Chapter 321: Holding On by a Thread

Inside the golden basin, the tiny flood dragon swam faster and faster, growing larger and larger.

The Red General simply waited. His expression did not change, not even when the creature’s coiling body swelled so large that the basin could barely contain it. Only when it reached its limit did he tap the rim twice and lift a finger toward the sky. “Go!”

The flood dragon had been straining for this moment. It shot upward, bursting from the basin in a spiral of cloud and fog, soaring straight into the heavens.

Once free of the vessel, its body expanded with the wind. By the time it leveled off above the mountains, its length exceeded fifty meters from head to tail.

However, the flood dragon was not the only thing that had grown. The clouds that surged after it thickened as they were dragged upward as if by invisible threads. A half-clear sky dimmed in a heartbeat, swallowed under churning storm clouds.

The giant flood dragon writhed through the gloomy sky, and wherever its body passed, the clouds compressed downward. They darkened, tightened, then lowered until it seemed they might brush the mountaintop.

The Red General ordered everyone back another thirty-odd meters before he stretched his fingers and tapped the water in the basin once more. He tapped the water lightly, like a dragonfly touching a pond.

His taps into the water within the basin echoed in the sky above.

From the storm clouds above came a crack of thunder, then another, and another. These booms were deep, rolling blasts that shook the ridgelines.

With a flick of his sleeve, he summoned clouds and rain. With a tap of his finger, he unleashed lightning from the very heavens.

Lightning flared inside the roiling canopy of clouds, illuminating the enormous shadow of the flood dragon twisting and swimming within.

Following that, the rain came pouring down from the skies.

The sand leopard yelped and sprang back several meters, terrified of a single drop touching its fur.

Yet the rainfall never reached the onlookers. Although the storm loomed vast and oppressive, its rain band was narrow, falling only over the mountain crest, nowhere else.

Only the Red General stood in its center, rain drenching him from head to toe. Everyone else felt not even a single drop of water fall on them.

The falling raindrops glimmered strangely red. Soldiers lowered their gazes and saw the snow on the ground melting as the droplets made contact. Beneath it, lichen and hard winter grass turned from yellow to ashen gray, then rotted outright.

Even the two pine trees by the mine entrance, stalwart enough to survive blistering heat and brutal cold, shed their needles at once. Branches shriveled, bark cracked, and life withered in moments.

Such hardy plants were felled effortlessly by a single shower of red rain.

However, the mountain drank the water as quickly as it fell, absorbing it like parched earth.

The Red General inhaled slowly, raised his head toward the storm above, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Inside the mine.

The patrolmen had withdrawn to the end of a dead-end passage.

This was not a panicked retreat. Instead, it was actually a position He Lingchuan and Xu Chun had deliberately chosen. Searching for an exit meant nothing now. As long as the leader of the underground palace, the ferry-crossing ghostspawn, remained alive, there was no leaving this maze that they had found themselves in.

Their only hope—however faint—was to kill the very ferry-crossing ghostspawn responsible for this maze!

To that end, they chose this narrow branch passage. Here, they only needed to defend one direction. With throughput limited and no need to defend another direction, they could conserve their dwindling strength.

He Lingchuan split the group into inner and outer groups. The outer group consisted of Xu Chun, another patrol guard, Doorboard, and himself. They were responsible for holding the front line and bearing the brunt of the bone puppet army’s assault. Too broad a corridor would scatter their formation; too narrow, and they risked being overrun. Meanwhile, the inner group was composed of Skinny, Willow, and the others. They were responsible for unleashing ranged attacks, supporting the outer group, and guarding the rear. They needed space to maneuver. After all, if the ghostspawn burst from a wall or floor, they needed room to respond instantly.

This passage, narrow at the mouth and wider within, was the best possible terrain to defend. They were able to funnel enemies in while giving their own formation breathing room.

Smashing the bone puppets to pieces did little good. They reassembled within moments. The real strategy was to delay, meaning binding them up, restricting their movement, and buying time.

