Having reached an agreement with Qiu Zhiheng, Luo Zhengnan returned to his hall and immediately gave the order for everyone in Medicine King Hall to go all out in capturing Mourning Cultivators.
Hunting Mourning Cultivators brought awful luck, and many people were reluctant to put in the effort.
Their reluctance didn't matter; Luo Zhengnan had his ways.
If any white lamb in the hall discovered the whereabouts of a Mourning Cultivator, so long as the report proved true, they would immediately be rewarded with fifty silver dollars. If their report was timely and they took part in the capture, they would be further rewarded with pills that built up Dao affinity.
As for gang members with cultivation, anyone who captured a Mourning Cultivator alive would be rewarded with Snake Speckle Pills—starting at twenty pills for the primary captor, and starting at ten for anyone assisting!
Luo Zhengnan was no Xiao Zhenggong; whatever reward he promised was paid on the spot!
Under the lure of such heavy rewards, brave men were sure to step forward. By the afternoon of the following day, the Jiangxiang Gang had dragged in another Mourning Cultivator.
Mourning Cultivators ultimately needed to cultivate; no matter how deeply they hid, they always had to seek opportunities to disgust others. With experience, the Jiangxiang Gang operated faster and faster, capturing yet another one that very night.
With the Jiangxiang Gang making their moves, the Sanying Gate jumped into action as well. Zhang Liuze, newly promoted to bronze seal, captured a Mourning Cultivator in Ligou, while two other bronze seals teamed up to nab two more in Waigou.
The Qingyun Association caught two.
The Baihua Sect caught one.
The Yuhua Gang lacked influence, and most of its members had no cultivation, but they managed to locate two Mourning Cultivators. Acting on their leads, Li Banfeng tracked down and captured both.
Through clues provided by Shopkeeper Feng and Yu Nan, Qiu Zhiheng brought in two as well.
Back at the start, aside from Yu Heshun, fifteen Mourning Cultivators had entered Yaowanggou. Now Yu Heshun was dead, one of the fifteen was dead, thirteen were in custody, and only one remained on the run.
Qiu Zhiheng worried that more Mourning Cultivators might slip into Yaowanggou, but the major gangs gave their word on that: gang members were stationed at the train station, the docks, and along the borders. Anyone who looked suspicious or seemed eager to court ill fortune would be seized first and questioned later.
Casting aside concerns of bad luck, Qiu Zhiheng kept all the Mourning Cultivators at the medicine shop and interrogated them one by one.
Yu Heshun had initially fled to Yaowanggou because he had disgusted everyone around him until they all left, leaving him with nowhere left to cultivate.
The other Mourning Cultivators, however, had come under completely different circumstances.
Some had offended ruthless figures and fled their homelands fearing retribution.
Some had found their cultivation progressing too slowly and wanted a change of scenery.
Some had simply fallen into destitution and wanted to eke out a living elsewhere.
Yet why had every single one of them chosen Yaowanggou?
Qiu Zhiheng employed his techniques, and the captives finally coughed up the truth.
They had all had a dream—a dream sent by their Grandmaster.
The Grandmaster told them that if they came to Yaowanggou, a way forward awaited them.
Could something seen in a dream really be believed so easily?
Besides, even if it were truly a summon from their Grandmaster, disciples of a pathway were not obligated to obey every command; when it came to matters of cultivation, personal inclination ultimately prevailed.
At first, they paid it no mind. But the Grandmaster had issued a warning in the dream: disaster would inevitably befall anyone who disobeyed his instructions.
And within two days, calamity really did strike every one of them. Some fell ill, some suffered beatings, and some nearly lost their lives. No longer daring to defy their Grandmaster, they had all flocked to Yaowanggou.
Li Banfeng was genuinely astonished to hear this. So Mourning Cultivators feared bad luck too.
Yet why could bad luck foretold in a dream manifest in reality?
Qiu Zhiheng felt there was still something off about this, so he and Li Banfeng went together to pay Old Yao a visit.
Old Yao was covered in cuts and bruises, clutching his three-pointed, double-edged blade as he drank wine in the courtyard.
Yesterday his grip had slipped, and the blade hacked into him twice.
The day before yesterday, the wine cellar caught fire, leaving him burned.
Three days ago was the worst of all. To guard against the Star of Mourning, Old Yao had rigged his entire house full of traps and mechanisms.
Only for the main beam to collapse early in the morning, setting off every trap in the building and nearly inflicting severe injuries.
They sounded like accidents, but Old Yao knew full well in his heart that this was the Star of Mourning striking from the shadows.
Despite taking these beatings, Old Yao held his ground, standing in the courtyard as imposing as ever. "Your grandfather isn't afraid of him! If he dares show his face even once, your grandfather will take his miserable life!"
Qiu Zhiheng asked, "Is the Star of Mourning the Grandmaster of the Mourning Cultivators?"
"Grandmaster, my ass! When the Grandmaster of Mourning Cultivators was alive, that dog hadn't even entered the pathway!"
