The window had not been deliberately shut. The evening breeze blew in freely, yet the smoke from the offerings refused to disperse. It hovered above the offering candles, coiling and lingering, gathering thicker and thicker.

In barely a dozen breaths, the dense smoke condensed into a gray silhouette.

Look closely, and you could see the shadow’s shape resembled the wooden idol on the table, except it had only seven or eight faces on its body. The face in the center even rolled its eyes and glared down at the child’s soul below.

The child’s soul, though muddled and innocent, instinctively sensed danger. It abandoned the incense and tried to burrow back into the wooden ball.

The figure of smoke lunged down and swallowed it in a single gulp.

A remnant soul so small and weak could barely even count as an appetizer to it.

Its mouth opened and closed as though speaking to the spellcaster. The curse master immediately prostrated themselves, voice reverent as he replied, “The mark has been set. Please go and enjoy the abundant offering!”

Hearing that, the smoke figure circled once around the room, then vanished into the air in the next instant.

The spellcaster straightened and looked at the idol. Sure enough, seven or eight of the faces on the wooden idol had disappeared along with the smoke figure.

* * *

He Lingchuan had always been a good sleeper. Even when he did not enter Panlong City, he could still enjoy a full night of deep sleep.

That talent to lie down and fall asleep, anytime and anywhere, made Second Boss Shi intensely jealous.

Up in the northern reaches of the Panlong Wasteland, clashes had erupted again and again, big and small.

The Baling and Xianyou coalition force kept probing the border.

It was the aftershock of Panlong’s lightning strike raid to seize the State of West Ji.

Because of it, the Broken Blade Squad had been reassigned to the northern front. In just over thirty days, they fought six battles.

Two of those battles turned white-hot, with both sides fighting until their eyes were red with bloodlust. During those two battles, the two sides had been extremely close to spiraling from a local conflict into full-scale war.

Those two battles were especially brutal. In one of them, they were badly outnumbered with 300 Gale Army soldiers using terrain and elevation to hold off 2,000 enemies for two days and one night.

The Broken Blade Squad brushed the edge of death again and again.

He Lingchuan relied on the fact that he could not truly die. In combat, he fought with reckless abandon, racking up wounds by the dozen. He even served as a shield once each for Willow and A’Luo, taking hits meant for them.

Even so, the two newest members of the squad did not make it, ultimately dying in battle.

On the final day, even He Lingchuan could not hold on. After spitting out his last mouthful of blood, he was forced to “log off” on the spot.

Fortunately, the next time he entered the dreamscape, he received good news. Reinforcements had arrived right after his death. Striking from inside and out, they drove the enemy back.

When he fell and stopped breathing, Willow had thought he was gone for good. Rumor had it that this woman warrior, who was tougher than most men, burst into tears on the spot.

Of course, that was only a rumor. Willow herself never admitted it. Anyone who said it aloud got punched.

After these campaigns, He Lingchuan even picked up a new nickname: “Mad Blade.”

Having failed to gain ground at the border, the Xianba Coalition Army[1] withdrew in frustration.

This matched He Lingchuan’s prediction that they never intended a full invasion. They only wanted to force the Red General, who was campaigning east, back to Panlong City, and, while Panlong’s defenses were stretched thin, seize a bit of territory for themselves.

They achieved only the first goal, and they even had to pay a heavy price for it.

Panlong City also pulled its forces back from the border, returning home to distribute rewards for merit.

The Broken Blade Squad, led by He Lingchuan, had been loyal, brave, and sharp, and displayed an iron-clad discipline. They scored the highest enemy kill count and took down the highest-ranking enemy leaders, contributing greatly to the northwest wing’s victory. Added to their merits from West Ji, every member received a generous reward.

As for He Lingchuan himself, he was promoted two ranks at once, directly elevated to company commander[2], with authority over a hundred men.

With him promoted, Willow and Doorboard, who had been acting as his deputies, began reorganizing the new hundred-man unit after returning to the city.

