Chapter 378

Chapter 378: Leak

With that “not good,” Immortal Yuan Ling turned into a streak of spectral light, as if he intended to fly straight toward the Demon Suppression Tower.

He didn’t get far.

Yu Sheng casually pulled open a door beside him. On the other side was the Demon Suppression Tower’s core containment zone.

“This way’s faster,” Yu Sheng said, holding it open.

Immortal Yuan Ling’s light collapsed back into human shape. He stared at the doorway—one that led straight into the highest-level containment zone—and for a single beat his expression turned… complicated.

Now wasn’t the time to argue about technical details.

The moment the door opened, Yuan Ling caught something off in the view beyond it. The central flow inside the tower looked faintly unstable. Something had gone wrong, and badly. He stepped forward, firing off orders as he moved.

“Xuan Che, go to the Parted Clouds Palace’s mountain-guard disciples and check the mountain protection array’s nodes.

“Yuan He, help seal the spirit mountain’s boundary. Don’t let any dirty things escape beyond the mountain.

“Senior Brother…”

He paused in the doorway and looked to Immortal Yuan Hao. Before Yuan Ling could finish, Yuan Hao nodded once.

“Don’t panic. Even though Senior Brother has been stuck behind bars these years, I haven’t let my fighting skills rust. If something comes out that you juniors can’t handle, I’ll hold it back.”

“Good.” Yuan Ling’s voice tightened. “I can see the Demon Suppression Tower’s central flow is faintly unstable, but I don’t know why the alarm still hasn’t sounded. It’s extremely strange. Everyone, be careful!”

With that, Immortal Yuan Ling strode through the door.

Yu Sheng opened another door at once, this one leading straight into the Parted Clouds Palace grand hall. He waved at Xuan Che, who was about to take off.

“Go through here. It’s faster.”

Xuan Che didn’t waste a breath. He cupped his hands in salute and ran through.

Immortal Yuan He stared at the doors, eyes blinking hard. Then he blurted, “…Do you have a door that goes to the mountain guard pass? It’s next to the Ten Directions Pavilion.”

Yu Sheng didn’t even pretend. “Don’t know that place. Never been. Run there yourself.”

Immortal Yuan He’s mouth opened, then shut. A heartbeat later, he turned into a streak of rainbow light and shot into the sea of clouds.

On the Cloud Viewing Terrace, Irene craned her neck to watch that departing trail. Then she looked back toward where Zheng Zhi had pointed earlier, unease creeping in.

“Is something really going to go wrong? Right now it still looks like everything’s—”

She didn’t get to finish.

A low, strange rumble rolled through the mountains, like something enormous shifting beneath the cloud sea and grinding peaks under its weight. A faint trembling rose from deep underground, tangled with something like a behemoth’s breathing and a thousand layers of noise.

Irene nearly jumped off Yu Sheng’s shoulder. “Oh my… it really is going wrong!”

Almost in the same breath, a semi-transparent rift flashed into existence in the distant sky like black lightning. This time it wasn’t just Zheng Zhi who could see it—Irene and Foxy could make out the rift’s outline too.

The rift flickered like a glitching illusion art. It even felt as if it were splitting a peak of the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain in another dimension.

Zheng Zhi stared, eyes wide. “Brother Yu! Something’s crawling out of it… and stuff’s coming out of the mountain too!”

Yu Sheng didn’t need the warning. The omens were already erupting across the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.

The clouds and mist surrounding the immortal mountain churned like boiling water. Countless hazy shadows darted through the fog like hungry ghosts. Smoke rose in thin columns from all over the slopes, as if rifts were opening everywhere—and then urgent warning bells began to ring across the peaks.

A crushing pressure descended from above.

Yu Sheng snapped his head up and saw another rift forming out of thin air. A bizarre vicious beast with jagged bone armor was forcing itself through. It looked like a heap of bones and rotting flesh, radiating chaotic horror. Chains from the Demon Suppression Tower still hung between its ribs, and talismanic runes along those chains burned fierce and bright.

The next second, the vicious beast threw back its head and roared—and it could speak.

“Yuan Ling, you old bastard! Your grandpa crawled out of that tower!”

In the blink of an eye, the talismanic runes burned to ash. The demon-suppressing chains snapped inch by inch. The vicious beast tore the rift wider and lunged straight for the Cloud Viewing Terrace.

What met it was a storm of black silk threads, spreading like a spiderweb.

