Chapter Ninety-Nine: Stare at Me Again, and I’ll...

At the very heart of the frigid blizzard—the coldest point inside it—Zhuang Xiaoyuan lay quietly across the ice puppet. Though absolute zero pressed in from every side, it meant nothing to Si Si Nao, the one who commanded ice and frost, and naturally it meant nothing now for Zhuang either.

Ahead of the ice puppet, the Earth-Digging-class fiend was locked in a block of ice, unable to move. Yet though he was frozen fast, his fierce glare at Zhuang made one thing clear: he was merely held in place. If not for the endless chill pressing against him, constantly mending each fracture the fiend made as it struggled, he would already have shattered his prison and broken out long ago.

“Keep staring at me. Stare as much as you want. If you keep staring, I’ll stare back at you.”
Zhuang Xiaoyuan looked at the fiend’s round, fixed eyes and felt an odd, strange amusement rise in her.

But when she remembered the subordinates this creature had swallowed, the wounded front-line soldiers still trapped inside it, a grief she could not hold back gathered in her chest. Crystal-bright tears slid down her eyes. Were it the real Zhuang Xiaoyuan, she would never cry so openly. For all her emotional nature, military training had forged her into a soldier of grit and endurance; even in sorrow she would keep an outer shell of strength.

Now, as she had become Shisano, Zhuang was being touched by Shisano’s temperament, growing tender in places she would normally keep steel. As each tear fell, a low, keening sob drifted through the ice storm, and the already crushing cold sank even lower. Shisano’s sorrow only sharpened the power of the frost.

For a moment, at the storm’s center there was only that: the Earth-Digging-class fiend, glaring as if he wanted to tear her apart; and Zhuang Xiaoyuan, frightened into tears by the monster’s dreadful eyes. This struggle between freezing and breaking would continue until the divine power in her body was spent. It had seemed fated from the first heartbeat. All she could do was wait for the guardian gods to return as quickly as they could—or for that one last chance.

Time rolled back. Earlier still, before Zhuang Xiaoyuan had transformed into Shisano. In a wild stretch of land some distance from Maple City, Hua Ze’s advancement had been interrupted midway. He yanked the blazing Greatsword from the core crystal of the giant Turret-class fiend, whose body had swollen into a grotesque monstrous size. With the blade withdrawn, the fiend disintegrated into drifting ash. The divine energy locked in the core crystal flowed into Hua Ze, giving him only a barely visible flicker of power.

“How is it, everyone all right?”
Hua Ze turned and looked at his teammates after drawing out the flame giant sword. The ambush itself had gone well, yet the battle had taken an unexpected turn. Even in the outer ring of the demon’s advancement, there had been a quiet cluster of fiends lurking, ready to spring. Under the command of the evil gods, with so many enemies before them, even Hua Ze—of the Divine-Blessed rank—had almost been wounded in the first instant.

“Not bad, no one’s injured. Just drained hard. Another wave and we’d only be running for our lives,” Hua Jing said, withdrawing the yellow soul-capturing crystal that had constrained the fiends. A faint, calm warmth settled over her face as if the fierce clash had all been an illusion.

“Mm,” Wang Mingyue muttered, glancing at Man Yuton. The watch detail for the Guardian Squad had been theirs—Man Yuton and Du Qiying—so to be surrounded like this by fiends was surely on both of their shoulders.

“The ambush happened after the fighting,” Man Yuton said, noticing Wang Mingyue’s glance. She was not making excuses; she was stating a fact.

“After the fighting? Are the evil gods really that clever now that they can lie in wait?” Du Qiying dismounted and glanced toward the direction where a few evil gods had slipped away. He raised an eyebrow.

“Miss Hua, can evil gods be that intelligent?” Wenhui tugged lightly at Hua Jing’s sleeve as he landed beside her in the breeze, and asked in a low voice.

“It’s possible,” Hua Jing replied. “Don’t dismiss it. Evil gods can advance, and every time they do, their intelligence rises. The higher the rank, the closer they come to human intellect. By our own estimates, a King-tier evil god has roughly human-level intelligence. An Emperor-tier… well, we probably don’t want to assume it’s any lower.”

“If that’s true, then was this a trap set by an Emperor-tier evil god to lure us in on purpose? Then his plan would have failed,” Wenhui said. The thought gave her a brief, human vanity—after all, she could barely see any Emperor-tier fiend smarter than an ordinary human now.

Hua Ze narrowed his eyes and stared toward Maple City, as if he could already see the fire-riven city there. “Failed… maybe not. Maybe it’s us who have fallen for the trick.”

“Fell for a trick? What kind of trick—drawing the tiger out of the mountain?” Du Qiying exclaimed, eyes widening. “No good, we have to hurry back. Summon Divine Gear—field jeep.”

Hearing Hua Ze call it a trap, Du Qiying also remembered that straightforward stratagem. Whether or not it was exactly what they feared, they all had to return immediately and confirm for themselves. He spent a good amount of remaining divine power and began the summoning.

As he moved, a circular field of light formed on the ground. From it floated an aggressively wild jeep, the summon of his guardian god, the God of Cavalry. By special function, Du Qiying could summon any item or creature he defined as a mount. It came with limits: besides divine-energy cost, the thing summoned had to be something he clearly recognized as a mount.

If he did not accept a car as a mount in his own mind, he could not summon one at all. Conversely, if he believed a broom could be ridden, he could summon a broom. As for how a broom is ridden, that question is for Du Qiying alone—his inner definition decides it.

No sooner had he called forth the feral jeep than Hua Ze, Wang Mingyue, Man Yuton, and Hua Jing—who was still gripping Wenhui’s hand—were already in the vehicle.

“I can tell you, you all were probably waiting on purpose,” Du Qiying said, half exasperated, half amused at the bad luck he’d had with these companions, as he took the driver’s seat. Only he could ride this summoned mount; even if they could drive, no one else could start and move the vehicle he had called forth.