Volume 3, Chapter 116 – The Attack

On the Xizhou Wasteland, the setting sun was as red as blood.

Commander of the Western Army Zheng Xuliang climbed up to the gate tower and gazed westward. As expected, he once again caught sight of those ominous columns of smoke.

That spectacle was man-made, lit by the “Western Wu ancient clans” who survived and moved about deep within the desert.

Thinking back on the battles with those witch clans, Zheng Xuliang could not help remembering Lu Niezhi, who had once commanded the Western Army.

Back then, when Lu Niezhi brought him along to suppress Jing River, it had been under an imperial mobilization order. The armies of the surrounding three states had all gathered there to be under his command. Now that the two southern uprisings had more or less come to an end, he had, of course, led his forces back west to continue this duty of manning the frontier.

When Lord Lu was still here, those primitives did not dare come out and act up whenever they pleased…

Zheng Xuliang slanted a look at those few columns of smoke. No matter how he looked at them, they were an eyesore.

“Someone.” He gave a brief order to the side, then fixed his gaze on the hurrying official. “Any other movements from those savages lately?”

“Reporting to my lord, none for the moment.” The official bowed with lowered eyes. “According to the intelligence scouted by the West-Flying scouts, they have still been building altars deep in the desert. Every time they are destroyed, they rebuild them.”

“Mm…” Zheng Xuliang narrowed his eyes, stroking his chin as he drew a deep breath.

He had a hulking build, like the plump, martial generals in historical paintings, and he had deliberately grown out a beard at his chin. Sitting there now, he looked like a small mountain. Many of the military officers and attendants glanced at him only to quickly look away again, feeling as if that sharp aura pricked at their eyes.

This matter really was somewhat strange.

Zheng Xuliang brooded in silence.

Just as the official had reported, the Western Wu ancient clans had been building altars deep in the desert lately. They transported water and clay from the oases and erected crude earthen altars and a huge statue of a nine-headed monstrous bird at several locations.

So far, this behavior did not seem to have much value. On the one hand, the altars sat for a few days without any movement, only to be destroyed by the West-Flying scouts who found them. On the other hand, even if the scouts failed to discover them in time, the scouting reports mentioned that natural disasters such as sandstorms and heavenly thunder would descend and smash the altars apart.

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Even so, Zheng Xuliang could not shake the feeling that those witch clans were plotting something in secret. He had never been able to set this aside in his heart, and whenever the sun went down, he would climb the city tower to check in person.

“My lord, you only just returned from the central region a few days ago. Did you hear the rumors there?” Seeing that he had a free moment, the adjutant beside him took the opportunity to speak up.

Zheng Xuliang’s style of command was rough and unadorned. He was not big on formalities and protocol, so when there was no fighting, his subordinates were quite casual with him.

“I heard them.” Zheng Xuliang rumbled. “It is nothing but that business of the Sea of Blood erupting again.”

The Sea of Blood in the northern frontier had erupted once more, and it was said to be several times more severe than before. News like that could not be suppressed at all. Even if there were no special reports in the national media, the rumors bouncing around officialdom alone filled the sky.

With this topic raised, many of the martial officers found their interest piqued, joined in, and began discussing together. Their words rarely carried true worry. More often, they were tinged with schadenfreude toward the circuits in the central region.

Life in Xizhou was indeed much harder.

One could see it from the geography alone. This city squatting in the yellow sands was called a circuit city, but it had long since been run like a fortress. While the Western Army hid behind fortified walls and sparred with the witch clans, the central region enjoyed peace and plenty. These officers did not quite resent the people of the interior or feel their own sacrifices had been in vain, yet at times like this, it was inevitable that they would think, “All the hardship you lot are tasting now, Grandpa here has been chewing on it for years.”

“The central region is still arguing about whether to switch to fortress management. What is there to argue about? Haven’t we been doing it for years already?”

“That is exactly it. Those civil officials do not understand the situation at all and really think the northern frontier is going to fall.”

Zheng Xuliang had no interest in joining this conversation. He sat sprawled in his chair, listening as he drank his tea. Suddenly, something seemed to prick at his senses. He lifted his head to look, and when his gaze fell on the distance, his expression changed sharply.

At first glance, the bloody sunset landscape had not changed. The same few columns of smoke still curled up into the sky.

But if one looked carefully, one would notice that the smoke had gathered into the faint outline of a gigantic nine-headed monstrous bird, writhing in the air with the setting sun as its backdrop.

“Enough chatter.” Zheng Xuliang shot to his feet. “Pick out a few men at once, you will ride with me to investigate.”

…

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At the same time, on the Qizhou Wasteland, the military camp stationed by the Jing River was in utter ruins.

Broken limbs and bodies lay everywhere. Blood had soaked the yellow earth into a dark, ugly shade. Under the churning black smoke of burning fires, shattered flags hung in tatters. In one corner of the camp, a slaughter not yet finished was still underway.

