The more devout among them dropped to their knees on the spot.
Without needing any explanation, the residents of Fufeng City all realized one thing:
The Jeweled Tree King was enraged.
This supreme ruler of the Jeweled Tree Kingdom was normally good-tempered, and spent eleven months out of the year in closed-door hibernation. For most residents, this was the very first time they had ever felt its wrath.
Chancellor Tang had departed Mount Baiyun only two quarters of an hour ago. He immediately ordered his carriage to turn around and hurried back for an audience.
"My King, what has happened?"
"The spirit seed!" The lake on Mount Baiyun was calm no longer. Fierce winds whipped up surging waves that battered the shore again and again, while the Jeweled Tree King's magnificent canopy swayed in the gale. "The connection between me and the spirit seed was abruptly severed! How is this possible?"
Chancellor Tang ventured cautiously, "Could the escort detachment have suffered an accident?"
"By now, they should have reached the Gale Tundra." The Jeweled Tree King's voice remained thick with fury. "Even if the spirit seed were abducted, I should still be able to sense its general location!"
Thirty-six years of painstaking effort had gone into gestating that spirit seed. How could it remain calm now that it was gone?
"Could it be that the spirit seed is already..." *Destroyed?* Chancellor Tang could not bring himself to voice the word.
"No, it is still alive," the Jeweled Tree King said, somewhat perplexed. "Yet I simply cannot sense its whereabouts."
How preposterous!
It could perceive the state of every single tree guard within the kingdom's borders.
"Dispatch men at once. I want to know what happened!"
***
The hollow of Wind Demon Mountain.
Having wrapped up his loose ends, Fu Shanyue jumped down into the fissure to interrogate his captive. "Where is the bribe that Shanyu Kingdom's fatuous ruler sent to Chiyan?"
The Chiyan envoy clenched his teeth and remained silent.
Fu Shanyue had no patience to wait for an answer. Only after scouring every last fragment in the mountain hollow had he discovered that the spirit seed was gone, realizing he had been played for a fool by the kid riding the mountain goat.
Vexed to the extreme, he took it out on the envoy, tearing off the man's ring finger in one violent wrench. Amid piercing screams, he peeled the ring from the severed digit.
*Hm? Not this one.* It was merely an ordinary ruby ring.
Fu Shanyue snapped off another finger and tried again.
This time he hit the mark.
He dumped out the contents of the blood-stained storage ring, spilling a small mountain of odds and ends, including quite a collection of bottles and jars.
The Chiyan envoy had already passed out from the agony, only to be slapped awake by a succession of blows. "Which one is it?"
Before the envoy could even catch his breath, he spat out a curse: "My King treated you with such magnanimity! How could you... Ahhh!"
Fu Shanyue broke another of his fingers and sneered, "I'm not in the mood for nonsense. Next time, it'll be your neck. As for the medicine, I can take my time searching for it."
Unable to endure the torment, the Chiyan envoy could only point at a small wooden vial. "That one! It's that one!"
The vial was only the length of a middle finger, hand-carved from wood with a sprig of wintersweet blossoms etched onto its surface. It appeared utterly unremarkable.
However, it was sealed with gold lacquer.
Could the packaging really be so crude? Fu Shanyue regarded it with half-suspicion. "Truly?"
"It's real, it's real!" the Chiyan envoy gasped continuously. "That is precisely what the Shanyu envoy handed over to me at Willow Residence!"
Fu Shanyue's eyes shifted. "Since gifts were presented, there ought to be an accompanying letter, shouldn't there?"
"Yes, yes." With great difficulty, the Chiyan envoy drew a gold-flecked letter from a pile of documents. The wax seal remained intact. "This is a missive from the King of Shanyu to my sovereign."
Fu Shanyue snatched it, tore it open, and pulled out the paper. He first verified the signature and seal, scanned the contents, and muttered, "It really is..."
Rolling the little vial between his fingers, he popped the stopper and took a whiff.
Inside was a pale red liquid exuding an extraordinary, sweet fragrance. A sudden urge welled within Fu Shanyue, tempting him to gulp it down in a single draft.
