In the dense mist of the southern bamboo defile, Deacon Xue San raised a clenched fist, halting his squad ten paces before an arched bamboo bridge.
The trail ahead narrowed between two towering clusters of iron-bamboo whose thick culms arched overhead like the ribbed vaulting of a tomb. On the ground, the slate flat stone slabs had ended, replaced by a smooth carpet of pale yellow pine needles and damp river moss. The scent of roasted sesame and sweet honey had grown stronger, wafting down the ravine in inviting, fragrant waves.
“Something is wrong,” Xue San hissed through his bone mask. His waxy fingers curled around the handle of his serrated bone dagger. “Why would a forest trail smell of festival pastries? Gu She, probe the outer edge with a blood viper.”
The lean scout behind him stepped forward, reaching into a bronze cage at his belt. He pulled out a writhing, crimson-scaled serpent no longer than a chopstick, its poisonous fangs dripping acid-burning red venom. Whispering a foul blood magic chant, Gu She tossed the snake onto the path ahead.
The viper slithered three feet forward, its tongue flicking the damp air.
Then, its tiny snout grazed an invisible filament suspended two inches above the pine needles.
SNAP.
The thread cut with a sound like a plucked harp string.
Before Gu She could blink, the four towering stalks of iron-bamboo flanking the bridge suddenly recoiled. Bent double and anchored with hidden bronze trigger pins, the sixty-foot hardwood bamboo culms whipped upright into the air with the thunderous whistle of a catapult arm!
THWUMP-THWUMP!
Strapped to the crowns of the bamboo stalks were eight wide wooden buckets carved from hollowed iron-oak, each packed to the brim with five hundred pounds of Lin Xiao’s specially fermented [Non-Newtonian Primordial Slime Gel], heavy by hundreds of yards of Su Ling’er’s Nine-Fold Spirit Silk webbing.
The moment the bamboo reached full upright extension, the heavy outward pull hurled the contents downward in an explosive, glittering azure deluge!
SPLAT! SCHLUCK! SQUELCH!
“Ambush! Raise blood shields!” Xue San shrieked, his combat instincts taking over.
All eight cultists reacted with ruthless, lethal smooth speed. They channeled their malignant yin-blood qi, raising circular crimson energy barriers above their heads while unsheathing their necro-toxic bone daggers. Xue San thrust his dagger upward in a vicious arc, intending to cleave through whatever falling projectile approached.
That was their fatal mistake.
The dropping azure fluid was not ordinary liquid. It was a dense, hyper-thick, sticky colloidal mid-air governed by Lin Xiao’s Primordial Chaos law. Xue San’s dagger struck the blue mass at high speed. Then, the non-Newtonian impact-hardening property engaged instantly.
CLANG!
Instead of slicing through soft liquid, Xue San’s dagger felt as though it had struck an anvil of solid meteor-iron at full swing! The bone-shaking blast wave traveled straight up his arm bones, wrenching his elbow joint and jarring his teeth in his gums. Before he could pull the weapon back, the gel relaxed into a thick, rubbery soup, wrapping around the bone blade and sucking it into its core with a wet SCHLUCK!
“What in the nine hells?!” Xue San roared, tugging wildly at his weapon.
The more wildly he yanked, the harder and more iron-hard the blue fluid became. It was like trying to pull an embedded sword out of solid granite.
Around him, sheer tactical chaos erupted.
Gu She and three other scouts were hit squarely by the falling barrage. Two hundred pounds of semi-clear blue jelly slammed into them, knocking them flat onto the mossy earth. When they tried to scramble to their feet. Their leather-gloved hands were pressed into the gel. It instantly seized their fingers in an airtight, elastic grip.
“It’s sticky! Merciful blood gods, it’s alive!” Gu She wailed, kicking his legs wildly.
His boots struck the pooling jelly on the path. Within a single second, both legs were glued to the ground as if set in rapidly hardening cement. He tried to channel his blood-core fire to burn up the goo. Then, the Primordial Chaos essence merely absorbed the heat, neutralizing the demonic flame into a warm, comfortable simmer that smelled pleasantly of caramelized sugar.
“Detonate your blood-escape magic charms!” Xue San bellowed in utter panic.
He reached into his sleeve with his free left hand. He pulled out a crimson parchment magic charm inked in human blood. If ignited, the magic charm would burn twenty percent of his lifeforce to project his physical form ten miles through the earth.
