Chapter 152 (Patreon)

“Just what is going on here!?” Pan Gong thundered.

“They’re traitors,” Lu Aotian snarled.

Chen Haoran pointed his sword at him. “You were trying to kill my friend!”

Lu Aotian ripped off the ragged remains of his uniform. “He’s a Black Bone Shaman. He worked together with the rebels to draw me into a trap.”

“You were the one hunting me for treasure!” Xie Jin accused. “It was a coincidence we ran into them!”

“The rebels were looking for the shaman Pan Gong. They knew who he was. The whole tribe are traitors.”

“Bastard!” Xie Jin yelled, the Beetle Gu pulsing to match his anger.

“Insolent!” A tiger of Liquid Qi rose from Lu Aotian.

“I can confirm Captain Lu’s suspicions,” Six-Eyes interrupted. “I spotted another Black Bone Shaman in the rebel’s fortress just now.”

Oh, hell no. If that was how Six-Eyes wanted to play it. “You can’t believe a word out of that guy’s mouth,” Chen Haoran said. “He helped cover up the array map being tampered with!”

“Enough!” Pan Gong bellowed. He breathed heavily out his nose and stared at Chen Haoran. Then past him. “Where are the other soldiers who were here?”

“They were killed while attempting to assist Captain Lu,” Six-Eyes reported.

“And what were you doing during all of this?” Pan Gong said with a heavy tone.

“I had to focus on defense,” Six-Eyes lied as naturally as he breathed. “There was a formidable archer on the pyramid targeting us.”

Pan Gong grunted. The look on his face showed how suspicious he was of Six-Eyes’s words. He brushed past him and Lu Aotian both and began taking large, slow steps toward Chen Haoran.

“Pan Gong,” Chen Haoran said warningly. “Out of respect for our cooperation, I don’t want to fight you or the Garrison.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not a choice you can make anymore, Song Yuelin,” Pan Gong said. “Even if you were my blood, I wouldn’t be able to save you today.”

Chen Haoran held his sword flat in a guarding pose. Not overly aggressive, but enough to make his intentions clear. “I should have already proven that I’m not on the rebel’s side, Pan Gong. Does that really mean nothing?”

“Where are my soldiers, Song Yuelin?” Pan Gong asked. “At the end of all this, you get to leave. I have to go back and explain what happened to my superiors and the families of the fallen. My career isn’t worth a person I’ve known for less than a week.”

“I’m sorry. This is my fault.” Xie Jin whispered. Poisonous liquid miasma welled up from his chest and dripped out his fingertips.

Phelps’s fur stood up like a cat’s as he hissed at Pan Gong. The Yellow Dragon rumbled and sank back into Chen Haoran’s body.

“I don’t like being left with no choice, Pan Gong,” Chen Haoran said, finally pointing his blade at him.

A giant red tiger soared overhead and fell upon their heads. “Go complain to the judges in Hell then!” Lu Aotian roared from within it.

Pan Gong silently accelerated with his next step. His fist glowing Machu River yellow. Chen Haoran switched his stance, his sword going back and his fist going forward to meet Pan Gong’s. When they collided, the air was visibly blown away. Chen Haoran could only liken the force to punching a speeding sixteen-wheeler. Even with the Banquet Peach, Chen Haoran would be hard-pressed to match Pan Gong’s strength. The sheer difference between Pan Gong and Lu Aotian in physical power was quickly imprinted on him. The position of strongest Liquid Meridian in the Garrison was a well-earned one.

The Yellow Dragon roared.

The roar traveled through Chen Haoran’s arm into Pan Gong’s. Through his sense, Chen Haoran could see Pan Gong’s qi violently fluctuate and whip into a frenzy. Pan Gong gave a great shout and was blown back as if there weren’t Seven Layers of difference between them. Chen Haoran made sure to angle his fist upward, and upward Pan Gong went, crashing into Lu Aotian’s Qi Tiger and bursting it.

Pan Gong was the strongest Liquid Meridian in the Secret Realm, and Chen Haoran wasn’t afraid of him in the least. Of all the reasons he decided to thread the dangerous line of cooperating with the Garrison, his complete confidence that he could deal with Pan Gong was the deciding factor. Pan Gong was strong. He no doubt had many techniques and vast experience as a student of the Palace School and from his time in the military. All the same, he cultivated a method derived from the Machu River, and compared to the real thing, he could only be inferior. As much as the Yellow Dragon acted nothing like its progenitor, it was a fragment of the Machu River. So long as that remained true, Chen Haoran would never fear a Yellow River cultivator in this lifetime.

Lu Aotian growled and pushed past Pan Gong rather than help him, regathering his liquid qi into dozens of falling claws and talons. Chen Haoran slashed his sword and filled the sky with white sword shadows. Blue liquid qi and purple miasma flooded past him. By the time Phelps and Xie Jin shouted wordless warnings, Chen Haoran was already jumping back. The combined qi evaporated instantly as Captain Liu burst through them, burning head to toe with blue fire. Even the vapors of Xie Jin’s miasma were ignored as he quickly crossed the distance and pressed his palm into Chen Haoran’s chest. Chen Haoran screamed in pain that he soon muted with qi. As he was sent flying back, he whipped his sword, and a long scythe of white energy cut off Captain Liu’s arm at the shoulder. The Yellow Dragon leapt out of Chen Haoran’s body as he rolled to the lake shore, grabbing Xie Jin and Phelps and carrying them to safety as Lu Aotian crashed and fed the earth to his endless horde.