The sensation was remarkably intense, hardly inferior to Emperor's Flowing Dew.
It seemed this was the genuine article after all. He had expended so much effort, and ever since Three Hearts Plain, nothing had gone according to plan. Fortunately, everything had finally returned to the right track, and the item was now in his hands.
Relieved, Fu Shanyue asked the Chiyan envoy, "Do you know what is contained inside?"
The envoy shook his head blankly. "I have no idea. I was only ordered to bring it back."
"Then you're of no further use."
With a sharp crack, Fu Shanyue twisted the envoy's neck.
Almost in that exact instant, his left hand felt lighter. Someone had actually slipped the vial right out of his grasp!
Fu Shanyue was thoroughly shocked. Curling his left fingers into a claw, he swiped backward on reflex.
His strike was so swift that the air tore like silk, though the sound was barely audible against the howling winds in the depths of Wind Demon Rock.
Yet the thief retreated even faster. A phantom blur flashed backward, coming to a halt at the outermost edge of the stone cavern with a light scrape—just one stride away from leaping into the mountain interior.
"It's you." It was the fellow on the goat.
Fury erupted inside Fu Shanyue. "You already snatched the spirit seed, and now you dare rob me of my things?"
This was intolerable!
"This belongs to you? Not Chiyan?" He Lingchuan mimicked Fu Shanyue's earlier motion, bringing the wooden vial under his nose to sniff.
Fu Shanyue had orchestrated such an elaborate scheme—from slaughtering the Eling envoy at Three Hearts Plain all the way to releasing the Wind Demon on the Gale Tundra to assault the Jeweled Tree Kingdom's escort detachment. Every single step had been ruthless, yet was it all just to seize this little vial?
Courtesy demanded reciprocity, and He Lingchuan was never one to pass up an opportunity.
Moments ago, he had used Lord Boshan's snake skin to conceal his form nearby, combining it with the divine ability Stubborn Stone to completely mask his presence. Aided by the howling wind outside, he had managed to slip past Fu Shanyue's eyes, ears, and nose.
Yet this scent within the vial—this unique, sweet aroma—felt faintly familiar to He Lingchuan. Where had he smelled it before?
He furrowed his brows.
Unlike Fu Shanyue, however, he felt no overwhelming impulse to drink it.
Fu Shanyue rose to his feet in a flash, pointing at the Chiyan envoy as he spoke each word with deliberate venom: "Return the vial, or your end will be far more gruesome than his."
He prowled forward step by step, like a leopard coiling for a pounce. Anyone who had witnessed him in combat would never doubt the weight behind that threat.
Yet He Lingchuan merely waved a hand. "Wait a moment!"
A peculiar expression crossed his face, for he had finally remembered where he recognized the scent from.
"What would a *ba* like you want with this?"
Indeed, over the past few days, He Lingchuan had entered his dreams to search the scrolls of Wenxuan Pavilion and sought guidance from masters at the Hall of Immortal Inquiries, trying to figure out what kind of creature Fu Shanyue actually was.
He possessed the appearance of a mortal human, yet harbored immense demonic power and a thirst to drink the vital essence and blood of monsters and men alike.
There truly was an entity that matched all those traits, though strictly speaking, it was classified not as a demon, but as an aberration.
A *ba*.
When a mortal died, an extraordinary turn of fate could transform the corpse into a fierce undead being, one capable of walking the earth without fearing sunlight.
The conditions required to forge a *ba* were exceptionally harsh, making them exceedingly rare even in ancient times. In the present age, one could practically put it on display in an exhibition hall.
He Lingchuan had hardly expected to be so "fortunate" as to cross paths with such a rare specimen by random chance.
Seeing Fu Shanyue take another step forward, He Lingchuan tilted the vial outward. "Take another step, and I dump it."
Directly beneath him lay the fissure. No matter how formidable Fu Shanyue was, he would never be able to salvage the liquid once poured.
Fu Shanyue had no choice but to halt. "That thing is useless to you, but it is the key to my breakthrough."