Xu Chun’s slowness spell was still effective. However, the true key lay in what Duan Xinyu pulled from his bag: a small bottle of seeds, shaped like coffee beans.

Unlike the others, he did not throw them outright. He told everyone to shield him, held the bottle against his chest, turned to face east, and began chanting a prayer.

Then, he closed his eyes and remained completely still.

The ferry-crossing ghostspawn immediately noticed the opening. Twice it attempted to slip past the frontline and ambush him, and twice the entire squad repelled it with desperate force.

Thankfully, the creature lacked the same pulling-through-earth ability its sibling had possessed. If it did, then Duan Xinyu would have been yanked underground long before he finished whatever it was that he was casting or channeling.

Over time, they had learned the faint signs preceding a ghostspawn’s emergence. The ground or stone walls would bulge subtly upward, trembling in a strange, wave-like motion. However, that did not change the fact that it was barely visible, thereby easy to miss in this shadowed, barely lit place.

This served as a confirmation that the ghostspawn’s ability to phase through the underground palace consumed its mother’s energy.

Regardless, the darkness made vigilance punishing. A slight shadow, a stone’s unevenness—anything could mask an incoming attack.

And this ghostspawn, which was the youngest of the lot, was monstrously tough. Its bone armor was so thick that only He Lingchuan’s treasured saber could even bite through it, while even Doorboard’s axe could only crack a plate. Everyone else’s weapons were nearly useless against it.

Worse still, every time it fled into the walls, its wounds healed. When it emerged again, it was as vigorous as at the start of the battle.

If things continued to play out this way, it would grind them to exhaustion long before they could kill it.

Its speed and combat sense also improved with terrifying swiftness. It was not just He Lingchuan benefiting from battle experience; it was apparent that the ghostpsawn was learning even faster.

Even its bone armor evolved. In just fifteen minutes, it had revised its plating twice, tightening its waistline, and reinforcing its chestplate. Doorboard swore that it felt like he was chopping a turtle shell with his axe.

At last, despite their protection, the ferry-crossing ghostspawn’s bone spear slipped through and pierced Duan Xinyu’s back.

The strike was not deep, but it made him shudder violently.

Even then, his chanting did not waver. He Lingchuan, closest to him, heard him invoke “Lady Mitian” several times, meaning that whatever it was that he was casting had some sort of connection with the god protecting Panlong City.

Thankfully, the incantation was short enough. Duan Xinyu finished, exhaled sharply, and hurled the bottle’s contents across the bone puppets’ path.

The seeds hit the ground and sprang to life immediately.

Roots burrowed downward, vines shot up, and leaves unfurled. The seeds’ growth accelerated a hundredfold. In no more than a dozen breaths, an entire forest of tangled vines filled the corridor.

He Lingchuan blinked.

Why does this look familiar?

Then he saw the sharp thorns at the vine tips and remembered.

These were the same plants that covered the outer walls of Panlong City.

He had once mocked the overgrown landscaping of the city wall, but now he realized that none of it was ornamental.

Willow gasped, “Man-eating vines! Where did you get those seeds?”

Such things were tightly controlled, and unauthorized possession was illegal.

Duan Xinyu grimaced and said, “Don’t ask.”

It seemed that the answer would only get him arrested.

Each vine had six tendrils covered in tiny barbed hairs that sensed heat and movement. When prey drew near, the tendrils snapped forward like giant pythons—coiling, injecting poison, and draining blood.

Panlong City planted them along its walls to punish climbing enemies. They feared neither flame nor acid and grew with frightening resilience. Each year, the city spent considerable effort just to keep them from spreading onto the streets.

The bone puppets had no blood to drain, but the vines’ constricting force alone held them fast, trapping them in place.

This was exactly what they needed.

Duan Xinyu, however, was drenched in sweat, panting as though he had fought an hour-long duel. The short incantation had nearly drained him.