“Lord Lu, go first!”

Amid deafening explosions, a young soldier turned back with a face blackened by grime and roared with all his strength, “What are you lot still standing there for? Protect my lord and get him out of here, now!”

“Go? And how exactly are we supposed to go?”

With that question, a young man in a cyan robe suddenly appeared above the defensive line. He held an open folding fan in his hand, his features were delicate and androgynous, and light cyan eye shadow was painted at the corners of his eyes.

“Who exactly are you people?”

Lu Niezhi was already badly wounded. Both his arms had been broken, and he was barely being supported on a stretcher bed. When he saw this, he forced himself to look up and glare at the young man. “After the Southern King, the forces of the Demon-Immortal Dao should have been uprooted to the last branch. How could you possibly still gather so much power?”

“This is why I said Lord Lu is ill-informed, and why Lord Lu did not believe me before.” The scholar-like demon youth gave a soft laugh. “I am not in a position to explain it to you in detail. Opportunities in history never send a notice ahead of time to the ones they fall upon.”

“I will ask you only one thing. Lord Lu, will you submit?”

“Submit to your damn mother.” Lu Niezhi spat a mouthful of bloody saliva at him.

“A pack of dogs who have followed the demon path so far you have forgotten where your own roots lie. I feel filthy just looking at you.”

“Very good. Very good.” The scholar youth’s face turned iron-blue. He snapped his fan shut and clenched it tightly. “It seems Lord Lu wishes to perish together with the former dynasty. In that case, there is nothing more this humble one can say.”

His body blurred and split into a dozen afterimages, each one diving into the defensive line of the soldiers and coordinating with the tide of blood-sha-infected demon beasts to launch a charge that caused massive casualties at once.

Lu Niezhi watched with a dark expression, then slowly lifted his gaze. His eyes fixed on the towering pillar of blood mist in the distance, where his pupils showed doubt and anxiety.

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This attack was far too strange. Not only had it struck without warning, precisely at the point of a rotation of forces, its scale and momentum were utterly unprecedented.

Most of all, the depths of the blood abyss had responded in unison, spewing out a massive tide of blood-sha demon beasts. Layer upon layer of abnormalities stacked together, and he could not help making deeper connections.

At that very moment, at the base of that pillar of the blood abyss, several black-robed figures stood at the edge of the crater, looking down.

“A millennial plan has finally come to this moment.” One black-robed figure stared at the blood-colored mist and the ocean of demon beasts spreading through the abyss and spoke lightly to the others. “We have done our duty. Once we have taken Qizhou and Maozhou, we can go before His Highness to claim our reward.”

The others reacted in different ways. Some nodded slightly along with him. Others remained calm and indifferent.

“Protector Zhao, what is it?” The black-robed speaker looked at the gaunt young man at the head of the group. “The plan was your idea. Why do you not look pleased now?”

“What news from the south?” Zhao Dongyan turned his face slightly to stare at the man. “Any word back from Ji Chang?”

“Ji Chang?”

“His grasp of the arts may be lacking, but all he has to do is handle a few dull demon kingdoms. There should be no accident there.”

The black-robed figures muttered among themselves in low voices. None of them seemed to take the southern situation very seriously.

“Protector Zhao worries too much.” One of the black robes said, “Even if he is concerned about the threat of ‘Black Heaven,’ with the protective treasure bestowed by His Highness, Ji Chang should have no difficulty holding that place.”

“I am not worried about whether he survives.” Zhao Dongyan shook his head. “I am worried about that Bai Zhixing.”

“Bai Zhixing? You mean that Bai Xiang?” One black robe froze.

“Is there really a need to be so concerned?” The others did not quite understand. “Even if she can defeat Ji Chang, she does not have time to rush back.”

“I studied the path of her rise. She climbed far too fast, and it is far too strange.” Zhao Dongyan shook his head, his face extremely grave.

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“This trend is different from Chu Weiping’s route. She is not like the first Qingping Sword Lord, who had eighty years of accumulated cultivation behind him. Where did her insights for creating a new path come from?”

The leading black robe frowned deeply. “What exactly is Protector Zhao trying to say?”

“I suspect Bai Zhixing is not of Yu.” Zhao Dongyan nodded. “She may not even be of the human race.”

At that, the faces of the black-robed figures all changed at once.

Not human?

That… there really might be something to that.

“The Void Calamity is approaching. If not for that, we would not need to strive so hard to return to the main world.” Zhao Dongyan’s words continued. “And we are not the only ones eager to come back. There are some filthy things as well, things so troublesome that even His Highness finds them difficult.”

“I suspect she is one of ‘those things,’ possessing and taking over a body.”

At this, every black-robed figure wore a heavy expression.

They knew all too well how troublesome those “filthy things” Zhao Dongyan described could be.

“Speed things up.” Zhao Dongyan let out a faint sigh.

“We cannot control the greater tides.”

“We can only try to make things as perfect as possible in the places we can still touch.”