Volume 1, Chapter 212 – The Cause

Not long after Shi Lan finished practicing her fist art, Su Lanyue arrived with breakfast.

While Shi Lan was eating, Su Lanyue cautiously asked where she had gone over these nearly two years.

Shi Lan concealed a few details and told Su Lanyue about joining the Demon-Suppressing Army.

After hearing that, Su Lanyue looked at the black Demon-Suppressing Token Shi Lan took out and remained speechless for a long while. Shi Tianlu’s Demon-Suppressing Token was black as well, so she naturally understood what that signified.

Shi Lan was already a thousand-man commander in the Demon-Suppressing Army, and her strength was at least at the Earth Fiend Realm. Such a drastic change was hard for Su Lanyue to take in.

In the middle of their conversation, Shi Lan casually asked in puzzlement, “Why haven’t I seen Shi Feng?”

Come to think of it, it had already been more than a year since they parted in Twin Moon City.

Su Lanyue looked puzzled when she heard that. “Shi Feng?”

Shi Lan froze. Given Shi Feng’s strength, there was no way Su Lanyue, as the mistress of the household, would not know of him.

And judging by Su Lanyue’s reaction, Shi Feng clearly had never come here at all.

After thinking for a moment, Shi Lan shook her head and did not dwell on it any further.

After breakfast, Shi Lan had just put away her Demon-Suppressing Token and poured two cups of clear tea when she felt a wave of heat. It was Bai Weiyang’s command token summoning her.

Rumble…

The heat had only just faded when the sound of hoofbeats followed close behind, like muffled thunder, making the tea on the table tremble lightly.

“This is…”

Su Lanyue’s expression changed slightly. Over the past two years, she had heard this sort of hoofbeat several times, each time when Shi Tianlu occasionally returned on a flood-dragon horse.

But those sparse hoofbeats had been far less imposing than the commotion sounding now.

“They should be here for me.”

Shi Lan picked up her teacup and drained it in one gulp, sent out a strand of true qi to pull the door shut, took out her battle armor from the Qiankun Bracelet, and loosened her robes to change.

…

Outside the main courtyard, several hundred cavalrymen stood in a dense black mass. All of them were clad in iron armor with their faces covered. Not a sound could be heard, yet an aura of slaughter rushed at the face.

Seeing this scene, the two men at the street corner both felt their legs go weak.

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“Could it be that Shi Tianlu is back?” the middle-aged man asked in a low voice.

“Most likely.”

The young man’s expression darkened. “Lucky for that brat. Let’s go.”

“Didn’t you just say that this time the Shi family was clearly in the wrong, and that even if Shi Tianlu were here in person—”

The middle-aged man grew anxious. A deal right in front of his eyes—how could it fall through just like that?

“In the wrong? Who knows whether Shi Tianlu cares about reason?” the young man cut him off impatiently.

His original plan had been to take advantage of the Shi family being unfamiliar with the place. Added to that, Shi Tianlu was away and a woman was running the household, so if trouble came knocking, they would surely want to smooth things over and avoid further conflict.

As long as he did not go too far, he could definitely extort a little money.

But now that Shi Tianlu had returned, his original plan had naturally come to nothing.

If Shi Tianlu had a violent temper and used the Demon-Suppressing Army’s power to investigate his background, the consequences would be more than he could bear.

“Hey! Look, it seems these people are here to pick someone up.”

The middle-aged man grabbed the young man, who was about to leave, and pointed toward the courtyard gate.

The young man glanced back and froze slightly.

A tall woman clad in black armor walked out of the courtyard and swung herself cleanly onto the flood-dragon horse at the front.

Neigh!

With a long cry from the flood-dragon horses, the several hundred cavalrymen surged eastward like a torrent.

“Snap out of it. They’re already long gone.”

The middle-aged man tugged at the young man, who was still staring blankly.

“I… feel like I’ve seen that woman somewhere before.”

The young man came back to himself and slowly frowned, concentrating hard. With his memory, there was no way he had mistaken it.

Suddenly, a flash of insight lit up in his mind, and realization spread across his face.

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“I remember now…”

“I’ve seen a portrait of that woman before!”

“So what if you have?”

Seeing the growing excitement on the young man’s face, the middle-aged man did not understand.

“I once got word by chance that a major figure in the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect was looking for a woman, and the reward was extremely generous.”

“You mean…”

“That woman’s appearance is at least ninety percent similar to the portrait that major figure provided. It’s almost certainly her. Follow them and take a look. I’ll send this news to the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect first.”

With that, the young man turned and left at once, moving with the wind at his feet.

…

Shi Lan rode at the head of several hundred Demon-Suppressing Army soldiers and made her way back to the drill ground without a single obstruction.

Along the way, Shi Lan had already asked each of them their names. Most of them had once served under her, and many were disciples of Sky Thunder Hall.

Wang Ning and the others were among them as well. After nearly a year apart, Wang Ning had already stepped into the Innate Realm and, relying on the battle merits he had accumulated before, had become a Centurion.

Aside from her former subordinates, there were also quite a few new faces, a little over a hundred of them. Those hundred or so seemed rather concerned about the fact that their commanding officer was a woman.

After returning to the drill ground, Shi Lan first went to see Bai Weiyang.

Bai Weiyang did not say much. She only told Shi Lan to rest up well for the night. They would set out in the next day or two and prepare to launch an attack against the demon race.

With the demon race soon to be at the city’s gates, the Demon-Suppressing Army naturally would not waste time sitting around and waiting for them to attack.