He raised two fingers to ignite the magic charm.
FWUMP.
A large, perfectly ball-shaped blob of azure jelly dropped from the bamboo canopy directly onto Xue San’s head like a giant blue melon helmet.
“Mmph! Glub! Mmmpph!” Xue San’s furious curses were instantly muffled into comical, bubbling squeaks.
The blue helmet didn’t suffocate him—cool, fresh, mountain-scented air continued to filter through the jelly into his lungs—but it fully locked still his neck, jaws, and spiritual spirit veins. The magic charm slipped from his numbed fingers, floating harmlessly into the blue jelly where it was promptly digested into a wisp of odorless gray ash.
Meanwhile, the elastic spirit silk threads woven into the gel began to retract.
Counterweighted by heavy granite stones high in the branches, the silk nets snapped taut, hoisting the locked still scouts off the forest floor.
Within less than two minutes, the entire Crimson Phantom Unit—eight elite demonic shadow killers whose names brought terror to the southern provinces—hung suspended between the towering iron-bamboo stalks.
They were wrapped into eight neat, wobbling, semi-clear blue dumplings. Each man was cocooned from the neck down in thick, elastic jelly, their arms pinned to their sides, dangling upside-down four feet above the mossy trail like huge blue gourds waiting to be harvested for an autumn festival.
Silence returned to the bamboo defile. It was broken only by the muffled, pathetic whimpers of the dangling cultists and the gentle swaying of the bamboo culms in the night breeze.
Then, the shadows on the ground began to ripple.
From the pitch-black darkness beneath the yellow pines, Xiao Hei emerged like an eclipse stepping into the physical realm. The huge wolf king stood twelve feet long, his midnight fur streaming cold silver mist, his ruby eyes glowing with lethal bright glare. Behind him, ten sleek shadow wolves stepped into the clearing. It formed a silent outer edge ring around the dangling blue dumplings.
Xiao Hei lifted his black glass snout, sniffing the air with deep distaste. “Demonic blood filth. Sovereign, shall I snap their necks and bury them beneath the roots?”
“Good grief, Xiao Hei, what did I say about snapping necks?”
A cheerful, bubbling voice echoed through the trees.
From the high crown of a forty-foot iron-bamboo stalk, a two-foot-wide sapphire sphere bounced downward, hopping effortlessly from branch to branch like a child skipping down a flight of stairs.
Boing. Squelch. Boing.
Lin Xiao landed gently on the mossy trail directly beneath Deacon Xue San’s dangling blue cocoon. The little slime shook his round body, ensuring his semi-clear skin was fully free of bamboo leaves, before looking up with two curved white crescent eyes.
“Look at that, Xiao Hei! Not a single broken bone, no blood on the walking path, and all eight are packaged neatly for easy transport,” Lin Xiao praised him warmly. “This new non-Newtonian formula is wonderful. If they struggle, it hardens into steel. If they relax, it cushions their spines like a down mattress. It’s the pinnacle of ergonomic prisoner management!”
Up in his blue dumpling cocoon, Deacon Xue San managed to turn his rolling, bloodshot eyes downward through the see-through jelly.
He looked at the two-foot blue blob sitting on the moss.
“This... This is the Divine Azure Patriarch?!” Xue San’s thoughts screamed in pure, pure mental horror. “A ball of water? An edible blue dumpling? And it commands a Tier-4 Shadow Wolf King that could swallow an armored cart?!”
Lin Xiao tilted to the side. He tapped the bottom of Xue San’s cocoon with a small blue slime arm.
“Hello there, friend,” Lin Xiao’s clear mental signal rippled through Xue San’s scared mindscape. “You’ve been hanging upside-down for three minutes, which means all the blood is rushing to your head. That gives people terrible migraines. Xiao Hei, cut the silk anchor lines, but keep the gel wrapped around their arms. Let’s bring our guests to the central pavilion for some hot tea.”
Xiao Hei snorted softly, his silver-tipped claws flashing once in the dark.
SNIP.
The silk balance weights released, lowering all eight blue dumplings gently onto the mossy path without a single bump.
Lin Xiao hopped forward, leading the procession like a cheerful tour guide. “Come along, everyone. Walking on an empty stomach is bad, but hanging upside-down in the cold is even worse. We have a fresh pot of peach-leaf tea waiting on the stove.”