He Bang had lost track of how many days she had been inside the pot. It grew hotter and hotter with each passing moment, and her shell was gradually losing its ability to keep the heat out. She could only release the water stored within her body, drop by drop, to cool her shell — but the water was diminishing steadily, and she was growing weaker and weaker. On the fifth day, the male Mingshe came to look in on her, inhabiting Chunyu Lin’s body. He Bang had hoped he would come closer, but he was clearly wary of her and would not draw near.

Many internal cultivators possessed a last-resort technique that could either save their life or bring their enemy down with them — and some did not even require a technique to activate it. This was an exceedingly cautious snake. It would not give He Bang that kind of opportunity.

Its hatred for this river clam was bone-deep. The enmity between them stretched back more than three hundred years. He Bang had escaped from the Jiang estate with grievous injuries, and along the way had encountered the Mingshe, then in the process of hatching from borrowed spirit energy. The Mingshe had brought her to Changgang Mountain.

At that time the seal had still been very much intact. The male Mingshe, coveting her age and her Celestial Water Spirit Essence, had set its heart on taking her in as a vassal, and so had used its ancient bloodline to preserve her life. Together they had entered into the Divine-Demon Covenant, by which He Bang was to cultivate for it a dharma body, enabling it to break free of its imprisonment. The Divine-Demon Covenant was an extraordinarily solemn binding agreement — binding upon all the gods and demons of the three realms. Once it took effect, it had to be fulfilled.

He Bang signed it. The male Mingshe was quite content, and let her go.

All had seemed perfectly arranged — but He Bang had barely walked clear of Changgang Mountain before she killed one of the small Mingshes that had just barely managed to hatch from borrowed spirit energy. After that, there was no word from her. The Mingshe had flown into a furious rage, and had at one point wondered how, with the Divine-Demon Covenant binding her, she could still go back on her word. Then, one idle day, it had sat down with the female Mingshe to pore over the covenant carefully — and discovered that it bore no effective date.

In other words, He Bang had agreed to cultivate a dharma body for it — but had never specified when. One hundred years would do. One thousand years would do. In any case, there was no deadline.

The male Mingshe had lost all face over this. From then on, it nursed a gnawing grudge against He Bang, and whenever a new batch of snake eggs successfully hatched, it would always want to hunt her down and avenge the humiliation. Now that this river clam had finally fallen into its hands, how could it let her off lightly?

The trouble was that He Bang now had both the wind and water spirit essences within her, and it harboured a deep wariness, not daring to act rashly. All it could do was trap her in the clay and steadily exhaust the moisture stored within her body until she hovered at death’s door. At that point, whether it wanted both spirit essences or simply her life, everything would be effortless — like taking something from its own hand.

Toward the end, He Bang no longer dared even to cry. The moisture within her body grew less and less, and she shriveled into a dry, withered husk. Of all the countless torments in this world that could be called cruel, for a water creature there was none more terrifying than dying of thirst. He Bang could no longer even speak. Four thousand years — not even when her senior brother abandoned her to save himself had she ever felt so utterly hopeless. She curled inside her shell, occasionally letting out a low moan, and ceased to move.

Rong Chen Zi searched until he was nearly out of his mind. The Li Family Settlement and Lingxia Town had been turned completely upside down — but where, in the end, was she?

He had not drunk a drop of water in several days. Ye Tian was both anxious and heartbroken. “Senior Brother, please drink some water first. Even if we find her, we still have a fierce battle ahead of us against the Mingshe. If you collapse, who will face it?”

Rong Chen Zi could not take in these words. He understood the reasoning perfectly — but his heart, no matter what, could not bring itself to let go. She was so delicate and tender, so fond of eating and playing. Even normally, letting her go with too little food was enough to make her cry out with hunger — she could not endure hardship, and after only a few steps she would want to be carried. All through the journey to deal with the Mingshe, they had barely fed her properly, and the last meal she had eaten was the orange at the Li Family Settlement. He began to dread letting his thoughts continue. His heart felt as though a blade were slowly turning within it.