After several battles, He Lingchuan had gained a great deal.

A battlefield truly was the best grindstone for a person. It was packed with endless surprises and variables: one second, you were cutting down enemies like wheat, the next, you could be riddled with arrows.

He had clawed his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, out of a flesh-and-bone millstone. He learned to keep an eye on all directions while listening to every side. He learned to read the moment and preserve strength; he learned that when you meet on a narrow path, the brave prevail; and he learned that at the brink of life and death, you still had to keep your mind clear and your eyes sharp.

A rookie on their first battlefield might tremble so hard their legs shook. But fight too long, and you could just as easily be intoxicated by killing intent and hot blood, forgetting that courage and recklessness, sharpness and cowardice, were often separated by only a hair’s breadth.

That hair-thin line was the border between life and death.

The more desperate the danger, the more you had to stay calm and restrained. That was not talent. It was the result of being tested by death, again and again.

Afterward, when He Lingchuan replayed it all carefully and consolidated the lessons, he could feel it clearly.

His state of mind, as well as his swordsmanship, had improved again.

His swordsmanship had become sharper, cleaner, and more practical.

His mind had become steadier, calmer, and more grounded.

This kind of precious battlefield tempering was something only the Panlong Soul Land could provide for now. The Generous Pot showed He Lingchuan no mercy. By day, it drove him to solve cases and juggle factions. By night, it hurled him into slaughterfields of corpses and blood, grinding him without pause.

If his will were not firm, he would have broken long ago.

Still, after this inhuman torment, his soul and spirit did seem to have gotten stronger.

In any case, after wave upon wave of unrest, the Panlong Wasteland finally returned to calm, if at least temporarily.

At present, He Lingchuan was in the northwest of the Chipa Highland, helping A’Luo capture a peculiar creature—

A monkey bat.

According to A’Luo, it was an invasive species. It was omnivorous, but it likely carried seeds of a tumor-like weed that harmed the wheat of the highland. Once those seeds fell to the ground, they would burrow into the soil and parasitize the wheat’s roots, siphoning nutrients. When the wheat withered, the parasite would expand and grow stronger.

In its early stages, that growth was extremely well-hidden. It was hard to detect and hard to control.

Panlong City’s Bureau of Medicine also bore responsibility for crop protection, and it was particularly alert to invasive organisms.

A’Luo had posted a related mission at the Bureau of Bright Prospects, but lately the soldiers and warriors seemed busy. No one had taken the job for a long time. So he simply went to He Lingchuan for help.

“Anyway, you’ve got nothing better to do, don’t you?”

Those had been A’Luo’s exact words.

So He Lingchuan came.

Monkey bats were big. They were about the size of a waterfowl, but they had sharp beaks and puffed cheeks. Their faces really did resemble monkeys.

Most bats moved in swarms, but monkey bats only traveled as couples, perhaps at most with a brood of pups, so their movements were relatively concealed and hard to track.

Following A’Luo’s clues, He Lingchuan searched all day. It took him a long time before he even found monkey bat droppings on a stalactite pillar inside a limestone cave.

Still deeper, huh...

He stared into the pitch-black pool ahead and sighed. Has lard clogged my brain? Why am I here, in a cave so dark that I can’t even see my own hand, catching bats for A’Luo, instead of staying back to coax and tease my beautiful neighbor?

A limestone cave, of course, had water, and living water, at that. When he entered, he had already felt a strong wind slap his face. It was midsummer, yet inside the cave the temperature hovered at only eleven or twelve degrees. Stay too long, and you would start sneezing.

Still waters ran deep. Only the shallow shoals babbled and splashed.

He Lingchuan could barely hear any flowing water at all, which told him the pool here was very deep indeed.

Looks like I’ve got no choice. He hauled out a set of water gear and put it on, then jumped into the pool.

Monkey bats could fly deeper, and so he had to swim.

The cave branched into countless side paths, with caverns everywhere, and in the water, unknown creatures surfaced from time to time.