"Does the Star of Mourning have cultivation as a Dream Cultivator?"
"No! For that old dog to cultivate a single pathway above the clouds was already a stroke of divine fortune. Where would he get the ability to dual-cultivate?"
He wasn't the Grandmaster, nor was he a Dream Cultivator. Where, then, did those nightmares plaguing the disciples come from? After all, these were nightmares capable of bringing genuine ill fortune into reality.
Qiu Zhiheng couldn't make heads or tails of it, but Old Yao recalled another connection.
"Could it have something to do with the Inner States?"
Li Banfeng recalled something: the Insect Vanguard behind the plague in Haichiling had also possessed power from the Inner States.
Old Yao couldn't say for sure. If the power of the Inner States truly was involved, defending Yaowanggou would become brutally difficult.
A Star of Mourning modified by the Inner States would likely no longer be on the same level as Old Yao.
Back at Qiu's Medicine Shop, Qiu Zhiheng resumed interrogating the Mourning Cultivators. "Now that you've arrived in Yaowanggou, why did you hide away and not dare show your faces?"
The group exchanged uneasy glances until an elderly man named Ge Tugen finally spoke up. "I've been in this pathway a long time. Ever since Yu Heshun died, I felt something was wrong.
"Later, I spotted some bloodstains near Yuxiang Village. Even after that heavy rain, the blood wouldn't wash away. By my guess, eight or nine out of ten chances it's a Mourning Array.
"That array is fed by the lives of our fellow disciples! I told them to run for their lives at once."
"Yet none of you ran."
Ge Tugen said, "Master, we wanted to flee, but travel permits aren't easy to come by! The travel permits we used to get here were handed to us in our dreams by the Grandmaster. We're total strangers in Yaowanggou—where were we supposed to find permits to go back?"
You could even pass physical items in a dream?
If the Star of Mourning truly possessed Dream Cultivator cultivation, just what tier had he reached!
With the interrogation largely concluded, Qiu Zhiheng waited for news of the last Mourning Cultivator being caught.
The next day, the news arrived. The last Mourning Cultivator had not been taken alive. Someone found a lead in Waigou's Mazhu Village, and Jiangxiang Gang members went to capture him, only to find the cultist's corpse.
Mazhu Village—Li Banfeng had been there before. It was Youtao's home, right on the border between Yaowanggou and Lüshui City.
Qiu Zhiheng asked, "When did this happen?"
Luo Zhengnan replied, "The body was just discovered this morning."
"Mazhu Village isn't close to Ligou." Qiu Zhiheng was slightly suspicious; judging by the timeline, Luo Zhengnan shouldn't have received the news so quickly.
Luo Zhengnan said, "I have my methods. You don't need to pry into that."
"Did he die trying to cross the border illegally?"
Luo Zhengnan shook his head. "He had a travel permit on him. Though we don't know where he got it, he had no need to cross illicitly."
Li Banfeng heard everything loud and clear from the back hall.
He had reached the border line, had a travel permit on his person, and didn't need to cross illegally, yet he had still dropped dead out of nowhere.
The first two Mourning Cultivators had died at the train station.
Apart from the Star of Mourning personally dispatching assassins to kill them, there was another possibility.
The Mourning Array had mutated—these Mourning Cultivators couldn't walk out of Ligou at all; dare to venture out, and they would die suddenly.
Could such a mutated array really exist?
If such an array truly existed, it meant they could never send the Mourning Cultivators away—no matter what they did, the cultists would die in Yaowanggou.
Luo Zhengnan and Qiu Zhiheng also lapsed into silence. After pondering for a long time, Luo Zhengnan wanted to take a gamble. "There's a freight train heading to Huangtuqiao tomorrow. I'll find a way to get one of the Mourning Cultivators onto that train.
"If he dies at the station, it proves they can't get out, and we'll think of something else.
"If he can be safely delivered to Huangtuqiao, it proves our method works, and I'll find a way to arrange another freight train to ship every last one of them back!"
The method was sound, but the cost was also steep.
Qiu Zhiheng had frequently dealt with the Garrison Commissioner's people in the past and knew the kind of scum they were.
"Hall Master Luo, if we bring someone there tomorrow and he dies at the station, will the Garrison Commissioner let you off? At a time like this, he'll probably turn against you completely."
Luo Zhengnan sighed; he shared that exact concern.
And that wasn't the only cost.
As the two drank tea, a gust of violent wind howled past, followed by the rapid clattering of roof tiles.
Standing at the doorway to look outside, they saw dense swarms of white pellets the size of fingertips raining from the sky.
Hail?
Given Yaowanggou's climate, it hadn't seen hail in years.
Qiu Zhiheng had selected top-quality tiles, so his roof barely held up, but ordinary tiles on other houses were smashed to pieces within three to five minutes.
*Whoosh—*
A whiff of wine drifted through the wind. As the fragrance permeated the air, the temperature soared.
