Volume 1, Chapter 62 – Acceleration

Everything was happening in the mind. Bai Xiang opened her eyes to find the ground still crawling with bugs.

Only, compared to before when they wanted to tear her apart, these big insects now seemed a little hesitant.

Clearly, the “call” Bai Xiang had let out had thrown them off. Their low intelligence left them wondering, “Is the other side one of us?” They drifted in a daze for a moment before coming to, and then… they all charged straight at Huang Qian.

???

Huang Qian’s head was full of question marks. Watching the sea of insects surging from every slope, he instinctively hugged a tree trunk with both arms and tried to climb.

“Commandant Huang!” Bai Xiang called out just then to warn him. “Throw away the Copper Cicada!”

Copper cicada… what copper cicada?

Huang Qian froze, then jolted in realization. He reached into his waist pouch, fished out that Demon Pool “Copper Cicada,” and hurled it hard into the distance.

Then a miracle happened: aside from a handful of beetles still itching to pounce on him, most of the swarm pivoted after the Copper Cicada and thundered off in a black wave.

Working in tandem, Huang Qian and Bai Xiang cleaned up the few remaining beetles in short order. Only then did he collapse into a sit, gulping air.

“…How did you figure that out?” After catching his breath for a bit, Huang Qian looked at Bai Xiang in open awe.

So the reason we were being hunted was that Copper Cicada?

But how did you know?

And you knew awfully fast, didn’t you?

“While we were running over, I watched how they chose targets,” Bai Xiang replied. “I found they leaned toward attacking the Commandant. Even that wave that just massed up—their main thrust was still at the Commandant.”

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There was also a reason underneath that: she had already assumed from the start that Chai Xuan was behind this.

If you assume it’s her, a question follows—on what basis does Chai Xuan control these big, mindless bugs?

If she could manage that, she wouldn’t need to rely on the Demon-Immortal Dao to open a Demon-Breeding Ground at all. The optimal move would be to quietly pocket all the opportunities for herself.

Once you spot that factor, the rest of the reasoning is simple.

Because it also ties into another question: on what basis was Chai Xuan confident she could force the Demon-Immortal Dao to withdraw?

The Demon-Immortal Dao would never pull out on their own, and Chai Xuan lacks the power to beat demonfolk head-on. So if she means to pull that off, it has to be through schemes and ambush.

Naturally, Bai Xiang immediately thought of the “Copper Cicada.”

That Copper Cicada had been in Lu Ran’s hands before. If Bai Xiang hadn’t been a variable in the plan, Lu Ran would be with the Demon-Immortal Dao people right now.

In other words, this whole sound-tide package was likely prepared for demonfolk like Lu Ran. The only reason she and Huang Qian got swept up was because Chai Xuan improvised, trying to use the chance to remove the strongest in the party—Huang Qian—and the variable, Bai Xiang.

“Adjutant Cao said you’re gifted at cracking Demon Pools?” Huang Qian marveled. “I’d say he was being too conservative!”

“Commandant, are you set?” Bai Xiang sidestepped the topic.

“Set!” Huang Qian sprang to his feet. “Let’s go! Find them!”

They weren’t far from where the rest of the team had camped. After another sprint, the two of them saw the main force fighting like mad under the insect onslaught.

The Copper Cicada had lured off the bulk of the swarm, true, but there were just too many bugs. Even one-tenth staying behind was a serious problem.

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A single beetle wasn’t hard—for someone at Huang Qian’s level. The unit’s elites were only at seventh segment of Nurture the Spirit and above, not even swordsmen, and even swordsmen couldn’t stand up to a “Shenming” sound tide.

By the time the two arrived, the team already seemed to have taken severe losses. They had fallen back to a slope; a sizable portion—nearly half—were nowhere to be seen, and the rest were hanging on under Cao Chuan’s lead.

Cao Chuan had only just reached the Condensing the Aspect (realm) and wasn’t yet adept at handling the “Chenyuan” Demon Pool. One moment he was shaping waterflow into shields to save people; the next he was casting it into ropes and long whips to sweep the field. Even so, he grabbed every chance to gasp for air and recover; he was burning through his reserves hard.

Light firearms like assault rifles did limited damage to the beetles. If you didn’t hit the head, you couldn’t kill them, while a casual sweep of their pincer limbs could split a person open.

Stacked against each other, their defense was in dire straits.