"The key to your breakthrough?" He Lingchuan found that even more bizarre. "You're a *ba*. Even if you rely on external aid, shouldn't the key to your breakthrough be drinking blood?"
"Of course."
He Lingchuan frowned. "Do you even know what this is?"
Fu Shanyue did not reply.
He Lingchuan immediately tilted the vial further.
Fu Shanyue was forced to speak: "Legend has it that a few true dragon eggs still survive in this world. This is the fetal blood and bone marrow extracted from such an egg."
"Are you saying this is dragon marrow?" He Lingchuan's tone turned exceedingly strange. "As in dragon marrow and phoenix liver?"
"Yes."
"And you intend to drink this to boost your cultivation?"
"Is there a problem with that?"
He Lingchuan rubbed his nose, struggling to hold back a laugh.
Fu Shanyue's sword-like brows twitched, already contemplating how he would torture this bastard to death in a moment. To his surprise, He Lingchuan suddenly asked, "I heard the King of Chiyan is also a *ba*. What relation do you have to him?"
Chiyan was the newest vassal demon kingdom in Beijia's history, having been founded merely a hundred and fifty years ago, which had finalized the count of Beijia's vassal demon kingdoms at thirteen.
The number had fluctuated throughout history, but for the past two centuries, it had remained thirteen.
Fu Shanyue gave no answer.
In the next second, He Lingchuan pulled the vial back, popped the wooden stopper securely in place, and tossed it back to Fu Shanyue.
The gesture caught Fu Shanyue completely off guard. "What are you doing?"
Was there truly an idiot in this world who would just hand dragon marrow back to someone else?
"Good luck to you." He Lingchuan leaped backward, dropping into the mountain interior.
Fu Shanyue rushed over to look. The fellow had swung over to the high cliff using a grappling cord and was already preparing to mount his mountain goat for a swift descent.
Yet before He Lingchuan could reach the goat, a dark shadow rose from the terraced fields and charged straight at him.
The force of the wind was immense.
He Lingchuan happened to be passing by the mouth of a stone cavern, and the violent gale hurled him straight inside, nearly slamming his face into the wall.
Reacting with remarkable agility, he whipped out a Wind Lion Lord stone carving from his storage ring and slammed it firmly onto the ground.
The surrounding wind died down at once.
Turning his head, he came face-to-face with the Wind Demon.
The creature had shrunk once more, standing only slightly taller than an ordinary man. It glanced at the Wind Lion Lord, then glared at He Lingchuan, letting out a couple of angry roars that made its displeasure abundantly clear.
It possessed sentience, knowing full well that Fu Shanyue had just been coerced because the item had been in He Lingchuan's hands. Only after He Lingchuan returned the wooden vial had it seized this opportunity to seek revenge.
"Hey, as a person—no, as a wind—you ought to know gratitude." He Lingchuan patted the Wind Lion Lord a couple of times while wagging a finger at the Wind Demon. "If I hadn't interrupted the escort leader's spell earlier, you would have been suppressed by the Jeweled Tree King's root sphere long ago."
The Wind Demon paid little heed to his words, yet it hesitated, circling in front of the Wind Lion Lord with palpable reluctance.
This was nothing like the murderous frenzy it had displayed during their previous encounters.
Even so, He Lingchuan remained on high alert. Facing the Wind Demon's true form, could this stone carving truly hold its ground?
After circling twice, the Wind Demon seemed to make up its mind.
How could it be stopped in its tracks by a mere stone pedestal?
These pedestals had long departed from the places they were meant to protect.
With a sudden, earth-shattering roar, it charged forward.
The Wind Lion Lord began to shudder and shake violently, as though it were being pummeled by a flurry of heavy clubs.
Then came a sharp crack, and the Wind Lion Lord split apart.
Watching the battle unfold from not far off, Fu Shanyue shook his head.
The Wind Lion Lord indeed possessed the power to ward off wind and quell evil, but every divine ability had its limits and boundaries. Quelling ordinary astral winds was no trouble at all, but against the Wind Demon—
Chapter 399