But as he drew his gaze back, he suddenly paused-he had not seen Zhu Gaoyang, but he had noticed the posture of the two purple-robed men.
They seemed to be watching for danger outside the valley too.
Pei Ye's heart sank. What did that mean? Did they also know Zhu Gaoyang was coming?
At this final step, with the "ultimate weapon" the Torchworld Cult had spent who knew how long plotting about to be born, vigilance was only natural. But their vigilance was far too specifically directed, as though they knew someone was coming to disrupt things at this exact time and place.
Hadn't Zhang Siche only told me... wait, Silent Sound Transmission!
Pei Ye's thoughts stopped there.
Could a top grandmaster intercept Silent Sound Transmission?
Had everything Zhang Siche transmitted in the grotto been overheard?
Pei Ye's heart sank completely.
Just then, a transmitted voice rang in his ears. "Activate it, quick! What you're holding isn't actually a defensive talisman-it's a Teleportation Talisman!"
Fuck, he's still transmitting!
Pei Ye's heart and lungs seemed to stop. Confirming his suspicion, the instant that transmission reached his ears, both purple-robed men whipped their heads around and fixed their eyes on him.
The next instant, they were right in front of him.
His hair stood on end. With no time to think, Pei Ye immediately poured true qi into the iron talisman and activated it.
Suddenly, everything beside Pei Ye's ears fell silent.
The surrounding air seemed to have been emptied in an instant, leaving Pei Ye feeling almost suffocated.
It was like an Oil Seller floating on a quiet little puddle, only to have a basin of water suddenly dumped over its head.
At the center of it all, Pei Ye was that Oil Seller.
The world overturned in a storm of wind and rain. Pei Ye was instantly knocked to the ground, while the two purple-robed men were swept away like two scraps of purple cloth tossed by a gale.
Violent, immense, densely packed Sword Qi erupted with him at its center, shredding the entire site in an instant.
Pei Ye's first thought was: So that was how the mountain got taken apart.
His second thought was: Defensive talisman, my ass! Teleportation Talisman, my ass!
So I was supposed to play Zhu Gaoyang!
Then where was the real Zhu Gaoyang?
As that thought arose in Pei Ye's mind, profound qi gathered like clouds around Zhang Siche.
Those clouds were drawn into fine threads, which then wound around him, enclosing him like a lantern woven from silk.
"Spirit illuminates the world; drifting dust knows no bounds."
A clear, graceful voice rang out. Zhang Siche formed a seal with one hand, his posture expansive and his expression solemn, like a Celestial Person descending into the world.
Everything became clear at that moment. Pei Ye had drawn everyone's attention, while the man playing dead had gained the opportunity to cast his art.
Zhu Gaoyang!
Zhu Gaoyang!
It wasn't that he hadn't had time to take Zhang Siche away. He had teleported the real Zhang Siche out, then stayed behind disguised as him!
Whatever Pei Ye was thinking now, Zhu Gaoyang had long since chosen his target.
His next move was aimed at Qiongqi.
The most essential thing to the Torchworld Cult had never been the Cocoon of Light, even if this final victor had been built upon hundreds of lives over fifty years.
Nourishment and a place to incubate could always be replaced or improvised. Only the seed was unique.
Zhu Gaoyang was not seeking to kill Qiongqi here-that was impossible anyway. He intended to take Qiongqi away with his divine art, then kill him at his leisure.
When he had told Pei Ye in the grotto that he lacked preparation time and might not be able to take a third person, that had indeed been the honest truth.
It was just that the one ahead of Pei Ye was not "Zhang Siche," but Qiongqi.
So he had both tricked Pei Ye and not quite tricked him. Although he had indeed used Pei Ye to draw attention, if Pei Ye truly seized this chance to escape, the Torchworld Cult's pursuit afterward would surely focus on Zhu Gaoyang, who had taken Qiongqi away, rather than Pei Ye.
