Jiang Haoran held He Bang’s transparent cone-shaped blade. Gao Bixin retreated step by step. His expression was serene, as though extracting the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence would be as simple as removing the hairpin from Gao Bixin’s hair. “There is no danger to your life. You need not be afraid.”
Gao Bixin kept stepping back, her voice filled with distress. “Cousin!!”
Jiang Haoran let out a quiet sigh and walked slowly toward her. His right hand rose slightly. No one could see which acupoint he pressed, but in an instant, Gao Bixin was unable to move. She opened her mouth but could make no sound, and her gaze was filled with consuming terror. The cone-shaped blade had no cutting edge — and yet it was incomparably sharp. Jiang Haoran raised the blade and drew it in an arc. Before it even touched skin, her chest had already been parted open. He had sealed her acupoints in advance, so the bleeding was not excessive. Only a single thread of red, no thicker than a little finger, flowed down her pale-coloured robes.
Jiang Haoran extended two fingers, suffused with golden light, and reached into Gao Bixin’s chest without resistance. Ye Tian had already turned her face away, unable to watch any further.
He Bang sat atop the large boulder, idly swinging her feet. She even found it in herself to make conversation. “Your precision with a blade is still as fine as ever.”
Jiang Haoran said nothing. The cone-shaped blade shifted with the smallest movement, and Gao Bixin’s eyes bulged as if they might burst from their sockets. Jiang Haoran’s two fingers flashed like lightning — in and out in an instant — then immediately applied a specially prepared medicinal salve to stanch the bleeding. He Bang hopped forward brightly, all the appearance of cheerful innocence. “This is a muscle-regenerating and bone-mending ointment I prepared myself. Give it a try on her — it is quite excellent.”
Jiang Haoran accepted the ointment. He Bang had already reached out and taken back the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence with one hand.
Everyone present, Rong Chen Zi included, was seeing this creation of heaven and earth for the first time. The moment the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence emerged, the winds across Changgang Mountain suddenly fell quiet — as though waiting for a new command from their master.
It was not at all the pearl-like form they had imagined. Instead it was long and slender as silk thread, at one moment coalescing and the next dispersing, seeming almost without form. Its colour shifted with everything around it — in sunlight it gleamed gold, in water it shimmered like the faint ripple of deep green, the whole of it like a flowing stream of light. He Bang slowly absorbed it into her own heart and soul while Jiang Haoran applied the medicine to Gao Bixin.
Even Rong Chen Zi was surprised that he dared use He Bang’s medicine — but its effects were genuinely remarkable, stemming the bleeding in no time at all. He Bang opened her eyes. They were wide and bright, luminous and captivating. “Gao Bixin — from this point on, I no longer hate you!”
She skipped inside to help Zhuang Shaoqin kill the Three-Eyed Snake. Rong Chen Zi and Jiang Haoran exchanged a glance. Jiang Haoran let out a quiet sigh and said nothing more.
The crevices in Changgang Mountain’s rock face had already been pried open. What had once been the place where the Mingshe was sealed had become a deep pit sunken more than two zhang below. Rong Chen Zi cast his gaze down and finally understood why Jiang Haoran could not abandon the Mingshe — the Jiang household had deployed a great number of disciples, and the casualties had far exceeded what anyone had imagined. Jiang Haoran had not even known there were two Mingshes within the seal.
And so he could not retreat. They had paid too great a price to walk away with nothing.
With the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence restored to her, wind and water bolstered one another, and He Bang’s original water-based techniques were like a tiger with wings added. Moreover, she had over four thousand years of cultivation behind her — those of Gao Bixin’s level could not begin to compare. Jiang Haoran, Rong Chen Zi, the great master Jiaye, and several of the Jiang household’s more capable martial cultivators held the front line in close combat against the Mingshe. Master Xingzhi, Zhuang Shaoqin, Ye Tian, and the others held the middle ground. The Jiang household disciples were all of the water clan — some stored water, while others launched ranged attacks on the Mingshe alongside He Bang.
He Bang unleashed the Wind Splitting Technique once more. The onlookers saw only a great mass of water surge forward. The female Mingshe spat fire to melt it, but then a black, tornado-like wind body came howling in with savage force. The female Mingshe could not evade — all her own flames were swept back upon herself. In her panic she tried to meet it with her tail, but a blast of fierce wind caught it and twisted it apart like a wrung bamboo pole. She let out a frenzied cry, seemingly wanting to retreat.
But the iron chain at her midsection had not yet fully broken free, and the seal still held. She could only thrash about on the ground — and He Bang’s second wave of attack was already upon her. Wind howling with water, the Mingshe’s flames could offer no resistance whatsoever. Even the venom she spewed was captured and flung back directly at her. Jiang Haoran was inwardly shaken — and even Rong Chen Zi felt a considerable jolt. Would she come to kill the Mingshe, or was she merely coveting the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence?
The battle was fierce, and he would not allow himself to dwell on such thoughts. He focused on deflecting the Mingshe’s attacks.
Seeing she could make no headway against He Bang, the Mingshe opened her great maw, intending to swallow everyone before her in one bite. Without warning, He Bang sent her third mass of wind and water surging forth. The gale poured directly into the Mingshe’s open mouth. She had already been gravely wounded by Rong Chen Zi and the others before, and her power was a shadow of what it had been. Now, with fierce wind raging inside her body and cutting through her like a thousand blades, she instantly vomited a great spray of blood. Her massive body collapsed and went limp upon the ground, convulsed faintly a few times, and lay still.
