On this mountain road, the Fufeng City escort detachment naturally led the way, keeping the three diplomatic delegations protected in their center.
Several merchant caravans and other travelers trailed behind.
In order of procession, the Shimen caravan, having deliberately lagged back, was sixteenth in line.
The mountain road wound intricately. Its narrowest points barely allowed two carriages to pass abreast, though the space widened whenever the path curved into a hollow between the ridges.
Consequently, the procession moved like a centipede, drawn out exceedingly long from head to tail.
The road distance between the Shimen caravan and the escort detachment was at least twenty li. By now, the escort detachment had already rounded the far tail of the mountain, while the Shimen caravan remained on this side of the crest, the two almost able to gaze at each other across Wind Demon Mountain.
If Second Master Shi could have seen this with his own eyes right now, he would likely have wept tears of overwhelming gratitude.
After leaving Wind Demon Mountain, the tornado kept a slender tail touching the ground. From afar, it looked like an antenna, but up close, it was immensely thick, continuously siphoning energy from the earth and expanding its vortex once more.
Its movement appeared sluggish, but was deceptively swift.
By now, the merchants and travelers on the mountain path caught sight of the Wind Demon's onslaught. Amid terrified cries, they scrambled to turn their horses around, but a dozen steeds were whipped too violently; in their panic on the narrow road, they lost their footing and plunged down the precipice, carriages and all.
Other horses sank to their knees on the spot, refusing to rise no matter how hard the whips lashed them.
Naturally, even more people simply abandoned their carriages and fled back without a second thought.
If your life was forfeit, what did cargo matter anymore?
The escort detachment had also seen the ferocious Wind Demon approaching, alarmed but not panicking. Before it reached them, the commanding officer urgently ordered everyone to dash into a mountain hollow—the delegations inside, the guards outside—drawing together into a defensive formation.
He knew very well that with nearly four hundred people and such a narrow mountain road, outrunning the Wind Demon in so short a time was entirely impossible.
He drew a wooden staff, thrust it fiercely into the ground, and roared, "With one united heart!"
Three hundred guards bellowed in unison.
The wooden staff instantly flared with deep blue radiance, expanding into a protective light canopy that covered the entire company.
Carved from a branch of the Jeweled Tree King, it inherently carried a portion of its demonic power and divine abilities.
"Ready bows!"
At the commander's order, the men unslung their longbows, drew back their strings, and nocked their arrows.
The arrowheads likewise flared with blue light.
"Loose!"
Three hundred arrows loosed together.
Against such an enormous target, missing was impossible.
Yet within the tornado whirled countless debris—boulders, mud, gravel, and even rubble from the ruins of the Piaomiao Sect—all acting as protective shields in their high-speed rotation.
Of the three hundred arrows, more than half struck this debris, with barely a hundred plunging into the wind vortex.
The guards watched as a hundred-odd blue sparks abruptly flickered, like static bursting inside cloud banks, and the Wind Demon unleashed an enraged roar.
It possessed neither form nor substance, rendering ordinary blades and spears useless against it. Yet the origin power imbued into the arrows was the natural bane of all demons and monsters, and the Wind Demon was no exception.
The pain it suffered was little different from taking a hundred arrows into flesh.
Yet sensing the aura radiating from the wooden staff, the Wind Demon's fury surged straight through the roof.
The Jeweled Tree King!
The mortal enemy who had dealt it a crushing disaster more than four hundred years ago had not come in person, but had dispatched such a detachment instead.
How could it pass up such a heaven-sent opportunity for vengeance?
Gathering its might, the Wind Demon whipped the three hundred-odd arrows around in the gale for several turns before suddenly sending them hurtling back along their original trajectory, swooshing toward the crowd.
They flew back even faster than when they had left the bowstrings.
The blue light canopy flickered, deflecting every last one.
By this time, however, the Wind Demon had already surged onto the heights and slammed headlong into the mountain crags.
