Chapter 1837: Lurking in the Shadows

Looking again at Panlongcheng surrounded by the sea in the mirror, at first glance it seemed as precarious as a pile of eggs, but the seawater never crashed onto the South Gate. He Lingchuan even noticed that the South Gate was tightly shut; when he first saw the Panlong ruins, the South Gate was wide open, the doors damaged.

It was evident that this scene was also different from history.

What exactly was going on? The answer was about to emerge.

Just then, the image in the Haoyuan Golden Mirror flickered, then zoomed in, actually focusing on the Blessing Pond in front of the Lady Mitian Temple.

A gentle breeze blew, the pond water full, casting a patch of shimmering gold from an unknown light source.

The pond water was dark red, as if stained by blood.

Just now, Qianhuan and the two Great Heavenly Demons had all jumped out from here. So, was this the switching point for different scenes in the sea of consciousness?

He Lingchuan was racking his brain when he suddenly saw light and shadow shift in the pond, and something swam past.

Was there a fish?

At least looking at the shape, it looked very much like a fish.

There being fish in the pond seemed only natural. In the Panlong world, the dozen or so koi in this Blessing Pond, though colorful, were so round they could barely swim, all fed fat by devout believers.

But here, it always exuded a sense of weirdness.

That figure swam over again, this time slowing down.

He Lingchuan stared intently and suddenly let out a soft "hiss."

He recognized it; this was an even heavier-weight old acquaintance—

The Chaos from the Great Fang Hu! He was all too familiar with that size and the round, blunt-headed shape. And the hundred or so chains following behind the Chaos looked like long, spread-out fish tails from afar, possessing a beauty that seemed elegant but was actually cruel.

But this guy had always been wandering in the Chaos Ocean of the Great Fang Hu; how did it suddenly swim into Qianhuan's sea of consciousness?

He Lingchuan scratched his head and could only make a rough deduction: perhaps the Haoyuan Golden Mirror had connected to Qianhuan's law network, so this guy had quietly followed along.

The Chaos had come, which meant the Great Fang Hu had also quietly invaded.

What was it doing here? He Lingchuan looked at the Chaos's idle figure; no matter how he looked at it, it was ill-intentioned.

He murmured: "How long have you been lurking here?"

The Great Fang Hu never gave him a heads-up when it acted.

The Chaos, of course, would not answer, but it swam close to the pond surface, then turned, and dozens of chains suddenly whipped over, crossing each other, actually weaving a large chain net beneath the water surface! The mesh was small and dense, and black shadows emerged one after another on the chains, blocking all the gaps in the net.

Three-Corpse Insects; these were also old actors.

At this, the color of the pond water became very dark.

He Lingchuan pondered.

What did this mean? Was the Chaos trying to lock something? The water surface?

Dong Rui on the side asked him: "Why did the Haoyuan Golden Mirror specifically let us watch this pond?"

The battle in the city was so tense and fierce; why give a close-up live broadcast of a pond?

He Lingchuan asked back: "What did you see?"

Everyone looked at each other and hurriedly widened their eyes to peer into the pond, but no matter how they looked, it was just a pool of bloody water.

Besides that, there was nothing else.

"Nothing at all." Dong Rui was curious, "What about you?"

As the owner of the Haoyuan Golden Mirror, was the image He Lingchuan saw always different from what they, as passersby, saw? He Lingchuan shook his head.

The existence of the Chaos was indeed invisible to the living; only he was the exception.

Zhu Xiuer suddenly said: "The pond water color has deepened."

Although she couldn't see the red shadows in the pond or the chain net under the water, she could feel the change in the pond water.

He Lingchuan was about to speak when he suddenly saw the chain net in the pond retract, and the Chaos was nowhere to be seen.

The pond was empty again.

What was going on?

Before this thought finished, he saw the two Great Heavenly Demons sweep past the Lady Mitian Temple, just happening to pass in front of the Blessing Pond.

It seemed the Chaos was hiding from them, not wanting to be discovered.

Then, did Qianhuan, the landlord, know about it invading the sea of consciousness of an ancient True Immortal?

He Lingchuan deduced that it was highly likely it didn't, at least not knowing the specific location of the Chaos.

The Chaos appearing in a small, inconspicuous pond rather than swimming in the vast ocean outside Panlongcheng spoke volumes in itself.

This pond was very likely a passage, a fault line. The Chaos might have turned itself from a giant whale into a mustard seed and then stuffed itself in here.

Then, the next question arose: what was its intention in hiding here?

Usually, passages were left for people to walk through. But earlier, Qianhuan and the two Great Heavenly Demons had passed through the pond, and the Chaos had made no move.

What was it waiting for?

He Lingchuan's eyes flickered.

Now the pond was empty, but he knew the Chaos was lurking on the side.

The two Great Heavenly Demons walked through streets and alleys, Miaozhantian becoming more alarmed with every step.

That's right, this was indeed the ancient Panlongcheng, the scene after the city was breached more than 150 years ago! There was a tower ahead; he jumped to the top, intending to find Qianhuan's tracks, but didn't expect that looking out, the surroundings were a vast ocean! Miaozhantian, of course, knew what the Panlong Wasteland looked like; why did Qianhuan specifically place the "Panlongcheng" in its sea of consciousness in the middle of the ocean? Wait a minute, sea? He didn't have time to think, as Miaoyuntian suddenly pointed forward.

A gray-white shadow flashed across the ruins.

Miaozhantian gestured to his sister, meaning to split up and surround it.