At the very least, the two purple-robed men would not be involved.
Drawn toward Pei Ye and forced back by the Sword Qi, the purple-robed men had no time to come to Qiongqi's aid. Zhu Gaoyang had already stepped in front of Qiongqi and reached for his mane, ready to take him away.
In that instant, Zhu Gaoyang fully displayed the oppressive might of a Crane List grandmaster. Qiongqi was not entirely incapable of resistance, but there was no way he could avoid the touch of Zhu Gaoyang's hand.
And once taken away and forced into a one-on-one fight, Qiongqi would be a cut below Zhu Gaoyang in sheer strength.
Qiongqi's tiger eyes widened. At this hair's-breadth moment, he suddenly opened his great mouth and spat out a brilliantly glowing bead-like object. It stretched into a beam of light and shot straight toward Pei Ye's abdomen.
Zhu Gaoyang reacted with extraordinary speed, immediately turning at a sharp angle to pursue it.
Pei Ye had no time to react at all. That bead-like thing, seemingly flesh and iron at once, struck his abdomen. Pain followed as the Cocoon of Light inside eagerly slit open his belly to welcome it in.
Pei Ye had only just gritted his teeth and lowered his head to look, with two Dark Blue tentacles still flailing outside his belly, when the wind before him abruptly tightened. He looked up to find Zhu Gaoyang's tall figure already standing in front of him.
Zhu Gaoyang had intended to lure the purple-robed men close to Pei Ye, leaving Qiongqi temporarily without support so he could take him away.
But the situation had changed abruptly. The seed and the Cocoon of Light were now both inside Pei Ye. To take Pei Ye away instead, he had no choice but to expose his back to the two purple-robed men.
A heavy palm strike slammed into his back. He spat out a great mouthful of crimson blood, while a sword tip wreathed in profound qi pierced through his chest.
But the next moment, his strong hand had settled on Pei Ye's shoulder. Profound qi scattered like fireworks, and the two vanished together.
The peaks of the Firewood-Cang Mountains towered steeply, like pillars reaching into heaven.
The sky was a gradient: at the farthest eastern edge lay a mass of white, bordered by a stretch of dim blue, then gray farther out, before deepening into a black curtain.
When praising the height and grandeur of mountains, people loved to describe them as piercing the blue heavens or looking down upon the clouds. Yet when praising the heavens' height, they never compared them to mountains.
Because the heavens truly were higher than every mountain.
Humanity could hardly be blamed for this. Limited by their field of view, those offering such descriptions usually looked upward from below at these great pillars that seemed to reach straight into the clouds.
People could not stand at the heavens' vantage point and look down on these little clods of earth, so the heavens naturally forgave these even smaller beings for overstepping their bounds while praising other small things.
Within this divine art, however, Pei Ye seemed to experience the heavens' perspective for a brief instant.
Countless mountains and ravines, impassable barriers to mortals, were crossed in a single step, no more than little balls of mud.
But that lofty, distant experience lasted only an instant. The next moment, dense branches and leaves struck his body. The world spun, and a jumble of scraping, snapping branches, falling leaves, and startled night birds rose around him.
Then something struck his back violently. Pei Ye realized he had hit the ground, but immediately afterward came an almost vertical slope, and he slid down through the darkness, dazed and disoriented.
Pei Ye had no idea whether below him lay a ten-foot earthen slope or a thousand-foot cliff. He clawed wildly at his surroundings for purchase, anxiety surging through him. Fine, I couldn't right myself in time, but you're a grandmaster, Zhu Gaoyang. Why aren't you giving me a hand?
Then he caught a limp arm.
I hope everyone will try to keep reading the latest updates over the next few days.
Chapter 49: The Vast Wilderness
Even as alarm struck his heart, Pei Ye's other hand finally caught hold of a rock, while the arm in his first hand continued to slip limply downward.
