Judging by the movement of the torches, it was easy to determine the direction the Yao army was advancing, and not difficult to deduce the fox demons' range of movement either.
Next, the two navigated the terrain while evading the Yao army, slipping into their steadily shrinking encirclement.
"What about the contact signal? How do we find that den of foxes?"
He Lingchuan sighed. "There is one. It's just liable to attract trouble."
They found a cliffside. He Lingchuan took out Madame Zhu's eyeball xun and began to play, producing low, mournful notes.
He was playing the *Melody of Qingqiu*, a tune rarely heard in the mortal realm.
Of course, he kept the instrument's final hole closed.
The plaintive timbre of the xun echoed through the mountain forests and clear springs, drifting leisurely toward the peaks.
He Lingchuan infused his playing with true power, allowing it to carry far across the silent valley.
It was the first time in months Dong Rui had heard him play the xun. Listening now, he couldn't help but feel surprised:
He Lingchuan's skill seemed to have improved once again. The music sounded lofty yet grounded, mournful yet subtly spirited, with every nuance measured to perfection.
This fellow was ridiculously busy all the time—did he still manage to find moments to practice in secret?
As He Lingchuan played, he listened intently in all directions.
Ever since landing at Julu Port, his internal journey and reflections had matured, and reflected through music, this amounted to yet another step of progress.
The melody ended, its resonance lingering.
Around them, torches swiftly converged toward their position—
The Yao soldiers were not deaf; once he played the xun, everyone could hear it.
The surrounding woods rustled in the shadows, as though creatures were peering from the dark, yet none rushed out to cause trouble for the pair.
Fang Canran had said that even if the *Melody of Qingqiu* was not used as a contact signal, it still had a soothing effect on the fox demon clan.
He certainly had not been wrong.
He Lingchuan's gaze was razor-sharp, immediately spotting the fox tails hidden in the woods.
Yet once the music faded, the foxes seemed to snap awake. Restlessness stirred among them again, their eyes flashing ferociously toward the two humans once more.
These were demons that had tasted human flesh and drank human blood; they had long since lost any former reverence for humanity.
Wisping vapor seemed to drift out from the mountain woods. Lingguang whispered to the two, "Put on the Heart-Clearing Talismans."
Fox demons specialized in casting illusions.
While mirage demons fabricated environmental illusions that made falsehood seem real, fox demons forged illusions within the human heart, turning inner perception instantly into perceived reality—
A craft fundamentally rooted in "forms born of the mind."
Thus, the dense fog did not truly exist; it merely made one believe they had plunged into mists.
The fox demons used this deception to conceal themselves and launch their assault.
Therefore, the simplest and most direct countermeasure was to wear the Heart-Clearing Talisman refined by an apothecary.
Several yellow foxes larger than wolves charged over in the blink of an eye.
He Lingchuan did not even budge: these were illusions.
The real fox demons crept up behind the pair, launching an attack without a sound.
Shield in one hand, He Lingchuan bashed the attacking fox demon away.
Another seized the opening to leap, moving as nimbly as a caracal, preparing to spit a plume of foxfire right at He Lingchuan.
This plume of cyan flame possessed an even more potent hallucinogenic effect; if struck, it would not corrode bone and melt flesh like ordinary true fire, but it could easily drive a person mad.
Instead, He Lingchuan acted a step faster, gripping its neck with pinpoint accuracy. The blast of fire choked in its throat, unable to escape.
The ghost ape leaped from Dong Rui's shoulder, swelling in an instant into a ten-foot-tall behemoth. Grabbing a small nearby tree, it swept it low along the ground!
Two foxes were sent flying.
"Go easy!" Dong Rui checked it. "Don't beat the foxes to death!"
After all, demons were in the minority within the clan; most of these were simply wild foxes.
They were here on business; creating bad blood and slaughtering them right upon meeting would do no good.
The ghost ape rolled its eyes.
It had already shown mercy—otherwise, it would have drawn its purple-gold staff!
The pack fell back all at once, and several larger fox demons finally stepped forward.
"Stop!" A human voice suddenly rang out from deep within the woods.
Hearing it, He Lingchuan and Dong Rui stayed their hands, and the foxes promptly backed away as well, though they remained encircling the two men.
A red fox the size of a calf trotted out from the trees. Glancing at them, it spoke in human tongue:
"Where are you from?"
"Mou."
"Follow us."
This was no place to linger; the Yao army would arrive shortly.
The two followed the foxes over rises and dips. Traveling by night was treacherous, and they could not light torches. Fortunately, both possessed keen night vision, allowing them to traverse the hazards on this starless night as though crossing flat ground.
Descending into a hollow, the red fox stepped up to a boulder and squeaked twice. He Lingchuan saw something move in the shadows beneath the stone.
A stone slab slid open without a sound.
The foxes ushered the two humans inside.
Afterward, the slab closed quietly behind them, leaving not a trace.
Here they had to walk hunched over, unable to straighten their backs, and Dong Rui bumped his head twice—
An underground lair like this was never built for humans in the first place.
Both wolves and foxes were adept at digging dens, but He Lingchuan had not expected the Baitou Ridge fox clan to elevate this gift to such heights.
The tunnel was not pitch-black either. Faint glimmers lined the passage walls, bearing a resemblance to Zhu Erniang's fluorescent spores, though He Lingchuan recognized them as luminescent fungi that provided just barely enough light.
