Chapter 161: Lord of the Six Dao Palace

On the stone platform, a group of about a dozen burly men stood with stern bearing, breath restrained, water flasks at their feet, tasteless jerky in hand, clearly resting and eating.

They arrived much earlier than Wa Yue's group, so Wa Yue's every word and deed were fully visible to them.

These burly men had pale gold skin with a faint metallic sheen over their whole bodies; no hair on scalp, eyebrows, or beards, their heads smooth as peeled eggs.

What was even more striking was the varying number of circular scars on their crowns—three to five, six to seven, and the most, on the burly mountain‑like old man leading them, exactly nine in a neat square.

This old man stood over three meters tall, his appearance markedly different from the burly men beside him.

Unlike the burly men's pale gold skin, the old man's skin was half jet‑black, half deathly white, the left‑right contrast stark, giving an extremely uncanny feeling.

Even more unsettling, the old man's left side was black while his left eye socket was white, and his right side white while his right eye socket was black.

He stood at the edge of the stone platform, looking down at Wa Yue and Gong Sunsheng's group of eight young men and women whispering and laughing, when he suddenly broke into a grin with no warning.

It would have been better if he didn't smile, for when he did he revealed two rows of… large teeth whose hue kept shifting.

With each breath, his teeth turned jet‑black and gleamed like black crystal; on the next breath they became deathly white and translucent like white crystal.

As the hue of his two rows of teeth shifted, the colors of his left and right halves and the eyeballs in his sockets shifted in tandem.

Wa Yue and Gong Sunsheng exchanged a few words, then pressed close together; amid the subtle glances of the other youths, Gong Sunsheng's hand rested on Wa Yue's shoulder, his fingers lightly sliding over her, intentionally or not.

"Wa Yue lass, we ought to get close… but I'll say it plainly: if we really manage to capture Wa Xiaoxi this time, you can't let us make the trip for nothing," Gong Sunsheng laughed brightly. "With Wa Xiaoxi's peerless talent, she's worth a fortune."

Wa Yue lightly brushed her chest against Gong Sunsheng's arm, giving him a flirtatious smile.

"Well… of course there'll be some benefits for you all." Wa Yue laughed brightly. "But it's not that simple… you need to know a bit of my Wa clan's methods; we must be extra careful, lest we gain nothing and instead get ourselves tangled."

Several young men and women laughed, gathered close, whispered a few words, then followed Wa Yue, swiftly departing along the stone crevice.

On the stone platform, a burly man approached the eerie old man and whispered, "Palace Lord?"

The old man picked up the water flask, gulped two mouthfuls, tore off a strip of jerky and chewed it fiercely. A mysterious light swirled in his eyes, an unknown eerie power slowly spreading; his body seemed to become a black hole, sucking in all surrounding light.

"These kids give me a feeling… do you still remember, sixty years ago, when our little junior brother disappeared?"

The old man muttered lowly.

Eighteen burly men with pale gold skin stood beside the old man; hearing his words, their faces all turned cold at once.

"Back then, I regarded your junior brother as the next Palace Lord of the Six Dao Palace to cultivate. His talent was superb, the most gifted I've seen in all these years… and then he vanished."

The old man pointed to where Wa Yue and the others had just stood: "That Wa clan girl said Wa Xiaoxi is valuable?"

"Wa Xiaoxi's extraordinary talent makes her valuable? In other words, she can be sold?"

"If Wa Xiaoxi can be sold, what about our Six Dao Palace's genius disciple?"

The white areas on the old man's body rapidly shrank as black spread across his skin; the space around him seemed to collapse inward, and the eighteen burly men stepped back a few paces, retreating with a hint of awe.

"Originally, I was going to settle accounts with the brat who dared bomb my Great Dragon City… and, by the way, finish that deal with the Three‑Linked City‑States." The old man grinned, his smile devoid of any chill, instead filled with deep darkness and cold.

"I never expected that merely stopping to rest would yield such a harvest."

"Keep an eye on these brats." The old man clenched his fist; black veins bulged beneath his skin like tiny black dragons writhing, dancing, and within the icy darkness harboring volcanic ferocity.

"No matter who's behind them, if my Six Dao Palace's missing genius disciple is truly linked to them… slaughter them." The old man turned, inhaling deeply at the rock wall behind him.