The initial strategy set by the upper ranks of the Demon-Suppressing Army was to wear down part of the demon race’s strength first, as much as possible.

Batch after batch of Demon-Suppressing Army troops began returning to the drill ground. To Shi Lan’s surprise, many of the people leading them were very young, no more than twenty-five or twenty-six at most, all of them spirited and brimming with powerful confidence.

The ranks of these leaders were almost all above that of thousand-man commander.

Moreover, from these people, Shi Lan sensed a very unusual air, something strangely out of place in these troubled times.

At that moment, Shi Lan was the only woman on the entire drill ground, so naturally she drew many probing looks.

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Shi Lan paid those glances no mind. Treating them as if she had seen nothing, she found a corner and began asking Wang Ning about some of the specific events that had taken place during this period.

The first thing she asked about was where the women’s camp had gone.

That question left Shi Lan considerably surprised.

The women’s camp of the Demon-Suppressing Army had originally been stationed in Xianwu City.

Because disciples of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect often joined forces with the Demon-Suppressing Army to hunt demon beasts, it was only natural that, over time, some of them would become captivated by the bearing of the women’s camp.

After shedding blood together again and again, it was only natural that sparks would fly.

On this point, the upper echelons of both the Demon-Suppressing Army and the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect had long turned a blind eye. So long as things did not get out of hand, they would not forcibly intervene.

Then one day, during a joint operation between the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect and the Demon-Suppressing Army to hunt demon beasts, a true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect took a fancy to one of the women’s camp thousand-man commanders.

Wang Ning was not very clear on the exact details either.

But because that true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect pursued the woman thousand-man commander, he came into conflict with another thousand-man commander.

In the end, that thousand-man commander was weaker and was defeated.

This should have been no more than a small incident, but after winning the match, the true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect became carried away with pride and spoke arrogantly.

In the end, he retained a trace of reason and did not say anything directly about the Demon-Suppressing Army. He only said one thing: “The people of the Central Heaven Domain are nothing more than this.”

Those words had not insulted the Demon-Suppressing Army directly, but they still kicked a hornet’s nest.

Very soon, another thousand-man commander from the Demon-Suppressing Army struck out in anger. This clash carried far more gunpowder than the last. Real fire had been stirred, and before long, that true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect had been beaten severely injured.

That outcome caused some dissatisfaction among the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect. They all said it had merely been a martial exchange, and that the Demon-Suppressing Army had been far too heavy-handed.

The Demon-Suppressing Army handed that thousand-man commander a light punishment, let the matter pass, and intended to smooth things over.

At that point, the matter should have ended there. Yet the people of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect were somewhat dissatisfied with the result, and more friction arose during their cooperation, causing resentment to deepen.

As the situation developed, a true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect named Ning Beichen became the fuse.

At twenty-five years old, Ning Beichen was at the perfection of the Earth Fiend Realm and could almost look down on all his peers.

After yet another bout of friction, proud and arrogant as he was, he stopped listening to the advice of his elders and, in the name of exchanging martial arts, challenged every officer in the Demon-Suppressing Army under the age of thirty.

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After defeating more than ten thousand-man commanders in succession, Ning Beichen grew even more rampant, and the things he said gradually became more and more excessive.

Those inflammatory words provoked one of the Demon-Suppressing Army’s ten-thousand-man commanders.

This ten-thousand-man commander was named Xia Yixiu. Though only around thirty years old, he had already opened the profound gate of life and death and entered the Heavenly Astral Realm.

Xia Yixiu needed only a single move to beat Ning Beichen to the brink of death.

After crippling Ning Beichen, Xia Yixiu marched straight to the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect and declared that among its true disciples, so long as anyone could withstand three of his moves, he would withdraw of his own accord.

After saying that, Xia Yixiu challenged nineteen true disciples in succession. Among them were even Heavenly Astral Realm experts, and he nearly crushed the younger generation of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect until they could not lift their heads.

When the situation was becoming increasingly difficult to control, an obscure true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect stepped forward. With only middle-stage Earth Fiend Realm cultivation, he endured three of Xia Yixiu’s moves, and only then did the affair come to an end.

The trouble stirred up this time undoubtedly created a certain rift between the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect and the Demon-Suppressing Army.

However, the upper ranks on both sides did not take this small matter too seriously. After disciplining both parties equally, they suppressed the matter.

To reduce further trouble, the Demon-Suppressing Army simply transferred the women’s camp out of Xianwu City so they would no longer have too much contact with the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect. At the same time, they gradually reduced the frequency of cooperating with the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect in hunting demon beasts.

In all of this, the only thing that surprised Shi Lan was the true disciple of the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect who had appeared halfway through, Shi Feng.

It was not that Shi Lan had not considered the possibility of another person with the same name, but the odds were truly not high.

Back then, Shi Feng had come aboard the Soaring Cloud Treasure Ship. It was nothing strange that chance had led him into the Sacred Martial Immortal Sect, and that also neatly explained why he had not returned to the Shi Residence.

Shi Lan did not feel much about Shi Feng’s choice. People climbed upward; water flowed downward. A fine bird chose the tree it perched in. That was only human nature.

At most, she felt a little wistful.

The women’s camp was now stationed on a plain more than five thousand miles from Xianwu City, and Wu Lingkong should be there as well.

After sorting out the general outline of events, Shi Lan had everyone go back and rest, while she prepared to return to her tent and cultivate.

She had barely taken two steps when another detachment of the Demon-Suppressing Army entered through the drill ground gate. At the front was a white-haired middle-aged man around fifty years old.

It was none other than her father, Shi Tianlu.