With a resounding crash, an ordinary pack horse slammed into the ground, smashed into a bloody pulp on the spot.
Fu Shanyue took the opportunity to kick down the guard beside him. The man landed directly beneath the falling horse and died without a sound, a spray of burst brains splattering across the face of the Chiyan Kingdom envoy.
Just as the Chiyan envoy reached up to wipe his face, his body suddenly felt weightless—he was hauled up by the collar.
Grabbing him tight, Fu Shanyue leaped off the cliff!
Seeing this, two guards charged forward with furious roars. The Wind Demon exhaled a breath, sending two ferocious blasts of wind hurtling out to sweep them away.
Targeted and pinpoint accurate.
"Huh? He's actually capturing the Chiyan envoy?" This completely exceeded He Lingchuan's expectations. Fu Shanyue's objective had shifted from the Shanyu envoy to the Chiyan envoy.
Could there be some connection between the two?
Shanyu Kingdom had internal turmoil, but what was going on with Chiyan Kingdom?
He had too little intel on hand to draw any reliable conclusion.
Debris rained down continuously from above, yet the escort guards were remarkably resilient, still finding ways to fight back while dodging and taking cover. With the Chiyan envoy unexpectedly snatched away, if they failed to protect the remaining delegations, their mission would essentially be a total failure.
The origin power coating their arrowheads shifted from deep blue to dark green. Clearly, their morale had not been broken; instead, facing a desperate impasse had united them in shared fury against a common enemy.
This was the only attack the Wind Demon was wary of. Even if the guards missed, the swirling air currents would eventually carry the arrows straight back to it.
He Lingchuan kept his gaze fixed on Fu Shanyue, which allowed him to see that neither he nor the Chiyan envoy had plunged to their deaths. Instead, carried by his glider wings, Fu Shanyue had glided back onto Wind Demon Mountain!
However, they landed on the lower outer tier of Wind Demon Mountain, where cavities and hollows abounded. With the Wind Demon obstructing the escort detachment's sight, the guards failed to spot where the two had ended up.
Just as He Lingchuan considered sneaking down to investigate, he saw the escort leader produce a glittering golden object.
The Jeweled Tree King's spirit seed.
It was also the treasure designated for retrieval by the divine bone necklace.
At that sight, He Lingchuan immediately reined in his rock sheep.
The appearance of the spirit seed sent the Wind Demon's fury skyrocketing to its peak. Its form began to fluctuate, and remarkably thick, muscular arms sprouted from both sides of its body!
Most arrows fired by the guards were blocked by these arms and violently flung back.
Then it closed in once more, swinging its massive arms to bash furiously against the phantom of the giant tree, each blow packing unimaginable gale force.
Once, twice... ten times.
Each impact was tangible and heavy. Everyone could hear a tremendous screeching friction, as though a tarpaulin was about to be ripped to shreds in the next instant.
The wooden staff stuck in the ground was swaying violently as well.
After all, it was merely one of the Jeweled Tree King's severed branches; it could not possibly possess its full might. Enduring until now was already an extraordinary feat.
At this moment, the escort leader dropped to his knees, cupping the spirit seed in both hands, chanting incantations under his breath.
Around them, a deep, resonant voice seemed to echo as well.
Watching as a bystander, He Lingchuan noticed the Wind Demon gradually flushing red as it drew in all the peripheral howling gales. The effect was so pronounced that even from the precipitous peak opposite, He Lingchuan felt the surroundings abruptly fall quiet, and the endless mountain winds ceased.
Only by concentrating all its power in one spot could it exert greater destructive force. Clearly, maintaining such a frenzied assault placed an immense strain on the Wind Demon as well.
Both sides were giving their all.
The wooden staff on the ground finally buckled under the strain; after all, every ounce of pressure was crashing down upon it.
With a pop, it was ripped out of the earth by the wind.
The entire escort detachment instantly lost its sanctuary. A hurricane-strength gale immediately swept everything up into the sky.
Whether living people or corpses, heavy carriages or giant boulders, none were spared.
The barrier had broken; the Wind Demon had triumphed.
It let out a triumphant howling roar.
The escort leader could not keep his footing either, but quick-eyed and swift-handed, he snatched the wooden staff and pressed the spirit seed onto its head!
The shapes of the two objects did not match, and it was impossible to tell how they bonded. Before He Lingchuan could get a closer look, the leader treated the staff like a javelin and hurled it fiercely at the Wind Demon!
Normally, over such a short distance, any projectile would have been knocked off course by the fierce winds. Yet this staff was an exception. Wholly unaffected by the gale, it drove steadily toward its designated target—
—and plunged into the position of the Wind Demon's head.
The spirit seed abruptly burst with dazzling brilliance, like sunlight breaking through over a murky world.
Though the burst of light lasted only a fleeting instant, it spurred the wooden staff into furious growth—lengthening, thickening, branching out...
He Lingchuan watched in astonishment. Weren't these the aerial roots of the Jeweled Tree King?
Without this innate ability, it could never have formed a forest from a single tree, supporting such a colossal canopy.
In just a few breaths, the wooden staff had grown into a massive ball of roots, trapping the Wind Demon inside. It happened so quickly that it even severed two of its arms.
Only up close could one see that each root bore slender aerial tendrils, densely woven into an irregular meshwork tighter than human capillaries.
Naturally, the Wind Demon refused to sit tamely in captivity. Dissolving into several currents of wind, it tried to bore its way out.
Yet every single root tendril radiated golden light, coordinating to form a solid barrier that forcibly held the Wind Demon pinned inside the sphere.
The Wind Demon thrashed left and right within, creating an immense racket, yet failed to break through.
This was one of the Jeweled Tree King's signature demonic arts:
Root Enclosure Art.
