Ever since the spirit adviser had led him by the nose into a ruse, Zeng Fei had learnt to be vigilant whenever entering unknown caves, paranoid that their jaws would clamp down behind him and trap him inside.


    As such, he summoned Pingu and ordered the penguin to scout ahead.


    Watching the penguin waddle off into the darkness without any hesitation or wariness, Zeng Fei was able to confirm what he’d suspected before: Pingu was dauntless, potentially even incapable of fear.


    It happened to remind Zeng Fei of when he’d first summoned Pingu into battle, against that Green-horned Python. Back then too, Pingu had disregarded the snake after noticing its predatory advance, showing none of the alertness that came after noticing a threat. Was this fearlessness a quality that all spirit beasts possessed, or was it strictly a Pingu thing?


    Tracking his progress by the softening taps of his feet, the cultivators and villagers waited with their hearts in their throats, muscles tensed and eyes locked on the darkness. The ground-shaking roar they were expecting never came, however.


    Zeng Fei was messaged by his minion through their connection that it was all safe inside, causing him to feel equal parts relieved and disappointed.


    He and Sun Ru had agreed they’d be the ones to go in next, just in case Pingu had done a sloppy job of scanning the area for dangers.


    “Sowing the Sky.”


    Sun Ru made a gesture akin to scattering seeds in the wind, though what left her grasp was an incandescent bulb which floated in front of her. With its bright shine staving off the darkness, the cultivators followed after it.


    The foreboding bloody aura intensified as they went inside, causing them to raise their guard further. Nonetheless, the penguin hadn’t lied, and they reached the end of the tunnelled-out cave within a minute of entering.


    Any remaining questions regarding the victims’ mortality were answered by the plethora of bones strewn about. From the way the flesh had been stripped off to the last morsel, they had presumably been juiced for every last drop of blood essence by the eldritch being.


    The Sacrificial Pad was a handwoven mat that bore a similar qi signature to the Totemic Poles and Knife of Deliverance, and upon it lay the lizard Sun Ru had tested the knife on, long deceased.


    There was nothing else in the cave, making for an anticlimactic mission conclusion, but the two cultivators were just glad it was finally over.


    “Peep peep,” Pingu exclaimed to them.


    “There’s something you want to show?” Zeng Fei repeated after him, clueless what he could be referring to.


    Pingu gave an enthusiastic nod and got onto the Sacrificial Pad. He shifted left and then right, followed by a 180 spin, shifting both directions once more, another 180 spin, then a weird motion with his wings like he was flaring his forearms in and out of his belly…


    If Zeng Fei didn’t know any better, he would have thought that penguin believed the Sacrificial Pad to be a dance mat and simply wished to show off to them his dance moves (which, mind you, looked eerily similar to the C**b P*****n dance)…


    Indeed, this must be what Sun Ru believed to be the case as she shortly began to clap to the beat, feeling blessed to have been allowed to witness such a wondrous sight.


    But Zeng Fei knew the truth was more complex as he sensed his minion draining his qi while busting out moves, expelling it through his webbed feet into the mat where it dissipated.


    Or at least it seemed to dissipate, yet for some reason this dispersal reminded Zeng Fei of when the spirit adviser had directed qi into the floor of the inheritance cave: there, the sliver of released qi had proceeded to spread into a scatter of thin, well-defined lines, over a few seconds revealing an invisible ritual diagram that had been drawn on the ground.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.


    Yet it was clear to see there was no ritual diagram drawn on the Sacrificial Pad here. So could it be then that Pingu had simply just wanted to let his feet shine and boogie down? The penguin was a little glory hound after all, hungry for praise, especially any that he could divert away from his master, the cheeky bugger!


    But if that was the case, why was Zeng Fei having such a hard time shaking off the association between the two events, almost like something in his subconscious was snagging on the corner whenever he tried to pull them apart.


    Suddenly there was a sound reminiscent of a sharp sword being drawn from behind Pingu as a gleaming blue portal materialised from thin air. It was flat and and amorphous in shape, though very crudely resembling a door.


