Despite what Chen Haoran said they did not, in fact, blow the joint. They were too tired and too hurt. At least while on the edge of the Green Hell they had a chance too recuperate in relative safety within the protective bubble of the Stainless Purity Lotus. So they did. They took turns to rest and keep watch over the next few days. Or what Chen Haoran assumed were days. The Green Hell did not change. There was no night or day and thus it was hard to determine how much time had passed. Perhaps it didn’t matter in the end.

Chen Haoran busied himself by rifling through his bag for everything they could use to make their recovery faster. Any of his rewarded items went to him and Xie Jin. Phelps meanwhile got the herbs and raw plants he had purchased while in Reservoir Town. These were materials fit for a Liquid Meridian. He would have to ration how much he gave to Phelps for now but over time his reserve would grow.

Received Hundred-Fold: Elegant Firefly Grass

Received Hundred-Fold: Body Nurturing Fruit

Received Hundred-Fold: Stone Mansion Incense

“Somehow. Someway. You always have something on hand no matter the situation,” Xie Jin said, shaking his head in disbelief as Chen Haoran handed him a Body Nurturing Fruit.

“It’s just luck that I happened to have what we need,” Chen Haoran said. He wasn’t even lying either….mostly.

“Praise Heaven for your fortune then,” Xie Jin wryly said. “We wouldn’t nearly be as comfortable right now without it.”

Chen Haoran glanced at Xie Jin’s Beetle Gu. It was darting in and out between the purified bubble and the toxic air of the Green Hell. Drinking in the fumes till its carapace began to rot before retreating into the bubble to molt and reveal a shiny new shell. It had done this three times already.

“I’m sure you would have managed somehow,” he said.

Chen Haoran was thankful that Stainless Purity Lotus’s aura didn’t seem detrimental to Xie Jin’s Gu. In fact it was positively starving for the flower. Which didn’t bode well for how the other creatures living in the Green Hell might react to it.

“At least we can still cultivate,” Xie Jin said. His Gu flew to his waiting hands and while Chen Haoran couldn’t tell how it happened he could feel Xie Jin’s qi slightly rise. “Things would be a lot worse otherwise.”

Ah. Yes. The other unfortunate discovery. It wasn’t just the air that was poisonous in the Green Hell. The qi was too. Needless to say, if it weren’t for the aura of Purity Lotus cleansing the qi they’d be in deep shit. Xie Jin at least could somewhat refine it through his Gu but that didn’t mean it was an easy process. As it stood the rate they could cultivate was massively slowed down even though the level of ambient qi in the Green Hell was several times higher than outside. There was only so much qi contained within the bubble, the area was barely big enough for one of them to cultivate regularly let alone both of them. It was why it took so long for Chen Haoran to discover his newest change.

Liquid Meridian Realm Third-Layer.

It was a pleasant surprise when he fully replenished his reserves and found he could keep going. The immense amounts of qi he ran through his meridians while powering the Metal Lily combined with the aftereffects of his enlightenment and the stress of combat had shattered the invisible barrier between him and the next stage. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing and helped his peace of mind at least.

“Right.” Xie Jin stood up and cracked his back. “I’m ready to go.”

“Let’s get outta here then.” Chen Haoran let Phelps clamber onto his back and rose to his feet. The Stainless Purity Lotus gently cradled within a pouch hanging from his neck that he made from a spare robe. He brushed his fingers across it. This was their lifeline right now. If he lost it then they were well and truly boned.

“Shit.”

Xie Jin’s head whipped. “What’s wrong, Brother Chen?”

Chen Haoran shook his head. “It’s just…. I’m realizing our very survival hinges on keeping ahold of a valuable treasure in a jungle filled with Gu that can steal it with a thought.”

“I wouldn’t be that worried,” Xie Jin said. “All of a Gu’s abilities, even their weirder ones, use their miasma as a base. I doubt most Gu could work a spell past this barrier let alone on the plant itself.”

“And if we meet one that isn’t like most Gu,” Chen Haoran quietly said. “Like a Golden Silkworm?”

Xie Jin gave him a helpless look. “Do you really need to ask questions you already know the answer to? Wrap it in your liquid qi and pray at that point.”

