Yet the grass and foliage ran wild, clearly unkempt for some time.
After the Panlong Army seized Xiji, this garden had been neglected. With so much to rebuild across the capital, no one had yet spared the attention for it.
General Nan Ke frowned. "This grass is far too tall."
The foxtail grass beside him stood nearly six chi high. Even left unattended for two months, could it really grow this tall? Give it another month or so, and the place would turn into a paradise for weeds.
Attendant Chang said, "That is just how the Western Garden is. Every plant grows rampantly here. If left untended for even a few days, it gets out of hand."
General Nan Ke asked curiously, "Did none of you look into the cause?"
"The late king sent men to dig three chi into the earth to search, but found nothing," Attendant Chang replied. "The palace also summoned sorcerers to inspect it, who only said that vitality here is dense and promotes the growth of flora, which was supposedly very beneficial to the human body. The queen was frail in health, so she frequently sat in the pavilion here to view the flowers."
"This place may spur plant growth, but it brings no benefit to the human body; in fact, it is harmful," General Red said mildly. "Did the queen die young?"
"Ah, yes. In her third year living here, she..."
General Red turned to the soldiers behind her. "Fan out. Look for wherever snakes, insects, rats, and ants congregate the most and grow the largest!"
The crowd scattered at once.
The garden was vast; once thirty or forty men plunged in, they vanished from sight in an instant.
These dozens had no tender feelings for blossoms or foliage, stabbing their weapons straight into the undergrowth. Small creatures naturally nested in the lush clumps; mice and ants scrambled to flee, and Willow even prodded a snake nest.
Had she not been on duty, she would have loved to roast all seven or eight snakes into spicy strips.
Right then, He Lingchuan caught a fleeting shadow out of the corner of his eye darting into the brush.
Fast as it moved, He Lingchuan had sharper eyes, instantly recognizing it as a yellow weasel—and it was as large as a wild dog.
At that size, it had to be a monster.
Taking two strides after it, he heard rustling ahead, but it soon faded away.
Pushing through the tall grass in the direction the sound had vanished, He Lingchuan soon discovered a massive tree at the end of the patch.
It was an ancient dragon-claw locust tree with a trunk thick enough to require six men to encircle. Its foliage was dense and lush, its leaves surprisingly casting a metallic sheen under the sunlight.
He circled the tree once and found no burrows or hollows.
How had the shadow vanished?
He Lingchuan widened his search, spiraling outward circle by circle.
Finally, beneath a low knoll two zhang from the tree's roots, he spotted a jagged hole. The opening was concealed by dense shrubs and covered with a few broken tiles—the sort seen everywhere throughout the garden.
Examining the traces around the entrance, He Lingchuan had a good idea of what lay inside. Drawing on his experience hunting monsters on the Chipa Plateau, there were at least four or five yellow weasels nesting here—likely an entire family, neat and complete.
With the Western Garden's thriving flora and abundance of snakes and rodents, it was paradise for weasel monsters.
He Lingchuan retrieved a bundle of herbs from his robes, lit it, and tossed it into the burrow while keeping a sharp eye on his surroundings.
Before long, in addition to the burrow entrance, smoke remarkably began drifting from the trunk of the old locust tree as well.
It seemed the burrow in the ground connected directly beneath the tree.
He raised his voice: "There's a den of weasel monsters here!"
With a rustle of the brush, General Red arrived at his side before He Lingchuan could blink more than a couple of times.
That was... absurdly fast.
General Red glanced at the old locust tree, then bent down to peer at the hole. "Well done," she praised.
Two sharp squeaks sounded, and a weasel monster burst from the hole, lunging to bite General Red.
He Lingchuan covered his face, unable to watch.
Sure enough, the next second, General Red caught it by the scruff of the neck and held it up.
The reason she did not hold it upside down by its bushy tail was that creatures like weasels possessed biochemical weapons...
Ignoring its bared teeth and snarls, General Red shook the yellow weasel in her grip. "I know you understand human speech. Cooperate obediently, and none of your family will come to harm."
Small creatures like this were most sensitive to qi signatures; her oppressive aura was terrifying, so the weasel gave up after a couple of struggles, letting out a few squeaks.
Dangling in General Red's grasp, it could not curl into a ball, but its tail quivered ceaselessly, as though staring death in the face. He Lingchuan genuinely worried it might lose control and let loose a foul blast.
Fortunately, General Red immediately spoke: "I keep my word. What is beneath that old locust tree?"
The weasel squeaked a few more times. General Red seemed to understand, and turned to He Lingchuan: "Call everyone over and bring the digging tools."
He Lingchuan nodded and went to carry out the order.
About fifteen minutes later, the Gale Army soldiers and artisans arrived with tools in tow.
General Red had already released the weasel. Pointing at the old locust tree, she commanded, "Dig beneath the tree in the direction of the burrow until you unearth whatever is down there."
This ground had gone untouched for who knew how many years, hard as iron, yet it could not resist the combined assault of shovels and hoes; soon a large pit was chiseled out.
The deeper they went, the darker crimson the soil became.
Below four chi, the earth was blood-red, and with the underground seepage, it felt clammy and viscous to the touch, remarkably resembling blood...
Looking at it, General Red remarked, "The yin energy here is even denser than the vitality, and a wood ghost has been planted here. How could anyone weak in body fare well lingering in this place?"
Attendant Chang craned his neck to peer into the pit. "Those sorcerers were talking utter nonsense."
Willow snorted. "More likely those sorcerers knew full well."