Those colossal boulders appeared imposing, but their bases had long been severely weathered. Jolted violently by the Wind Demon's heave, they toppled like falling jade pillars, hurtling down the steep slope with deafening roars in an unstoppable charge, some splitting in two and tumbling together.
That was hundreds of thousands of jin of earth and stone, and the escort detachment stood right at the bottom of the slope.
Before an assault of natural-disaster proportions, the light barrier seemed far too frail; no one had confidence it could hold.
A chill gripped the hearts of several envoys. Unable to watch, they turned away and clutched their heads.
Just as the boulders hurtled downward with thunderous force, the phantom of a colossal tree suddenly manifested above the crowd, its boughs and foliage piercing the heavens, identical in appearance to the Jeweled Tree King.
Falling rocks larger than millstones were deflected one after another upon striking the canopy. Only stones smaller than that slipped through the gaps between the leaves, crashing onto the ground.
Members of the escort detachment struck out one after another, swatting away the stragglers.
A flying shard struck the Chiyan Kingdom envoy between the brows, carving out a long, bloody gash. Yet the colossal tree phantom clearly had no intention of intercepting such petty nuisances.
Focusing on the greater threat while letting the small slip by, it would not squander its energy trying to block every pebble.
The escort detachment's mission concerned the prestige of the demon kingdom, so the Jeweled Tree King had specially allocated them an ample reserve of origin power, but even that strength was not limitless.
The tornado paused midair, as if observing, or perhaps contemplating.
Naturally, the escort detachment's rain of arrows reminded it that a battlefield left no room for hesitation.
Within a dozen breaths, it had swept behind the mountain, using the massive peak as a barrier so the humans could no longer shoot it.
The commanding officer bounded up the ridge on hands and feet. Without waiting for orders, two personal guards followed behind him. If they simply took a beating passively, no amount of origin power would suffice; they had to fight back.
The arrows loosed by the commander even bore a faint red sheen, exceptionally lethal to demonic beasts.
Yet this was a formidable foe that had once battled the Jeweled Tree King itself, and the battlefield was the summit of a towering peak—the Wind Demon's absolute home turf, where replenishing its energy was effortless. Even if the Jeweled Tree King had come in person, bringing it down would have been no easy feat, let alone for a few humans.
Paying no heed to their arrows, the tornado had already swung around the mountain and ruthlessly devoured the caravans there.
Amid horrifying screams, people, horses, carriages, and cargo were hoisted into the sky together.
Bystanders blanched in terror, the fugitives on the mountain path wishing only that they had been born with an extra pair of legs.
Snatching up these people, mounts, and wagons, the Wind Demon turned around and hurled them down upon the escort detachment's heads.
The phantom of the giant tree was, after all, merely a divine art, not the Jeweled Tree King in the flesh. It would judge incoming boulders and arrows as enemy attacks that required interception; falling humans, horses, and cargo carried no innate hostility, so the ancient tree phantom ignored them entirely.
Yet these objects, swept up by the tempest, plummeted with the gale's momentum atop their own weight, crashing down no differently from cannonballs—their power was not to be underestimated.
Worse still, several hundred people were crammed together in the mountain hollow, presenting a concentrated target. With a chaotic crash of impacts, over a dozen guards and delegation members were pounded into meat paste before they could even utter a cry.
This move alone demonstrated that the Wind Demon possessed no small intellect.
Several odd-job laborers from the delegations lost their wits in sheer terror, spinning around and bolting into the distance in an attempt to escape this slaughterhouse.
Where could they possibly flee right under the Wind Demon's nose?
Before they had run two paces, the tempest swept them into the sky, who knew when to touch ground again.
Seeing that this tactic worked, the Wind Demon immediately wheeled around to seize new caravans to fling.
The rearward convoys had already emptied of people, leaving over a hundred carts and wagons stranded where they stood. The Wind Demon scooped them up with ease—not only completely natural, but thoroughly convenient.
