Halfmoon said with her eyes wide open, “You actually dare to be so rude with this mistress!” Her eyes seemed increasingly wider.
Li Qingshan glared at Halfmoon and said, “You never talked about this, you were obviously intentionally hiding it.”
Halfmoon felt inexplicable panic in her heart under his intense stare. She looked left and right and tried to divert the topic: “Haha, did I? You never asked either!”
Li Qingshan sat down cross-legged. “Here is the end of the road for me.”
Halfmoon exposed her sharp claws and said threateningly, “What? You say that again?”
Li Qingshan said, “Your supernatural skills are vast, and even if you encounter danger you can use Shadow Blink and walk off, but there’s eight chances out of ten it’s a road to death for us. If you want to kill me then kill, I don’t want to be made use of any longer. It’s fine as long as you let Little An go.”
Little An caught Li Qingshan’s sleeve and desperately shook his head.
Halfmoon said, “You think I won’t dare!” She waved her claws down fast as wind and thunder. It was impossible for Li Qingshan to dodge, and his skin and flesh weren’t all that much tougher than that mouse monster.
The claws stopped only a hairbreadth away from Li Qingshan’s nape. Halfmoon’s chest rose and fell. She turned around and said, “Hmph, I’m too lazy to kill you. Go if you want to go, suit yourself.”
Li Qingshan looked deeply at her. He turned around and was just about to stride away.
Halfmoon caught Li Qingshan’s little finger and said in a gentle voice, “The Dragon province isn’t far from here anymore, we had a promise!”
Li Qingshan turned his head back and saw that her eyes were pointed elsewhere, not looking at him. Sunlight fell on her eyelashes and cast a shade on her eyes that resembled pools of water, seeming to exude a thread of sorrow and weakness that stirred his heartstrings.
Li Qingshan said after a long silence, “Alright, I’ll accompany you for a little longer, it ought to complete the promise.”
The clouds instantly parted from Halfmoon’s face. She stuck her tongue out and let out a crafty smile. “Really easy to coax.” Where was there any half shred of sorrow or weakness left.
Li Qingshan hung his head down, his expression instantly black. Little An watched Li Qingshan with some pity.
“It’s a promise! A promise!” Halfmoon danced proudly hither and yon around Li Qingshan, then finally leaped on top of his head and urged, “Let’s hurry to set out!”
Li Qingshan sent her a fierce glare. He continued forth on the journey.
It had been a long time since he last walked under the sunlight. The sunlight from the winter sun was soft and warm. A long time had already gone by in a blur, and he’d already fully adapted to this monster body.
Halfmoon said, “Don’t feel embarrassed. There’s nothing shameful about losing to my ultimeowte skill.”
“Ultimate skill?”
Halfmoon said, “Actually, I’ve been wanting to leave a long time ago already, but I’m always powerless as soon as queen concubine Serenity exposes this kind of expression.”
Li Qingshan said, “But you still left in the end.”
Halfmoon said proudly, “Because I’m relatively heartless meow!”
Li Qingshan said, “That’s not something to show off about! Those heartless to others, others will also be heartless to you.”
“Is that so?”
Inside the Black Mouse Mountain, the Great Mouse King had jumped down on the ground and fully buried its head inside the soil. Every little sound within ten miles or even a hundred miles spread to its ears along with the earth. The back and forth between Li Qingshan and Halfmoon did naturally not escape its hearing.
The innate supernatural skills awakened by monsters were mainly offensive or defensive in nature. However, it was actually proficient in an extremely rarely seen “Earth Listening Art” that happened to fit its nature overcautious to a fault and timid as a mouse.
It suddenly lifted its head covered in dust and said with a face full of a dirt, “Indeed fishy!”
The crowd of mice said, “The Great King is wise!”
“Stop talking, hurry up and chase them!”
Halfmoon’s ears suddenly stood up. “Disaster, they’re pursuing us, hurry up and leave!”
Li Qingshan lifted his feet and dashed madly forward. Every step left a deep footprint behind when it trod on the ground, then the next step would fall already several hundred feet away.
