Borrowing Strength from All Sides

Nanhua County town.

Rolling thunder often rumbled through the sky. By all reason, there should have been no thunder in winter, much less on clear days, yet thunder echoed through the clouds day and night without cease, leaving people deeply unsettled. Everyone thought some great calamity was about to occur.

Swallow had originally thought that after returning from the mountains, he would likely make another trip or two there.

By his reckoning, since the Pingzhou Mountain God knew why his teacher had come and had even invited him as a guest, that in itself revealed an inclination. Yet this matter was of utmost importance. Even if the Pingzhou Mountain God was violent and combative by nature, and his resentment and fear of the Heavenly Palace were enough to make him agree to help his teacher without a second thought, other matters still needed discussion—what exactly his teacher intended to do, how they would fight, how they would win, and what benefits the Pingzhou Mountain God could gain after victory.

Yet his teacher had not summoned him to go.

Perhaps the gods in the heavens had been pressing ever more urgently and watching ever more closely, so his teacher felt his cultivation was too low and did not wish to send him into danger. Or perhaps he had already spoken with the Pingzhou Mountain God in dreams, or the two had long shared an understanding and needed no discussion at all. Perhaps the Pingzhou Mountain God was simply so hot-tempered that he cared about nothing else and only wanted to fight the Heavenly Palace.

Swallow could not figure it out.

But at noon, as he stood atop the inn roof, drowsy beneath the warm sun, he had only to narrow his eyes slightly before an ancestral deity came to him in