Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The Heavenly Tribulation Token within my Thunderstruck Wood Talisman was a finite resource, but I couldn’t afford to care about that anymore. I raised the talisman, preparing to chant the Lightning Invocation Spell, when several strange shrieks suddenly echoed from the distance. Wang Cuiping’s expression tightened, and the fleshy wings on her back snapped open.

Was it the Wild Man? Was he coming to drag her back?

Wang Cuiping abandoned us, flapping her wings and launching herself into the air. She vanished into the dense forest in an instant. Without wasting a second, we lowered our heads and sprinted forward.

I don’t know how long we ran, but eventually, a glimmer of light appeared ahead.

“It looks like a village!”

Jiang Haoyan switched on his flashlight, and we trudged through the rain. As we got closer, the scenery began to look more and more familiar.

It was Maogou Village. We had made it back to Maogou Village!

The horizon was already showing the faint, pale light of dawn. Once we entered the village, we knocked on the door of a house to ask for shelter.

The owner was an old man living alone. He looked us over with a pair of calculating, triangular eyes and interrogated us. “What are you people doing? Why have you come to the village at this hour?”

“We’re medicinal herb traders. Our car hit a guardrail yesterday, and we’ve been searching all night to find our way here.”

I was wearing Jiang Haoyan’s jacket, and the ritual paint on my face had been washed away by the rain. The old man stared at me for a moment, then nodded.

“Come in.”

We took the opportunity to drink some water, eat a little, and change into dry clothes before collapsing onto the floor in a daze.

I hadn’t slept for nearly two nights and had spent the entire day running. My mind was a total blank, and my temples throbbed with a rhythmic pain.

Hua Yuling gave me a kick.

“Qiao Moyu, what are we going to do about the Ghost Mother? Think of something, fast.”

There were ways, of course. The most powerful force in the world was the power of the stars, and many astral arrays could slay a Ghost Mother. However, such grand arrays required many components and had to be set up in advance.

Take the Zhou Tian Xing Dou Grand Array I used to deal with the water serpent at Poyang Lake, for example. I would first need to craft three hundred and sixty-five Primary Banners and place them according to the positions of the stars, aligning them with the three hundred and sixty-five primordial stars of the firmament, using the Sun and the Moon-the two most powerful celestial bodies-as the array cores.

Setting everything else aside, just crafting those Primary Banners alone would take forty-nine days.

“How about you wait here for four days? I’ll go back to prepare the supplies, then come back and finish off this Ghost Mother.”

Hua Yuling rolled her eyes at me.

“Why not make it seven days? Just come back in a week!”

My eyes lit up.

“You can hold out for seven days?”

Hua Yuling nodded. “Sure. Seven days is exactly the time for my ‘First Seven’ funeral rites. When you show up, we can see each other one last time, and it’ll save you the trouble of having to summon my soul.”

Me: …