“Too slow!” Halfmoon felt it was still too slow.
Li Qingshan said, “Let’s see you try to run while carrying me!”
Halfmoon groped out a spirit pill and tossed it inside Li Qingshan’s mouth, then she also grasped out a spiritual talisman. The color of the talisman wasn’t the usual yellow, but a crimson red.
A gust of nimble qi rose as the spiritual medicine melted, and Li Qingshan felt as if his body became twice lighter. The talisman broke and a hurricane wrapped around Li Qingshan. It seemed his body had become weightless.
Li Qingshan stamped down and directly soared in the sky. The sky was dazzlingly blue. The forest of tall ancient trees was under his feet, and it seemed the curve of the chains of peaks undulating up and down in the distance was about to fly up.
He turned his gaze back and took a look. A rolling cloud of smoke and dust was sure enough rushing their way. He’d already adjusted his stature when he landed back on the ground. His body leaned forward and directly charged forth. Each stride crossed over thousand feet, and those small hills weren’t obstacles any longer as he crossed past them in one jump.
Halfmoon stood on his shoulder and laughed out loud. “Charge! Meowhahaha!”
A rolling smoke of dust swept their way at an alarming speed. The one in the lead inside the smoke was precisely that Great Mouse King. Its feet trampled on waves formed by countless mice. It saw Li Qingshan at one glance and said, “You hurry up to stop.”
Halfmoon knew she’d been exposed and no longer hid. She scowled: “Only idiots would stop, dumb-ass dumb-ass!”
Yellow light flashed in the Great Mouse King’s eyes and one earth spike pierced up after another. Whether speed or power, they were ten times more ferocious compared to that great mice general, often stabbing at the places Li Qingshan’s strides fell on.
Li Qingshan barged left and charged right, changing his direction nonstop. He’d just moved sideways and dodged past a spike that there was movement again under his feet. He shouted “Bull Demon Hoof Stamp” explosively and stepped on the spike that’d only begun to emerge, then borrowed the force to soar into the sky. The pain from the stab under his foot was hard to endure, but fortunately the sole of his feet had already become tough bull hooves, otherwise he would have been crippled this time.
He flew up thousand feet in the air. The patch of blue light on the horizon blurred his eyes, distracting him from the pain on his foot.
Halfmoon pointed at the horizon and said, “Big Black, Little White, did you see? The Ice Sword Cliff is right in front of us!”
An ice cliff rising forever to the sky for thousands of miles stretched across the Boundless Mountain Range, as if a god had struck an ice sword down and cut the massive dragon-like Boundless Mountain Range into two sections.
This here was the dividing line between the two Verdant and Dragon provinces.
A spark of hope suddenly ignited inside Li Qingshan’s heart, like a traveler who’d seen the end of his journey. He understood that one could watch a mountain but kill a horse trying to reach it, and also knew that the ice cliff should still be very far from where they were.
But he had the constant feeling with him that they could reach an unprecedented situation if they could step across that ice cliff.
When he lowered his head down, he saw that the originally hard rocks he was about to land his feet on had become quicksand thousand feet across. His entire person heavily plunged into the quicksand.
The quicksand revolved like a whirlpool and produced a mighty suction, as if countless pairs of hands were pulling Li Qingshan down toward the earth. It was just the same as a tiger fallen from the mountains to the bright plains; he couldn’t display his power even if he had a strength of ten thousand pounds. The more he struggled the deeper he sank.
The Great Mouse King seized the occasion and caught up in a spurt of energy. It said with a great laugh, “Trapped right? You actually dared to underestimate this great king, you all obediently stay here for me!”
“The Great King is wise!”
“Meooow!” A cat cry sounded, even more tyrannical than the snarl of a fierce tiger. Halfmoon stood on Li Qingshan’s shoulder, emitting powerful monster qi from head to toes as she stared straight at the Great Mouse King. “Cat-Eating Mouse was it? Although it’s very disgusting, today I’m still going to taste the flavor of mice.”