Madam Ying, who had been listening all along, blurted out, "Then that ought to be plenty to fight a war."
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized her blunder.
The others fell silent. Fixer Liu kept his head down, not daring to chime in.
He Yue changed the subject: "Since General Ke came to the capital to plead for mercy, can the Fu family escape this calamity?"
Ke Jihai had put down the Woling Pass rebels first and was now fighting Dong Haoming in the west, making him the commanding general the royal court relied upon most. With him personally rushing back to plead for the Fu family, and the sovereign still counting on him to defeat Dong Haoming, surely the ruler would show some deference, wouldn't he?
"We'll find out soon enough."
Feeling a bit stifled, Madam Ying lifted the curtain to inspect the road conditions. Their carriage was making its way down the winding mountain path. The snow fell thicker and heavier; objects beyond thirty feet were barely discernible.
Under such conditions, no matter how wide and level the mountain road might be, traveling required double the caution.
Only carriage lanterns ahead and behind echoed one another in the distance.
Hm? Ahead and behind?
She glanced back. "There's a carriage following behind us. I wonder whose it is." Ahead, General Ke's carriage was quite close, within twenty feet. This was an unspoken rule when traveling mountain roads in the snow: keep within sight of one another so everyone could lend a hand if something went wrong.
Which family was leaving the banquet midway as well?
He Lingchuan poked his head out to look as well. Pulling back in, he closed his eyes briefly, then said, "What a coincidence. It's the same commoner carriage that we followed on the way up the mountain. My guess is the passenger is that young man who handed General Ke the booklet during the banquet—he didn't look like an official or a wealthy man." He paused. "Hm, that carriage stopped."
Madam Ying asked in surprise, "With snow this heavy, how could you tell?" She could only see a faint warm glow from the carriage lantern and vaguely discern the dark silhouette of the carriage; discerning anything more was out of the question.
In truth, it was simple: that carriage's lantern was covered in green-tinted paper, casting a yellowish-green glow, whereas the other carriages had normal yellowish-white light. He Lingchuan had watched it the entire ride up; how could he not remember?
Yet looking across at He Chunhua, he bared his teeth in a grin. "Just a guess."
He wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, but his old man seemed reluctant to let him accept Ke Jihai's Baipi saber.
With that last glance just now, he had seen the carriage halt, and the driver leap down through the falling snow to inspect the wheels, unsure of what had gone wrong.
Madam Ying rolled her eyes.
Still, her words reminded He Lingchuan. Since he was sitting there with nothing to do anyway, he might as well put his newfound skill to practice and try extending his divine sense again.
To the others, he merely appeared to be resting with his eyes closed.
As it turned out, using it at night was far more effective than during the day, and the strain was actually lessened. He wondered if that had something to do with the weakness of his divine soul.
The sensation was extraordinary; he could clearly "see" the shape of every single snowflake.
Though all were hexagonal, between flake and flake, edge and edge, there were subtle differences.
Thousands upon thousands of snowflakes danced around the carriage—one's eyes could never take them all in, yet divine sense could encompass everything down to the finest detail.
With such a vivid contrast, he finally appreciated the advantages of seeing through divine sense.
Needless to say, this was also an indispensable god-tier skill for home, travel, and homicide.
He Lingchuan was engrossed in expanding his divine sense, unable to tear himself away, but found it could extend at most twenty feet; beyond that, it could reach no further. This was likely constrained by the modest strength of his divine soul.
The snow accumulated on the road, the rocks beneath the cliff, the white vapor puffing from the coachman's breath, and a strange shadow on the cliff face.
Hm?
He Lingchuan snapped his eyes open, leaned outside, and barked like a clap of spring thunder: "Stop the carriage! Enemy attack!"
Only a thick cloth partition separated him from the coachman in front. Infused with true power, the shout detonated like a winter thunderclap, setting the driver's ears ringing and prompting him to instinctively yank the reins.
On such a snowy night, the carriage hadn't dared go fast in the first place; with one tug, it ground to a halt.
Taken off guard, everyone pitched forward. Ying Hongchan complained, "What is—"
Before the remaining words could leave her mouth, a massive boulder crashed down directly in front of the carriage with a deafening boom, shattering more than a dozen black stone slabs paving the road.
That was not all: carrying its momentum, it rolled forward several times and plunged straight off the mountain road.
Several breaths later, a dull crash echoed from down the mountain.
Madam Ying's face turned white as paper.
The irregular boulder was larger than an inn's door, weighing at least six or seven hundred jin. Had her eldest son not shouted to halt the carriage just now, their entire family would have been hurled down the cliff by the impact!
This was an imperial villa—would a weathered boulder from the mountain break loose so suddenly?
She had forgotten that He Lingchuan had also shouted "enemy attack."
A dark shadow swept across the sky.
Everyone looked up to see an enormous figure hurtling down from the sky, crashing onto Ke Jihai's carriage ahead with a thunderous bang!
A direct hit. The carriage cabin of fine rosewood burst apart like paper mache with a sickening crunch.
Splintered wood flew more than twenty feet, striking the horses pulling the He family's carriage.
Struck and injured on the shoulder, the horse reared in terror, pulling the carriage sideways.
"General Ke!"
The He family was horrified.
Could the supreme commander of over a hundred thousand troops truly be crushed to death inside a carriage just like that, without rhyme or reason?
By the lantern light, everyone saw clearly that the giant silhouette that had crashed down was no boulder, but a brown giant ape!
The beast stood ten feet tall, its bulging cords of muscle looking ready to burst through its skin, weighing at least two thousand jin. It was covered in scars and wore a spiked collar around its neck. He Lingchuan had only ever seen such spike-studded collars on fierce hounds, designed to protect their necks from tiger and wolf bites, yet he never imagined one would be fitted around the neck of a giant ape.