    The blockhead penguin appeared not to notice this rather notable development as he proceeded to moonwalk (very poorly, it had to be said) into the portal.


    Pingu disappeared just like how the lizard had disappeared after being stabbed, all too abruptly and all at once, leaving no doubt that this was the work of the eldritch being.


    Though that fact was far from Zeng Fei’s mind, as for the first time ever he felt Pingu separated from his consciousness, just completely cut off to the point that even unsummoning didn’t work anymore.


    Once he’d clocked onto this, he summarily came upon the unsettling self-discovery that he’d been a tsundere all along: although he’d loved to grumble and hate on Pingu’s success at every turn, now that he was finally rid of the pesky penguin, all he felt was the undeniable despair birthed from loss…


    “Pingu!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, matched by Sun Ru as it just so happened.


    They both sprinted for the portal in sync.


    She used some kind of technique to go faster still and left a fiery trail in her wake, royally pissing him off as it forced him to switch lanes.


    What the fuck was wrong with this girl, acting like Pingu was her bloody minion and not his?! To the extent she was cheating to ensure she was the first one Pingu would see rushing to his rescue! He dearly hoped he was overthinking it, though had a feeling he wasn’t.


    Cursing her underhanded tactics and intractable personality, Zeng Fei took the longer route around the fire and followed them into the portal.


    He was hit with a disorientating blast, followed by the inconceivable sensation of someone molesting his entire body - which was to say not just his skin, but the flesh inside, the bones, and the entrails too…


    The eldritch being whose power was being used to transport him across space-time was doing so by physically unravelling his body and recreating it elsewhere, a fact which Zeng Fei knew to be the case on an instinctual level as though the information had been transferred over during the trip.


    Next thing he knew, he was stepping out of the portal and doubling over, retching violently onto the ground ahead. Only once the worst of the queasiness passed did he raise his head and take stock of his surroundings, eyes widening at the environment which was unlike any he’d seen before.


    Gone was the sparsely furnished cave, and present was a haunted forest of bloodwood trees. Wherever this was, the simple fact that it was connected to the eldritch being made it patently clear that it wasn’t somewhere you wanted to have an extended stay at, not unless you had ‘let a cult use you as their ritual sacrifice’ on your bucket list.


    Several paces ahead of him, Sun Ru was straightening herself with a hand over her stomach and a drawn expression.


    Further on from her, Pingu wandered around the grove they were in, examining the peculiar trees with the energy of a middle-aged factory manager inspecting his rank-and-file workers.


    Sun Ru called out in a strained voice: “Esteemed Pingu, why did you bring us here?”


    Even though vomit was rising up his throat, her comment caused Zeng Fei so much irritation that torrid anger exploded out first. “Fuck you, bitch!” He was forced to stop and clench his teeth, holding off against a surge of bile, before continuing. “Who cares why? I want you to get your arse back in the portal right this second, Pinguis Brattius!”


    It was long overdue that he drew boundaries between his minion and this crazy bitch who seemed to be under the illusion she was the Heavenly Demon Emperor’s successor, not him! Although Zeng Fei had never taken pride in the role before, how could he not feel possessive when this darned girl kept overtly wanting to take his troops from right under him?!


    As expected, Zeng Fei’s command fell on deaf ears. He was about to unsummon Pingu as punishment when two things happened in quick succession.


    The first was that the sound of a sharp sword being drawn repeated; Zeng Fei threw his gaze back and felt the blood drain from his face as he saw the portal was gone…


    The second was that, perhaps attracted by their voices, something gave a bone-chilling howl in the distance, which prompted another howl, and another…


    To make matters worse, the hubbub of humans was audible beneath the howls: people chasing after their pack of hellhounds.


    With all this sensory information gunning for his attention, Zeng Fei was slackjawed in disbelief at how quickly his fortunes had flipped. How on earth had it gone from being a dreamlike conclusion of a mission to a literal nightmare of a situation seconds after?!