Chapter 266: Old Foe, New Encounter

The curses spewing from the man’s mouth were utterly vile, but He Lingchuan only lifted his hand and flipped him a middle finger.

He knew perfectly well that that clean, crippling strike had only landed because Mao Tao’s arrow had forced the man to flinch at the last instant. But in a melee like this, who cared about fairness, ambushes, or honorable duels?

If you could hit, you hit. If there was an opening, you took it.

He felt no guilt whatsoever about winning without honor.

Behind him, Shan Youjun had had his line of sight blocked and never actually saw the moment the arm flew. Naturally, he chalked it all up to Fleeting Life being unnaturally sharp.

To be fair, he was about sixty percent right.

Only He Lingchuan knew the whole truth. Fleeting Life’s Army-Breaker ability had actually triggered.

That was the saber’s most terrifying hidden property. It ignored an enemy’s origin energy and divine technique defenses entirely, carving through as if they were not there and dealing full, unmitigated damage.

The catch was that it almost never happened.

This “almost never” meaning that out of hundreds of swings, perhaps one or two might activate Army-Breaker.

Tonight, he had simply hit the jackpot. One exchange, one trigger.

This Lord Baili really was just incredibly unlucky. All that thick origin energy rolling off his body might as well have been stage smoke. The faint light rippling over his armor had already told He Lingchuan that the man’s military rank was not low.

And Fleeting Life’s first real appearance on a battlefield, after being reforged, had just been baptized in the blood of a frontline enemy commander.

He Lingchuan strongly suspected this was the saber giving him a feature demo.

All around them, his father’s command was rippling through the camp. Voices were picking it up and passing it on, one shout after another,

“Only a hundred Xun Province riders!”

The grain convoy outnumbered that several times over. What was there to be afraid of?

The officers of Xia Province were finally dragging their men into order, forming ranks and starting to push back.

They still had the advantage in numbers. The Xun Province riders, in contrast, had already plunged deep inside the enemy camp. Their charge had no more depth to it, and their fiercest momentum—the shock of that very first impact—had failed to shatter the convoy the way they had hoped. Now, they were about to pay the price of a battle’s age-old rhythm of first assault fierce, second wave weaker, third wave spent.

As the lines steadied and rallied, the origin energy flaring from the Xia Province troops began to change color. It went from a pale green to a deep, rich green.

That color shift meant that morale was rising and condensing like a storm front.

Behind him, He Lingchuan’s own personal guard had already mustered. Led by Shan Youjun and Jiao Tai, they followed in his wake, slashing paths through the chaos.

After weeks of hunting monsters together, this little unit was better at setting ambushes and coordinating flanking attacks than most regular Xia Province troops. Now, those skills finally had a place on the battlefield.

Once the balance between attack and defense flipped, this “surprise strike” from Xun Province might very well find itself wrapped up and eaten whole.

Both sides could see it.

That was why Lord Baili, even bleeding from the shoulder and white-faced from blood loss, still clenched his teeth and kept ordering his men to focus all their strength on killing He Chunhua.

They had already pulled him down from the saddle. His bodyguards were working frantically to staunch the stump and keep him conscious.

To catch a snake, catch its head. Baili knew the principle as well as anyone. Their raid today had slammed straight into a slab of iron, all because the convoy’s real master was still alive.

They had never imagined that the convoy’s true commanding officer would skip the banquet.

They had chopped the snake, but only a sliver off the tip of its tail.

Even He Chunhua had not expected that his whim to travel incognito, inspecting the people’s hardships with his own eyes, would be what saved his life.

If he had gone to that restaurant tonight, he would be scattered in a thousand damp chunks by now.

Both sides were now battering at each other’s hard points.

They wanted him dead. Why would he not want them dead in turn?

He swept his arm in a wide circle and simply threw out a reward, “Kill their general and you’ll earn one hundred taels of gold!”

To respond to the northern front, Xia Province had recently issued a new conscription order and significantly increased soldiers’ pay. But even with their lives tied to their belts, a common soldier could earn at most twenty silvers in a year. In these parts, that already counted as an enviably high wage.

One hundred taels of gold was the equivalent of fifty years’ income.

With that kind of reward on the table, there was no shortage of men ready to turn into tigers. Especially now that their earlier panic was easing. In their eyes, the enemy general, wounded and reeling, suddenly looked less like a threat and more like a walking pile of gleaming gold.