Any discerning observer could see that the escort leader was subduing the Wind Demon using the power of the spirit seed. The Jeweled Tree King's spirit seeds were capable of maturing into border-guarding tree sentinels across its domain; the demonic power sealed within was shockingly abundant.
Moreover, trees' capacity to block wind, anchor sand, and absorb water was beyond dispute.
In this era of scarce spiritual energy, perhaps only the Jeweled Tree King, with its unique innate gifts, could achieve such a feat.
That the escort leader could deploy the spirit seed was the result of communicating with the sliver of spiritual awareness the Jeweled Tree King had left inside it.
Bringing it into play had naturally been a last resort. If the stored power within was depleted too heavily, it might never mature into a tree sentinel later on. That would be profoundly detrimental to the stability of the Jeweled Tree Kingdom's northern border.
In an era of dwindling spiritual energy, it had taken the Jeweled Tree King thirty-six years to nurture a single spirit seed like this.
The desperation of their plight and the safety of the delegations had ultimately driven the escort leader to make this decision.
With the Wind Demon bound, the howling winds abruptly died down, and debris fell from the sky like dumplings dropped into boiling water.
The guards who landed first scrambled to rescue others.
Fortunately, the special envoys from both Xuluo Kingdom and the White Elephant Kingdom were still alive, bearing varying degrees of injury. The Xuluo envoy had only survived because his belt caught on a dwarf tree before he was hauled up. But the first thing both did upon being rescued was to gasp desperately for air—
Trapped inside a high-speed vortex, breathing had been utterly impossible.
Those horses and men swept into the vortex earlier, if not battered to death by flying debris in the opening moments, would have suffocated to death or slipped into unconsciousness.
Those less fortunate who plummeted off the cliff were smashed to smithereens, beyond any hope of salvation.
The escort leader dropped to the ground as well. Pausing only to catch a single breath, he hurriedly began chanting the incantation to fully subdue the Wind Demon. No matter how formidable his martial prowess, facing a formless adversary left him with nowhere to apply his strength; he could only dutifully chant the incantation imparted by the Jeweled Tree King.
The drawback of using something freshly learned was always unfamiliarity.
Moreover, the incantation was exasperatingly tongue-twisting and dreadfully long, containing syllables that hardly seemed humanly pronounceable. For the Jeweled Tree King, reciting it was just a casual flick of the tongue, but for the escort leader, a single slip in pronunciation meant starting over. The more errors he made, the more anxious he grew; the more anxious he grew, the more errors he made. Sweating profusely, he had no choice but to take a deep breath and start from the beginning.
Meanwhile, the Wind Demon was not idle either. It whirled furiously inside the root ball, generating another air vortex to draw in the surrounding north winds to replenish itself.
After all, this root ball was not being directed by the Jeweled Tree King in person; it could only operate on its preset defaults: it prevented whatever was inside from getting out, but did not stop what was outside from entering.
Thus, even locked away, the Wind Demon could endlessly draw power from the outside world.
As the Wind Demon rammed harder and harder, the airborne root ball began drifting eastward—directly toward the ruins of the Piaomiao Sect—at considerable speed, at least fifty miles an hour.
Watching this, the escort leader had no better recourse than to untangle his tongue and chant the incantation as quickly as possible.
Not far off, He Lingchuan watched the scene, his eyes darting as an idea struck. He suddenly said to the soul-snatching mirror, "Send out the evil spirits. We've got work."
Though it was daytime, the surrounding skies were dim and dreary, allowing specters to operate, so the soul-snatching mirror readily agreed.
A streak of black light darted out from He Lingchuan's body and drifted toward the official road across the way, entirely unaffected by the winds en route.
Amid the chaotic turmoil, no one would notice a wisp of black smoke drifting about.
The escort leader closed his eyes, calming his mind and reciting the incantation word by word. This time, he finally made no mistakes or omissions.
Just as he reached the final few syllables, a sharp pain suddenly pierced his calf—someone had stabbed him with a blade!
Worse yet, the ambusher actually seized his foot and dragged him backward!
The escort leader's recitation was cut short yet again.
Around him, shouts rang out from two of his subordinates:
"What are you doing?!"
"Let go!"
"It's a spy!"
The escort leader looked down, only to see that the ambusher was an injured man who had been lying on the ground, on the verge of death!
Only now, the wounded man's expression was grotesque, wreathed in black mist.
Hm?
Shielded by origin power, the leader instantly perceived that this fellow was possessed by an evil spirit.
With a swift kick, the escort captain sent the man flying. The wounded man's head struck a crag with a dull thud, brains splattering out.
The black smoke on his body swiftly drifted away.
Only then did the guards realize that the unfortunate man kicked to death belonged to the Xuluo Kingdom delegation; he had been sucked into the sky by the tornado earlier, losing half his life when he crashed down.
Furious yet helpless, the captain could only take a deep breath and start the incantation anew!
Yet in the time lost to this delay, the Wind Demon had rammed the root ball all the way upward, crossing the peak of Wind Demon Rock.
"Well done," He Lingchuan patted the soul-snatching mirror in praise.
Now that the Jeweled Tree spirit seed had finally left the escort detachment and headed toward this peak, he was naturally going to lend the Wind Demon a helping hand for now.
The more chaotic the scene, the greater his chances of stealing the spirit seed.
He Lingchuan could also roughly guess why the Wind Demon insisted on returning here. But as he urged the sheep downward, he suddenly frowned.
At this moment, there were quite a few outsiders inside the hollow of the mountain.
Smart people were never in short supply. Some merchants and travelers had come to their senses, realizing that the official road was the Wind Demon's hunting ground while the opposite peak remained unharmed. As long as they stayed away from the crowds, the wind monster would not come after them.
And so they had crossed over.
Yet in He Lingchuan's eyes, they had merely come to die.
Chapter 396