“Fair enough.” Chen Haoran mentally prodded the Yellow Dragon. It growled a bit but a tendril of liquid qi emerged from his chest and covered the Stainless Purity Lotus in a thin film. Pan Gong’s comment on his over-reliance on the Yellow Dragon to control his own qi still stung but dead beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Phelps let out a shrill whistle.

Chen Haoran was immediately on alert. His qi surged and his sense instantly swept their surroundings. Xie Jin did the same. Phelps kept whistling and his grip on Chen Haoran tightened. Despite that, he couldn’t find for the life of him what had set Phelps on edge.

“What’s wrong bud?” Chen Haoran asked. “What do you see?”

“Brother Chen,” Xie Jin gravely answered. “The trees are different.”

What? He observed the jungle, casting his sense over each and every tree and trying to recall what it looked like before. Slowly he turned his gaze upwards where there should have been a tree lifted entirely off the ground. It was not there, both it and the tree lifting it.

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“But we haven’t moved,” Chen Haoran whispered. He looked behind them and instead of blank green fog, there was more jungle. “What the fuck?”

“Looks like it doesn’t matter,” Xie Jin said. His Gu orbited around his head like a moon. “No point in trying to find a direction. Still, believe in your idea about the Three Killers?”

“Not at all,” Chen Haoran said. “But I got a new one.”

“Oh?”

“The Hell Bugs. You said they’re from here. That means they can leave here. We just need to figure out how they do it.”

“Track a First Generation Hell Bug. Sounds easy enough,” Xie Jin sarcastically said.

“We both know I don’t know what that means.”

“Oh, nothing. Just a monster straight out of the stories by grandfather used to scare me into behaving as a child.”

“I don’t see whats so scary about them then. It clearly didn’t work.”

He and Xie Jin shared a chuckle that slowly died away. They stood there, fidgeting in place. Scanning the jungle. A bead of sweat rolled down Chen Haoran’s temple. Phelps oh so helpfully licked it away much to his disgust and Xie Jin’s quiet amusement. He rubbed Phelps’s head in return. Patting down raised hair and adjusting the place of the tense arms on his shoulders. Xie Jin’s fingers twisted into different hand signs until he had to do one that required his missing finger, forcing him to remember he was, in fact, lacking one, causing him to scowl. He did it twice more before stopping.

They had not moved.

Chen Haoran took a long breath, then exhaled, stirring up dust at his feet. He took a step forward. “Let’s go.”

Xie Jin fell into lockstep beside him. Phelps pressed his head flat on Chen Haoran’s shoulder, black eyes constantly roving. Together they entered the jungle of the Tenth Green Hell. The bubble of purification moved with them cleansing all that was in front of them and leaving all that was behind them to the clutches of the Green Hell. In the space they once stood green fog rolled back in, turning the purified soil into stinking, black mud. When they got close enough to finally envelop the trees within the Lotus’s aura they paused, tensing.

No reaction. Not from the trees at least. They didn’t come alive and try to eat them like Chen Haoran had been expecting. Nor did they rear back or lean forward once the Lotus’s aura touched them or did anything to imply they were nothing more than normal, albeit, scary trees. The worst that happened was the black sap leaking from their ‘eyes’ boiled away. An unsettling image but nothing immediately life-threatening. Chen Haoran couldn’t tell if they looked better or worse without their tears. He supposed it depended on what flavor of screaming face a person preferred.

They continued on. The jungle was silent. The sound of their feet on dead earth was too loud. The sound of boiling sap was even louder. It added an omnipresent his wherever they walked because everywhere they walked were screaming, crying trees. They loomed even more menacingly now that they were amongst them. Their clawed branches intertwined into a canopy overhead that looked as if it would fall upon them at any moment like a hunter’s net.

There was no other sound. Just them. Only them.

“Xie Jin,” Chen Haoran whispered, it was loud in the silence. Stupid. Why? It’s loud. Too loud. They were too loud. “How do you think Bao Si is doing?”

Xie Jin’s eyes never took his eyes off the jungle. He whispered back. “Probably having the time of her life. I’m sure she’s out there conquering Zumulu or something while we get the boring stuff.”

Chen Haoran’s grip on his sword’s hilt was white knuckle. “Just our luck eh?”

Shutupshutupshutp. It’s loud. Too loud. You’re loud. Something will HEAR YOU—

There was a scratch of something against wood. Soft, almost unnoticeable, yet it rang like thunder.

