"Youâre that confident, daring to come fight over this Demon Fetus? You think this sword of mine canât take your head off?"
The Shamate swung once and chopped at Chen Xuantianâs neck, the blade stopping just half an inch short of taking his head clean off.
Chen Xuantian ignored him, since heâd just seen that knife strike with his own eyes.
The domineering sword was indeed pretty fierce, but not that fierceâhis power wasnât enough to cleave through the path of the Netherworld Spring.
The Holy Daughter also lifted her hand at the right moment to halt the blade.
"Of course I can kill you. Itâs just that to cut down this Dao Body of mine, thereâs no need to use that Divine Weapon.
Fellow Daoist, you can rest easy. Iâll say it again: this time Iâm here to help you save the world and, while Iâm at it, take back the Divine Sword for my Sect.
As for this whole âDemon Fetus descendingâ business, I donât know the details. Everything about this calamity is what you told me.
No matter what comes out of this secret realm, this time Iâm only here to watch you pass your tribulation and help you with Demon Extermination. I absolutely wonât interfere in anything else.
My word is my bond; Heaven and Earth bear witness. Is that good enough?"
Chen Xuantian put away the sword bag.
"Good. As long as everythingâs out in the open. But if weâre counting it like this, since you and that guy are both without sex and without life, not counted within the tribulation, then aside from you two, I can bring two more helpers into the dungeon, yeah?"
The Holy Daughter corrected him,
"Wrong. I may not be in the tribulation, but this Dao Body of mine isnât dead yet. She still has to count as one slot. So you can only bring one more person in to exterminate demons."
Chen Xuantian looked at the two ladies.
The Holy Daughter suggested,
"Donât take them. Itâs too dangerous."
Chen Xuantian couldnât help getting suspicious again,
"Didnât you say you didnât know the details."
The Holy Daughter sighed,
"I donât know the details, but I can still see clearly enough that one of them has thin Blessing and shallow life, and the other has severed soul and cut-off ties. Theyâve probably already accompanied you through several slaughter tribulations, right? How could they possibly hold out through a karmic disaster like the Demon Fetus descending.
And this battle actually comes after Suiyang, so the difficulty must be absurdly high. You at least need to find someone with deep blessings and thick fortune, Heavenly Destiny upon them, protected by the power of vows, to have a chance of bearing it. Otherwise, if itâs just us going in, weâre probably just being offered up as sacrifices to the Heavenly Demon."
She did have a point. After all, the Holy Daughter herself hadnât awakened yet. The Dao Body she was using right nowâZhen Baiyuâsâwas only at the Nascent Soul Realm. Although she had herself draped in a dazzling assortment of shabby junk to ward off disasters and avoid death, in truth her Combat Power was basically nonexistent.
And Chen Xuantian had just exterminated one Demon not long ago, paid ten tentacles in the process, and was still in a weak state. Forget Heavenly Demons; he probably couldnât even get through Master Xuan Duâs checkpoint...
The Shamate puffed out his chest.
The Holy Daughter: "Go stand in the corner. Train another hundred years first."
The Shamate squatted down in the corner.
Chen Xuantian thought for a while but couldnât think of any suitable candidate. He could only shake his head,
"Letâs find the three axes first. Otherwise we can only squat at the door until the Demon Fetus comes out. Holy Daughter, do you happen to have any good ideas?"
The Holy Daughter frowned, not understanding for a moment, and asked,
"Since you know the Demon Fetus will be born here, you know thereâs a Barrier here, you know you need axes to enter the Array, and you even know what this place is called, and that there are three axesâso why are you asking me? Since your divinations are so thorough, just go get the axes."
Chen Xuantian coughed twice,
"I actually donât know exactly where the axes are. I only know that one of the three axes is in the hand of Xuan Yue, Sect Leader of the Three Elements Extreme Truth Sect on Sky Covering Mountain; one is in the hand of Zhong Nanzi at the Taiyi Mountain Taoyuan Zongzhen Sect; and one is maybe, probably, eight or nine times out of ten, in the hands of the Cai Family on Magu Mountain.
All three are Old Xuan Sect geezers over a few thousand years old, at the Peak of Divinity Transformation, absolute Peaks in divination. Even I canât calculate their whereabouts. But Iâve long heard that the Divine Sectâs Divine Insight is peerless under Heaven, and that the Ten Extremes Saintess is brilliant beyond compare. I was wondering if I could trouble you for a little casting of the lots, to look into..."
The Holy Daughter rolled her eyes,
"You want a Holy Daughter of the Demon Sect to help you secretly calculate the Mountain Masters of the Mystic Sect! Are you that full from eating, or do you just think I donât have enough trouble as it is! Is this your tribulation or mine? Do it yourself!"
Tsk, he was just trying to bluff her a bit, and this Holy Daughter turned out to be a bit petty...
So the little team temporarily settled down in the Land God Temple. The Holy Daughter continued treating patients and watching the kid, the Shamate continued acting as bodyguard, and Chen Xuantian left early and returned late every day, roaming everywhere, clearing wild mobs along the way, divining the axesâ movements, and searching for the location of the Carefree Void Cave Mansion.
In fact, Chen Xuantianâs "scientific math" wasnât bad at all. Repeated deductions showed he hadnât gotten the place wrong; he just couldnât find that lake where the giant salamanders were raised. You could only say mystic arts really depend on fate: if your opportunity hasnât arrived and your lifeâs tally is lacking, itâs truly hard to find a True Immortal.
