Immortal Burial Town had once been home to over ten thousand residents, its thousands of houses laid out on an impressive scale. Yet its perilous proximity to the Mist Domain of Departed Spirits had brought frequent hauntings and eerie incursions, gradually reducing it to a deserted ghost market.
Most of the dwellings were decrepit. Doors hung broken, roof tiles lay missing, and earthen walls would collapse at a shove.
Only during the coffin retrieval season would the various Jiuli tribes repair a few dozen houses at the entrance of town to serve as rest stops and supply depots.
Yet none dared set foot deeper inside.
A pervasive rumor claimed this was a cursed settlement—that its inhabitants had never moved away at all, but had instead all turned into departed spirits who emerged en masse whenever the moon was full.
...
Noon arrived under a blazing sun.
Li Ling, the Nether Lamp Wayfinder, Li Songlin, the first chief of the Cangling, and Cang Li, the clan leader's direct grandson, led the coffin-bearing procession up the sloping path of Dragon-Slaying Pass, steadily making their way toward Immortal Burial Town several li off.
Cang Li was eighteen or nineteen years old, handsome and dashing. Astride a Zouwu beast that resembled a colossal tiger, he gripped a zhang-long silver spear, gazing at the quiet, peaceful town in the distance.
"Why is it so quiet? Where are our people? Fourth Uncle, something isn't right," he said. His sharp senses caught the anomaly at once.
Standing on the back of a black bull, Li Songlin raised a hand, signaling everyone to halt.
After a brief consultation, Cang Li shot forward on the Zouwu beast like an arrow, riding out to scout Immortal Burial Town.
...
"Too damn sharp! It's all your fault—why the hell did you kill them all instead of leaving a few to keep up appearances?"
Shi Jiuzhai donned his Buddha-head mask, furiously berating his three disciples behind him. Then, like a clap of thunder, he roared, "Strike!"
Like a cannonball, he had already launched himself out of Immortal Burial Town, hurtling toward the approaching Cang Li.
The next instant, bloodcurdling battle cries tore through the town.
Soldiers of the Earth Wolf King's Army, all clad in Buddhist robes and brandishing various weapons, poured out from the streets and alleys. Many skilled fighters among them had opened their Dharma power spring orifices; moving at blinding speed, they crashed into the procession of coffin bearers, hacking and slashing in all directions.
The esteemed guest in the Buddha-head mask stood gracefully atop the town entrance archway, playing a two-foot-long bone flute.
The flute's melody was mournful and desolate, like weeping, like pleading, like deep-seated yearning and grief.
Amplified by Dharma power, the sound waves rolled across a radius of over a dozen li.
Harsh, screeching cries like night owls erupted across the mountains as man-eating dusk bats, each two to three meters across, surged out from the forests.
Completely hairless and pitch-black, they bore gruesome humanoid heads.
Their leathery wings spread wide, and their talons gleamed like dagger tips.
With slaughter raging into bloody chaos, Li Weiyi and Gao Huan seized the opening to bolt from Immortal Burial Town, fleeing through the reeds along the banks of the Sui River.
They ought to have headed back to the Blood Sea and the Bronze Ship, but that lay straight across the two sides' battlefield. They could only wait until the slaughter died down before circling back.
"I'm never picking up random clothes to wear again. That almost got us killed," Gao Huan said, lingering fear in his voice.
At the mention of their clothes, the two were just about to strip off their Buddhist robes when the thunder of galloping hooves rose behind them, startling flocks of waterbirds into flight toward the far bank of the Sui River.
A booming shout rolled in from the distance behind them: "Cut them off! Don't let them escape to bring reinforcements!"
Li Weiyi glanced back in a hurry.
Two mutated beings nearly three meters tall, clad in brown Buddhist robes, were chasing down five Cangling riders on sturdy horses. They were only dozens of paces behind Li Weiyi and Gao Huan, closing the distance in the blink of an eye.
Evidently, the pursuers had mistaken them for their own allies again.
Li Weiyi utterly reviled the Earth Wolf King's Army for their cruelty, yet he had never thought of getting involved in this massacre. He lacked the strength to meddle; an existence like Shi Jiuzhai could kill him without lifting a finger.
Reason told him not to care.
The only sensible thing was to flee alongside Gao Huan at top speed.
Astride their mounts, Zhao Zhizhuo and the four other Cangling riders saw the two figures in Buddhist robes ahead, and their hearts plunged into despair.
Their first chief had fought through wounds to tear open this gap so they could ride to the nearest of the Nine Li, the Shouli Tribe, to beg for aid. Borne upon their shoulders were the lives of five thousand Cangling clansmen.
To their shock, the two robed figures ahead stopped, glanced at them, and then sprinted away even faster.
A glimmer of hope reignited in Zhao Zhizhuo's eyes.
Whoosh!
The air tore behind them.
An arrow whipped past, cutting down one of the five Cangling riders.
