The screeches were like needles stabbing straight into the brain, bringing with them bursts of ringing in the ears and dizzying vertigo.

He Lingchuan’s solution was simple. He flung out the net in his hand.

He had only caught four of them earlier. The net was huge, and there was still plenty of room inside.

The distance between the two sides was short, and he moved fast. At least forty to fifty of the bats failed to stop in time and plunged headfirst into the net.

The burrow spiders truly deserved praise for their excellent materials. All at once, the net contained dozens more savage, frenzied human-headed bats, yet it still held. No matter how crazily they slammed against it, it did not tear.

That left another fifty to sixty bats that had avoided the net. They split into two groups and rushed straight at He Lingchuan.

Standing atop a stalactite, He Lingchuan felt the direction of the airflow.

These things had also flown in on the wind.

When the first bat was almost upon his face, Fleeting Life finally left its scabbard.

In the pitch-black cavern, a sudden flash of light burst forth, like a startled swan, yet also like wrathful thunder. It lasted only an instant, yet it covered an area of ten meters directly in front of him.

The fierce saber light was like raging breakers and crashing seas, shredding every bat rushing at him.

Wave-Cleaving Slash.

The rest saw that things were going badly and tried to flee, but they were still swept into the saber wind and annihilated within a second.

When the bats were minced apart, they did not burst into blood and flesh. Instead, they turned into black flakes that drifted through the air, becoming what looked just like burnt paper offerings.

Then He Lingchuan looked forward again and saw that the aberrant creature had somehow lost two or three faces on its body, but it had grown a vertical eye on its forehead.

The eye was huge and bulging, occupying nearly half its face and almost crowding out the remaining features entirely.

The moment it opened, it fixed He Lingchuan with a glare. Blood vessels even crawled thickly through the corners of the eye.

He did not know what this thing was capable of, but just looking at it gave off vile and sinister vibes. He Lingchuan had no intention of waiting for it to unleash its move. Raising a hand, he fired two more pellets at it.

The aberrant creature lifted an arm to block them. But the moment the pellets touched its skin, there came two tremendous booms—

They exploded.

These were Spirit-Nurturing Isle’s newly developed fire pellets, also called hand-thrown cannons, and they worked rather well.

When the smoke cleared, He Lingchuan saw that the aberrant creature had been blasted into a grotesque mess, like a lump of clay kneaded by a child. The proportions of its body were all wrong now, some parts too long, some too short, and a huge chunk was missing from one shoulder, which was where the fire pellet had struck.

However, that vertical eye was still intact.

It stared at He Lingchuan without blinking, and the creature muttered, “Why can’t I find it?!”

Find what?

It sounded very much like it was speaking to itself.

Right before He Lingchuan’s eyes, the thing actually began to recover.

The damaged parts started shrinking back into place, as though some invisible hand was kneading them back into their original shape.

It feared neither blades nor fire, and it could heal itself. What, then, was this thing’s weakness?

The aberrant creature pressed one hand against the rock wall, and bluish-gray moss immediately began to grow across the stone, spreading in all directions.

Something seemed to be writhing within the moss.

Bugs?

He Lingchuan did not get a good look because, within two breaths, the moss withered, turned to black ash, and fell away in soft, rustling streams. The rock wall became clean again.

“Hm?” Genuine surprise actually appeared on the aberrant creature’s hideous face. The next time it slapped the wall, it struck even harder, producing a loud thump.

But it was useless.

This time, the moss shriveled even faster, unable to spread beyond half a meter.

He Lingchuan remained perfectly at ease. “Got any other tricks?”

Clearly, this thing had wanted to unleash some large-scale divine technique, but for some reason, it simply would not work here.

Shock appeared on the aberrant creature’s face. Then it suddenly leaped into the water.

He Lingchuan never took his eyes off it. The moment it lifted its leg, he moved too, crossing the ten-meter gap in a single bound, as fast as one of his own sleeve arrows. He followed up with a Swallow Strike, and Fleeting Life slashed out in a full, perfect arc.

This aberrant creature should have been split cleanly in two by that strike. Who would have thought it would clap its hands together and catch the blade between its palms?

This thing could actually stop a sharp blade barehanded, and it even seemed frighteningly practiced at it.

No matter how sharp Fleeting Life was, it was useless if its edge did not reach flesh.

The next instant, the aberrant creature stretched its neck, opened its mouth wide, and bit straight at He Lingchuan’s head.

A human neck has its limits; ordinarily, it could not reach a target like that. But this creature’s neck suddenly lengthened like that of a heron, stretching so long that it could probably have tied itself in a knot if it tried.

Aside from the astonishingly huge vertical eye on its forehead, it still looked roughly like a human face when its mouth was closed. But once it opened, it was as though its jaw had dislocated. It could have swallowed an entire embroidered ball.

Naturally, swallowing a human head posed no problem at all.

And inside that mouth, apart from the two rows of fangs, there was only darkness like that of an abyss.

This was the sort of thing that should only exist in nightmares. Any ordinary person facing it would surely be scared out of their wits.

Fortunately, it had been abnormal from the moment it appeared. At this point, no matter what grotesque trick it pulled, He Lingchuan remained calm. Before that gaping maw could close over his head, he had already driven a kick into its belly.

But instead of kicking the thing flying, his foot sank into it as though plunging into mud.

Its body was far too malleable.

Seeing that abyssal mouth almost above his head, He Lingchuan drove his other fist upward and smashed it straight into the creature’s jaw.

Crack.

He heard the sound of its upper and lower fangs slamming together.

Then the two of them fell into the water together.