Jiang Haoran was also having people search on all sides. Whatever he had done before, at least his feelings for He Bang had at some point been genuine. The Jiang household remained fairly attentive to the matter of finding He Bang — after all, she had now gathered both spirit essences, and with wind and water working in tandem, given more time, she would undoubtedly reach the summit of all techniques. And if they caught her in a vulnerable state, it might even be possible to retrieve the wind and water spirit essences…

Word somehow reached the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. The Dragon King also dispatched several Sea Clan members. With the Sea Clan’s support, Rong Chen Zi used water vein energy to probe the earth’s veins and finally uncovered some clues — the Mingshe was underground, and that underground space was none other than Changgang Mountain itself.

Through countless years of sealed imprisonment, who could have imagined that this snake had dug out most of the space beneath Changgang Mountain? In the chaos of the battle, everyone had seen it suddenly vanish and assumed it had fled — and then, seeing He Bang missing, had been gripped by several additional shades of panic. But it had never occurred to them that if He Bang’s water evasion technique could not even work within the seal, how could the Mingshe have fled at all?

Once the location was confirmed, not a single moment could be wasted. Everyone moved at once to dig a passage through.

The underground space of Changgang Mountain was truly already hollowed out in a vast expanse. The passage connected to the tunnels the Mingshe had excavated, but entering felt like walking into a labyrinth. One tunnel led to another, as if there were no end to them. Jiang Haoran walked at the front. Rong Chen Zi was already in an extreme state of anxiety, but could not move as fast as him and had no choice but to follow behind. Ye Tian came in the middle. Zhuang Shaoqin came after, followed by Master Xingzhi, the great master Jiaye, and others from both Daozong and the Jiang household.

The tunnels went on without end. Rong Chen Zi’s worry consumed him like fire, and he pushed past Jiang Haoran to use his primordial spirit to probe ahead. Using one’s primordial spirit recklessly in an unknown situation was extremely dangerous — but he no longer cared. That river clam was the most timid of creatures. She was even afraid of the dark — sleeping beside him at night, she always kept a small wall lamp lit. What had become of her now?

The Mingshe had not anticipated the others would arrive so swiftly. At that moment it was attending to He Bang. Inside the pot, He Bang had been steadily drained and was nearing the end. She could no longer spare even the small amount of water she had needed each day to cool her shell. The spirit essences depended on their master’s vital energy to survive. If he truly killed her and then tried to retrieve them, he feared he would destroy both priceless treasures of the world. But if he waited too long for her to reach her very last extremity, he worried she still had some killing technique held in reserve. The Mingshe wavered. He moved slowly toward He Bang. He Bang opened her mouth, and her voice was hoarse as rusted iron grinding against iron. “You want the wind and water spirit essences? Why not simply come and take them yourself?”

The Mingshe gave a cold laugh and was not baited by her. “They will be mine sooner or later. Why should I be in any hurry?”

He Bang forced herself to keep talking with it. Among the rules governing demons, letting your enemy see your weakness was tantamount to hastening your own end. All she could do was swing between moments of genuine weakness and moments of forced vitality, keeping the male Mingshe unable to gauge her true condition. Time was pressing. The pot the Mingshe had found was just something it had casually seized from the Li Family Settlement — it would be nearly impossible to burn through her shell. But earth overcomes water, and in an environment like this — earth above with fire below — her mortal flesh was fragile, and she was naturally suffering far beyond the limits of endurance.

He Bang gritted her teeth and held on. She did not want to die. She wanted to live.

Then — as though something had struck her — she suddenly asked, “Is it Rong Chen Zi who has come outside?” The male Mingshe let out a cold snort. A strange unease stirred within her. “Then why are you still here?”

The male Mingshe crossed its arms leisurely. “Guess.”

He Bang’s thoughts turned rapidly — and sudden, consuming dread flooded through her. “You…”