Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 584 - 526: Dry Food

To say Ghost Shovel’s corpse was moving was, perhaps, an overstatement. It clung to the ground, inching slowly using its hands and feet. On its exposed skin, saw-toothed splits were forming—these splits were increasing in number and would occasionally open and close, creating suction to absorb shattered rocks, sand, and bioluminescent fungi from the rock walls.

Lu Yunan watched this scene solemnly. Ghost Shovel was indeed dead. Half of his head had been shattered by a Thunder Strike, and the other half had been severely damaged during the fall from the cliff, leaving only his jaw. But its corpse was being puppeted by the parasitic demon within, crawling aimlessly across the ground like a primitive worm.

A Martial Arts Grandmaster, reduced to such a state, could only evoke sighs of lamentation.

HISS—

Suddenly, the splits on the back of Ghost Shovel’s hands all opened at once, making a sniffing-like motion. Then, using its hands and feet, it turned toward Li Ang and Lu Yunan.

Trouble.

"It’s coming from the right!" Lu Yunan warned aloud.

Relying on the dim patches of light in his vision, Li Ang barely made out the outline of Ghost Shovel’s corpse and kicked it in the chest.

In the Bottom of Li Yuan Valley, the suppression of Spiritual Energy and demons was so strong that Ghost Shovel’s corpse could not muster even one-thousandth of its former strength. Kicked against the rocks by Li Ang, it thrashed wildly, its hands and feet scrabbling as the splits on its chest tore at Li Ang’s boot soles. In a matter of seconds, the bottom of Li Ang’s boots were chewed through.

"Put me down!"

Lu Yunan jumped down from Li Ang’s arms. Landing on her uninjured left leg, she braced her hands on a nearby rock, maneuvered past it, and began searching through the rubble.

With his hands free, Li Ang picked up a heavy stone from the ground and smashed it onto Ghost Shovel’s chest, pinning the corpse against the rock face. However, the splits on Ghost Shovel’s body seemed capable of consuming anything; even the stone began to visibly shrink under the scraping of their saw-toothed edges.

"I found it!" Lu Yunan yelled, hopping over on one foot, and handed Li Ang a rod.

Is this... the Triangular Spear?

Li Ang weighed the rod. His Triangular Spear had been completely broken in the previous battle; this appeared to be its tip. He strained his eyes, trying to make out his target, then stabbed the spear tip into Ghost Shovel’s shoulder and twisted hard, severing the arm. He then dismembered the rest of Ghost Shovel’s torso in the same manner.

Despite this, the dismembered parts of Ghost Shovel’s corpse continued to squirm and crawl on the ground, trying to escape. Li Ang speared them one by one, like skewering fish, stringing Ghost Shovel’s remnants together with the broken shaft of the Triangular Spear—its surface was still covered with a layer of Mo Si, which wouldn’t be chewed away anytime soon.

"How is this thing so damn resilient?" Lu Yunan gritted her teeth and hopped over on one foot. "Is it a reincarnated cockroach?"

"When it comes to demons, who can say for sure?" Li Ang gasped for breath. The feeling of his Spiritual Energy being sealed and his near-blindness was awful. After straining his eyes for just a moment, they began to feel raw, and he couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.

"What do we do now?" Lu Yunan pointed at Ghost Shovel’s remnants skewered on the Triangular Spear. This thing was too bizarre; physical attacks were hardly effective, and leaving it unattended was unsettling—who knew if it would consume more soil, evolve into something else, and attack them again.

"...Let’s find the parachute first," Li Ang said. "Li Yuan’s suppressive power over demons is strong; we can wrap it up with the parachute for now."

Holding the Triangular Spear in one hand and supporting Lu Yunan with the other, Li Ang struggled forward for some distance. They finally found the Mo Si parachute on a rock ledge not far from the ground. Relying on his memory, he took out the soft frame from the parachute and dismantled it to make a splint for Lu Yunan’s fracture. Then, he used part of the parachute fabric to wrap up Ghost Shovel’s remnants.

Having completed all this, the exhausted pair finally found a place to sit down and rest.

Li Ang leaned against the rock wall, looked up at the sky, and sighed deeply.

At this moment, Galuo should have already returned to the Turkic Royal Court with the help of the Wolf Head Armor, and informed Yu Country about what happened using the Nearby Worm. He didn’t know how He Fanshuang and Qiu Feng were doing. With the squad’s strength, escaping from Tongluo City and breaking out of the encirclement before Taihao Mountain and the Turkic Practitioners could react shouldn’t have been too difficult. But the subsequent task of treating the Khan... it was hard to say if that could still be completed.

Lu Yunan turned her head to look at him and asked, "What are you thinking?"

"Nothing much." Li Ang raised his hand and grasped at the air above. "Just wondering if we can ever leave this place."

"Doubtful." Lu Yunan blew at her bangs and said calmly, "This is the Bottom of Li Yuan Valley, a forbidden place in the Human World. Even Cultivators from the Candle Cloud Realm turn into ordinary people here. We were incredibly fortunate to reach the valley floor without being eaten by the demons that dwell here. That in itself was a stroke of luck amidst our misfortune. By the way, do you think Lian Xuanyao will come to save you?"

"...Hard to say." Li Ang rubbed his forehead. "First, there’s the question of whether the Academic Palace can even contact the Mountain Master. Even if they could, we’d have to consider if the Mountain Master could withstand Li Yuan’s suppressive effects. Besides, our current location might not be directly beneath where we fell from the cliff—who knows how far the parachute carried us off course. The Ghost Shovel corpse might have smelled our flesh and crawled here from a distance."

"That’s tricky." Lu Yunan sighed. "We can’t get out of here on our own. Li Yuan stretches one thousand five hundred miles from north to south. It’s up to fifty miles at its widest point and still several miles across at its narrowest. It would take ages to walk out. And as for climbing up..." She looked up at the cliffs. "Three thousand meters? Four thousand? Or maybe five, six, seven, or even eight thousand?"

The cliffs of Li Yuan were incredibly steep, with almost no footholds, like an insurmountable natural barrier.

For a moment, the atmosphere grew silent.

GURGLE—

Lu Yunan’s stomach growled, breaking the tense atmosphere. The two exchanged a smile as Lu Yunan took a pack of rations from her bosom. "Want some?"

Li Ang sniffed, catching a faint scent of animal fat. "What’s this?"

"Compressed biscuits with added lard." Lu Yunan explained, "They’re made of wheat flour, sugar, fats, and milk powder. They’ve undergone preservation treatment and can last two to three months. This pack, if rationed well, might last us both about three days." She paused, then calmly added, "It might look simple, but it’s actually quite tricky to make. Still, I got used to being hungry in the past; I always carried a pack of this when traveling. Never thought it’d come in handy today."

Got used to being hungry?

Li Ang sensed a subtle shift in Lu Yunan’s tone and hesitated. He knew Lu Yunan was from the Black Mountain Tribe in the Northern Territory. The climate there was harsh and resources were scarce—life must have been tough. After some thought, he hesitatingly asked, "So... how did you, um, come to this world?"

"How did I come to this world? My mom gave birth to me, of course." Lu Yunan burst out laughing, inadvertently aggravating her thigh wound, and grimaced as she inhaled sharply a couple of times. "Ow, ow! It’s killing me. Damn, damn, damn!" She hovered her palm over her thigh for a moment to ease the pain before settling back down, her eyes flickering. "You’re asking how I crossed over, right?"