"Sha-raids?" Fong Jue growled, making the cave shake again. "What kind of silly name is this? Are you mocking this Venerable One again?"

"No!" Sweat was trickling down the back of my immortal neck. Shit. There really was no way out of this cavern without blasting straight up through the mountain all the way up to the surface, and the amount of qi and physical energy that would take...also considering that a thousands-of-years-old demon would be on my tail as I tried to dig my way up...

Basically, things were not looking good for this immortal.

I sighed.

Only one thing left to do, then.

I turned around, wiping the sweat off my beautiful immortal forehead and grinning. "No! Of course I wouldn't mock you, Venerable One! It's...see, it's from a divine language. A very special name for a very fun game, you know?"

"Explain it now, or this Venerable One will crush you where you stand!"

"Hah...Ha! Okay, okay, you got it. It's like this. Do you happen to have an hourglass? One for a short amount of time, y'know?"

Fong Jue grumbled. He waved his hand, and a small glass hourglass appeared. Only, it was empty. Before I could laugh nervously and point that out, he blew an ear-piercing whistle that shook the cave, and a bunch of little red ghost fires who had been cowering in the corners rushed forward, shuddering.

"In!" Fong Jue barked, making more rocks fall from the ceiling. I stepped to the right, avoiding getting crushed by a particularly sharp one.

"Yes, Master!"

All at once, the ghost fires gathered together at the mouth of the empty hourglass and started to shrink, and shrink, and shrink — until they were like tiny grains of sand, except glowing and red! They piled up in the top half of the hourglass and started to drip slowly into the bottom half, like little sad drops of glowing goo.

Fong Jue shook the hourglass, causing all of the shrunken ghost fires to shriek. Then he held it sideways so it wouldn't drip anymore and glared at me.

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"Here is my hourglass. What is next, foolish immortal?"

I...wasn't really sure whether I should laugh or cry, to be honest. Apparently, it was normal for demon kings to crush their subordinates into glass tubes and use them for time-telling. All right, then.

I cleared my throat.

"All right. Next step! When I clap my hands, you turn the timer over and start it. Then, you'll have until the timer runs out to guess what I'm acting out. Ready? START!" Without allowing questions, I slapped my hands together, and started rolling on the ground.

A deep rumbling came from Fong Jue's ancient, morphing throat.

"What...What is this you are doing, foolish immortal? Do you wish to make an even greater fool of yourself?"

I lay on the ground with my limbs splayed out, pretending to sleep. With a wave of my hand, I turned my color-changing immortal robes black and white, and conjured a shoot of bamboo from the air. With the stick, I wrote in the air:

Sorry, Venerable One. The person acting can't talk in a game of charades. That would break the rules!

Then I started rolling on the ground again.

At the same time, I was trying to draw out a complicated array in the dirt of the cavern, but it was hard because 1) I was trying to act out my charade as dramatically as possible, and 2) Fong Jue was staring right at me, so it was basically impossible for me to do so without him noticing anything.

Suddenly, the floor of the cave began to rumble violently.

Rumble, rumble. Rumble, rumble.

Shit. That couldn't be good. The rumbling also made me lose balance, causing me to trip and smudge part of the Mortal Realm Transportation Array I'd been drawing discreetly, making it now useless.

Rumble, rumble.

Big chunks of rock fell from the ceiling. I deflected them with the bamboo shoot, not wanting to pull out Destiny Sword if it wasn't absolutely necessary.

Slowly, I turned around, internally cursing at myself for choosing such a basic game to try and keep this ancient grumpy demon distracted.

However, the sight that met my eyes was...totally unexpected.

Rumble, rumble.

Fong Jue, the ancient demon king who crushed his servants' souls, was leaning back on his throne and laughing. The rumbling sound came from his gravelly, shape-shifting black throat, and he was holding his foggy stomach like it was about to burst.

Rumble, rumble. Rumble, rumble!

After a while of me standing there dumbstruck while Fong Jue gasped his guts out, the rumbling finally slowed. Fong Jue opened his glowing red eyes, which were arched with laughter, and pointed a long, scraggly claw at me.

"You...immortal. You are truly ingenious! That...rumble, rumble...was a panda! You, an immortal, rolled on the ground like a panda! RUMBLE, RUMBLE! RUMBLE!!! I have not seen a panda in millennia! And...rumble, rumble...I have never seen an immortal roll on the group like one! Rumble! Another! Immortal, do another round!"