Chen Haoran ripped out his sword from its scabbard with a sharp hiss of steel. Xie Jin clapped his hands together and his Gu darted out of purified bubble, wrapped in purple miasma. Phelps’s claws dug into Chen Haoran’s shoulders as he hissed. They whirled toward the direction of the noise as their senses disappeared into the fog and found nothing. They waited. Motionless, like statues poised for violence. Their senses roamed, sweeping the area around them for a hint. An excuse. A justification for their paranoia. They waited and watched. Watched while waiting. For their nerves and their vigil, they were rewarded with….

Nothing.

There was nothing.

Chen Haoran licked his lips. Unbidden he looked at Xie Jin and their eyes met.

Something heard them.

It exploded out of the fog far too quietly for the intensity of its motion. It was fast and large. It’s sudden ambush a blur to Chen Haoran’s sense. When it crossed the barrier of the Stainless Purity Lotus it paused, its armored form seizing up for a moment as a creature that had only known filth took its first breath of fresh air. It was a beetle. Larger than a tank with mandibles capable of shredding one like paper. Its armor was grey and sleek. It’s eyes yellow and faceted like a dragonfly’s. It was an Eighth-Layer Liquid Meridian and it had critically hesitated in the middle of combat.

Red Step of Good Fortune.

One step took him beyond the beast, depositing Chen Haoran in the perfect place to immediately bury his sword deep into the creature’s bulbous eye and twist. Pus leaked from it like blood and dissolved under the Lotus’s power. Pain and threat of death return the beetle to its faculties. It did not scream nor did it cry out or threateningly roar. It had a sword in its eye and it was quiet. Why was it quiet? The beetle’s counter was swift, a leg that looked more like a blade lashed out at his waist. Phelps screamed from above and loosed a flood of liquid qi, leaching enough force from the leg blade that when the Yellow Dragon’s own protective flood of qi was breached Chen Haoran could afford to raise his leg and stop the edge. He could feel the sting the leg blade broke his skin but he paid it no mind. Instead he wrenched the sword further into its eye. The Yellow Dragon loosed a roar and surged out through his arm, into the sword, and down the blade to enter the beetle.

The insect thrashed as the Yellow Dragon roared and buffeted it from within. Yellow qi expanded and the beetle’s other eye popped. It slumped over, lifeless. Chen Haoran collected his qi and swirled his sword around the beetle’s eyesocket. He pulled the blade out and stabbed it in the head again several times for good measure. When he was done the beetle’s head was a smoking mess, its toxic fluids vaporizing under the Lotus’s aura.

He was just about to step back when he heard Xie Jin’s panicked shout. “The body!”

The dead beetle monster surged to life once again, catching Chen Haoran within its mandibles. Chen Haoran forcibly caught the mandibles, their serrated edges made a bloody mess of his hands and the power behind them made his bones creak but he stopped it. He flooded qi to his leg and stomped the beetle’s head in as he did however the bug’s back exploded in a shower of gore and viscera and a worm lunged out from the mess, its head splitting open to reveal a gullet of rotating teeth.

Xie Jin’s Gu fell atop it from above, his back opening up and revealing a barbed stinger that it buried into the worm’s body, interrupting its momentum. It bought Chen Haoran the time he needed to free himself from the mandibles and flood qi to his hand. His palm glowed green.

Blossom Picking Palm

A furious rain of heavy strikes pulped the worm’s head. Not content with that however Chen Haoran proceeded to grab the rest of the worm and rip it from the beetle’s corpse before dicing it to pieces with his sword. As if a testament to his good thinking the pieces of the worm writhed and wriggled, their immense vitality allowing it a last, futile attempt at survival. Chen Haoran and Xie Jin carefully squashed each one, making sure not to miss even a single one, before stepping back and warily watching the smoking remains.

“Puppeteer Beetle,” Xie Jin said as if that sufficed as an explanation.

“What the fuck,” Chen Haoran said. He could not think of anything better to say. Phelps fell from the air and landed on his shoulders.

It was loud. The smoke was loud. The fight was loud. They were loud.

The Beetle was quiet. The worm was quiet. The jungle was quiet.

Chen Haoran’s blood chilled to ice.

There was a scratch of something against wood.