With a flick of her hand, Irene wove countless strands of spider silk. They interlaced and wrapped the skeletal beast layer after layer as it squeezed through the opening.

At the same time, Yu Sheng caught movement out of the corner of his eye—Immortal Yuan Hao.

This legendary Elder Senior Uncle took a single step and was already standing in midair. Something slipped from his sleeve: a square object, neither metal nor wood, bright red and glaring, cold enough to chill the spine. The moment it left his hand, it roared through the air like wind and thunder.

A spirit brick.

Trapped by spider silk, the vicious beast heard the rush of wind. It looked up and saw the brick filling its vision. Over the beast’s shoulder, it caught sight of Yuan Hao in the air, and the pressure alone made its whole body tremble.

Then it roared, furious and unwilling, “It’s fucking Yuan Hao, that old bastard—”

Bang.

The spirit brick slammed into its face. It looked like a plain, unremarkable hit. The next instant, the monster’s body exploded into dust, purified and scattered by the brick’s red glow.

Yu Sheng, who had been about to strike, went momentarily dumb. He stared at Yuan Hao—white brows, white hair, an immortal air—and at the spirit brick floating beside him.

He couldn’t stop himself. “…Your weapon is a spirit brick?!”

Immortal Yuan Hao almost fell out of the sky. “This is the Ten Directions Heaven-Suppressing Ruler! The Heaven-Suppressing Ruler! I just made it a bit short when I forged it!”

Yu Sheng only stared blankly. He had no idea what kind of treasure a Ten Directions Heaven-Suppressing Ruler was, but from Yuan Hao’s tone, it was clear more than one person had told him it looked like a brick.

And this was obviously not the time to debate whether it made sense for a tragic, handsome, powerful immortal-dad type to fight with a spirit brick.

Because as that vicious beast vanished, countless rifts of all sizes began popping open across the cloud sea around the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain.

“Holy shit, this is getting insane!” Irene shrieked.

Black spider silk spread again, forming a protective web over the Cloud Viewing Terrace. Foxy dropped flat at once, transforming into a massive nine-tailed silver fox. The eight fox roaming cannon behind her swelled to match her new size, and she unloaded a full barrage into the nearest rifts. Fox fire surged, followed by wave after wave of fox carrot missiles that howled into the clouds, relentless and bright.

A rift formed directly overhead with a teeth-grinding crackle. Pitch-black smoke poured out. Behind it, chains snapped as if sliced by the opening itself, and talismanic runes burned to ash in an instant. From the smoke emerged a creature with a vaguely humanoid outline.

Then more rifts tore open, and countless bizarre things spilled out.

There were ferocious beasts and heretical demons the Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain had subdued and suppressed. There were cultivators who had fallen into demonic paths, vicious criminals from the immortal realm, strange objects, and unstable entities that had been contained in the Demon Suppression Tower across the ages. Some barely looked human. Some barely looked like beasts. Some didn’t look like anything at all.

In moments, the Yun Shan Cloud Sea filled with howls and screams. Everything became chaos.

A streak of gold flashed past Yu Sheng’s vision. He turned in time to see Princess Rapunzel swinging a golden great scythe, slicing a humanoid monster cleanly in half. As it struggled and dissolved into black smoke, she hopped back lightly. The scythe reshaped into a spear in her hands, and she thrust backward, piercing a fleshy ball creeping up from the side—covered in countless eyes and writhing limbs.

Golden light poured like a waterfall. Radiance shredded the countless offspring that burst forth as the meatball disintegrated.

Yu Sheng could barely follow her with his eyes. The unreliable-looking young lady had abruptly revealed the kind of combat instinct forged in endless life-and-death fights. He was stunned.

In the space of a few breaths, Princess Rapunzel cleared a whole area around herself. Then she noticed Yu Sheng’s stare, shook grime from her hair, and grinned like it was a game.

“Bro, am I awesome?!”

“…You’re awesome,” Yu Sheng admitted, swinging his spiked club to smash away a winged demon that kept darting in to screech at him. He looked back at her with genuine awe. “I knew you could fight, but I didn’t know you could fight like this.”

“Feels like everything coming out is the easy kind—at least the ones you can touch and destroy. Solid enemies.” Behind her, magical golden hair began to spread like dazzling rippling water, flowing across the Cloud Viewing Terrace. Swords, scythes, spears, halberds, spikes, and blades grew wildly from it, each weapon moving as if it had a will of its own, shredding every hostile thing that entered her range. “For me, if it has a health bar, it can die. And these things are way easier than the demons in the tower.”