There were too many streets and alleys in this ruined city; if Qianhuan was determined to hide, it would be hard to find for a while. Miaozhantian couldn't summon a Divine Fire Heavenly Meteor to raze this place to the ground either.

But since he had come, he would be at ease; he wasn't in a hurry.

If Qianhuan kept hiding in the sea of consciousness, the control of the Inverted Sea in reality would gradually be encroached upon by Miaozhantian.

It could hide outside, but Miaozhantian had already broken in. In its own sea of consciousness, on its own must-win territory, could it continue to hide?

On the pursuit, Miaozhantian saw two black dragon marks on the broken walls in a row.

Had they not dissipated yet? And why would there be such marks in Qianhuan's sea of consciousness? This thing hadn't been seen for a long time since the fall of Panlongcheng.

Its latest news was appearing where the Great Emperor Jiuyou made his debut. Hmm, hadn't Bai Ziqi already found out that the Great Emperor Jiuyou was that He Xiao outside? Speaking of which, characters related to Panlongcheng all seemed to be concentrated in the Inverted Sea now?

As Miaozhantian thought this, he passed another broken white wall, and there was a dragon-head mark on the wall again.

Seeing it too much, he became accustomed to it; he glanced over it and walked forward without looking back, but after taking two steps, he felt something was wrong:

The previous dragon-head statues were all black; why was this one gray-white? Was it because it grew on a white wall? The mouth was shorter, the nose was bigger, and the shape of the dragon horns was also different.

Damn it! He immediately turned around, only to have his entire field of vision filled by a bloody mouth.

Jiaotu!

It had buried its head in a hole in the wall, eyes open and motionless; the two Heavenly Demons hadn't noticed anything unusual at first glance.

The opponent was too fast; Miaozhantian raised his arm to protect his head, and his left arm was bitten by the opponent's big mouth.

The two sides rolled in the ruins, and Jiaotu shook its head violently, snapping Miaozhantian's forearm with a crunch.

But it didn't linger after a successful strike and jumped away violently. Because Miaozhantian's left-hand saber stabbed at its belly, and another figure also rushed over.

Miaoyuntian had arrived.

The Miaozhantian sisters acted together, determined not to let it escape again.

Golden light lingered at Miaozhantian's severed arm, and the wound healed rapidly.

In the sea of consciousness, his "body" was a manifestation of soul power, which could be repaired by consuming soul power after being injured.

Jiaotu dodged left and right a few times, then jumped onto a high wall with a swish, climbing along the wall, its movements more agile than a gecko.

This had to be mentioned: on the previous Pu Island, Miaozhantian was over a zhang tall; but in the Panlong ruins, he had turned into the height of a normal human.

Jiaotu had also shrunk in the same proportion.

So the high walls of Panlongcheng were still very majestic to them.

Miaoyuntian leaped high towards it, her two hand-forks shooting out one after another, just happening to land directly in front of Jiaotu's two turns.

Her prediction of the enemy was incredibly accurate, missing Jiaotu's nose tip by only a hair's breadth.

The tips of the forks were sharp, piercing more than half a foot into the wall, the tails still trembling.

Jiaotu turned and ran along the wall, its speed extremely fast.

This wall was thick and straight, and Miaoyuntian ran vertically on the ground as if she were not affected by gravity at all.

Miaozhantian chased on the ground, and Jiaotu still had time to turn its head and spray a few sharp nails at him.

The nails flashed with a blue light; they were highly toxic.

Miaozhantian casually picked up a broken stone tablet from the ground and smashed it fiercely at Jiaotu.

Although Jiaotu dodged, it was delayed, and Miaoyuntian in the rear had already arrived; she raised her hand-fork, almost piercing its tail.

The reason it was called "almost" was because the moment before the hand-fork pierced the target, a huge head suddenly emerged from the city wall, the open bloody mouth more than enough to stuff an entire Miaoyuntian inside.

And it indeed intended to do just that.

The most terrifying thing was that there was no sign before it appeared.

When a crocodile lunged at prey, there was a splash when it left the water; but it emerged so silently that even the wall didn't crack!

Before it emerged, Miaoyuntian, running on the wall, hadn't felt anything unusual about the wall at all. But her reaction was extremely fast; she forcibly moved her body outward, avoiding the vital parts, but her left leg was bitten by the giant head.

This monster bit her and slammed her fiercely against the wall.

With a loud bang, Miaoyuntian wasn't flattened, but the mottled city wall didn't break either, only losing a few layers of mud skin—it was truly absurdly hard; even Great Heavenly Demons couldn't smash it.

However, this was Qianhuan's sea of consciousness, and Panlongcheng appearing here was already very weird, so no one bothered to haggle over a few more strange things.

The monster slammed her a few more times, and Miaoyuntian tried hard to pry its teeth open, but it didn't move at all! She was like a fierce tiger caught by an iron-toothed beast clamp, possessing bravery but unable to use it.

It was broad daylight now, and the unknown light source also shone from above, illuminating the monster emerging from the city wall clearly.

Miaozhantian's footsteps paused: "How is this possible!"

This was another dragon!

And its size was much larger than Jiaotu's.

Its massive head emerged from the wall, the body diameter alone close to a zhang and a half, the body length temporarily invisible. It supported itself on the wall with one front claw; it was four-clawed.

Seeing these four claws, Miaozhantian's words "Black Dragon God" were on the tip of his tongue, but he forcibly swallowed them back. ===== CHAPTER 1838 =====