Volume 3, Chapter 99 – Invasion

Once the call ended, in Liangzhou, Dongchuan Circuit, on the upper floors of Red Dust Sword Dao’s “sect dojo” — the Hongying Tower — a woman in modern business wear sat in her office, staring blankly at the phone in her hand.

It really had been so, so long since she had heard anyone call her “Xiaochan.”

She thought back to the years when she had followed her heart, poured everything she had into that lush, blooming love, only for it to end in scattered guests and severed hair, fulfilling her father’s grim prophecy.

Did she regret it?

If she had faced that question a few decades earlier, Chen Yuchan’s answer would definitely have been yes.

She regretted falling in love with that indecisive man Bai Shengju. Regretted abandoning so many precious opportunities just to be with him. Regretted baring herself completely and giving him everything, only for him to lack even the courage to follow at her side. Even at the very end, he had believed that being together would only hold her back.

That kind of regret, and every similar emotion, had churned through her for decades. Now, facing the question again, Chen Yuchan could finally be calm enough to analyze it.

I had my own problems back then too…

At his core, he was a strong-willed man, but she had pushed herself to be even stronger. She had simply assumed that giving meant she must get a return, never considering how great a pressure that was on someone who had not yet broken through his own inner barriers.

So I don’t regret it.

Thinking that, Chen Yuchan’s eyes gradually grew firm.

Tempering the heart in the red dust was the fate of every cultivator of Red Dust Sword. She had traded ten years of youth for a blazing, unforgettable memory and a surge in cultivation after breaking through her heart knot. Even if the ending had not been what she’d hoped… who said there was no chance to mend it?

That fool. I even told Han Yuanfeng to stay there and not come back, and he still couldn’t grasp my intent. Only now does he call me.

It was very much like him.

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“Have you heard enough?”

She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a cold gleam had settled over them.

She lifted her head toward the door to the next room, just in time to see it swing open with a crash and a bespectacled young woman in business clothes tumble out.

“I’m so sorry!” the girl yelped, scrambling to her feet and bowing repeatedly. “I… I didn’t think… I was only bringing medicine for the Dao Lord… please punish me!”

Her answer was a flash of pink sword-light.

The instant the sword-light exploded, the girl’s face changed. Something writhed and struggled beneath her skin, twisting her features into something demonic. But before her true form could emerge, the pink radiance swallowed her completely.

Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle—

“Ah! Ahhh…!!”

After a burst of detonations like a thousand blades tearing flesh, there was no trace of the girl left in the office.

Having wiped out the spy the demon race had planted, Chen Yuchan felt no satisfaction at all.

Her expression stayed cold as she picked up the landline and pressed a few buttons, leaving a message for the other end. “Connect me to the State Chancery.”

“Tell them I want to discuss bypassing Yujing and directly initiating ‘fortification’ of the four Circuit Cities.”

At the same time, similar topics were echoing through many official residences across the Nine Provinces.

“Why is the Feathering Sect showing itself at a time like this?”

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“No idea. Two large counties in Fanglüe Circuit have already suffered at their hands. I hear the Demon-Suppression Office’s people nearly threw up when they got there… the village and town were full of Feathering corpses, all of them clinging to the walls like insects.”

“The eastern sea isn’t quiet either. The demons in the water have been riding the storms ashore again and again. It has to be at least two or three demon kingdoms working together to make waves that big.”

“Didn’t the south just have a demon disaster not long ago?”

“The world is about to fall into chaos, the world is about to fall into chaos!”

In Liangzhou, Xuzhou, Zezhou, Luezhuo… in State Chancery compounds all across the land, countless officials gathered to discuss these matters. All of them felt that something about the situation was far from normal.

Some officials took the chance to bring up a bit of fresh gossip they had heard: the rate of supply consumption on the northern frontier had slowed again, but the court had issued urgent gold-plate edicts ordering every region to raise a unit to rush north as reinforcements.

That was no good sign. Supplies going slowly meant there were no people left to use them. The officials murmured uneasily, suspecting something serious was about to happen in the north.

It had been like this last time too, and that had led directly to Blood Sea’s eruption and the loss of all Panyan Circuit to the demon race, leaving nothing but an unreclaimed ruin to this day.

And now?

Was another Blood Sea about to burst forth?

Especially with word that Huangzhou and Daizhou, the two provinces that served as the north’s gateway, had already gone under military control, and that the eight circuits of those two provinces had begun “fortification” — scorched earth, drawing all people and supplies within the high walls, while building new walls and massive gates. Many State Chancery supervisors hesitated, unsure whether they should, at this moment, ask Yujing what it intended.

They all knew the court had originally divided the Nine Provinces and Thirty-Six Circuits according to the scale of thirty-six fortress cities.

It was clearly to guard against a certain kind of disaster. Those familiar with the details could not help pondering this in their hearts, as forces everywhere churned under the surface.

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By comparison, the public mood in Maozhou was actually more relaxed.

The people here had just gone through a demon disaster. Many had worked alongside the army, mercenaries, and sect disciples. As firsthand witnesses to war, they were actually full of confidence in rebuilding a new home in Maozhou.

But there were negative feelings too.

To put it harshly, it was precisely because they had experienced the demon disaster, and the wave of Demon Pool anomalies that came with it, that Maozhou’s population now looked so “healthy” in terms of age and structure.

A considerable number of the “weak” had already perished — the infirm elderly, women and children with poor constitutions, children and even adults with overly fragile minds. Many of them had been washed away in the earlier cataclysm.

But Bai Xiang had acted “too early,” and the process had been cut short. A significant number of elderly and weak women and children were still alive.

Most of them had been traumatized by the disaster or had lost close kin. They were far more anxious about the coming unrest, and far less resilient in the face of new calamity.

“So we have to keep things stable.”

Finding Lian Feng and a squad of patrolling disciples, Xu Shu raised a forefinger and reminded him, “Don’t be fooled by how calm things look on the surface. If it really blows up, the consequences could be unimaginable.”

“I get it.” Lian Feng held his sword in his arms, face cold. “You’re afraid the refugees will ‘mutiny.’ Just do what the Inspectorate does and put them down.”

“You—” Xu Shu glared at him. “The dojo took these people in to teach them how to live, and plenty of our new disciples’ families are from among them.”

“Even though those relatives have been pulled out and resettled, they still went through it. How are we supposed to explain treating the refugees like that to our disciples?”

“Senior brother, you just don’t understand.”

Lian Feng, if anything, was more self-assured.

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“In extraordinary times, you use extraordinary means.”

“I grew up fighting my way through refugee camps. There are some situations you simply can’t control without coming down hard.”

Xu Shu could do nothing with him and had to drop it, pushing him into Chen Shi and Chen Jing’s squad instead.

Patrol duty was doubled.

Every disciple was being dragged out to work, to make sure there were no lapses in vigilance inside the circuit during this period.

And just as they were splitting up tasks and scattering, a few figures suddenly flew in over the Great-Gate ramparts facing the wilderness on Zhen’nan Circuit’s walls.

“Is everything in place?”

“They infiltrated ahead of time.”

“And Zhang Xianzhi’s end?”

“Of course. We said this time there would be no mistakes.”

“Then we move.”

The leader drew his weapon with a ringing clang.

Figures streaked down one after another, dissolving into wisps of smoke and slipping into the dark.