Chapter 399

Chapter 399: After the Mess

Terrifying energy washed across the heavens. The blinding beam surged like a river of light, splitting the rain and driving back the downpour across a wide stretch of sky.

Where it passed, rain evaporated instantly. Clouds curled and shuddered. The shockwave shredded the cloud layer and, for a brief moment, sunlight broke through—bright and sudden, like a memory—spilling onto the distant Refining Tower.

Then the clouds closed again, and the rain returned.

The surviving black-robed cultivators sensed the horrific buildup of power the instant Irene lifted her hand. They scattered like startled birds. Even Foxy and Luna couldn’t stop them.

The remaining beasts went berserk in the unstable aftershock, charging wildly through the storm until Foxy wiped them out with a dense barrage of foxfire.

The jade-faced golden fox in the red dress stared at the sky for a long time, unable to speak. When the heavy rain resumed, she jolted back to herself, hugged her tail, and trembled.

Zheng Zhi stood there stunned for what felt like ages, then turned to look at the injured fox beside him.

The six-tailed highland fox had woken again just in time to see Irene’s beam sweep the sky clean. He croaked, “My life is over!” and fainted for the third time.

Immortal Yuan Hao didn’t even spare him a glance. He stood, studying the Little Doll still floating in the air, electricity popping across her body. After a long, thoughtful stroke of his chin, he muttered, “…What kind of principle is that?”

Foxy sniffed, then sprinted toward the edge of the battlefield. In a muddy pit she found Irene—Rebar—who’d been flung from the sky earlier.

True to the name, the body was stubbornly tough. Even after a fall from that height, she hadn’t fallen apart. She just looked dazed.

“Are you okay?” Foxy reached down, hauled the bedraggled doll out of the mud, and wiped her face twice with a messy swipe. “I saw you fall—”

Irene—Rebar—blinked slowly. After a long moment, her focus finally caught up with her body. She looked up at Foxy and wailed, “I fell! I fell, I fell—I almost died from the fall! I almost died!”

The other Irene drifted down from the sky, wobbling slightly. She still crackled with overcharge, arcs of electricity snapping over her limbs. Even her voice had a bright electric buzz. “That was so thrilling!”

Foxy’s fur bristled instantly. She lowered one tail to the ground like a lightning rod and glared up at her. “This body can overcharge too?”

“I’m finding out for the first time too!” Irene said, sparks jumping as she spoke. “I thought I was going to blow up, but then I realized it and blew that guy up instead—holy crap!”

Mid-sentence, she slapped her forehead as if remembering something terrible. Regret flooded her face. “We didn’t leave him alive! I evaporated him in one shot!”

She craned her head toward the sky where her beam had passed, muttering in a rush, “I’m screwed. I’m screwed. Yu Sheng definitely wanted to take him alive. One of Holy Revere Hermitage just popped out, and he clearly wasn’t some bottom-tier cultist. If we’d captured him, we could’ve wrung so much out of him… and I just deleted him.”

Luna walked over. She looked at the crackling, glowing Irene and said slowly, “Shorty Irene. Control: bad.”

“I just wasn’t used to it!” Irene snapped, electric eyes flashing. “I wasn’t used to it, okay? And if you’ve got the guts, you do it—you didn’t beat him either…”

She hesitated, staring up into the rain. “So, uh… is there a chance the cultist left scraps we can pick up and maybe revive? I mean, isn’t Holy Revere Hermitage best at bioengineering? And the higher the rank, the harder they are to kill…”

Foxy’s stare sharpened. Irene threw up her hands quickly. “Okay, okay! Look at you. I’m just saying!”

“I think you’re talking nonsense,” Foxy said flatly. “Think about it. Is that even possible?”

“If it’s not possible, it’s not possible,” Irene grumbled.

Immortal Yuan Hao and Zheng Zhi walked over. Irene shut her mouth, reluctantly, and tried to look innocent.

“Where did Yu Sheng go?” Immortal Yuan Hao asked first.

His expression was heavy—heavy with confusion as well as worry. He hesitated, then stopped speaking, as if something unsettled was rising in his chest.

