Chapter Eighty-Six: The Secret of the Celestial Spirit Lock

The bite came like lightning. Even with Leidong’s reflexes and speed, he managed to throw himself back less than a meter before the two rows of fangs were already at his throat. He could even feel the bone-chilling cold of those razor-sharp teeth.

Leidong’s eyes flew wide. With a hook punch that tore through the air, he drove his fist like a bolt of lightning toward Taotie’s jaw. If you want my life, then damn it, don’t expect to get off easy!

Yet just as those iron teeth were about to graze his skin, raising a sheet of gooseflesh on Leidong’s neck, Taotie’s huge mouth suddenly snapped back. Its meat-patty body,借助 the force of the punch’s wind, oddly rebounded several inches upward and barely evaded the heavy blow. Then the gaping mouth slammed shut, and the two rows of fangs crashed together with a grating crack that made one’s teeth ache.

Leidong could not help but stare in shock. That bulky, bizarre-looking body was actually this nimble?

Looking more closely, he saw Taotie’s massive head hanging in midair, circling rapidly around him. Leidong was spun so dizzy that he asked in frustration, “What are you doing?”

To be honest, ever since he had first seen this strange fellow who seemed to do little more than open his mouth, Leidong had felt something inexplicably odd. He seemed familiar with the creature before him, no, not with the creature itself, but with the scent it carried. More than that, he even felt a kind of closeness.

The feeling was utterly bizarre. He had clearly never seen this thing before, so why did he feel this way?

Because of that sensation, Leidong had not guarded against a sudden attack from the start. And because of that same sensation, the punch he had just thrown, though fast as lightning and heavy as a mountain, had not been delivered with his full strength. He had held something back.

But now this fellow was spinning around him and making his head ache. What in the world did it want?

Whoosh.

Taotie turned to face Leidong, still floating in midair. Its beady little eyes were round with surprise as it studied him from head to toe, wearing an expression both astonished and peculiar.

After quite a long while, a suspicious voice sounded in Leidong’s sea of consciousness. “Heaven Spirit Lock? It’s actually the Heaven Spirit Lock? No wonder. Which Nascent Soul tribulation made such a commotion? Even a cultivator ascending at the Great Ascension stage would not be this terrifying. It scared me so badly I did not even dare swallow a trace of spiritual energy. Hm? No, no, this is actually a cultivation of chaos...” It abruptly fell silent there. Its little eyes rolled around furtively, no one knew what scheme it was hatching.

But Leidong did not notice any of that at all. He did not even register what the creature had been muttering. The instant he heard the three words “Heaven Spirit Lock,” he went rigid, every hair on his body standing straight up.

What did it say? The Heaven Spirit Lock?

This creature actually knew about the Heaven Spirit Lock?

The old con-man master knew of the Heaven Spirit Lock because he had been the one to discover it and tell Leidong about it. His father, Leidong Gang, knew, and so did Dark Cloud, Lang Tianyu, Huang Xiwen, and the others, because Leidong had told them himself. Beyond that, even An Jing knew nothing of it, because Leidong did not know how to explain it to her, much less what sort of reaction she would have upon learning that he was, in fact, a Daoist priest.

Most crucial of all, this profoundly mysterious and profound thing called the Heaven Spirit Lock was something even the old con-man master, who had reached the Great Ascension stage centuries ago but stubbornly refused to ascend, could not fully understand. And for others, it could not be seen at all from the outside.

And yet this creature before him had recognized it at a glance. How could Leidong not be overjoyed? If it recognized the thing, then perhaps there was a way to solve it. As long as this problem, which had always shackled his strength so tightly, could be resolved, then with his current cultivation, the world would be wide enough for him to go anywhere he pleased!

“The Heaven Spirit Lock? You know about the Heaven Spirit Lock?” The words burst out of Leidong before he could stop them.

“Rubbish!” Taotie’s voice rang out in his mind. “You know this master is Taotie, and yet you do not know that Taotie knows all things under heaven and on earth?”

Leidong curled his lip inwardly, thinking: whether you’re ignorant or not, I don’t know. But blowing your own horn, that I know all too well. Out loud, however, he did not dare offend this creature that could flip its face at any moment. “Then what exactly is it?”

“You actually do not know?” Taotie cried out in surprise, then once again swung its huge mouth back and forth around Leidong several dozen times before saying, “Hahaha, you really don’t know. So it turns out it is... hahaha...”

Taotie’s voice carried an uncontrollable delight in others’ misfortune, booming inside Leidong’s mind and making his head spin.

“Damn it! So what if I don’t know? Is it really that funny? You’re making my head spin!”

“Hahaha... it is true... hahaha... so funny...”

“If I don’t know, then do you know?”

“Of course I do.”

“You do? Then say it!”

“Say it, then. The Heaven Spirit Lock is simply an immortal—”

Taotie had barely gotten out a few words when it abruptly shut its mouth, alert and wary, its eyes darting around as though harboring some dark little secret. No matter what, it would not speak again.

Leidong nearly stumbled over in frustration. Damn it, you were the one who brought it up, and now that the answer is right in front of me, you suddenly stop talking?

“Immortal, what? Immortal what?” Leidong pressed on, unwilling to give up. Taotie shook its huge head back and forth and ignored him.

“Immortal sect? Immortal realm? Immortal maiden? Or maybe first, before, innate?” Leidong asked and guessed one after another. But with every guess, he only saw that enormous flying-disc head swaying before him, and in his mind, Taotie’s voice never came again.

Leidong was the sort of man who would never stop until he got what he wanted. He fired off question after question in rapid succession, and Taotie finally lost its patience. It roared, “Why should I tell you?”

“Damn it!” Leidong was thoroughly vexed. Hell, the one who wanted to say it was you, and the one refusing to say it is also you. Are you trying to drive me mad?

His eyes darted rapidly, and suddenly he put on an expression of sudden realization. “Oh—” He drew out the final note, raising his brows. “I get it!”

“Get what?” For once, a trace of tension actually slipped into Taotie’s voice.

“I get it. You refuse to tell me because you don’t know!” Leidong deliberately curled his mouth in a look of scorn, trying hard to mimic the disdainful expression that Dark Cloud always wore.

Who would have thought that upon hearing this, the tension in Taotie’s tone would vanish without a trace. “Hmph—” it snorted. “Save it. This master has lived for more than two thousand years. You want to use reverse psychology on me?”

Leidong nearly collapsed to the ground with a thud. Damn it, he had already performed that look of contempt so convincingly, and this creature still saw through it in one glance?

Had it really become a spirit?