Li Ban anchored himself underwater, calculated the time, and closed his eyes, returning to the Shadow World as fast as possible.
When he awoke in the Shadow World, he was no longer in his original room, but in a makeshift cave formed from heaps of scrap steel.
He lay on a soft mat, covered by a light but warm blanket.
The moment Li Ban sat up, the girl dozing beside him jolted awake. "Ah, Priest Ban, you're awake?"
Her voice was full of pleasant surprise.
"I am going out. I will be right back," Li Ban told Nana in his broken local language.
Without waiting for her to react, he rushed out of the steel cave.
It should have been daytime in the Shadow World, but the sky was as gloomy as night.
The thick, heavy cloud cover seemed to press right down on people, making it hard to breathe.
Li Ban left the temporary camp and ran into the distance. Where others couldn't see him, he found a towering heap of scrap steel.
He looked down and retrieved the Iron-Eating Sword from his Cubic Space—the element he had just finished fusing in the Wizard World.
It worked!
Using the Cubic Heaven and Earth, he had successfully brought out the Iron-Eating Sword's physical vessel.
Now he just had to see if it could absorb this world's metal.
The Shadow World held massive amounts of metal waste. Even Trash City, famous for scavenging, didn't bother hauling these metals away.
But for the Iron-Eating Sword, which normally rarely got to feed on steel, this place was practically a free buffet.
Li Ban drove the Iron-Eating Sword into the scrap steel heap, watching expectantly.
The moment he took out the Iron-Eating Sword, he realized it was just like the Flute Sound. Although it couldn't replenish its spiritual rhinoceros in the Shadow World, it could still deploy the spiritual rhinoceros stored inside it.
"This way, creation-class elements can also be used in other worlds."
The scrap steel heap was rapidly shrinking.
Seeing things unfold just as he had envisioned, a smile appeared on Li Ban's face.
No matter how tough the Hundred Flowers Pavilion Master's vines were, they couldn't possibly compare to a city wall a dozen meters thick, could they?
An element like the Iron-Eating Sword could easily be classified as a superior element in the Shadow World, with its abundance of metal.
Before long, the metal hill before Li Ban vanished, leaving behind only a scattered, one-meter-tall pile of non-metallic materials.
However, judging from the Iron-Eating Sword's feedback, it still needed another third to be "full."
Li Ban immediately moved to another, slightly smaller scrap steel heap. After absorbing roughly half of it, the Iron-Eating Sword was finally satiated.
Afterward, he hurried back to the Alliance.
Nana was waiting anxiously beside the original cave.
Li Ban had woken up, dropped a single sentence, and left.
She didn't know where he went, or when he would return—and she was even more terrified that he wouldn't come back at all.
The commotion had already alerted Ah She, who had taken two men to search the surroundings.
If it alerted the guard captain Luca as well, Nana didn't even know if she would be scolded.
Just then, she suddenly saw Li Ban running back from a distance. Her eyes lit up, and she hurried to meet him.
"Priest Ban!"
Seeing Nana's head covered in sweat, Li Ban knew his sudden departure had scared her.
He reached out and patted her shoulder. "Don't be afraid."
Pressed for time, Li Ban couldn't explain further. He returned to his mat. "I am going to keep resting."
"Ah, okay." Nana had thought that once he woke up, he wouldn't go right back to sleep, just like last time.
But she hadn't expected him to fall deeply asleep again so soon.
It seemed Priest Zhong Ye was right; Priest Ban was in poor health and needed a long period of recovery.
Once Li Ban went back to sleep, Nana carefully covered him with the blanket, meticulously tucking the edges under his body to keep out any cold drafts.
Only after finishing all this did she remember she needed to notify Ah She that she didn't have to search outside anymore.
Just as she slipped out of the cave and headed toward the radio equipment, she saw that Ah She had already returned with her men.
Having run a couple of laps back and forth, Ah She and the two men behind her were sweating profusely too.
"Priest Ban is back. He's already asleep," Nana said, hurrying over.
"I know." Ah She looked at the girl in exasperation. "As soon as Priest Ban came back, someone contacted us on the radio. If I waited for you to tell me, I would have run my legs off."
Nana flushed slightly. "It didn't take that long. I ran out specifically to call you."
Ah She pulled Nana aside and said in a low voice, "Since Priest Ban is back, don't tell him we went out looking for him. So he doesn't feel uncomfortable about it."
Nana nodded.
It was their first time encountering Li Ban leaving so suddenly; it was perfectly normal for them to panic a little.
After all, Priest Zhong Ye seemed to have paid a heavy price to save Priest Ban.
Those in the know were all terrified that Li Ban would just leave without a word.
However, the commotion here still alerted Luca, who marched over with a grim expression, carrying his heavy gun.
Nana licked her lips nervously and shrank her neck back.
Quickly returning to the Wizard World.
Li Ban raised his hand, took the Iron-Eating Sword out of his Cubic Heaven and Earth, and gripped it tightly.
The fully satiated Iron-Eating Sword quivered slightly in his hand. Brimming with unprecedented fullness, it wanted nothing more than to unleash itself to its heart's content!
But just as Li Ban looked up, preparing to wait for a chance to strike, he unexpectedly saw Lady Hua returning. He shrank back into the water.
Lady Hua walked over, cradling a ceramic basin about the size of a human head.
The old pavilion master, who had been resting with his eyes closed, slowly opened them. "Why are you back?"