But itâs hard to say the problem was his. When Tie Dan came here before, he couldnât find the place either, and only by swinging his sword around and randomly splitting things open did he draw out the Divinity Transformation Mountain Man, and then found out that the Mystic Sect had ringed off this land to grow ginseng, and that you needed to bring the axes to enter. So the one with the real problem is Huangfu Yi, ahem...
All in all, when Chen Xuantian came over this time, heâd originally thought: since this was a Barrier laid down by the Mystic Sect and an Array prepared by that bastard junior brother, with his abilities and cheat-sheet plugâin, he ought to at least see some clues. He absolutely hadnât expected that after wandering around for two days, he still couldnât find the door in at all, and was honestly out of ideas. For a moment he was thinking it might be better to just go with the Tie Dan Flow playstyle, pull out the Breaking Dao Divine Weapon, go the "just wildly split everything" route, and bruteâforce his way in and be done with it.
But what Chen Xuantian really hadnât counted on was that at this moment the horse actually stood up and provided him with a crucial clue.
Yes, that cartâpulling one...
"Doctor, I smell a Monster nearby, smells so good, can we have some meat for dinner?"
Chen Xuantian casually fed it a handful of blueberries, smoothed its Fur, eyeballing it: the colt was about one zhang long, eight chi at the shoulder, white body and crimson mane, eyes like Gold. He logged into the Lingxu database, did a quick appraisal, and immediately had the measure of it,
"GoldenâEyed CrimsonâMane, Jiliang among coursers, tenâjointed wild goose stride, dust canât even rise before youâre gone. Mount of Emperors, steed to be presented to the exalted king.
A peerless treasure like you just pulling a cart, stuck eating grass every day, really is an injustice. Come on, letâs go for a run."
Jiliang happily nudged his hand. "Thank you, Doctor!"
Sha Mate hugged his knife and squatted on the roof, watching them with envy...
Chen Xuantian ignored him and first let Jiliang run a few laps around the mountain,
"Can you tell what kind of demon beast it is?"
Jiliang pawed the ground with his hoof,
"A Leech, and a Tianwu, both almost at Divinity Transformation."
"Which one do we eat first?"
"Eat the Leech. Leech tastes good, like crayfish. That Tianwu just reeks."
"Eh, arenât you a Western Regions stallion, since when have you eaten crayfish..."
"Thereâs loads of them in the pond behind the back mountain."
Chen Xuantian froze for a second and turned to look,
"The pond behind the back mountain? Since when is there a pond behind the back mountain?"
Jiliang licked his lips,
"Right behind the Land God Temple, just a short run away, the waterâs real sweet. Those two demon beasts often go drink there too."
Chen Xuantian did a quick calculation, eyes rolling once as a grin spread across his face,
"Good, weâll go hunting first, then later weâll go catch crayfish in the pond and have them together tonight."
"Nice! Neighhh!"
Jiliang dashed off in high spirits, hooves fast as wind, his crimson mane and tail like flames, turning into an auspicious streak of rainbow light in the sky. In the blink of an eye heâd carried Chen Xuantian through the mountain winds to a narrow cleft between cliffs.
"Itâs hiding right in here, no mistake."
Jiliangâs eyes were glowing with hunger.
"Okay, wait here."
Chen Xuantian took one look at the terrain and immediately understood. No wonder two days of searching had turned up nothingâthis place was actually pretty well hidden.
The entrance to the rock fissure was concealed in layers of dense forest, looking down from above you couldnât see it at all, and the ravineâandâchasm terrain naturally blocked Primordial Spirit probing; if you just flew past overhead, it was hard to sweep the valley bottom. On top of that, someone had carved runes and secret spells all over the cliffs on both sides, laying down layer after layer of Barriers, making it even harder to detect the demons hidden at the bottom of the valley. Itâs just that demons need to drink water too, and in the end theyâd left a Weakness by the water.
Right away, Chen Xuantian used Netherworld Spring Escape to slip down to the valley floor, and immediately spotted his target.
Sure enough, shaped like a hog with a hornâthis was exactly the Leech that Huangfu Yi had encountered, though compared to fifty years later there was still a difference: the difference being that it currently had three horns on its head.
So thatâs it. This demon beast was most likely not wild, but had been deliberately sealed hereâno, raised hereâby someone.
After all, back then Huangfu Yi entered the pool carrying the Leech Horn. This beast was clearly left here specifically to break the Array, and that Tianwu probably had a similar function. Storing the two beasts here was essentially making them the keys to entering the Array.
Chen Xuantian did a quick calculation and also knew that this beast wasnât at harvest time yet. If he waited until it reached Divinity Transformation before flaying its skin, eating its flesh, refining its bones, and using them in Alchemy and Medicine, the effect would be much better.
But the great trend of the worldâs destruction fifty years from now was already set; by then even the cold dishes would be cold again, what Elixirs was he still going to refine. Besides, the hornâs effect of warding off Illusion Technique didnât require the Divinity Transformation Realm to triggerâso just kill it.
So Chen Xuantian flicked his sleeve, reached out a hand, and yanked the demonâs head right off...
"BOOM!!!"
Thunderous rage shook heaven and earth, a clearâsky thunderbolt shattered the firmament,
"Which bastard killed my spiritual pet!"