“The vitality of the man-eating vines should allow them to hold for about an hour,” he said, swallowing a pill as he panted. “Make it count.”

These were forcibly accelerated plants, meaning that they burned through their own vitality. In other words, they would not last.

Regardless, they bought them an invaluable opportunity to focus entirely on the real threat, which was none other than the ferry-crossing ghostspawn.

Xu Chun gave him a sidelong glance and asked, “How did you survive earlier?”

Everyone else in his squad had died. He alone escaped, but that could not really be said to be something to brag about.

Duan Xinyu hammered a bone puppet into the wall before admitting, “I smeared myself with the blood leaking from the rock walls and climbed to the top of a passage. The bone puppets couldn’t detect me. Then, when ghostspawn ran off to chase you all, I slipped out.”

The ghostspawn’s movements grew ever faster. Thankfully, its attacks were chaotic. It struck from the east, then west, rarely committing to a full kill. Whenever it exposed itself, the patrolmen concentrated all their firepower on it.

But time was firmly on its side. Any danger, and it melted back into the walls or floor. Any injury, and it regenerated fully.

Meanwhile, the patrolmen only grew more and more exhausted.

A long fight had frayed every muscle, every breath. Chests heaved, hands shook.

He Lingchuan still managed to slice off part of its shoulder plate with his saber. But Doorboard’s axe, swung with all his strength, failed to even properly damage its hip bone, leaving only a shallow gouge.

Old strength spent, new strength too slow to rise, fatigue nipped even at him.

And then, the ferry-crossing ghostspawn switched up its tactics, and its attacks doubled in tempo. It turned out that it had been holding back all along. It had merely been dragging them down, wearing them thin.

Even Xu Chun’s slowness spell barely hindered it now.

Despite their best efforts, two more comrades fell—one from He Lingchuan’s group, one from Xu Chun’s. The ghostspawn seized a moment’s opening, and one man was disemboweled before he knew he had been hit, while the other’s head was severed in a single bite.

They were hopeless to rescue, gone from just that opening that had appeared for just a moment.

He Lingchuan’s left eye remained blind, narrowing his field of vision. His swings grew less precise. Sweat ran down his cheeks, each drop burning where green venom still lingered.

The ghostspawn moved so fast now that it left afterimages. How it managed such speed while wearing armor thicker than stone was a mystery best left to nightmares.

He Lingchuan slashed again, intercepting a claw that would have raked across Willow’s back.

This time in the dreamscape, he felt worn from the beginning. It was much unlike his previous visits, where he would arrive alert and brimming with vitality. Perhaps it was the lingering fatigue from the real world—the aftermath of the Han River battle dulling his spirit.

It seemed that while combat here did not drain him in reality, the exhaustion from his waking life could seep into the dreamscape.

The déjà vu struck him like a cold wind. It was like he was back in Xiqing Gorge again, surrounded, outnumbered, and fighting in suffocating darkness with no ally in sight, no hope of dawn.

Everyone here held on grimly. No one dared utter a word of despair. No one dared speak of death. If not for their discipline engraved into their very bones by being a part of Panlong’s military, half of them would have broken long ago.

But where was the victory in this? Would reinforcements come? Could they possibly hold out long enough?

Behind him, Skinny rasped, “Hey, if anyone makes it out... tell my family that I hid the money in—”

His left arm hung uselessly, and his right leg was injured. He could not even turn his body properly. The ghostspawn had speared him in the buttocks earlier, and blood still trickled down his thigh. He was pale and swaying weakly.

He knew, as most of them did, that they were nearly done for.

Willow snapped, “Say it yourself when you get back alive!”

He Lingchuan flicked a glance over his shoulder. “Why stop him? Let him speak. We’ll dig up the stash ourselves and split it. His savings beat all of ours combined.”

Skinny muttered, “I saved that with blood and sweat...” but he did not bring up his dying message again.