Because reason, experience, and his perception all told him that when that bolt of lightning fell, Yu Sheng had probably been struck out of existence. The moment was too brief for the naked eye to catch a body breaking apart, but the result felt obvious.

Worse, his divine sense had felt Yu Sheng’s life force disperse.

And yet Irene and the others were acting like nothing had happened.

The sheer wrongness of it made Immortal Yuan Hao doubt himself for the first time in his life. He frowned and glanced at Zheng Zhi.

Zheng Zhi looked just as dazed.

Irene cleared her throat twice. As the most experienced “second-in-command” when it came to handling Yu Sheng’s aftermath at the hotel, she decided it was time to improvise.

“Don’t worry,” she said, tilting her head up. “He’ll be back in a bit.”

She shot Zheng Zhi a look. “Don’t ask. You’ll know soon.”

Then she looked at Immortal Yuan Hao. “And you… you won’t know soon anyway.”

Neither man understood a word.

Irene didn’t intend to explain. She pivoted fast. “So, how’s that square-headed fox doing?”

The girl in red, who’d been inching closer but still didn’t dare get too near, perked up at once. She glanced at her great-uncle, then looked nervously at Immortal Yuan Hao.

“His life is secured. He won’t die anytime soon,” Immortal Yuan Hao said. He kept his questions to himself when it became clear Irene wouldn’t answer. “But his heart meridians and spiritual sense are badly damaged. He still needs to be sent to Thousand Peak Spirit Mountain for treatment.”

Irene waved a hand. “Fine. We’ll wait for Yu Sheng to come back and open a door to send the wounded over. For now, let’s get somewhere we can breathe.”

They retreated to the collapsed, abandoned factory.

Immortal Yuan Hao raised a barrier over the ruin to block wind and rain. Beneath it, the heavily injured six-tailed fox breathed more steadily now.

Luna scanned the fox’s vital signs, then stepped into a quiet corner and entered standby.

Zheng Zhi pulled out his phone and started thinking about how to write today’s report. Something this big had to go to the bureau.

Irene—Rebar—tried to wipe mud off her dress and hair. It was hopeless. In the end she flung her hands up in frustration and resigned herself to waiting for Yu Sheng to come back and take her home for a bath.

The jade-faced golden fox girl stood stiffly beside her great-uncle like a child waiting to be scolded, nerves written all over her face. After that dangerous, bizarre battle, she was clearly even more afraid of this group of strange experts who’d appeared from nowhere.

Foxy noticed. As a fellow fox, she felt a flicker of kinship and tried to help. “Don’t be so tense. If you stay nervous all the time, you’ll shed more fur.”

The moment the nine-tailed silver fox High Immortal spoke, the local fox went even stiffer. She hugged her tail so hard it looked like she might rip it off.

“Silly Fox, you should really talk less,” Irene said, still crackling with electricity. She casually patted Foxy’s tail.

A zap snapped through Foxy’s fur. She puffed up from head to toe like a startled dandelion.

Irene turned to the girl in red with a grin. “By the way, what’s your name? Things were too chaotic earlier—we didn’t ask.”

“I-I’m Ling Long,” the jade-faced golden fox answered quickly, lowering her head. “My great-uncle is Shang An. We’re originally from Eight Gates Star, but for the past hundred-plus years we’ve mostly lived at the Grand Void Spiritual Axis…”

She rattled off the basics, eager and obedient.

Immortal Yuan Hao raised his brows. “You said you came here seeking an opportunity under an immortal’s guidance, but you weren’t clear earlier. Now that you’ve calmed down, tell me properly. What kind of immortal was it? What guidance? Do you even know what this so-called ‘opportunity’ is supposed to be?”

“An opportunity… is an opportunity,” Ling Long said, scratching her head, still sounding muddled. “Great-Uncle said it might be ancient secrets of the Dao left by some great power, but what form it takes… we’ll only know when we see it. As for the immortal…”

She paused, thinking back. “Great-Uncle and I never saw what he looked like. We only heard his voice through illusion magic. He said his name was… Yun Qing Zi.”

The abandoned factory fell silent at once.