“Hah!” Without another word, Huang Qian plunged into the fray. The “Eight-Plated Nightmare Horse” manifested again, and with another “Quake the Earth,” he shook most of the beetles besieging the slope back down, massively easing the pressure on the defenders.

Bai Xiang slipped through the swarm like a wraith. Drawing on her familiarity with the Shenming Sword, she batted aside those spike-like pincers; her second thrust would invariably leave a bug corpse behind.

If she ran into a concentrated tide, she either ducked behind a giant tree to let it pass or lifted her sword and performed “Shenming,” letting the sound tide flow along her body instead of slamming into her—greatly reducing the damage—then resumed the cleanup once she steadied.

Their reinforcement sent morale surging. Cao Chuan even led people down the slope, forced a link-up with Bai Xiang, and together they carved efficient slaughter through the sea of bugs.

After more than ten minutes of hard fighting, the battle was done.

Those still alive collapsed to the ground, not caring that it was mud and bug corpses, mouths open and panting.

Huang Qian felt comparatively fine. Once the others got a little of their breath back, he stepped up to ask Cao Chuan, “Where are Liang Wenbo and his people?”

Only his own soldiers were here. Liang Wenbo and that group of students had vanished without a trace.

He certainly wouldn’t think they’d all died. Impossible—never mind that Liang Wenbo was at least a match for himself; even without Liang Wenbo, based on how he knew his own men, they would have prioritized shielding the youngsters behind them.

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Unless every one of his soldiers had died, the student group couldn’t have taken heavy losses.

“We got separated…” Cao Chuan was still panting. “At the start there were even more bugs. Liang Wenbo and I disagreed—he wanted to lead a breakout, I wanted to hold here… and this is the result you’re seeing.”

Hard to say who was right or wrong, because there really had been a terrifying number of bugs. Hunkering down was risky; you couldn’t say Liang Wenbo’s choice was wrong.

But later, for some reason, the sea of bugs ebbed for the most part and the pressure on the defenders dropped sharply, letting them last until Huang Qian arrived—while Liang Wenbo and the others got swept who knows where.

To Huang Qian, though, Cao Chuan was clearly in the right. The fact so many of his own men survived was thanks to Cao Chuan holding the line. He thanked Cao Chuan solemnly, then pulled Bai Xiang in to discuss where to go looking for Liang Wenbo’s group next.

It looked like a casual gesture, but to Cao Chuan it was anything but.

Huang Qian… was he acknowledging Bai Xiang’s place in the team?

Cao Chuan had been at the camp longer than Bai Xiang and knew Huang Qian better than she did. He knew the man only looked rough—inside, he was careful.

Being good in a fight alone wouldn’t earn this level of respect. For Bai Xiang to be treated like this, she’d done something again.

“They’ll be trying to get back to the cave,” Bai Xiang analyzed.

She’d spent plenty too, but she cultivated multiple methods in parallel and had been nursing her breath even while fighting, so she could still go on.

“They don’t know the cave’s blocked. Exiting the Illusory Realm would be the optimal choice—they’ll definitely go for it.”

“The cave’s blocked?” This was the first Cao Chuan had heard of it; even his stern face changed a shade.

Huang Qian’s face went fully dark.

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He’d kept it quiet to avoid stirring panic—mainly to settle the students. His soldiers weren’t that fragile.

Who could’ve thought that one misstep would lead to disaster—the way Liang Wenbo would be thinking was easy to guess: the swarm’s too big; if worst comes to worst, we’ll block the cave mouth and clear them slowly. That beats fighting enemies on all sides.

Except the swarm has one more trick—a big loudspeaker!

It was that strong out in the forest; how much worse in a cramped cave?

That’s suicide!

“Bai Xiang, can you still fight?” He looked at her, resolve in his eyes.

No need to ask—he was about to race to the rescue.

“No problem,” Bai Xiang nodded.

Saving people was the right call, and besides, she had other plans.

If Chai Xuan had triggered all this, she certainly wouldn’t have expected Huang Qian and me to survive.

Liang Wenbo facing “Shenming” in a cave was likely in dire straits too. Which meant, in Chai Xuan’s plan, she meant to wipe out the remaining fighting strength of Benling and the Chilong Army at the same time.

So would she be about to show her true colors?

Her real plan—the target she’s after—should be about to surface.