Chapter Ninety: The Colossal Shadow

One after another, powerful presences crossed the snowfields and forests, flying toward the frozen river. Fierce winds swept in their wake, and the blizzard grew ever more savage, ever more violent.

“Reinforcements from the Temple have arrived,” Pandora said with a smile.

She pulled Ye Ran with her and flew to the hill ahead.

Yet the experts from the Temple did not advance any farther. They stopped while still two miles from the frozen river.

The boundless river of ice was already crawling with Sky Centipedes. Their numbers had reached a terrifying level. Bodies lay heaped upon bodies; in several places they had piled up like low mountains. Nor was that all. On the eastern and western flanks of the frozen river stood a colossal ten-legged insect on each side, their enormous bodies covered with their descendants. A single glance was enough to make one’s scalp crawl.

Even the masters of the Temple did not dare press forward when they beheld such a sight.

“Divine Envoy, we have already discovered the whereabouts of the Sky Centipedes. We should return at once and report to the Goddess.”

A powerful warrior from the Sixth Temple stepped before Shari and bowed.

Their mission had only ever been to follow the three great insect races and uncover the location of the Sky Centipedes, and they were more than pleased to see the insect clans slaughter one another.

The experts of the Palace of Scarlet Flame, the Sea God Temple, and the Thunder God Temple also took their leave one after another.

“You may all go back. Leave this place to me,” Shari said, waving a hand.

And so Ye Ran and Pandora watched the Temple’s reinforcements depart exactly as they had come. From afar, they could see only a single red figure standing within the raging snowstorm.

With a rushing sound, the Temple experts swiftly withdrew, but Divine Envoy Shari spread both hands and activated her psychic force. An invisible, tremendous power suddenly lifted her body into the air. With a sharp whistle of wind, she streaked across the sky above the frozen river. The two giant Sky Centipedes roared and actually rose into the air to pounce upon her small-seeming figure, but wrapped in the cover of her telekinetic force, Shari swept swiftly through the air like a flowing current, and the two Sky Centipedes lunged at nothing.

“Hehe, a Divine Envoy,” Pandora laughed softly. Her long whip slipped loose in her hand as demonic energy began to spill from her body. She watched the rapidly approaching envoy with smiling eyes.

Ye Ran, meanwhile, was caught in a dilemma. If he went any farther forward, he would be nearing the battlefield of the insect clans. Their combat shook heaven and earth and frightened gods and ghosts alike; one needed only draw a little closer to be caught in its wake. With Ye Ran’s present strength, if he came within ten miles, he would likely be shredded to powder by the force of their clashing auras.

Yet behind him stood the troublesome Divine Envoy Shari. By Ye Ran’s estimation, her power was in no way inferior to Pandora’s.

Before Shari had even landed, Pandora’s long whip had already struck into the sky like an eagle. A whip little more than a meter in length suddenly stretched and lengthened, lashing through the air like a giant serpent reaching to the heavens.

A muffled impact rang out from the air wall before Shari, but her body only paused for an instant. The moment her eyes turned toward the two of them, an invisible force came crashing down upon their heads.

“Hehe, boy, go!”

Pandora seized Ye Ran and shot upward from the ground. At once, a deafening rumble exploded beneath them. Under the pressure of Shari’s psychic force, the entire mountain peak collapsed with a thunderous crash, and wind and snow surged up from the earth.

With Ye Ran in tow, Pandora flashed backward in a burst of wind-breath speed and landed on a mountain behind them. Shari also descended upon a peak opposite theirs, the air wall around her body thickening unceasingly.

“Boy, so you truly have thrown in your lot with the demon race. Today, no matter what, I will take you back and hand you over to the judgment of the gods.”

Anger flickered faintly across Shari’s face, as though she could not bear to see iron fail to become steel.

Pandora gave a sweet little laugh. “Ye Ran and I are a perfect match, a union made by heaven itself, treating one another with all the courtesy of honored guests. How can that be called collusion in evil? If anyone is in league with each other, it is you Divine Envoys and the great Temples.”