Before the hailstones could hit the ground, they melted rapidly, transforming within the mist of alcohol into a torrential downpour.
The downpour lasted a full three hours. Had it hailed for three hours, there was no telling what Yaowanggou would have been reduced to.
And this was only the beginning. At midnight that night, the hail returned.
Holding his wine flagon and clutching his three-pointed, double-edged blade, Old Yao stood in the courtyard and bellowed, "Whatever tricks you have, bring them at your grandfather! What kind of skill is bullying common folk?!"
He spewed out a mouthful of alcoholic mist, and the hail melted into rain once more.
Old Yao went head-to-head against the Mourning Array for an entire day and night.
This was the third-stage array Hong Ying had spoken of.
If Luo Zhengnan were allowed to make another trial and error, Li Banfeng didn't even dare imagine what kind of catastrophe it would unleash.
Yet what should they do next?
Keep a tight watch over the Mourning Cultivators so that they absolutely wouldn't die?
Setting aside how dreadfully unlucky doing that would be, even if they ignored the misfortune, they couldn't possibly guard them all. What if the Star of Mourning made a move one day and came in person to slaughter the cultists?
Even if everyone here teamed up, they couldn't stop a cultivator three tiers above the clouds.
Old Yao could theoretically seize an opportunity to launch an ambush and kill the Star of Mourning, but while the idea sounded nice, pulling it off was far too difficult.
A thief can wait a thousand days to strike, but who can guard against a thief for a thousand days? Were the local spirit and all of Yaowanggou's forces supposed to keep their eyes glued to these Mourning Cultivators day in and day out?
The only feasible way seemed to be destroying the Mourning Array itself.
Li Banfeng and Qiu Zhiheng took the old Mourning Cultivator, Ge Tugen, to Yuxiang Village and located the bloodstain he had mentioned earlier.
It was a palm-sized patch of dark red blood. The old man must have had remarkably sharp eyes to have spotted it in the first place.
Li Banfeng asked, "If we dig up this bloodstain, will it break the Mourning Array?"
The old man shook his head. "Digging up one spot definitely won't do it. Exactly how many need to be cleared before it works, I can't say."
Qiu Zhiheng frowned deeply.
The old man wasn't lying; Old Yao had said the same thing.
The problem was, where were the other bloodstains?
Li Banfeng took out an iron shovel and shoveled away the bloodstain from the ground.
Qiu Zhiheng stepped forward to stop him. "Brother, don't touch it. Mind the ill omen—let me do it."
Li Banfeng waved his hand; his shovel had already dug in.
Having tangled with Mourning Cultivators for so many days, he had long ceased worrying about bad luck.
The blood had soaked deep. He had to dig over five feet down, shoveling out a good half-sack of dirt before the stain was completely cleared away.
Returning to the medicine shop, Li Banfeng took some of the soil back into the Portable Abode. Catching a foul whiff of it, Hong Ying snapped loudly, "Did you bring a Mourning Cultivator back here?! Why is there such a stench of misfortune?"
Li Banfeng said in pleasant surprise, "Since your nose is so sharp, why don't you come to Yaowanggou with me? I'll lead you on a leash, and you can sniff out all the bloodstains to break the Mourning Array."
Hong Ying fumed, "I'm not doing something so foul! Besides, doing that wouldn't work anyway."
"Why wouldn't it work?"
"I don't know how big this Yaowanggou of yours is, but it has to be at least a hundred li across, doesn't it?
"Across an area a hundred li wide, a small bucket of blood was scattered around. You'd have to dig up at least more than half of them to break the Mourning Array."
Li Banfeng actually thought this was a viable lead. "What shape is the Mourning Array? How many blood spots are there? I'll search for them one by one!"
Hong Ying scoffed. "You really don't give up, do you? Back when I was still in the army, I vaguely recall that the Mourning Array had over sixty variations. Every single variation has a different layout, with anywhere from one hundred to three hundred blood spots. Do you honestly think you can find them all?"
The barrage of numbers left Li Banfeng speechless for a long time.
The gramophone scolded Hong Ying, "Stop talking!"
Hong Ying retorted angrily, "Why shouldn't I say it? I'm telling him so he doesn't waste his energy!"
"Wretched wench, still running your mouth? Go take twenty strokes of the military rod yourself!"
"I'd say it even if I got beaten with rods! The Mourning Array can't be broken at all! To let someone lay such a massive array right in his own house—that drunkard deserves to be finished! Why do you even care about him?!"
Before her voice faded, the house suddenly let out a low drone.
*Buzz—*
Hong Ying donned her full suit of armor and stood beside the gramophone.
The gramophone and Hong Ying heard only a continuous low drone, like the grating noise of colliding, grinding machinery.
Only Li Banfeng heard the voice of the Portable Abode: "I can help you, but I need at least two more rails."
"How will you help me?"
"By traversing all of Yaowanggou—leaving not an inch untouched!"
Chapter 341