Pei Ye stopped his descent, gathered his strength, and leaped, carrying the body in his grasp back up the slope.
Laying the man flat on the ground, Pei Ye felt his way along the arm. He had only just reached the mouth and nose when that mouth said weakly, "Stop feeling around. I'm alive."
Pei Ye breathed a sigh of relief and looked around. Everything was dim, the shadows indistinct, so he thought of making a fire to examine Zhu Gaoyang's injuries.
As soon as that thought arose, a dark-blue flame ignited in his hand with a whoomph.
Pei Ye stared blankly for a moment, then extended his hand and left it floating in the air before bending down to help Zhu Gaoyang.
Zhu Gaoyang's gray robe was soaked through with blood. Pei Ye helped him remove his upper garment, then, following his instructions, took a bottle of pills from inside his abdominal cavity-if circumstances had allowed, Pei Ye would dearly have liked to stick his head in and see what else was stored in there.
After swallowing a pill, Zhu Gaoyang's complexion improved a little, and his true qi stopped the blood flowing from his wounds.
"Feeling better?"
Zhu Gaoyang nodded. Raising a hand, he tore the disguise from his face, revealing features that were pale, slightly breathless, and excessively handsome.
His face was dashing and well-proportioned. The unruly, irrepressible air belonging to Zhang Siche had vanished completely, replaced by composure bordering on solemnity.
"Let's look at you first," he said, staring at Pei Ye's belly. "How does it feel now?"
Pei Ye checked himself and frowned. "It doesn't feel like anything. I can still control those liquids as usual, but the Cocoon of Light seems to have gone quiet. Oh, and there's this flame. I couldn't do that before."
"It's incubating," Zhu Gaoyang said, coughing up a mouthful of blood. "This ability to produce flames is probably some of its power leaking out. As incubation progresses, you should gradually develop other abilities, just like that Qiongqi-we can test that guess of mine over the time ahead."
"Incubating..."
"It shouldn't have needed this step originally," Zhu Gaoyang said. "Remember the bead floating above the fire? The Cocoon of Light provided a place to incubate, while that bead supplied an enormous amount of energy. That should have allowed it to complete this stage quickly."
"Since it didn't use that bead, how long will it take to hatch?"
"I don't know. As time passes, you should be able to feel it awakening yourself."
"What happens after it hatches? Will it turn me into that kind of monster?"
"How would I know?" Zhu Gaoyang gave a faint, bitter smile. "I don't even know what it actually is. It looks like a Dantian Seed, but what Dantian Seed is this bizarre?"
Pei Ye silently rubbed his belly. After the seed had burrowed inside, the Cocoon of Light in his abdomen seemed to have begun operating quietly. Those clawing, flailing tentacles seemed unlikely to appear again.
The seed was developing inside it, but Pei Ye felt nothing particularly distinct, and the seed did not respond to his attempts to activate it.
For a normal Dantian Seed to sprout, aside from certain secret methods, one had to train and temper the body. Once blood and qi were abundant enough, they would naturally stimulate it to break out of its seed shell and produce qi.
Pei Ye had long since reached that standard. If there had been a normal seed in his abdomen now, he should already have been able to stimulate it into sprouting.
But that was not the case. Rather than a plant's seed, it was more like an animal's egg. It did not germinate in response to sunlight and rain from the outside world, but had its own incubation cycle.
No matter how abundant his blood and qi, they had nothing to do with it. It would only break its shell once it had absorbed enough of the nutrients it needed.
"Then what do we do?" Pei Ye asked.
"Proceed as planned." Zhu Gaoyang sighed. "If I'd brought Qiongqi, I would have killed him, cut out this seed, and taken it back to the Immortal Platform. Since I've brought you instead, I'll just take you back."
"Thank you for sparing my life."
"Ha-ha." Zhu Gaoyang's laugh was bright and warm. "I'll still need you to carry me."
He lay sprawled on the ground, not moving a muscle.
Before you continue