He Lingchuan swam for over a fifteen minutes. With the faint light of glowgrass, he finally spotted some monkey bats clinging to the rocky ceiling.

“These damn things!” The sooner he caught them, the sooner he could go back and turn in the job.

He Lingchuan did not have eyes on the back of his head. Naturally, he did not notice that deep in the pool behind him, a flicker of blue light flashed.

The monkey bats hung upside down directly above him. There was a whole family of seven in total here. They had likely eaten their fill and were now sleeping like logs.

So, how was he to catch them?

Of course, He Lingchuan had planned ahead. He pulled out two nets made from burrow spider silk and, moving as quietly as he could, climbed onto a stalactite to secure them.

In this timeline’s Panlong City, the Red General and Madame Zhu Erniang had renegotiated their agreement. The burrow spiders had ceded exclusive distribution rights to Panlong City for their products.

That way, Panlong City gained another powerful export, and the burrow spiders no longer had to deal with human merchants.

From then on, Panlong City’s warriors gained access to specialized spider-silk equipment, whether it be nets, grappling lines, or soft spider-silk armor, either issued as standard gear or obtainable through exchange and trade. These items earned widespread praise.

He Lingchuan replaced his old rope net with a net made from spider silk as well. It was lighter, tougher, and more durable.

He arranged the two nets to block the exit route, forming an “L” shape.

Once the trap was set, he picked up a few pebbles and flicked them toward the bats.

The monkey bats woke with a start, spread their wings, and fled.

Naturally, He Lingchuan also carefully chose his position, driving them toward the nets.

Spider webbing retained the spider silk’s nature. The more the prey struggled, the deeper it became trapped.

As per A’Luo’s request, the more monkey bats he captured, the better.

After He Lingchuan’s scare tactics, four bats crashed into the nets. The others fled in different directions.

He lunged, scooped the nets up in one go, and collected them all.

Done. Time to leave and turn these in.

Just then, a gust of cold wind rose behind him, and a chill ran up his spine.

A warning.

He did not even hesitate, immediately listening to his instincts. He leaped over six meters to another stalactite, and it was only then that he whirled around.

The moment he saw what it was, he froze. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Where he had been standing before, a ragged figure had appeared.

Calling it a person felt generous. Yes, it had all four limbs, but it also had several heads. Male and female, old and young, all with contorted features. More than a dozen eyes stared at He Lingchuan at the same time.

And the look in those eyes was... hunger.

Only a wolf pack starved for seven days and nights would typically bear such a look in their eyes.

What the hell is that?

“Offering!” one of the heads on the aberrant creature’s neck cried, shrill with excitement. “Come here and let me eat you!”

He Lingchuan’s brow furrowed. Offering? Who is it calling an offering?

He lifted his wrist and fired a sleeve arrow straight at it. “Eat this instead.”

“Eat! Eat! Eat!” The creature did not dodge at all. The head of a baby slid up from its belly to its chest, and then it opened its mouth wide. The arrow should have punched straight through its heart, but instead, the creature swallowed it.

Its mouth was like a bottomless pit. The arrow caused no damage whatsoever.

“Not tasty!” the baby face snarled. “I want meat!”

One of the heads on its shoulder twisted and spotted the bats flitting in the cavern. Suddenly, it opened its mouth and spat, vomiting out over a hundred bats directly at He Lingchuan.

These bats were smaller than the monkey bats by two sizes, but each one had a human head, eyes glowing green, and a mouth full of sharp teeth. Their foreclaws looked disturbingly like human hands.

The cavern was not large to begin with. Now, with more than a hundred bats crammed in, it was filled with the sound of flapping wings and countless piercing screeches.

1. Note that this is still the Xianyou and Baling coalition force/army. ☜

2. Note that the original text here is 旅帅, which does have the argument to be translated as battalion commander, but seeing as the number of men under the rank’s command is much less than what would be typical of a commonly understood battalion commander, I have decided to go with this instead. ☜