He Lingchuan circulated his origin energy, and a pale yellow glow spread along his blade. Taking advantage of the motion, he twisted his saber and chopped off the creature’s hands.

But in that brief opening, several wisps of black smoke also rose from the aberrant creature’s body and darted into the water.

Behind He Lingchuan, they transformed into several water ghosts. Their hair instantly lengthened into thick tangles of waterweed, wrapping around his ankles and arms and dragging him desperately toward the bottom. Their strength was astonishing.

At the same time, the aberrant creature in front of him lunged at him.

Trying to gang up on me?

One of He Lingchuan’s eyebrows twitched, and a figure appeared behind him as well. Wielding twin blades, it cut down a water ghost with each slash.

His clone had appeared.

The third water ghost recognized danger at once and turned to flee.

Freed from the bindings, He Lingchuan immediately regained the use of both arms and struck at the aberrant creature before him with a single slash.

The timing was perfect. It was almost as if the thing had deliberately offered itself up to be cut.

What He Lingchuan cared about most was that huge eyeball. And since the creature’s neck was so thin, he chopped it off outright.

Even underwater, he could hear its scream of agony.

* * *

At the inn, three hundred meters away.

The curse master had been kneeling before the idol the whole time, muttering incantations under his breath. The three sticks of incense were burning down at astonishing speed; each would reach the end in about fifty breaths.

The curse master had to keep replacing them to ensure the incense offering never stopped.

These three were already more than halfway burned through again.

He had just opened his eyes and was about to replace them when, with a soft puff, all three sticks suddenly snapped in two without warning and fell onto the tabletop.

What?!

The curse master froze. The disorderly smoke in the room suddenly gathered again into the shape of the idol. It first looked at the three broken incense sticks on the table, then demanded of the curse master, “What offering did you give me?!”

“A human,” the curse master answered instinctively. “Though he bears an appointment from the Crown Prince of Chiyan, he’s a foreigner, so he can’t use origin energy!”

If He Lingchuan had origin energy protecting him, the curse master would never have invited this evil entity over in the first place.

“Wrong! It’s not that simple!” the smoke figure roared irritably. “When I get back, I’ll deal with you!”

With that, it shot out through the window with a whoosh, even stirring up a small storm in the room.

Several sheets of white paper on the back table were tossed everywhere.

The smoke then settled again and even began drifting out through the window. The curse master knew then that the thing had gone personally.

All he needed to do was keep offering incense.

But his mood was far from calm. With the power this idol possessed, ambushing some obscure, unprepared human should have been child’s play.

Even if it had only sent out an avatar earlier, it should not have failed.

So what exactly was going on now?

* * *

Although the aberrant creature was covered in faces, the one on its neck was clearly the most important. At this moment, it could no longer care about He Lingchuan and bent down to grab its own severed head.

It was worth noting that once its head was cut off, the aberrant creature’s body returned to normal proportions. Its neck shrank back down, and its body stopped stretching unnaturally.

A thought flashed through He Lingchuan’s mind. He grabbed the aberrant creature by the shoulder and, before the grotesque face on its chest could crawl over and bite him, he hurled it out of the water in one throw.

Though it looked skinny as a stick, it was shockingly heavy in the hand. He Lingchuan felt as though he were lifting not a person, but a giant wild boar weighing over 150 kilograms.

Fortunately, his true energy surged powerfully through both arms, and he braced himself against a nearby stone spike before making the throw.

With that toss, the aberrant creature landed close to the rock wall.

He Lingchuan flung Fleeting Life with a backhand throw. With a sharp whistle, the saber pinned the aberrant creature to the stone wall.

Without its head, it could no longer distort its body and slip free from the blade.

Only then did He Lingchuan feel at ease enough to swim off in search of the severed head.

He looked around.

It was gone.

A jolt ran through him, and he immediately dove straight to the bottom.

Using the light of the glowgrass, he swam in circles twice before discovering that the aberrant creature’s severed head had actually grown a new body. This time it was long and thin, with no limbs at all.

It was plunging deeper and deeper into the water. Even without hands or feet, it swam astonishingly fast.

His clone had just finished off the last water ghost and happened to be not far from the head. It immediately fired a sleeve arrow.

He Lingchuan feared the thing might open its mouth and swallow the arrow, so he aimed at its grass-like tangled hair instead.

Sure enough, the arrow pinned that wild hair into a crack in the rock.

He Lingchuan swam over as well, took the blade from his double, chopped off the newly grown body, and only then grabbed the head and floated upward.

Now that he had the head, he still needed to go up and deal with the aberrant creature’s body.

But when he surfaced and raised the glowgrass to look upward, he was startled again.

At some point, a great mass of dark brown vines had grown across the rock wall, thick and thin alike, binding the aberrant creature’s body tightly in place.

It was trussed up so thoroughly that there was practically no room left to move.

The aberrant creature struggled, of course, but with Fleeting Life pinning it in place, it could not go anywhere.

He Lingchuan looked more closely and felt these things did not quite resemble vines after all. Rather, they looked like...

Tree roots?

There were countless tiny root hairs growing from them. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

What kind of plant can produce so many roots so quickly?

If the roots are here, then where’s the plant itself?

Tracing them back to the source, He Lingchuan discovered that the root system seemed to emerge from a fissure in the rock face directly above.

It was very obvious that these roots had come specifically for the aberrant creature.

Some of the root tips had even pierced directly into its skin and were sucking at it nonstop, as though drinking nutrient fluid.

The few faces remaining on the aberrant creature wanted to flee, but the roots held them firmly in place. A faint azure glow shimmered from the root hairs, preventing them from turning into black smoke and slipping away as well.