He Lingchuan let out a low hiss. The origin energy cloaking the Xia Province troops shifted again, deep green shading toward blue. It was now so dark that it even seemed to pick up a faint yellow gleam.

Compared to that, poor Lord Baili, whose household coffers were nowhere near as deep, suddenly seemed at a sharp disadvantage.

Just then, something else shifted on the battlefield.

At the rear of the Xia Province lines, atop one of the supply wagons, an ape sat munching an apple.

At first glance, it looked unobtrusive enough. It was a brown-furred ape with a ring of thorny branches wrapped around its neck like a collar, fatter and sturdier than its wild cousins, but nothing special.

But the rock wolf at He Lingchuan’s side suddenly whipped its head around as if it had caught the scent of something it knew. Lu Xin stared straight at the ape and began growling wildly.

Its agitation instantly put He Lingchuan on alert. He followed the wolf’s gaze. To him, most apes in the world looked more or less the same. This one certainly did not have medicine ape Ling Guang’s round, goofy charm.

But that thorn collar on its neck was familiar.

Where have I seen that before?

They were still a fair distance apart. If he could just zoom in a little—

Wait, zoom?

His pupils shrank to pinpoints.

He Lingchuan drew in a breath and shouted at He Chunhua, “Watch out for the ghost ape! It’s behind you!”

The words had barely left his mouth when the ape on the wagon swelled like an inflating wineskin.

In a heartbeat, the creature ballooned from less than shoulder height to a towering giant ape over three meters tall, muscles bulging under its hide like braided cables.

The horse beneath it screamed once. In the same heartbeat, more than a ton of weight came crashing down and simply pancaked the wagon into splinters.

Of course, He Lingchuan recognized it.

This was not just an old acquaintance but an old nightmare. This was the same ape that even the fortune-blessed Grand General of Chariots and Cavalry Ke Jihai had nearly failed to fell. The first enforcer and trump card of the Monster Puppet Master, Dong Rui—the ghost ape.

The last time they had met, He Lingchuan and Ke Jihai had only managed to injure it by combining their strength—well, combining in the sense that He Lingchuan had thrown the walnut boat at it and used that magical artifact to suppress it. Dong Rui had taken the wounded beast and fled. Since then, they had vanished as if swallowed by the earth, no trace of them found, no matter how hard the authorities searched.

Now the ghost ape had come back of its own accord.

The moment it finished transforming, the brute grabbed for the heaviest things within reach—wagons, horses, crates of supplies, even sections of wooden palisade—and began hurling them at He Chunhua.

Throwing massive objects was its innate divine technique. Everything it tossed carried terrifying weight and force. Each piece cut through the air with a thunderous whine, and every throw was disgustingly accurate.

It did not need practice.

It was simply born that way.

He Chunhua stood in the center of over ten men, shielded on all sides by guards. Light flickered around him, this being the result of someone triggering a formation to deflect stray arrows and projectiles. The ghost ape was perhaps twenty meters away. All its throws followed high-curving arcs, picking up momentum on the way down.

Every impact landed with a resounding boom. The ground trembled even several meters from the point of impact.

A few of the carts and wagons it hurled were fully loaded. Grain sacks burst in midair, filling a slice of the camp with a white dust like a sudden, choking snowfall.

Dozens of men packed tightly around He Chunhua had no hope of dodging. In an instant, they vanished under a tangled mass of smashed carts and wagons and flailing horse carcasses.

From where he was, one quick glance told He Lingchuan enough. There was a man beneath one of the flying horses. Only his legs stuck out from under the fallen bulk, twitching faintly.

The camp dissolved into chaos. The Xia Province soldiers nearest the ghost ape recoiled in terror, scattering instead of stepping up. No one wanted to be the one squashed flat by the monster’s next throw.

With the Xia Province’s lines collapsing, the Xun Province riders roared with joy. Lord Baili, suddenly invigorated despite his missing arm and bloodless cheeks, barked orders to press the attack on the grain convoy.

Opportunities like this came and went in the blink of an eye. Only an idiot would fail to see it.

He Lingchuan’s scalp was crawling, but panic would not help anyone now.

“Go find Dong Rui and tear him apart!” he snapped to the rock wolf.

Then he kicked his mount’s flanks and charged toward the heap of wreckage where his father had been.

