Chapter 759: East and West

Li Huowang, his headache slightly eased, stared wide-eyed at the scene inside the rotating mirror, hardly believing his eyes.

The massive red dot, which previously represented the military formation of the strategists, had been forcibly torn apart by something.

“This is impossible! How can this be? I clearly interrupted the sacrificial ritual!” Li Huowang looked up at the motionless statue above him, then surveyed the chicken-footed people lying strewn about in pools of blood.

With a grim expression, Li Huowang immediately pointed his finger at a small red dot next to the battlefield in the rotating mirror, wanting to understand what was happening there.

The perspective instantly shifted, and Li Huowang found himself on a warhorse, galloping into the distance.

When he turned to look at the battlefield, he witnessed an astonishing sight: the massive military formation of the strategists was clashing with an invisible entity.

Though unseen, the entity's presence was undeniable; every move it made visibly warped the surrounding space, causing everything nearby to inexplicably collapse inwards.

Through the rough outline of the distorted space, Li Huowang could barely make out that the creature had four legs, appeared enormous and flat, and was distinctly covered in various long, strip-like appendages.

Beyond that, however, Li Huowang could discern no further details about the entity.

“What is this? What in the world is this?” Li Huowang ground his teeth. No matter what the entity was, it was clear that the Dharma Sect's treachery had succeeded; they must have had a backup plan.

Even if he had managed to stop them here, the Dharma Sect's sacrificial rituals had evidently succeeded elsewhere.

The previous memories from the Mount Tai stone were flawed! But whether the Dharma Sect had been wary of him all along, or if this was a trap set for them, it didn't change their current desperate situation.

Li Huowang quickly withdrew his hand from the rotating mirror and shouted to the others, “Go! Everyone, go! Head southwest for support!”

Hearing Li Huowang's command, Zhao Jiabao and the others, who had been patrolling, immediately moved. Without hesitation, they set off as ordered.

Li Huowang also prepared to depart, despite his throbbing headache and his uncertainty about whether he could face the entity.

Yet he had to go. If the entity were allowed to slaughter the allied forces of the strategists, then Great Liang would likely be at the mercy of the Dharma Sect.

“I need to get there quickly! I need to be faster!” Li Huowang cried out, clutching his head in agony.

With a sickening thud, a sharp halberd blade pierced through Li Huowang's chest. As the flame-engulfed Peng Longteng let out a roar, the halberd head sharply lifted, throwing Li Huowang high into the air and directly out of the wooden city, flying southwest.

The rain continued to fall, a raging storm that prevented Li Huowang, suspended within the clouds, from opening his eyes. He could only manage to discern his direction using the rotating mirror after falling to a certain point.

Li Huowang didn't know how long he flew. When his body, charred black from the burning, finally froze solid, his position overlapped with the large red dot in the rotating mirror.

“We're here!” As Li Huowang drew in his limbs, his body rapidly plummeted downwards.

As he broke through the clouds and returned to the human realm, he saw a bizarre, ancient entity squatting in the center of the ravaged battlefield.

It resembled a toad, but was more grotesque than an ordinary one, and bore a slight resemblance to the earlier statue, yet wasn't quite the same.

The entire entity squatted, its formless body constantly shifting. Its previously invisible surface was now entirely covered with continuously writhing iron and flesh.

Only when he heard the collective cries of battle coming from above did Li Huowang realize that the things on its body were actually strategists; it was completely covered by all the strategists!

Suddenly, a roar, neither distinctly tiger nor wolf, erupted from the entity's mouth. All the strategists on its body were violently shaken off, scattering like rain in all directions.

As the strategists retreated, the creature reverted to its previous state: constantly warping space-time, yet its own body remained completely transparent.

The strategists seemed to have caused it no harm, or if they had, its blood was also transparent and thus invisible.

The strategists who had been shaken off it attempted to re-form their ranks, but Li Huowang could clearly sense that they seemed to be running out of strength.

“Xuanpin, Xuanpin!” Li Huowang anxiously shouted all around him. “I don't care where you are right now, but you must come immediately! This place is in serious trouble now! Don't tell me you haven't seen something this massive!”

“Don't tell me, you old fox, that you haven't prepared a backup for something this important! Stop hiding things! Those beasts from the Dharma Sect really did summon this thing!”

Li Huowang's voice echoed across the desolate battlefield, yet no one responded, as if Xuanpin cared nothing for a matter of such life-and-death importance.

Though furious, Li Huowang felt no surprise whatsoever, for some reason. He clenched his fists and walked with determined steps towards the distant entity.

“Xuanpin, if I make it back alive this time, you wait, you just wait for me!!!”

Accompanying Li Huowang's roar, the thundering sound of hooves echoed from behind. Peng Longteng's massive halberd swept down, hooking Li Huowang onto his horse's back, and they galloped towards the distant battlefield.

What appears close often takes longer to reach. Li Huowang rode for about fifteen minutes, finally arriving near the entity.

Upon reaching its side, Li Huowang truly understood its power. A certain pervasive emotion continuously spread from it, attempting to infect everything around it and assimilate everything into itself.

It was savage nature and ambition.

It had been said before that it wasn't a Heavenly Mandate, but in Li Huowang's view, this entity was likely no less powerful than one. Only a Heavenly Mandate would possess such an unconscious ability to assimilate everything around it.

Accompanied by a chilling gnashing sound, the invisible, ferocious maw opened and closed, and the mangled, blood-soaked corpses of strategists, bitten to pieces, cascaded down.

Strategists once again swarmed over most of its body, attacking it with various weapons, yet to little avail.

It seemed as though nothing from the mortal realm could harm the creature.

“What do I do?” The question popped into Li Huowang's mind. Facing such an existence, and watching the strategists charging forward relentlessly, Li Huowang slowly took a deep breath. “No matter what, I'll try!”

He hesitantly reached out and gripped the hilt of his spine sword, but feeling his headache still largely unabated, Li Huowang thought better of it and lowered his hand again.

“No, Zhuge Yuan probably can't be repaired. I need to forge something else.”