It came from the mutated creature with long ape arms. Running at full tilt, he wielded a two-hundred-jin spine bow, loosing two-meter-long arrows that claimed a life with every shot, felling three men in rapid succession.
The other mutant was built like a pair of chopsticks.
His legs were more than twice the length of his torso, covered in thick bristles and ending in hooves. He moved even faster than the horse beneath Zhao Zhizhuo, which had drunk the blood of a Zouwu beast.
Catching up to the fourth Cangling rider, the mutant leaped onto the horse, clamped his jaws around the man's throat, and drained his blood in wild, cackling frenzy.
In moments, only Zhao Zhizhuo was left alive among the five breakout riders.
The long-legged mutant hurled away the blood-soaked rider and bounded after Zhao Zhizhuo, his malevolent gaze darting toward Li Weiyi and Gao Huan farther ahead. His face darkened as he barked coldly, "Deserters? What bold insolence! Even if you flee to the ends of the earth, we'll drag you back and make you beg for death!"
Li Weiyi had had no intention of meddling in this slaughter, but those words were the final straw. The scales within his heart tipped, and the impulse coiled in his mind overrode all caution.
...
Zhao Zhizhuo had opened two spring orifices and was formidable in his own right, but he was advanced in years.
Wielding a broadsword, he traded dozens of blows with the long-legged mutant before inexorably falling into the disadvantaged position.
Thwack!
A two-meter-long iron arrow tore in like a spear.
Zhao Zhizhuo twisted away by sound to dodge a fatal strike, but the shaft took him in the shoulder, throwing him from his horse.
It was over.
All five thousand of the Cangling Tribe would perish here.
Blood gushed from Zhao Zhizhuo's pierced shoulder. With the bone shattered, his arm hung useless, and half his body went numb with agony. Still, he struggled to his feet, bracing for one last desperate stand.
"Nowhere left to run, is there? Haha!"
The long-legged mutant was also a two-spring Dharma-Martial cultivator, but with the strength of his mutation, his combat power far surpassed Zhao Zhizhuo's.
His nearly two-meter-long right leg swept through the air, sending shockwaves that whipped the surrounding reeds for yards around. A kick like that could snap not just a man in two, but a tree as thick as a rice bowl.
Swish!
Li Weiyi blurred into view from behind Zhao Zhizhuo like an afterimage.
The Yellow Dragon Sword trailed a streak of yellow light.
Squelch!
A severed leg half a meter long spun away in a spray of blood.
Before the long-legged mutant could scream, Li Weiyi had already leaped upward, driving a knee into his chest and slamming a palm onto his crown. Blood poured from the creature's seven orifices, and he collapsed dead into the muddy puddles.
Zhao Zhizhuo stared in disbelief. Just as he thought Heaven had decreed the end of the Cangling, infighting had broken out among the enemy.
"Hurry and bring reinforcements! I'll hold him off!"
Li Weiyi urged, his eyes locked onto the bow-wielding mutant charging toward them in the distance.
Zhao Zhizhuo realized at once that this was no enemy infighting. This youth was risking his life to save him—and to save the five thousand souls of the Cangling Tribe.
Why?
"That ape-like variant is a three-spring Dharma-Martial cultivator! Little brother, you must be careful!"
Knowing the gravity of the situation, Zhao Zhizhuo called out his warning and dragged his battered body onto the horse. But no sooner had he mounted than Li Weiyi tackled him to the ground.
Whoosh!
An iron arrow shrieked across the horse's back, nearly impaling him.
Nocking another arrow, the ape-like variant hunched forward and closed in with rapid strides.
Towering and burly, with long, heavily muscled arms like a humanoid ape, his eyes fixed intently on the thick patch of reeds where the two had tumbled.
Closer and closer he came.
A sharp whistle cut through the air.
A shard of metal shot out from the reeds.
Whoosh!
The ape-like variant loosed an arrow toward the source of the shard while nimbly dodging to the right.
Before the creature could draw another arrow, Li Weiyi burst from the reeds. Executing Yellow Dragon Ascends to Heaven, he took five strides across empty air and dove down upon him.
"Traitorous scum, you court death!"
The ape-like variant swung a fan-sized paw straight at him.
Li Weiyi formed the Heaven-Overturning Palm Print, channeling the twin currents of cold and heat through his body into the silver-thread gloves. A brilliant silver radiance flared from his palm, solidifying like a three-foot seal as he met the blow head-on.
Before the clash, Li Weiyi had braced himself for injury.
The opponent was, after all, a three-spring Dharma-Martial cultivator of higher realm than his own. With a demonic, towering physique to match, the mutant's physical might should have been vastly beyond his.
Boom!
The ape-like variant was knocked staggering back six or seven paces, pain shooting through his hand as though the bones had snapped.
Li Weiyi blinked in surprise. The old Cangling man had misjudged—this ape-like monster couldn't possibly have opened three springs. At most, he had opened one.
If he was this weak, what was there to fear?
Kill!
Chapter 30