Chen Haoran leapt to his feet with clenched teeth. He ripped off his burning robes and swallowed back a deep, visceral growl of pain as they brushed over the inch-deep palm branded into his chest. This, too, would heal, however. Even now, his qi was regrowing muscles and flesh to fill out the depression and seal off the bleeding between burnt and melted skin. He just wished it could do something about the pork smell.

The Yellow Dragon deposited Phelps and Xie Jin at Chen Haoran’s side and flew back into his body to assist his recovery. Lu Aotian rose from the crater at the head of his ravenous pack. The ever-burning Captain Liu crushed his still-flaming severed arm to embers, and a new one flared into place. Pan Gong fell from the sky in front of them.

“Are you alright?” Xie Jin asked concernedly.

“I’ll live,” Chen Haoran said, wincing as the palm print in his chest bulged and filled back in.

“What’s the plan then?” Xie Jin asked. “I can take at least one out with my Death Curse.”

“No sacrificing yourself,” Chen Haoran said. He pulled Phelps onto his back and flooded qi to his legs. “Give us some cover.”

“On it.” Xie Jin’s veins bulged and colored purple. A thin film of liquid miasma covered the Beetle Gu was all the indication there was before liquid miasma shot out from Xie Jin’s chest like a cannon. Captain Lu stood immediately and placed himself in the way of the poisonous geyser. His flames turned from blue to white. Just before it hit him, however, the miasma turned from a liquid into a gas that billowed into a large cloud that enveloped the three.

Chen Haoran picked up Xie Jin as soon as the cloud spread and released the qi in his legs, shooting into the air over the lake like an arrow loosed from a bent bow. Fire, Yellow qi, and Red beasts scattered the poisonous miasma cloud. Pan Gong took one look at them and leapt into the air after them, soon followed by Captain Lu. Lu Aotian looked as if he were about to leap as well but hesitated and ultimately remained where he was. In the air, they crested the peak of the jump, and just as they began to descend, Phelps squealed and wrapped them with his liquid qi, carrying them further into the air and out of reach of the Garrison officers. That was until Captain Lu suddenly divested himself of his flames, stripping his burning body like a suit and letting the fire collect and transform into flowers beneath his feet. Then the flowers bloomed, and Captain Liu shot forward with rocket-like propulsion. Pan Gong curled his legs and twisted in the air, and Captain Liu caught his soles on his fist and carried him straight toward the three of them.

Chen Haoran overflowed his arm with qi and threw all of it into his sword. The Yellow Dragon flew into his hand and bit down on the hilt. For a brief moment, Chen Haoran felt the light of the White Tyrant’s Harmonization turned to him in disbelief. As if the White Tyrant himself was looking at him and saying, ‘Really?’. Then came the rage. Another chunk of qi disappeared, the fine leveled by the Harmonization for his cheek. Chen Haoran’s sword glowed so bright it that it stabbed the eyes. Phelps and Xie Jin were forced to close theirs. Chen Haoran kept his open through virtue of his regeneration.

He swung down.

Thousands of sword shadows and energy blades interposed, flocked like deadly birds, and flew down to Pan Gong and Captain Lu. Before they could meet the wave and be forced to reveal their cards, however, they suddenly stopped unnaturally in the air and, like reeling fish, were pulled back down to the ground. On the lake shore, Six-Eyes stood with his hands raised in the air. Chen Haoran could barely make out that he’d swapped his goggle eyes for a new pair of purple ones filled with concentric circles. Once Pan Gong and Captain Liu landed, he clapped his hands, and chains of unknown runes whipped out from his robes and into the air, forming a barrier around them that blocked the White Tyrant’s Harmonization. The air was filled with the sound of shrieking metal and fizzling qi before the barrier suddenly disappeared into thin air and took the Harmonization with it.

Silence befell the lake in the wake of Chen Haoran’s final attack. Pan Gong, Lu Aotian, Six-Eyes, and Captain Liu stood at the lake shore silently watching Chen Haoran and Xie Jin. Chen Haoran meanwhile stared at Pan Gong before gradually shifting his gaze to Six-Eyes. Between the two, Einstein on crack was the more unnerving. Particularly as Chen Haoran didn’t know what the point of any of his actions were. If he had just involved himself more in this fight, then Chen Haoran would have fallen into a dangerous situation. Even more than what the three Ninth-Layers put him in. Yet he didn’t, despite ostensibly trying to capture him. Six-Eyes met his gaze and waved.

Under Phelps’s floating qi, they bobbed their way through the air over to the lake island. Just as they were about to bump into the barrier, the white qi parted and allowed them entrance. A weight fell from Chen Haoran’s heart. Bao Si had pulled through. Phelps brought them to the peak of the pyramid where Bao Si, the archer who attacked Six-Eyes, and a crowd of Rattan Armor Soldiers were waiting. They touched down in the middle of the group, and as Phelps’s lightened qi receded, the heaviness Chen Haoran felt around him grew.

When Phelps’s took back all his qi, Xie Jin collapsed. Chen Haoran caught him in his arms, and Bao Si was by their side in an instant, miasma twisting into healing energy in her hands.

“You fool,” she hissed at Xie Jin. “Did you not understand the risks.”

The expected backtalk never came. Xie Jin’s eyes rolled up into his head. Bao Si cursed, and Chen Haoran fumbled to be out of her way while still somehow helping. He scanned the surrounding Rattan Armor Soldiers. He needed privacy. His eyes fell on the archer and what he assumed was the leader. At least no one else had red and blue lotuses on their shoulders.

“Sir Qiong Qi!” A soldier suddenly broke out. “That’s him. He was the one who killed us in Barrier A and helped the Garrison escape.”

“Oh,” the newly named Qiong Qi said. The lotus flowers on his shoulders bloomed with fire and ice.

“That’s quite the predicament.”