"In this world of all things… is there anything eternal and indestructible?"

With the old man's low mutter, as he inhaled, a large swath of rock wall silently crumbled into streams of black qi that continually flew into his mouth. His belly gradually bulged, and when it swelled like that of a woman seven or eight months pregnant, he finally exhaled in satisfaction.

"Having eaten my fill is hard… I really want to swallow that bunch of brats." The old man belched contentedly, muttering lowly.

Behind him, a massive slab of rock wall—several hundred meters across and over ten meters deep—had completely vanished, swallowed whole by him as food.

Deep in the stone crevice, Wu Tie once again immobilized a large lizard.

Wa Xiaoxi held a long‑barreled double‑barreled hunting gun; the witch gritted her teeth, holding a newly made compact double‑barreled hunting gun crafted by Lu Ji; both narrowed one eye and took careful aim at a large lizard hanging in midair a hundred meters away.

Before they could pull the trigger, a hissing sound came from the dome overhead; a hundred or so giant spiders spat saliva and venom, rushing toward them like a gale.

When the hissing was heard, these carefully trained war‑beast spiders were still five or six li away; Wu Tie and company had just lifted their heads when the spiders surged to their heads and lunged down, limbs splayed.

Apparently intending to capture them alive, the spiders' large abdomens convulsed, spewing patches of variably colored fluid that turned into sticky spider‑nets descending upon Wu Tie and the others.

Wu Tie gave a cold snort; beside him, white fireballs the size of water jars silently condensed, then shot upward with a muffled tearing‑through‑air sound.

The fireballs exploded several hundred meters above their heads.

Flames of death burned rapidly; the air filled with a scorched‑hair smell, firelight and heat waves striking the bulky spiders, which were blown to shreds, spraying foul‑smelling juices, while spider after spider plummeted from the sky.

Wa Xiaoxi and the witch each swallowed a mouthful of saliva.

Those giant spiders' legs are all extraordinarily tasty.

Wu Tie simply grabbed the witch and shoved her into Wa Xiaoxi's embrace.

At the same time he took a sideways step, standing on the edge of the stone beam, blocking Wa Xiaoxi and the witch in front of him.

A horde of fully armed warriors surged forward; as far as the eye could see, on the ground, on the cliffs, in midair, nothing but sturdy men dashing forth while employing techniques, their low howls echoing, each pair of eyes flashing with an unknown ferocity.

They were still several hundred meters away when about half of them simultaneously swung their hands, sending forth blades of cold light that whistled through the air with a piercing tearing sound.

Various weapons tore through the air, aiming straight at Wu Tie, Lu Ji, and Lao Bai's vital points.

"Be careful, don't hurt my little Xi sister… hehe!" a lanky youth riding a giant saber‑toothed wolf‑spider shouted from the ground.

Wu Tie's face turned cold.

Are these people after Wa Xiaoxi?

How dare they? This is right at the edge of Wa Valley, wholly under Wa clan jurisdiction—how dare they attack the daughter of the Wa clan matriarch here?

"Are you mad?" Wu Tie snarled lowly, reaching down to grab Lao Bai from beneath the stone beam, hoisting him behind him; the koi brocade at his waist thrashed, and twenty‑four tiny blue koi shot out, forming a net of light before him.

The light net's coverage expanded rapidly, standing before Wu Tie and Lu Ji.

Hundreds of assorted weapons flew in, violently striking the koi‑formed light net.

Sharp, grating impact sounds rang nonstop, sparks flying, the koi‑formed light net shuddering violently.

Lu Ji raised his double‑barreled hunting gun, narrowed his eyes, and with two muffled "thumps" fired two deadly cloud‑burst explosives that slammed into the densest part of the crowd.

Two blobs of toxic fire sprayed forth; dozens of heavily armored burly men screamed, their bodies engulfed in poisonous flames, tumbling down the cliffs and crashing heavily to the ground.

Wu Tie was about to praise "Nice shot," when a black metal sphere the size of a human head, tinged with fire, whooshed out from behind him.

Wu Tie's eyes widened sharply; he shuddered, waved his right hand, and an invisible force field slammed forward, hurling the metal ball several hundred meters to land among the running enemy troops.

"Xiao Xi..." Wu Tie bellowed.