As everyone dug, the old locust tree suddenly moved without any wind, its boughs and leaves rustling loudly.
The artisans hesitated in fear and suspicion, not daring to continue, while the Gale Army soldiers treated it as nothing and kept swinging their mattocks.
"Nourished by what lies beneath, this tree has turned into a monster too, and now it fears we will dig up its roots," General Red said, pressing one hand against the locust trunk. "Cause no trouble, and I will spare your life."
Yet her warning proved futile this time. The old locust tree rustled violently, and the earth beneath everyone's feet began to shift.
Door Plank was standing at the very bottom. Two tree roots suddenly shot out of the dirt; one wound around his calf, yanking hard, while the other wrapped tightly around his waist, constricting with immense force.
Caught unprepared, Door Plank fell to the ground with a grunt of pain. Beside him, Willow saw his waist cinched inward instantly. Given the old tree's strength, snapping a man in two would hardly be a challenge.
Stranger still, why would a locust tree have aerial roots as well-developed as a banyan's?
Willow drew her blade with a backhand strike and hacked at the root.
With this woman's strength, she could have cleaved off a bear's head, yet the root remained completely undamaged, showing only a pale notch.
Everyone heard a sharp clang; the wood rang out more like metal than timber.
In the next instant, He Lingchuan plunged into the pit, bringing his blade down in a clean strike that sheared the root in two.
Clutching his waist, Door Plank drew in a long, ragged breath. That was close—he had nearly been snapped in half.
"Everyone out!" He Lingchuan roared, seizing two nearby artisans and tossing them out of the pit. The other Gale Army soldiers needed no prompting and leaped out on their own.
Thanks to his quick thinking, more roots erupted from the soil, striking out at anyone nearby and writhing as nimbly as pythons.
He Lingchuan swung his blade in a tempest of slashes, severing the assaulting roots one after another.
A red fluid bled from the severed ends of the roots, looking even more like fresh blood.
An artisan at the pit's edge struck at a root with his pickaxe, only for the pick head to snap off and fly away while the root remained unbroken.
The onlookers clicked their tongues in astonishment, finally realizing just how tough these roots were.
They were nearly as hard as the palace walls outside.
"Refusing a toast only to drink a forfeit," General Red muttered. Drawing her spear from seemingly nowhere, its tip alight with a pale flame, she thrust it straight into the massive trunk.
The moment the fire met the locust wood, it flared with a whoosh and spread outward, as if doused in oil.
The bark crackled and popped under the flames, emitting sharp, piercing shrieks that sounded like wailing.
Withdrawing her spear, General Red circled the dragon-claw locust and casually snapped off a root to examine it closely.
"Not bad, not bad at all!"
He Lingchuan could hear that she was somewhat surprised, yet genuinely pleased. General Red then tapped the trunk lightly, and the pale flames vanished as if by magic.
Had it not been for the lingering burnt scent and the charred section of trunk, the roaring fire just now would have seemed like an illusion.
The tip of General Red's spear tapped the trunk again. "Resist again, and I will sever your roots and wipe you out entirely."
This time, the dragon-claw locust gave no response.
Only then did she address the crowd: "Keep digging."
The artisans and Gale Army soldiers jumped back down and resumed excavating.
No matter how they dug, the roots no longer lashed out to cause trouble.
Digging at this point was actually far more difficult, as the locust tree's root system was gnarled and interwoven at this depth, forming a tight mesh that guarded whatever lay below.
At this stage, General Red instructed everyone to avoid damaging the roots as much as possible.
Yet various animal bones were gradually unearthed from the pit—cats, dogs, and even three human skeletons!
Two of them belonged to an adult man and woman, while the last was tiny, belonging to an infant.
General Nan Ke marveled, "This locust tree has been catching and eating people, and the palace was completely unaware?"
Standing nearby, Attendant Chang cleared his throat and explained, "These people were not caught by the locust monster; they were buried here."
A'luo turned the bones over. A large hole was caved into the back of the male skull, clearly the fatal wound.
Willow spat. "Royal palaces are all the same under the sun."
Everyone kept digging.
About a quarter of an hour later, Door Plank's shovel struck something hard.
He scraped away the dirt with his hands and shouted, "I found it!"
A section of jade-white bone emerged from the red earth.
More divine remains!
General Red showed no excitement, merely ordering men to stretch a massive tarpaulin over the pit to block the sunlight from reaching the bottom.
In another half an hour, the sun would dip below the horizon, yet General Red blocked even this faint, feeble sunlight.
Having struck something in the soil, everyone's enthusiasm surged, and they dug down with vigor—
Mostly out of curiosity, eager to see what gods actually looked like. The divine remains embedded in the palace wall earlier had not offered a full view.
Soon, the uppermost remains were cleared of earth.
Likely due to geological conditions, over a dozen divine remains were piled on top of one another, their skeletal frames craggy yet largely intact.
Everyone marveled at the sight.
These dead "celestial gods" appeared to stand over a zhang tall, markedly larger than humans. Yet their heads, necks, and upper bodies closely resembled humans, save for their elongated craniums and differing numbers of fingers—some had six fingers on a hand, others only four.
Below the waist, the variations were even greater. One skeleton possessed an extra tail extending from behind, while another had no legs whatsoever.
He Lingchuan asked curiously, "Are gods not a single race?"
General Red said impassively, "Are monsters a single race?"
Touching his nose, He Lingchuan understood General Red's point in an instant. "Celestial gods" was merely a collective term, not a single species, just as beasts and birds attained enlightenment to become monsters—and monsters came in every imaginable shape and form.
Chapter 442