Chapter 137

Chapter 137

A sunshower fell over Golden Saddle Mountain.

Its uniquely brilliant sunlight draped the black mountain range in a veil of gold and crimson.

Even this range, strewn everywhere with fragments of Huang Jun, now looked majestic and expensive.

Qin Ying sat inside the little matchbox, fine rain sprinkling over her shoulders.

It wasn’t cold, yet she shivered out of nowhere.

Han Lie, who had been watching her the entire time, noticed at once.

Thinking something was wrong, he hurriedly leaned in to check on her. “Supreme Deity, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Whenever something happened, Qin Ying’s face instinctively went blank.

Since things had already come to this, she decided to take it one step at a time and carefully rose to her feet.

As she moved, the stiff garment she wore rubbed against itself with a rustling sound.

To be fair, the collar and sleeves of this outfit were actually shaped decently, and the uneven edges had all been singed clean with a heated needle.

At first glance, there was nothing too wrong with it, as long as she didn’t move.

Limited by the material, wearing it felt about the same as wrapping herself in plastic sheeting.

The slightest movement accidentally exposed half her collarbone.

Every motion Qin Ying made was cautious. She was afraid that if she wasn’t careful, she would tear open the glued seams.

Beside her, Han Lie reached out to help her, a flash of guilt passing through his eyes.

Qin Ying stood at the edge of the matchbox, looked at her own clean white feet, then looked at the dark ground below, covered in sharp stones. She found it a little hard to step down.

It wasn’t that she was afraid of getting dirty. It was just that when she thought about how the blackness had been contributed by Huang Jun, she couldn’t quite get past it mentally.

She was just about to tear up the cardboard of the matchbox and make herself a temporary pair of shoes when Han Lie extended his arm to her. “Supreme Deity, I can carry you.”

Qin Ying froze for a brief moment, then quickly nodded.

Right now, she had several options: ride a deer, ride a bird, or ride a dog.

All of those options had one thing in common: she would have to straddle them.

But this descended Supreme Deity had nothing under her nonwoven fabric skirt, not even underwear.

And if the Soul-Container Puppet currently wearing this filthy outfit walked over sharp rocks and got damaged, would that make her unable to move?

Qin Ying didn’t dare take that gamble.

Since she had no desire to ride a dog and end up splitting her crotch, the best option was naturally to find another means of transportation.

She openly spread her arms toward Han Lie and said, “Much appreciated!”

“I want to go to the Divine Shrine.”

She lifted her legs and very unceremoniously sat in the crook of his arm, taking command.

To Han Lie in his Monstrous Beast form, Qin Ying weighed about as much as a reed stalk.

Yet Han Lie was so nervous it was as if he were holding some fragile vase.

After he took two steps, Qin Ying had no choice but to pat his arm. “Relax a little. You’re too hot.”

“If you can’t manage it, I’ll get down and walk by myself.”

Han Lie was like a boiling kettle. Even the scales on his arm were starting to roast her backside.

“I’m sorry.”

Han Lie apologized, his eyes darting left and right, looking anywhere but at Qin Ying. After stammering for a while, he forced himself to calm down and keep his gaze straight ahead.

At the same time, he quickened his pace and began running through Chixia Mountain.

Wangcai was enormous now. Every time Han Lie had run a good distance, it would lazily take a single step.

The Thunderbird, on the other hand, seemed quite interested as it flew alongside them.

After several leaps and bounds, Han Lie, using the tail behind him to keep his balance, came to a steady stop before the Divine Shrine on Golden Saddle Mountain.

Only then did Qin Ying’s fingers, which had been nervously pinching his arm, loosen slightly.

She still wasn’t very used to the feeling of entrusting her little life to someone else.

“Supreme Deity, we’re here.”

Han Lie, who had just sprinted all the way like a swift hunting leopard, wasn’t even breathing hard.

He looked around, then walked over to a flat boulder. The tail behind him moved nimbly like a feather duster, sweeping across the surface of the stone.

After scraping away the scorched, blasted stone skin and revealing the white rock underneath, he finally set Qin Ying down on the stone to stand.

“The Divine Shrine has been buried under ash. Supreme Deity, please wait a moment. I’ll lead Wangcai and the others to dig it out.”

Huang Jun’s body had been burned right beside this Divine Shrine. After his ashes had blown all over the ground, the Divine Shrine had collapsed and was now half-buried in black ash.

Han Lie would never allow Qin Ying to take part in such dirty work, much less touch that scum’s oily ash.

Fortunately, they had plenty of little companions.

The Hou gathered atop the rubble, sniffing around. When they found a loose spot, they gave a warning cry.

When Han Lie heard it, he brought Wangcai over to dig.

Qin Ying sat on the white stone. The airless outfit had made her break into a sweat, and she couldn’t help urging Fuzhu, who was serving as both her bodyguard and backrest behind her.

“Fuzhu, make the rain a little heavier.”

At her words, Fuzhu let out a bleating cry. Thunderclouds gathered in the sky, and the fine drizzle instantly turned into raindrops the size of beans.

Qin Ying tugged open her collar to catch the rain, washing away the hot sweat trapped inside her clothes.