It seemed to enjoy itself immensely. After two rounds of bombardment, it drifted back along the mountain path, intending to scavenge more ammunition.
Carriages took up considerable space. If it threw just another round or two, the delegations and escort guards would have no ground left to stand on.
Separated by several peaks, the Shimen caravan had little idea of what was happening ahead. They could only hear the howling wind and see what appeared to be an enormous tornado suspended in midair.
Having swept up too much debris, the tornado had turned black, looking exceptionally sinister. Moreover, its path seemed to weave back and forth, entirely unpredictable.
Aside from that, living people from the front were fleeing back, sprinting in desperate overdrive while screaming:
"The Wind Demon is coming! The Wind Demon is coming!"
The Wind Demon? That Wind Demon from the legends of the Piaomiao Sect?
The caravan members shuddered in terror, thanking the heavens ten thousand times over that they had not drawn near.
***
While the escort detachment struggled frantically to cope, He Lingchuan, stationed along the flank of Wind Demon Mountain, was not paying attention to the carnage across the way, but rather to Fu Shanyue atop the peak.
Chaos reigned on the official road; no one had the luxury of looking up at the summit of the Piaomiao Sect's main peak.
Yet just as the Wind Demon slammed into the giant tree phantom, a tiny black speck bounded forward two paces atop the mountain crest and leaped off!
Fu Shanyue!
He Lingchuan had been keeping a watchful eye on his movements all along, quietly closing the distance toward the mountain. At this moment, he rode the rock sheep straight up to the peak, stopping right where Fu Shanyue had stood moments before.
This spot offered the best vantage point to oversee the entire situation.
That fellow had orchestrated such an enormous catastrophe with his own hands, only to stand atop the mountain enjoying the spectacle ever since.
Of course, the distance from the summit to the official road on the opposite side was far too vast for human strength to bridge; only winged birds could cross it.
And so, Fu Shanyue sprouted wings.
Strictly speaking, they were not wings, but broad leather gliding membranes stretched between his hands and feet, allowing him to glide forward on the air currents like a flying squirrel!
He Lingchuan muttered under his breath, "This bastard's gear really is comprehensive."
He had ridden a rock sheep, risking life and limb to leap back and forth across perilous crags and precipitous peaks just to rush back to the official road. How could that compare to the effortless leisure of this fellow descending from the sky?
Yet Fu Shanyue was gliding straight toward the Wind Demon. In less than ten breaths, he was sucked into the violent vortex of wind!
Like a leaf drawn into a whirlpool, he was entirely helpless.
*What is he playing at?* He Lingchuan stared in bewilderment.
Immediately afterward, however, the Wind Demon began violently hurling things downward with crashing thuds—carriages, cargo, humans... and Fu Shanyue!
People rained from the heavens in a bewildering blur. Yet with the eyesight he had painstakingly honed, He Lingchuan still picked Fu Shanyue out from among the dozens of falling bodies.
After battering against so much chaotic debris inside the vortex only to be slammed violently into the ground by the Wind Demon, an ordinary person would have been crippled if not killed outright. Yet this fellow's body was truly forged of iron. The moment he hit the ground, he rolled back to his feet, darting left and weaving right to evade two crashing carriages before charging headlong into the diplomatic delegations.
"Fishing in troubled waters?" He Lingchuan narrowed his eyes. "Let me see just who your target really is!"
Not a single corner of the mountain hollow was safe now; the guards relied entirely on their agile footwork to shield the envoys as they dodged and scrambled for cover.
With two bounding leaps, Fu Shanyue reached their side.
Under normal circumstances, had he dared approach the delegations like this, the guards would have driven him away immediately. But with their attention locked onto the sky, how much guard did they have against another 'person'?
People were falling from the sky all over the place.
"Look out!" Fu Shanyue yelled, tackling the Chiyan Kingdom envoy to the ground.
Chapter 395