Foxes possessed far superior night vision to humans; this meager glow was more than sufficient for them.
Dong Rui followed the foxes ahead through climbs and descents, turns and twists, until he felt a bit dizzy.
This labyrinth actually spanned multiple vertical layers. No wonder the Yao army had besieged Baitou Ridge for three days without catching the great fox demon.
A faint breeze drifted through the subterranean labyrinth, indicating nearby ventilation shafts—these foxes were remarkably meticulous about their burrowing.
After a long trek, they entered a natural grotto and finally met their principal target.
It was an enormous fox demon, likely taller than a man when standing, but curled on the ground at present with a deep gash on its hind leg. Behind it, three tails swayed gently.
He Lingchuan had assumed it would be pure white; he hadn't expected the creature to be of the commonest fiery red, only with white eyebrows that made it look as though it had four eyes.
*Ahem*, read too many picture books in his past world, always thinking high-cultivation foxes had to be white foxes.
"You played the *Melody of Qingqiu*. So Wang Xingyi sent you?"
"We were commissioned by National Preceptor Wang to escort you from here to Julu Port." He Lingchuan glanced around. "I assume you're prepared to relocate?"
Indeed, his second mission on the Shanjin Plain was to escort the Baitou Ridge fox demon clan to Julu Port to board a ship. This den of foxes had lived here for several decades, but relations with the local populace had soured. Recently, hostilities had escalated to the point where even the Yao Kingdom was purging them.
Unlike smaller nations with meager origin power, if the Yao Kingdom got serious, the fox clan would suffer devastating losses.
Years ago during his travels on the Shanjin Plain, National Preceptor Wang had formed an acquaintance with this Three-Tails fox demon, and thus invited it to settle in the Mou Kingdom.
The mission sounded simple enough, but He Lingchuan knew it was far from as easy as it seemed. The fox demon was wounded atop old injuries, rendering movement all the more difficult.
Three-Tails looked him up and down. "Just the two of you think you can lead us out?"
Dong Rui chuckled. "How will you know unless we try? Besides, can you get out on your own?"
If the fox demons could have escaped, would they have waited until now?
Three-Tails cast him a glance. "Had you not come, I could have stalled a little longer."
"The exposure of this last underground refuge is only a matter of time," He Lingchuan countered. "Can you still walk?"
"I can, but fighting again will be difficult." Three-Tails looked at its injuries. "The wound on my leg is nothing compared to the one left by the Yao Kingdom's new Grand Overseer of the State three months ago—that is the real trouble. Furthermore, the Yao army has already converged on the spot where you just played your xun."
"This is my apothecary." He Lingchuan patted the monkey on his shoulder. "Why not let him examine you?"
Three-Tails nodded.
Lingguang hopped down to inspect its wounds.
Meanwhile, He Lingchuan pressed forward to discuss a plan with the fox demon without delay.
"If you stay here, you will be captured tonight."
Three-Tails knew this all too well. "We tried breaking through, but no matter which direction we went, the Yao army quickly reinforced and sealed the gap before us!"
It gestured with its chin toward the torchlight along the mountainside. "Look, they know exactly where I am and are mustering troops toward this spot. This has happened countless times over the past three days. Had I not managed Baitou Ridge for years, and had my children not dug multiple subterranean complexes with such intricate tunnels, we wouldn't have lasted this long."
"You mean the Yao army can anticipate your moves ahead of time?"
"More than that!" Three-Tails's eyes turned grave. "I suspect they have known my exact location all along!"
It was merely that it had been hiding within the subterranean network; even if the enemy knew where it was, figuring out the multilayered underground maze was no easy feat.
"Several lairs have already been sealed off one after another. Our hiding space is dwindling."
*Understood—tracking and localization.* He Lingchuan nodded. "We must escape tonight. Does this labyrinth lead directly to the surface?"
"Yes. There are five exits here."
The next question: "How many descendants do you have?"
"There were nearly two hundred originally. Now, only these remain." Sorrow filled Three-Tails's eyes.
*These?* He Lingchuan swept his gaze across the chamber, estimating fewer than thirty. Among them, seven large ones were fox demons, while the rest were ordinary foxes.
Three-Tails warned them, "The Yao army activated an escape-art prohibition barrier across Baitou Ridge, or we would have escaped long ago."
"Which escape art do you know?"
"Wood escape."
With trees carpeting the mountains, had their escape art not been hindered, the fox clan would have gotten away long ago.
Just then, a series of shrill wails drifted from afar, particularly hair-raising in the pitch-black night. Though not human cries, He Lingchuan could clearly distinguish the agony and terror in them.
Hearing it, the fur bristled along the backs of the foxes in the cave.
They were very close to the surface here, and through some spell Three-Tails had cast, sounds from above easily carried inside.
"Whenever the Yao army captures one of my children, they skin it alive so its shrieks echo across the ridges." Three-Tails's ears twitched continuously toward the sound. "They already know my position; they have no need to interrogate my children."
A quiet agony resonated beneath its words.
The Yao army tortured captured foxes both to provoke Three-Tails and to terrorize the pack.
Fear and fury easily led to mistakes.
"If they truly can monitor your position," He Lingchuan said, "they must have planted a tracking ability on either you or one of your offspring."
Chapter 1152