He Bang had been hiding behind Zhuang Shaoqin. Only after a long while did she peek out to look. It was then that the assembled group finally understood why high-cultivation internal cultivators were so endlessly coveted and fought over by every faction — with an internal cultivator in the sect, how could anything not be accomplished at half the effort and double the result? And yet precisely because internal cultivators were difficult to nurture, being delicate and fragile, high-cultivation internal cultivators had become as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.
He Bang had reclaimed the Celestial Wind Spirit Essence, and was now gleefully experimenting with it — one moment using the Wind Transmission Technique, the next the Wind Splitting Technique, even advancing her water-based techniques by several levels in the process. She waved her hands and feet about in delight.
Yet, as the saying goes, great joy begets great sorrow. Seeing the female Mingshe fall, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief — even He Bang drifted slightly forward to admire her own handiwork. Then, without warning, the male Mingshe within the sealed pit suddenly surged upward — the wind-based techniques that had destroyed the seal on the female Mingshe had also broken the barrier containing both snakes.
Everyone was caught completely off guard. The moment the male Mingshe broke free, he unleashed a blast of malevolent energy ten-thousand years in the making. Everyone else raised their guard in time — but He Bang knew something was wrong. Too slow to cast her technique, she instinctively threw herself toward Rong Chen Zi. At the most critical moment, Rong Chen Zi spun around, grabbed Ye Tian, and rolled hard to one side to evade. Zhuang Shaoqin, instinctively believing Rong Chen Zi would protect He Bang, also grabbed Ye Tian — and the three of them tumbled into a heap, barely escaping the ten-thousand-year-old malevolent blast.
“Zhiguan!” He Bang reached out her hand — and touched nothing but a stretch of cold, slick snake blood.
Within the dense fog, a dull thud rang out. The Mingshe lunged directly at He Bang, his tail sweeping out from a distance and coiling around her, dragging her away into a cave.
When Rong Chen Zi had cleared the malevolent energy away, his own expression had gone pale — though he had repeatedly told himself to trust He Bang, deep within his subconscious, he had still harboured doubt. So when danger came at its most critical moment, he had chosen to protect his own loved ones, and abandoned her.
Zhuang Shaoqin and Ye Tian stood in silence, watching him. No one said anything. In the pit more than two zhang deep, the female Mingshe’s blood had already risen above ankle level. The male Mingshe had vanished.
Rong Chen Zi slowly clenched both fists. His lower lip was bitten until it bled.
Jiang Haoran also noticed something was wrong. “Where has Panpan gone?” He caught sight of Rong Chen Zi still holding Ye Tian and suddenly erupted in fury. “Rong Chen Zi! Where is Panpan?!”
Rong Chen Zi bowed his head. He truly was not cut out to be a martial cultivator. A martial cultivator, under any circumstance, would think only of their internal cultivator. Even if those dying around him were his closest kin and dearest friends, he would still know who was the most vital of all. He Bang had made a mistake — her mistake was in trusting him too completely. Had she gone to Jiang Haoran’s side, Jiang Haoran would certainly never have abandoned her.
He had always felt that Jiang Haoran deserved to lose He Bang. Only now did he understand how deeply mistaken he had been. The Mingshe had schemed and plotted all of this — none of it had been for anything except to deal with He Bang. Perhaps He Bang had truly made some kind of deal with it, but the two of them were long since no longer allies.
Within the female Mingshe’s body there were indeed many ancient treasures. Even without the Celestial Water Spirit Essence, it would have been more than enough to delight a Jiang household that had already lost more than ten disciples. But at this moment, neither Jiang Haoran nor Rong Chen Zi had a shred of joy in them — she was such a soft and delicate soul. Fallen into the Mingshe’s clutches like that, how could she survive?
Rong Chen Zi led his disciples through the Li Family Settlement once more in a thorough search — so meticulous that not even a mouse hole was overlooked. Zhuang Shaoqin ordered his forces to comb through Lingxia Town with a thousand-strong military unit, while Jiang Haoran went to see the Dragon King, and with permission granted, led the water division to search through the Sea Clan of Lingxia Town. After several days, they came up empty-handed.
The Mingshe seemed to have vanished entirely.
Rong Chen Zi grew quieter and quieter with each passing day.
When He Bang woke, she found herself inside a pot. Yes, a pitch-black pot. She poked her head out of her shell — all around her was perfect silence, and not a single sound could be heard. The surrounding walls were made of earth, dry enough to have cracked apart in places. Though she had always rather liked pots, being inside one herself was a decidedly unpleasant sensation. She extended her foot-like appendages, intending to climb out, but the moment her foot touched the surface, there came a sharp hiss. She hurriedly drew it back, only then noticing that the pot had been heated until it glowed red.
He Bang panicked. If she received no water to replenish her moisture, her shell would eventually be burned through — and then what would she do?
She thought to gather her last reserves of water to escape using her water evasion technique, but the space had clearly been sealed with a formation array, the barrier specifically designed to counter water and wind-based techniques. She attempted her techniques several times, but they were completely without effect. Her moisture was draining faster and faster. She could not step down onto the surface below, and could only weep softly in despair.
She cried for a while, and when nobody came, she began shifting her shell this way and that, desperate to climb out of the glowing-red iron pot. The pot was large and deep, and the fire beneath it burned ever hotter. With no one to turn to, He Bang sat in the middle of the pot and wept aloud.