Chapter 480: Not One Less!
Upon realizing that its short moment of freedom was coming to an end now that it had run into a jailer... the head was profoundly furious.
If it had been an ordinary jailer, it might not have been a big deal. The head could have made a big scene and probably pulled the wool over the eyes of someone unfamiliar with it. But when facing Xu Qing, it didn’t dare to bare even a hint of its teeth. All it dared to do was flee. Not even it was sure how many times Xu Qing had killed it. Xu Qing’s methods were profoundly brutal, and what was more, the fluctuations of godly authority he emanated were terrifying. And then there was that shadow of his....
The head could remember not too long ago how Xu Qing would awaken in D-132, and the first thing he would do was stomp the head out of existence. No matter how many times the head experienced that, it never got used to it. All it did was instill a deep terror of Xu Qing into it. It trembled in fear as it fled, and the stone lion ahead of it was in the same position.
Xu Qing wasn’t in a rush. He watched coldly as the head and the stone lion ran from him. Now that he wasn’t under the influence of D-132, some of the memories of that time were returning to him. One thing he now recalled... was why he had always snapped those bamboo slips. They had gathered godly power from D-132, and were also full of the amnesiac destiny aura. What was more, being all piled together caused the bamboo slips to change on a substructural level.
Every time I woke up and realized that, I wanted to use the power of D-132 to create a special treasure.
With such thoughts on his mind, he summoned the hellspirit bloodwing and then shot forward with such astonishing speed that he instantly caught up with the head.
All the head saw was a blur, and then Xu Qing was in front of it. It shrieked in absolute terror as Xu Qing lifted his foot.
“AIIIIEEEEEE! Not this again!” It instinctively closed its eyes, and then a loud thump rang out.
Xu Qing stomped his foot onto the head, causing it to burst. Then he looked placidly at the stone lion.
“Get the hell back here!”
The stone lion stopped in place and shivered. It didn’t dare to continue fleeing. Thinking back to how many times Xu Qing had burned it to death, it obediently turned back around, then skipped back to Xu Qing, wagging its tail like a puppy. When it reached him, it dropped to the ground in front of him in obeisance.
Xu Qing coldly examined the lion. Whether it was because of his memories or the information carved onto the broken bamboo slips, he knew that this stone lion was the cloud troll from D-132. More precisely, under the effects of the destiny aura, it looked like a cloud troll. But this headless stone lion was its true form. That was why the head had made such a big deal about Xu Qing putting him in that specific cell. It was because it wanted to become the stone lion’s head.
As Xu Qing considered those things, the chunks of flesh that had been the head flew back together. A moment later, the head was whole again, and it immediately started shrieking.
“Exalted Jailer, I—”
Xu Qing stomped on it. Another thump rang out as it exploded yet again.
The stone lion shivered and wagged its tail even harder.
The head recovered fairly quickly, and immediately began moaning. “I’m done for. Done for! Without the amnesic effects of D-132, I simply—”
Thump.
It exploded again.
In that manner, an hour passed. After stomping on the head seventeen or eighteen times, Xu Qing left.
But this time, he wasn’t moving on foot. He was sitting on the back of the stone lion. As for the head... it was tied onto the stone lion’s tail. As the stone lion bounded along, its two rear paws would continuously smack the head, causing it to moan in grief and indignation. However, it didn’t dare lose its temper with Xu Qing. Instead, it would curse the lion.
Upon hearing those curses, the stone lion would make sure to swish its tail vigorously, and kick out its hind legs with increasing force.
Xu Qing had originally intended to put these two prisoners to death. But apparently, they had been locked up in D-132 with that god for so long that they had been slowly transformed in miraculous ways. Or perhaps it was some curse. Either way, whenever they died, they were always resurrected almost immediately.
Now that Xu Qing thought about it, that was how they were back in D-132.
That said, though he couldn’t kill them, he also couldn’t just let them go free. So he decided to bring them with him.
The headless stone lion bounded along at incredible speed, using a lot of force with its rear legs. The head tied to its tail screamed and cursed constantly. And Xu Qing sat expressionlessly on the lion’s back, occasionally pointing out to indicate which direction to travel in.
Around the time the sky was turning bright, Xu Qing could see Daybreak Prefecture in the distance.
“Daybreak Prefecture?” the bruised head blurted. Spitting out some chunks of rock it had bitten off the stone lion’s legs, it looked in the direction of Daybreak Prefecture and blinked a few times.
“Exalted one! Sir! I have information to report! Do you remember that Paintedfolk bastard Sir Inkwell? He’s in Daybreak Prefecture! And not just him. That god’s finger from D-132 is also there!”
Xu Qing’s eyebrows shot up and he turned to look at the head.
Putting on a very fawning expression, the head said, “Those damn prisoners have no sense of gratitude. The Corrections Division treated us so well! We got food and drink, and they didn’t execute us. We had a nice place to sleep. In a chaotic world such as ours, a place like that is hard to find. But them? They actually broke out!
“Exalted one, the truth is that this entire time, I’ve been really missing life back in the Corrections Division. Every single memory is something I cherish! I miss it so much! So, being the upright and righteous head that I am, I absolutely had to give you this information! Exalted one, you should also know that the old fart Sir Inkwell was the one that instigated the whole prison break!”