A massive boom rang out, fire shot into the sky, countless tiny poisoned triangular iron shards flew wildly, and the fire's shockwave swept across a radius of several hundred meters.

Black-red fire rolled along the narrow stone crevice; Wu Tie drew a deep breath, the koi thrashed violently, and a dense net of light enveloped everyone below.

Hundreds of attacking soldiers were either riddled by the dense poisoned iron shards like a sieve, or completely engulfed by the scorching fire.

This oversized 'torpedo' was crafted by Lu Ji over several days using the knowledge Wu Tie imparted.

Originally, this was just a torpedo.

Wu Tie had already tried fishing with a hook together with Wa Xiao Xi, and he also wanted to taste the blast of using a torpedo to blow up fish with her, which led to the birth of this oversized, extra-large, extra-loaded Demonic Craft Opening Mountain Thunder.

Wu Tie never expected that the already somewhat crazy Wa Xiao Xi would throw this thing out to blast people.

The tremendous shaking made the surrounding rock walls tremble; with a series of cracks, the rock on both sides of the fissure suddenly split open with numerous fissures.

Wu Tie let out a strange cry, the invisible force field contracted inward, he grabbed Wa Xiao Xi and the others, plunged headfirst into the rolling fire cloud, and led the group at top speed to break through the fire‑enshrouded stone fissure and flee toward its exit.

Wa Xiao Xi and the shamaness laughed happily and clapped their hands.

Although they were dazed and their vision darkened by the tremendous roar, it somehow felt exhilarating!

Wu Tie led them away, sparing them the effort; Wa Xiao Xi grabbed Lu Ji's hair, leaned to his ear, and shouted loudly: "Make me a hundred of these torpedoes… no, a thousand… no, ten thousand…"

Wa Xiao Xi's eyes lit up, she exclaimed joyfully: "From now on, whoever dares to bother me, I'll blow up their base in Wa Valley!"

As Wu Tie ran at full speed, his body shuddered; he thought, "I won't lead my sister astray, will I?"

Surely not?

Surely not?

Wu Tie couldn't help but picture the wonderful scene of Wa Valley being blown sky‑high every day by Wa Xiao Xi's explosions… What would Wa Mu think?

Countless sharp triangular iron shards slammed hard into the light net formed by the koi; the net shuddered violently, gales howled and smoke swirled around Wu Tie and the others as they broke through the rolling fire cloud and escaped the blast radius of the loaded torpedo.

Just as they ran out of the fire‑covered zone, the sound of breaking rock came; huge boulders, even entire slabs of strata, crashed down from above with a tremendous roar, and a stretch of the stone fissure two or three li long collapsed completely.

The boulders hit the ground with a dull thud, and Wu Tie heard mournful wails carried on the air.

He ignored it, had no intention of rescuing them; similarly sized stones rained down on their heads, and Wu Tie only focused on leading his people out through the fissure.

Here the terrain is too narrow; a single loaded torpedo's killing power is not great, but its chain‑reaction destructive force is terrifying.

Wu Tie also didn't know whether this fissure would collapse entirely; he dared not gamble, and had no energy left to worry about the enemies' lives or deaths.

"Xiao Xi, don't do that again… it's too dangerous, too…" The surrounding cliffs kept emitting piercing cracks; Wu Tie had no breath for words, only able to usher his party away at top speed.

Just as they fled into a relatively narrow part of the fissure, an earsplitting tearing‑through‑the‑air sound rang out; a gold pellet the size of a baby's fist shot forth and slammed hard into the koi swirling and circling above.

In the piercing impact, the light net formed by the koi was torn open, leaving a hole the size of a bowl.

The gold pellet struck Wu Tie's chest; the long robe made of tiny‑bean spider silk, which could deflect blades, shattered into fibers, and a bowl‑sized piece of flesh was blasted into minced meat that tore away from his chest.

His breastbone caved in, Wu Tie spat out a mist of blood, his forward‑lunging body jerked to a halt, then he slammed backward in a reverse flight.

On the stone platform, the Six Paths Palace Master, whose whole body had turned pitch‑black with blackened eye sockets and teeth, grinned widely.

"Let's see what that bunch of brats will do."

"This brat is the culprit who invaded Dragon City, killed Li Meng and the others, right?"