I laughed nervously, 1000% dumbfounded.

"You...You liked that, Venerable One? The panda thing?"

Fong Jue's extremely dangerous, rumbling laughter kept going, making even more rocks fall from the ceiling. If he kept laughing like this, I was pretty sure this whole cavern was gonna be buried soon!

But it was either dealing with a collapsing cavern, or a raging ancient demon king who wanted to tear my arms off.

Collapsing cavern, please! Not really a hard choice, there.

But what was weird, was that I felt something else in the vibrations of the walls. They seemed more shallow — almost like the earth above us had become thinner.

Was that possible? Had so many rocks fallen from the ceiling that we were actually closer to the surface now?

No, that couldn't be it...huh. Also, was the whole mountain shaking? Or was that just Fong Jue's laugh?

Anyways, this immortal didn't have time to figure that out right now. It was more important to keep getting Fong Jue to rumble. If I got him to laugh hard enough, maybe the cavern would really collapse, and then I could stealthily dig myself to a safe tunnel, draw an array, and transport myself out!

"Hah! Ha, ha...You really have a good sense of humor," I said, grinning and laughing really loudly. "Venerable One, allow me to perform another charade for you. Try to guess this one before the timer runs out."

With that, I stood still as a rod and held my arms out to the sides like sticks.

Fong Jue's rumbling slowed down. His blood red glowing demon eyes studied me excitedly, trying to figure out what I was doing. They narrowed.

"A...a stick insect?"

I shook my head, staring straight ahead.

"A...house?"

Another head shake.

Suddenly, Fong Jue's eyes burned brightly, and his grin stretched wide, revealing white, knife-like teeth.

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"This Venerable One sees! You are a tree! The foolish immortal is resembling a tree! Standing still, with two branches! A tree, a tree! Rumble, rumble!"

I released my pose, laughing and nodding while dodging several chunks of rock and dirt falling around me.

"Yeah! You got it, Venerable One! You're not just a demon king, you're the King of Charades! Tell that to all your demon colleagues, heh—" I paused.

Shit.

Fong Jue's rumbling laughter faded. I could almost feel the searing glare from his red eyes.

Of course he couldn't talk to his demon colleagues. He was freaking sealed under this freaking glittering mountain! I'd just rubbed salt in his wounds!

Coughing violently, I held up a hand.

"This immortal misspoke just then! I meant to say, tell that to all your...your demon call-ees. Like...like servants for you the demon king. So, your ghost fires...cough, cough. That's what I meant."

The cavern seemed to become unbearable hot all of a sudden. Fong Jue's body had started to flame again. The tiny sand-sized ghost fires in the hourglass squealed from the heat, some of them turning into smoke inside the glass.

"Are you mocking This Venerable One, foolish immortal?"

I waved my hands energetically, grinning. "No, no! Never. Let this immortal show you one more charade? If this charade doesn't make Your Venerable Highness satisfied, then you can — you know, tear my arms off, or whatever!"

Wow. I probably shouldn't have said that. But whatever. Too late now.

I dropped to the ground and lay there like a lifeless sack of rice, my face in the dirt.

I could practically hear Fong Jue's confusion.

"What...is this? A river? A beaten person? A defeated immortal?"

Nope, all wrong. But dang, that last one kinda hurt. Had I been defeated? Let's not say that yet, all right? I still wasn't dead.

As Fong Jue guessed and guessed, getting more and more thoughtful, my index finger moved silently, drawing shapes in the dirt with a small amount of blood from a wound on my ribs. I worked fast, only using the hand that was facing away from Fong Jue so that he couldn't see. It was the smallest Transportation Array I'd ever drawn, and it could probably only take me about one li away from here, but it would have to do.

Just as I added the last touch, Fong Jue jumped up from his throne, causing the already-shaking room to tremble.

"I've got it! A possum! You are playing a charade of an opossum who is playing dead!"

Whew. He'd given me just enough time to finish.

Just as I was about to raise my head to grin and chant the words to activate the array, however, there was the biggest rumbling yet. And this time, it didn't come from Fong Jue's laughter.

Instead, it came from the rubble-covered doorway to this throne room.

BAM!

All at once, the rubble flew away from the door, and the doors flew open.

"What the heck?" I muttered.

Standing there, shadowed in the faint red light, was a crowd of people. I spotted Gao Hong and Madam Li among them; these must be villagers from Yingxuan Shan. And at the very front of that crowd, carrying a shovel on one shoulder and looking very, very angry...was Xu Yun, my best temporary student kid.

He glared at Fong Jue.

"You, demon! Get away from my laoshi!"