Hearing all of that, Xu Qing looked thoughtfully in the direction of Daybreak Prefecture.
As the palace lord’s secretary-general, he’d been given access to more than just the war reports from all of Sea-Sealing County. He’d also been privy to the details surrounding the collapse of the Corrections Division.
At the moment of the event, the suppressing power of the Corrections Division had vanished. The god’s clone, which had been fooled into thinking it was a spirit automaton, instantly woke up. Then it erupted with power as it tried to revert itself from a state of dismemberment into a state of being whole again.
Thankfully, Palace Lord Kong himself was stationed in the Corrections Division. Thanks to his quick action, along with the help of the honor guards and the deputy palace lords, bolstered by the power of the county capital’s taboo treasure, they quickly re-sealed the clone’s head and torso. However, as they did that, the governor died and the Corrections Division exploded. The county capital had descended into chaos, and large numbers of prisoners took advantage of the moment to escape. And among those who escaped were some of the other parts of the god’s clone.
The final tally concluded that two fingers and an eye had vanished without a trace. The only upside was that they sustained severe injuries in the process.
During the swordsage’s attempt to round up all the prisoners, they found one of the fingers, and the two deputy palace lords managed to capture it.
As for the other missing parts, one finger and one eye, there were no clues regarding their whereabouts. They had gone into hiding somewhere, and the presumption was that if further intense searching was carried out, they would be found. But because of the war, the swordsages didn’t have that spare time to work with.
If what the head just said was true, then the finger from D-132 was hiding somewhere in Daybreak Prefecture.
As Xu Qing considered matters, the head blinked rapidly a few times. It was very pleased, as it was thinking that if Xu Qing went looking for Sir Inkwell, then either Xu Qing would end up dead and the head would have his freedom back, or the old Paintfolk bastard would also end up captured, and there would be a big D-132 reunion party.
As far as the head was concerned, it was too unfair that all the other D-132 cellmates were free, while it wasn’t. It would be much better for them all to be suffering. Having reached the conclusion that this was definitely the best way to think about it, the head continued speaking.
“Exalted one, back when the Corrections Division exploded, that old fart Sir Inkwell ran off with the god’s finger and—”
“I’m not a fan of lies,” Xu Qing said coldly.
The head shivered and quickly spoke in a different tone of voice. “It was the god’s finger! Hē clearly has thoughts of being independent. Instead of responding to the call of the other body parts, hē fled with Sir Inkwell. Me and the lion here had no choice but to follow along.
“Ehhh... while we were traveling, I heard that old fart Sir Inkwell talking to the finger. From what I could hear, I think hē wanted Sir Inkwell to paint something.
“Of course, hē’s a god. Very different from us. So Sir Inkwell said that a painting like that would need special paint. And that’s why they went to Daybreak Prefecture, to look for the legendary remains of the fallen sun, and use them as the main ingredient in the paint.”
The head didn’t dare to hide any elements of the story, and in fact took great efforts to include every detail. After all, if Xu Qing got the sense he was lying, he knew he would pay the price.
After some more thought, Xu Qing patted the stone lion’s neck, and the lion bounded forward toward Daybreak Prefecture.
As the prefecture got closer, Xu Qing mentally reviewed everything he knew about it. Daybreak Prefecture was unlike Sea-Sealing County, or any of the other prefectures, for that matter. It contained virtually no dry land. Instead, it was a massive, incomparably deep pit covering ninety percent of the prefecture.
Legend had it the huge pit was really a crater that resulted when the broken face of the god arrived, and one of the suns perished. When it fell, it created that massive pit.
Thus, Daybreak Prefecture was like a bottomless abyss, a lake so big it was like a sea. In fact, it was called the Abyssal Sea. The surface of the pitch-black sea was dotted with occasional mountain peaks that stuck up out of the water. Over time, the tips of those huge mountains came to be occupied by humans and nonhumans alike. The mountains were very unique in that they were made of a black, crystalline substance that came to exist when the sun fell and released incomparable heat. That was one of the reasons why this prefecture was known for producing cloudmother stones.
In the middle of the Abyssal Sea and all the mountains, there was an extremely large mountain called Mount Daybreak, which was where Daybreak Prefecture’s Swordsage Court was located.
What was more, the sun wind in Daybreak Prefecture was stronger than in surrounding areas. It blew constantly, year-round, and never abated. As a result, Daybreak Prefecture was a place where teleportations weren’t possible, and flight was extremely limited. Instead, over the years that had passed, cultivators of the various species took to traveling on huge ships.
To accommodate those huge ships, the borders of Daybreak Prefecture featured numerous harbors. Right now, Xu Qing was looking at a mid-sized harbor. He was in disguise, and he had masked his aura. He had also disguised the stone lion and the head.
The huge harbor reminded him very much of Seven Blood Eyes. After all, the Abyssal Sea was reminiscent of the Forbidden Sea. It was even the same color.
A wharf stretched out into the water, but there were no ships docked. That said, a lot of cultivators were waiting on the wharf. There were a handful of humans present, but the majority were nonhumans of every shape and size.
The buzz of conversation reached Xu Qing’s ears as he approached.