She had just started to feel a little cooler when a sudden blast of flying sand and tumbling stones swept toward her.
Wangcai was digging furiously at the Divine Shrine with both front paws.

The little dog, now as huge as a mountain, was having the time of its life clawing up the earth, but Qin Ying was in no state to withstand that storm of flying sand.

She immediately lost all dignity, crouched down with her arms over her head, and shouted, “Wangcai, stop!”

Before the words had even left her mouth, Han Lie rushed over and leaped in front of her, shielding her from the flying gravel and sand.

Qin Ying spat several times to get the powder blown into her mouth out, firmly refusing to think about what exactly it might be made of.

Startled, Fuzhu made the rain fall even harder, and in the blink of an eye Qin Ying was drenched like a drowned rat.

She wiped the black muddy water from her eyelids, leaving her body streaked with black and white.

Not daring to open her mouth, she pressed her lips together and glared at Wangcai.

But Wangcai, busy digging, was now the size of a small mountain. There was no way it could see the murderous look in her eyes.

Left with no choice, Qin Ying squeezed two words out through her teeth. “Canned food.”

Her voice was not loud, but Wangcai’s ears instantly perked up, its right ear swiveling toward her.

Clearly, the mutt had heard her just fine. It simply did not want to respond.

Qin Ying’s teeth itched with anger. She repeated, “Tin canned food!”

Wangcai became a completely different dog from a moment ago. It whipped around with a whoosh, its enormous wet black nose, reeking of dog, shoving toward her like a boulder.

If Han Lie had not lifted Qin Ying out of the way, it would have nearly knocked her staggering.

As if sensing Qin Ying’s speechlessness in that instant, the black pit Wangcai had dug abruptly collapsed with a boom, exposing the stone pillars supporting the Divine Shrine beneath, like a landslide.

Two large cauldrons burned pitch-black rumbled and rolled out.

Fuzhu braced one with the four horns on its head. When the other rolled toward Qin Ying, Han Lie held her and leaped high into the air to avoid it.

That cauldron went rolling a long way with a clatter.

Knowing it had caused trouble, Wangcai turned its rear end away and pretended nothing had happened.

Qin Ying could not be bothered to argue with it. She looked toward the passage the two white stone cauldrons had rolled out from.

“I’m going in to take a look.”

With Han Lie accompanying her, Qin Ying walked into the burned and collapsed Divine Shrine.

This was one surviving corner of the structure. Everything within sight had been charred black by the flames from when the Huodou burned the corpses.

As Han Lie walked through it, he had no choice but to stoop in humiliation.

Qin Ying tilted her head back, searching the ceiling.

Then, as they reached a relatively larger space, the light suddenly dimmed.

Qin Ying stood amid volcanic rock scattered across the ground and looked up.

By the terrible light, she abruptly saw a pair of eyes pieced together from black and white stones on the ceiling.

Those eyes were covered in soot, as if lined with eyeliner and then covered by a gray filter. They no longer looked at all like the eyes of a child Han Lie had described.

Instead, they were the eyes of an adult.

The red mole beneath the right eye was clear and unmistakable.

Staring up at the ceiling, Qin Ying felt as though she were looking into a fogged mirror.

Han Lie noticed it too. His pupils contracted slightly, and his gaze moved from Qin Ying to the eyes on the ceiling before he said softly, “Supreme Deity, it’s you.”

Qin Ying’s heartbeat gradually quickened. As if sensing something, she took two steps forward.

Just then, an ominous crack came from the ceiling.

The fur on Han Lie’s tail instantly bristled, and he reached out to pull Qin Ying away. “Supreme Deity, we should leave.”

A massive fissure cut across both eyes, and the red mole at the corner of the right eye dropped with a crisp ding.

Before either of them could react, it smashed onto the soot-covered ground with a bang.

The jade shards that splashed up were like beads of blood scattering through the air.

Han Lie shielded Qin Ying with his body. The flying fragments struck the scales along his back, actually producing a metallic sound.

At the same time, warning cries from Wangcai and the Hou came from outside: this place was about to collapse.

Han Lie, who could understand the language of beasts, changed expression drastically. Without waiting for Qin Ying to react, he scooped her up sideways and ran for the exit.

A huge boulder from the collapsing cavern smashed down, grazing the back of Han Lie’s shoulder.

He asked anxiously, “Supreme Deity, are you all right?”

Qin Ying did not answer. She glanced at the collapsed cave.

Only after taking a deep breath did she reply, “I’m fine.”

She lowered her head and looked at the blood-red fragment she had snatched up amid the chaos in her palm.

The spindle-shaped shard was only the size of a fingernail, and its pointed end had cut open her palm.

Blood welled from the palm of her puppet body. As soon as the shard touched the blood, it turned into a handful of red dust.

The red dust did not disperse. Instead, it wriggled like a living thing, eventually forming an incomplete map.

On the map, simple lines outlined a place that looked like a small island, with a Divine Shrine clearly visible.

Its style was completely different from the Divine Shrine on Golden Saddle Mountain, but Qin Ying had an instinctive feeling that, like this place, it was also a ruin.

A ruin connected to her.