Lady Hua placed the ceramic basin beside him. "Pavilion Master, Lady Kui was worried about Miaomiao and sent over the cultivation soil she specially mixed for him. I... I brought it in so as not to arouse her suspicions."
—
Lady Hua said in a low voice, "Since you don't need him right now anyway, maybe we should let Miaomiao stay in the soil. That way his condition will be a bit better, too."
The old pavilion master looked at the ceramic basin, stayed silent for a moment, and finally agreed.
"Alright. Put him in."
With that, the old pavilion master used a vine to pass the tiny tree-man to Lady Hua.
Lady Hua reached out with both hands and took Miaomiao. She found him lying motionless in her hands, as if he were asleep, or perhaps unconscious.
Then she squatted down, seemingly preparing to place Miaomiao into the ceramic basin.
But the very next moment, she kicked her legs hard, throwing herself rapidly backward while simultaneously stuffing the Miaomiao in her hands into the robes at her abdomen.
"Hmm?" The old pavilion master abruptly looked up and said grimly, "Hua, do not betray me."
Lady Hua turned a deaf ear and bolted.
The old pavilion master immediately whipped the vines that nearly filled the entire cave into motion, swarming to cut off Lady Hua's escape.
However, the moment Lady Hua retreated more than three zhang away, a thread on her belt, so thin it was nearly invisible, snapped.
Bang!
The ceramic basin sitting at the old pavilion master's feet suddenly exploded!
The explosion was deafening, reverberating through the not-so-spacious cave and almost shattering eardrums.
At the same time, the explosion blasted the basin's soil into the air, filling it with thick smoke and severely obstructing vision.
"Ah!"
Unexpectedly, in the very next second, it was the fleeing Lady Hua who cried out in pain.
When the smoke and dust cleared slightly, the scene inside the cave was revealed.
Several vines near the old pavilion master's body had risen to block the space between him and the ceramic basin, absorbing some of the explosion's force, but a few fragments still managed to gash him.
Dark, almost blackish-red blood trickled down, staining his white robes.
The old pavilion master lowered his eyes to look at his own wounds. "Damn you. You actually made me bleed."
On the other side, Lady Hua was in an even more wretched state than the old pavilion master.
Several wooden spikes had violently erupted from her abdomen. Three pierced her abdominal cavity, while five thrust outward, protruding through her silver outer robes.
Through the torn fabric, it was obvious that what had turned into wooden spikes was actually "Miaomiao," the little tree-man the old pavilion master had just handed her.
Lady Hua gripped the protruding wooden spikes tightly and forcefully yanked "Miaomiao" out.
The wooden spikes that had pierced her abdomen were covered in blood. But that blood quickly vanished from their surface, as if eaten by the wood itself.
She coughed up a mouthful of blood. It spattered across the wood and was once again absorbed.
The old pavilion master said in a sinister tone, "I gave you a chance. You actually tried to kill me with explosives?"
Lady Hua barely stood up before she was pinned down by a massive vine extending toward her.
The tips of those vines were like sharks scenting blood. After entangling Lady Hua's limbs, they plunged into her bleeding abdominal wounds.
Lady Hua wailed loudly in agony, begging continuously for mercy.
The old pavilion master was entirely unmoved. "I was originally grooming you as my successor. Yet you tried to steal my vessel for rebirth."
More and more blood welled up from Lady Hua's mouth. "Pavilion Master, I was wrong, I was wrong! I just couldn't bear to lose Miaomiao! Miaomiao... we raised him for eighteen years!"
"Enough," the old pavilion master said coldly. "You were just afraid that once I used Miaomiao to be reborn, you would never get to sit in the pavilion master's seat. Hmph. Not only is your talent pathetic, but your heart is rotten too. It just so happens my vines are thirsty. I will use your blood to feed them full."
The vines hoisted Lady Hua up, suspending her in the air as her entire body convulsed.
Several more vines snaked over, wrapping around her limbs and neck, and began pulling forcefully in five different directions.
Her pupils rolled downward, exposing a large swath of white. She stared at the pavilion master in terror and shrieked desperately, "Pavilion Master, don't! Spare me, please!"
"You have all betrayed me. There is only the Dragon Scale Vine. From now on, I will only trust my element."
As the vines tightened, Lady Hua made a choking sound, but she still struggled to scream hoarsely, "The Dragon Scale—Vine—doesn't drink blood, Pavilion Master—they are no longer—"
Crack!
The resistance finally gave way to the tremendous pulling force.
Lady Hua's body was ripped apart right above the old pavilion master's head. Her dismembered corpse was still spraying blood as the pieces rained down.
The bright crimson blood splashed across the vines, over the old pavilion master's pristine white robes, and across his head and face—
The old pavilion master tilted his head back with difficulty, as if accepting the baptism of a spring rain, and greedily licked his pale, blood-red lips.
"The taste of youth... is so good—"
He closed his eyes in pure enjoyment.
However, right at that moment, an intense sense of danger suddenly spiked in his mind.
He was just about to open his eyes when a sudden, violent throb of pain lanced through his brain, making even the act of opening his eyes sluggish.
Forcing his eyes open just a crack, he caught a blurred glimpse of a human silhouette right in front of him.
And in that person's hand was a conical, three-edged thrusting sword.
The iron-gray thrusting sword was already plunging straight toward his heart.