunately, He Lingchuan himself had never attempted to chase Perfected Sanshui through one of those rifts. Otherwise, he might have been the one sliced apart.

Against a power that operated on the level of rules themselves, how much protection could even the Red General’s armor truly provide?

The shoulder beast felt no pain. It immediately turned and tried to bite Perfected Sanshui, but attacking with only three legs made it far less agile. Two sword strikes pierced its eyes, and it finally dissolved into a strand of red light before returning to the Red General’s shoulder plate, where it resumed its original crouching position.

Meanwhile, He Lingchuan drew his longbow and seized the opening to aim at Perfected Sanshui.

Two arrows flew at once, yet only a single whoosh sounded.

Perfected Sanshui retreated into a spatial rift, but the arrows followed him inside. He turned, but the arrowheads turned with him.

1. The Qiongqi is a monstrous, winged tiger or quill-covered ox from Chinese mythology known as one of the Four Perils that punishes the good and rewards the wicked. As for the Chaofeng, it’s typically depicted with the head of a dragon and the body of a lion covered in scales, along with wings on its back. Imagine the combination as you will, or I guess just read the description a bit before this ☜