Behind him, a volley of arrows arced up from the Xia Province ranks and rained down on the ghost ape. No one dared go near it, but shooting from afar was still safe enough.

The ghost ape ignored them entirely. Bone armor grew over its hide as naturally as bark over a tree. Common arrows snapped on that shell like dry twigs. All it had to do was keep one hand free to shield its eyes.

What truly chilled the soldiers was that every arrow they loosed had been infused with origin energy. Against ordinary monsters, that gave their shots extra penetrating force, force enough to pierce or even break armor. Yet on this giant ape, the effect seemed to vanish.

As the men recoiled from its power, the ghost ape did not even bother with its usual chest-beating display. Two great leaps took it into the very heart of the battlefield. It raised both iron fists high, ready to bring them smashing down onto the pile of rubble covering He Chunhua and the others.

Whether the governor-general was already dead or not, it would pound the whole area into meat paste for good measure.

Looking at the sheer mass of its shoulders and arms, no one doubted its punching power.

Even if everyone under that ruin were still breathing, a few blows would turn them into a single flattened smear.

At that instant, one of the wagons in the wreckage shifted.

It suddenly shot upward like a kicked stool and smashed straight into the ghost ape’s face. Wood exploded in every direction, planks and shards flying.

𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Clearly, someone beneath had hit it hard enough to send it flying.

For a split second, the giant ape reeled, stunned.

With the wagon gone, He Lingchuan finally got a clear view of what lay underneath.

A thin, shimmering curtain of light enclosed the very center of the crushed circle, forming a half-dome barrier. Inside it, he saw his father, two of the closest bodyguards, and several disciples of Cloud-Piercing Pavilion, and even Elder Liang of Cloud-Piercing Pavilion himself.

Seizing the moment when the ghost ape flinched and squeezed its eyes shut, Elder Liang vaulted up, then he thrust out a palm and struck the ghost ape square in the middle of its brow!

Even with a small gap of distance between them, the timing and courage of the move made something in He Lingchuan want to cheer. That strike was a work of genius—a perfect, razor-thin opportunity, seized and driven home.

This was the kind of blow that turned defeats around.

Then, just as quickly, his expression fell.

Because the ghost ape just shook its head, as if clearing a haze, then glared down at Elder Liang and He Chunhua and roared in fury. It lifted one enormous hand and slapped down at them again.

Did Elder Liang just... knock some dust off its face?

Why didn’t he draw a weapon?

Even Elder Liang looked faintly surprised, as if he, too, had misjudged just how thick the monster’s skin—and skull—were. However, He Lingchuan noticed something else. Right where Elder Liang’s palm had landed, which was dead center on the ape’s forehead, a single red character had appeared, shining like a brand.

Compared to the giant ape’s massive frame, the mark was tiny.

Luckily, he had the sort of eyesight needed to put an arrow through a target at range and to throw a knife into a gap between armor plates, or he might have missed it entirely. Narrowed focus picked out the strokes:

The character was “滞 (Slow/Sluggish).”

It was written in the ancient script of immortals, the lines glowing and flowing like liquid mercury.

The moment the character lit up, the ghost ape’s movement slowed by a beat, maybe even two beats. That furious, down-swinging palm looked almost like a slow-motion display.

It roared in rage, muscles bunching thicker around its frame. Every fiber of its body screamed forward, faster, yet it still could not quite pick up speed.

The glowing red character on its brow flared brighter, clearly straining to hold it back.

He Lingchuan’s mind flashed back to the Panlong Illusion Realm, back to the “heavenly god” that had possessed Nian Songyu and the Word-Spirit Spell it had used then.

The effect was eerily similar. Both were techniques that used words themselves as weapons, twisting reality around the command embedded in a single word.

But Elder Liang’s version did not seem to be tearing his own body apart the way that god’s had. At least for now, he moved freely enough, dragging He Chunhua out of the ghost ape’s immediate reach with quick, steady steps.

From what He Lingchuan could see, his father seemed largely unharmed. That meant his own shout of warning had gotten there in time, and Elder Liang had triggered the protective barrier before the first barrage landed.

Straightening his slightly askew hat, He Chunhua glared around at the panicking soldiers. “What are you panicking for?! The rest of you, go claim your reward! Elder Liang, you and your disciples hold the ghost ape in place and kill it!”