“Hmph. Shameless.”

The invisible force came crashing down again, while Pandora’s whip coiled upward like a colossal serpent. Another peal of thunderous noise erupted between the two mountain peaks.

But Ye Ran had no time to spare on these two irreconcilable women. His eyes were fixed on the battle unfolding in the snowy mountains.

The six Sky Centipedes quickly converged into one force. Six hunting three, they drove the three great insect races at once into a desperate extremity. In the midst of their frenzied tearing and biting, the giant millipede had nearly half its body bitten away, and the entire mountain range was smeared with blood.

The Golden-Headed Centipede was in a miserable state as well. Its enormous head had been bitten until only half remained. But the insect race was savage and violent by nature; even with only half a life left, it remained ferocious beyond belief. The three great insect races dragged their dying bodies onward and fought their way all the way to the edge of the mountain ravine.

Beyond that lay a bottomless abyss, a hundred zhang across.

The Golden-Headed Centipede and the giant millipede looked hideous and vicious as they stared at the six Sky Centipedes that came crashing through shattered rock. Agonized hissing shrieked from their mouths.

The purple-haired woman was drenched in blood, her hair hanging loose in disarray, her gaze colder than frost.

The six Sky Centipedes, however, showed not the slightest fear. Hissing, they rushed low against the ground in a wild, berserk charge.

Then, at that very moment, an aura of extreme brutality rose from the abyss. In an instant, the stench of blood spread through the entire snowy range.

That presence surged upward with a force as though it would devour the heavens. When Ye Ran first sensed it, it was still deep in the valley floor, but in the space of a few heartbeats it had already risen tens of thousands of feet. Ye Ran felt his whole heart sink, as though he had fallen into a boundless, bloody hell.

The earth shook violently. Across the vast sky, grief-dark clouds suddenly gathered. The three great insect races, wild and raging only a moment before, and the six giant Sky Centipedes all fell utterly still. Pandora and Divine Envoy Shari alike changed color.

The entire mountain range turned black. A vast shadow descended, and every living thing in the mountains was swallowed beneath that cast-down darkness.

A gigantic black form burst upward from the abyss, trailing a heaven-toppling gale. In that instant, Ye Ran seemed to smell the coming of doomsday itself. He spat out a mouthful of blood on the spot; had Shari not used her telekinesis at once to shield him, he would likely have died there.

Before Ye Ran could even make out the shape of that monstrous shadow, it had already lowered its body and bitten into the mountain wall. The three insect races, together with the entire mountain peak, were swallowed into its belly in a single gulp. The six giant Sky Centipedes trembled in terror, their bodies curling up to one side.

Everyone heard the dreadful crunching of its chewing. Streams of fresh blood sprayed from the giant shadow’s mouth, and they heard the mournful cries of the Golden-Headed Centipede and the giant millipede.

The two great insect races that had once reduced all of Lanche Avenue to ruin were devoured in a single bite, together with the purple-haired woman.

Ye Ran watched helplessly as that black shadow dropped back into the abyss. A few iron centipede legs were spat from its mouth. Faintly, a few rays of sword-light could be seen flashing out, and the cry of a sword rang through the air, but all of it soon vanished.

“Benefactor…”

“Benefactor…”

Ye Ran stood there as if turned to stone. The peerless figure of the purple-haired woman still seemed to linger before his eyes.

He remembered her blurred silhouette when the Gold-Devouring Ants had gnawed him down to gleaming bone. He remembered Trapped Dragon Ridge, the Phantom Walkway, when the God-Hunter Clan attacked and she alone, with one sword, had held back the demon race. Those two acts of grace were vivid in his mind. And now he watched her being swallowed away while he could do nothing at all.

His eyes reddened, and tears slipped one by one down his face.

He did not know how many times he had hated his own helplessness before. Only this time, it cut especially deep.

Suddenly, a faint thread of violet energy rose from within his body, and a cold voice sounded from inside him.

“Hmph. What are you crying for?”