Chapter 696
Chapter 696
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>Translator: Ryuma
>Chapter: 696
>Chapter Title: Natural Disaster
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In the chaotic battlefield, just as Li Huowang was momentarily baffled about what the freed Dragon Vein intended to do, he saw it shouting excitedly at the surrounding battlefield.
“Run! Run away!! This is a trap!! The Dharma Cult wants to use the Dragon Vein as bait to catch you all in one fell swoop!!”
No sooner had the words fallen than deafening roars came from who-knows-where, and the ground began to tremble violently.
The open ground at the center of Cloud Marsh shook especially fiercely, as if the entire fortress—or rather, the entire surface—had come alive.
It turned out that destroying the Dragon Vein was just a feint. The Dharma Cult didn’t merely want to destroy the Dragon Vein; they wanted to use it as an excuse to wipe out everyone from the Celestial Bureau!
And at that moment, the sky suddenly darkened. A natural disaster had struck.
When he sensed the gaze from the heavens fixed dead on him, a bead of cold sweat slid down his face. Li Huowang knew they were in deep trouble.
He had thought that no matter how many experts the Dharma Cult threw at them, they couldn’t possibly stand against three Celestial Bureau heads plus the top elites of the Heavenly Monitoring Division.
Even if there was an ambush, he and Bai Lingmiao could still escape without issue. But no one had anticipated that Yu’er God would act directly!!
This wasn’t the Dharma Cult’s scheme! It was Yu’er God’s scheme! To clear the obstacles for its descent, it was pulling out all the stops.
Li Huowang knew Yu’er God couldn’t descend just yet, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t make other moves. Having personally set the ambush, what followed was sure to be major trouble.
“Go! Miao, pull back now!” Peng Longteng suddenly appeared beside Li Huowang, grabbed him with one hand, and hurled him toward the distant marshland.
As a hair-raising crane cry echoed from far in the sky, the dry ground of Cloud Marsh trembled even more violently.
Suddenly, fangs like stone pillars rose from the surrounding mud, blocking Li Huowang’s path midair. Before he could veer away, one massive spike after another rose around the entire fortress.
The spikes interlocked amid the violent shaking and snapped shut with a jolt, forming a mouth as vast as a mountain peak that swallowed the fortress at Cloud Marsh’s center whole.
As they plunged into pitch blackness, everything around them fell silent in an instant.
When Xuan Pin’s hand summoned a sun to illuminate their surroundings, the crowd burst out with a boom, and the clashing sides could no longer focus on the fight—they scattered in all directions.
The panic on their faces was genuine. Clearly, the Dharma Cult followers hadn’t been informed this was a trap.
With things as they were, Li Huowang could only force himself to stay calm. He walked over to Xuan Pin and asked,
“What trick did Yu’er God pull? Whose stomach are we in right now?”
Xuan Pin gave a succinct answer to Li Huowang’s question. “Earth Dragon.”
“What? A real Earth Dragon exists?” Li Huowang’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. He’d always thought “Earth Dragon turning over” was just a euphemism for earthquakes, but he never imagined the thing actually existed!
The dim surroundings began to tremble slowly. Clearly, the Earth Dragon was burrowing into the earth, and deeper by the second. If they didn’t find a way out soon, they never would!
With that in mind, Li Huowang immediately headed toward the side, determined to claw his way out of this so-called Earth Dragon even if he had to tear it apart.
Li Huowang quickly reached the edge and pressed his hand against the wall, hard as iron. Under his control, it swiftly melted into a large gap.
Though incredibly tough, it could be breached. But before Li Huowang could continue, something unexpected happened. His body began to itch. He reached toward the wound on his abdomen and pulled out several wriggling worms.
Staring at the green worms, Li Huowang suddenly recalled those human figures he’d seen inside Cloud Marsh before.
“Dad, there are so many bugs in your belly, and more keep coming. I’ll throw them all out.”
Li Sui’s tentacles kept hurling the worms from Li Huowang’s stomach, but when he saw worms surging beneath the smooth skin of Li Sui’s tentacles, his heart sank.
The Earth Dragon was digesting them. Not just the people—Li Sui was being digested too.
What made his expression turn utterly grim was that this digestion wasn’t limited to their insides; it was happening on the outside as well.
“Aaah!!” Lv Xiucai let out a scream of agony. Li Huowang whipped around to see all sorts of chaotic evils emerging from his shadow, wrapped in black smoke.
Inside the Earth Dragon’s belly, everyone’s shadow had become an unclosable door, endlessly summoning evils.
These evils weren’t particularly strong—about on par with a Wandering Lord—but there were infinitely many of them. No matter how many they killed, more kept coming.
“Xuan Pin! Do something!” Li Huowang shouted at the Great Liang Celestial Bureau head nearby.
“Sorry, I can’t. I escaped before the Earth Dragon’s mouth closed. What’s beside you is just my illusion.” With that, Xuan Pin’s body began to melt away.
“What did you say!!” Li Huowang stared at him in disbelief.
“The cunning rabbit has three burrows. Since I came to Later Shu to save the Dragon Vein, I naturally prepared contingencies. What, don’t tell me you didn’t.”
Li Huowang reached into his own stomach and pulled out a palm-sized human skin that no one had noticed. He gritted his teeth—of course he had a contingency.
While they’d been traveling, he’d secretly peeled off two layers of his own skin to craft two life-saving talismans—one for himself, one for Bai Lingmiao. But in this situation, his contingency was utterly useless!!
Li Huowang quickly scanned his surroundings and saw that aside from Xuan Pin, the Later Shu Celestial Bureau altar leader had fled too, along with quite a few others.
The one silver lining was that the Si Qi Celestial Bureau head, Zheng Boqiao, hadn’t escaped. His face was ashen as he eyed their surroundings, seemingly calculating something. Whatever contingency he’d prepared hadn’t gotten him out either.
“No worries. Just hold on a bit. The me outside is definitely working on getting you out. Don’t doubt I’d abandon you—the two Dragon Veins are here too.”
“Hold on? You think we can afford to wait right now?!” Li Huowang slashed apart the evils charging at him with his sword and jabbed a finger at the chaos before them as he demanded.
In that short time, the swarming evils had crammed the space. Plenty of those with weaker cultivation had already fallen to the internal worms and the evils, making the situation extremely dire.
“Don’t panic. The me outside is definitely figuring something out. Besides, you’re not that easy to kill.” With those words, Xuan Pin’s body fully melted away.
And at that moment, Li Sui’s voice emerged in Li Huowang’s mind. For the first time, it carried fear and terror.
“Dad, bugs are coming out in my belly too. They’re eating my flesh. Dad, am I going to die?”
(End of chapter)