Stranger still, it was clad in ghastly gray plate armor protecting its vitals. It did not look metallic, but rather... bone?
Not satisfied after hurling itself down like a cannonball, the giant ape swung its iron fists in a frenzied barrage of heavy blows, smashing Ke Jihai's carriage into shattered splinters.
Madam Ying had been about to scream, but catching sight of its blood-red eyes sweeping their way, she hurriedly slapped a hand over her mouth.
"Out of the carriage!" He Chunhua ordered in a low voice. Taking advantage of the carriage body blocking the giant ape's view, he scooped up his wife and leapt to the ground.
With the giant ape this powerful, the carriage was no longer a safe shelter; it only restricted their movement.
He Yue also grabbed the petrified Fixer Liu and the driver, pulling them down. While the giant ape was wildly smashing Ke Jihai's carriage, He Lingchuan drew his saber with a backhand motion and severed their carriage harness in a single strike. Leading out the two horses, he shouted, "Mount up, quick!"
Stranded halfway up the mountain, no help would come from heaven or earth; survival depended on speed. Only by quickly fleeing into the mountain forest would they have a chance at safety.
This was no time for hesitation. He Chunhua leapt onto a horse holding his wife, wheeled the mount around, and headed up the mountain.
He Yue mounted the other horse and reached out a hand toward his elder brother, but He Lingchuan hauled Fixer Liu up instead. "Go!"
He Yue panicked. "Brother!"
He Lingchuan gave the horse's flank a hard slap, spurring it forward at full gallop after He Chunhua.
He himself had no intention of waiting around to die. Seizing his coachman by the collar, he bounded in a great leap toward the common carriage behind them.
The two vehicles were separated by less than twenty feet; for He Lingchuan, it took just a stride or two to cross the distance.
Before his feet even touched the ground, he repeated the trick, liberating the two carriage horses as well.
In his estimation, though the Baipi saber fell short of the broken saber's sharpness, it was still a rare treasure of a blade, slicing through the tough wood like bean curd, saving both effort and time.
At a critical moment, a good blade could save lives.
The carriage's driver and passenger had already been stunned senseless by the giant ape and were caught completely off guard by He Lingchuan's actions. Just as they were about to shout, He Lingchuan warned them, "Mount up and run, quick!"
No matter how wide and level the mountain road might be, turning a carriage around was terribly difficult; how could it compare to escaping on horseback for speed and agility?
He Lingchuan could see clearly now that the passenger was indeed the young man who had toasted Ke Jihai and presented the booklet earlier. His driver snapped out of his daze, leaped onto one of the horses, and bolted back down the road. The passenger tried to clamber onto the back behind him, nearly getting jolted off.
He Lingchuan reached out to steady the young man, then mounted the final horse with his own coachman, galloping toward the summit.
This had been his goal all along: borrowing their horses.
Eight people, four horses—in the blink of an eye, they had set off on their flight for survival.
The entire sequence looked complicated, but barely seven or eight breaths had passed, taking no longer than the six or seven blows the giant ape swung into the carriage.
How could such a massive, ferocious monster suddenly appear in Shihuan City?
He Lingchuan immediately thought of the northern demon kingdom. If a banished crocodile demon could style itself a god in the Hongchuan River before Woling Pass and whip up storms to defeat the Yuan Kingdom's navy, could these formidable monsters also have hailed from the north?
The giant ape tore Ke Jihai's carriage to pieces. One draft horse seized the opportunity to flee, while the other, unlucky enough to remain hitched to the carriage, neighed incessantly in terror.
Then, with a few careless sweeps of its arms, the giant ape flexed its muscles, hoisted the entire carriage above its head, and hurled it over the cliff!
They were still well over a hundred feet above the ground. Even if Ke Jihai hadn't been crushed to death inside the carriage, this fall would certainly finish him.
He Lingchuan heard the horse's mournful neigh recede into the distance before abruptly cutting off, his palms slick with cold sweat.
The giant ape had attacked two carriages. Was its target Ke Jihai, or the He family?
To deal with Ke Jihai, it had descended in person, whereas against the He family's carriage, it had merely hurled a boulder. So Ke Jihai was its primary target?
If they could ascertain this, the He family might have a better chance of surviving.
At the moment, they were fleeing up the mountain path, hoping to put distance between themselves and the giant ape in short order. The beast seemed immensely strong, but it didn't look like a creature built for speed.
Without anyone realizing it, the snow had stopped falling.
Right then, out of the corner of his eye, He Lingchuan caught sight of something darting through the dense woods at the roadside.
Ahead, He Yue cried out as well, "Watch out, there's something in the woods!"
Yet the creature shot forward in a blur, its speed far outpacing a galloping horse.
He Lingchuan channeled his breath into his dantian and roared, "Father, get down!"
He Chunhua and his wife were riding in the lead.
The instant he heard his son's shout, he turned his head to look, but the woods were pitch-black; there was nothing to be seen.
Ahead lay a massive boulder of solid rock rising more than ten feet above the roadbed, around which the mountain path wound.
Before He Chunhua could pull back his gaze, a silhouette appeared atop the rock, swooping down from above like a raptor diving for prey, lunging straight for his head!
It had completely ignored the three mounts behind and come straight to take He Chunhua's life.
To catch bandits, first catch the ringleader—even monsters understood this principle.
Fortunately, He Chunhua's nerves had already been stretched taut. The moment the corner of his eye caught the movement ahead, he yanked hard on the reins without a second thought.
Chapter 175