Enduring the Earth Calamity (2/2)
Blue charm lightning shadow shrieks and claws at its own head after a botched sneak attack. Its lightning flares at nothing until it finally settles. The soul damage it took entering Dang Hun Mountain shows plainly, and inside Dang Hun Palace Fang Yuan’s face goes ashen at the sight. Only the land spirit’s teleport, timed to the instant, kept him from dying in the strike. Little Hu Immortal, the land spirit, pats her chest pale with fright. ch. 417
Enraged at missing, blue charm lightning shadow rams Dang Hun Mountain, the world’s only one, again and again. It tears craters and scorched pits that leave Fang Yuan sick at the damage. Dozens of collisions later, its own battered soul turns too disordered to keep attacking, and it stops. ch. 417
By now the land spirit has already teleported the desolate beast swamp crab away twice, at a cost of five beads of green grape immortal essence. Fang Yuan’s once endless fox army stands near extinction. The crab itself carries only small wounds and keeps advancing steadily, as if it cannot be broken. Both beasts serve one faction with one aim: destroy the blessed land’s center, drain its immortal essence, and kill the land spirit. ch. 417
Unable to safely ram the mountain again, blue charm lightning shadow turns on the blessed land itself, shattering sky and earth until it tears a hole clean through the world. Fang Yuan orders the land spirit to cut away the ground around the hole. The alternative is worse: letting it widen into a passage for outside Gu Immortals, demonic path Immortals waiting on Tian Ti mountain among them. Little Hu Immortal is appalled that cut land can never be restored, but obeys anyway, repeatedly severing about half a square kilometer at a time. ch. 417
The crab keeps pounding the mountain, opening a crater at least six tenths of an acre wide and shaking Dang Hun Palace’s pillars. The land spirit’s repeated teleports already run the green grape essence spent to thirteen beads. Little Hu Immortal breaks down sobbing over the shrinking land and the lost essence. Fang Yuan, ashen faced, snaps at her to stop. ch. 417
He has no attack type Immortal Gu. Even his rank five Gu, turn gold, soft bones and pitch black among them, would only ripple the crab’s thick defenses unless used for a sustained stretch, he judges. Using them himself would mean leaving Dang Hun Mountain and meeting the lightning shadow’s attacks. He will not risk handing them to the land spirit either, since her death would cost him even fixed immortal travel Gu. Calling it a gamble, he orders her to stop teleporting the crab and unleash Dang Hun Mountain’s full power instead. ch. 417
Freed from Little Hu Immortal’s restraint, Dang Hun Mountain lets loose a soul shaking force that reaches three thousand steps. It batters the crab as it closes in, slowing its movements. The pain only sends it into a berserk charge, faster than before, and its pincers smash into the mountain like steel clamps, crumbling solid rock and gouging fresh holes. ch. 417
Blue charm lightning shadow finds the blessed land’s eastern and northern edges, already weakened by earlier calamities, and tears holes through them instead. Little Hu Immortal credits surviving the earlier water and fire calamities with sparing them a tenfold worse outcome. Fang Yuan answers with two orders. Teleport the crab only three thousand steps at a time, to save essence while keeping it inside the mountain’s soul shaking range. And cut off the entire northern area too: over six hundred square kilometers, one sixth of the blessed land’s full four thousand. ch. 417
Blue charm lightning shadow happens to be inside the northern ground when it is cut away. It lunges to escape, but five kilometers is too far to cross in time. It is carried off into the outside world with the evaporating land, screeching in fury as it goes. Fang Yuan calls it a success, reasoning that only its own soul damage and the speed it burned attacking the world kept it from escaping in time. ch. 417
The swamp crab keeps pounding Dang Hun Mountain as Little Hu Immortal teleports it away again and again, the contest now one of soul foundation between beast and mountain. Dang Hun Palace’s pillars crumble and its beams snap under the tremors. Fang Yuan stands silently, demanding of himself more strength. The crab’s movements finally slow, and it collapses dead at the mountain’s waist, ending the sixth earthly calamity. ch. 417
