After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 405: Chapter 404: Wind Demon Squad

That thunderous BOOM was the sound of the Wind Demon absorbing the Meridian Divine Wind and shattering the Treasure Tree King Root Ball.

The dignified envoy of a kingdom, who should have been surrounded by his Guard Team, had somehow appeared in the heart of the mountain with both legs broken. No matter how you looked at it, he was a prisoner.

Shi the Second figured he couldn’t afford to offend whoever had captured the man, so he hadn’t helped.

Hee Lingchuan nodded. ”You did the right thing.”

It turned out that Fushan Yue had also seen the battle between the Wind Demon and the root ball intensifying. He had conveniently stashed the captured Chiyan Kingdom envoy in the mountain’s core before turning back to take advantage of the chaos.

That scoundrel truly never missed an opportunity.

Hee Lingchuan’s eyes darted about.

’In fact, was he any different?’

Just then, Shi the Second suddenly pointed and cried out, ”Look there, look there!”

Hee Lingchuan swept his gaze over and saw countless small tornadoes forming on the mountain path ahead. One after another, they lined up along the road, coming to reap their harvest of lives.

Needless to say, although the Wind Demon was chasing the Guard Team captain, it hadn’t forgotten the many enemies still behind it. Thus, it had split off this row of mini-tornadoes to clean up the rest.

But it had just absorbed the Meridian Divine Wind. While the little twisters it released weren’t large, they were exceptionally dense. They traveled for over ten li on the mountain path without dissipating, sucking people and carriages into the sky and tossing them off cliffs as they went!

Watching the tornadoes advance in a line toward the Stone Gate Merchant Team, Shi the Second’s voice trembled. ”My merchant team! Brother Hee, what do we do?!”

Hee Lingchuan didn’t answer, simply urged his sheep to descend the mountain faster.

Meanwhile, with the Stone Gate Merchant Team.

Seeing the Wind Demon rampaging on the opposite mountain and the Guard Team fleeing in disarray, the Stone Gate Merchant Team had, of course, halted, not daring to advance.

Many other travelers were behind them. Unable to move forward or retreat, they were all stuck on the mountain road. They could only watch the terrifying spectacle of tornadoes rising in the distance, pointing and chattering away.

As long as it wasn’t their problem, they were happy to watch the show.

But soon, someone screamed, ”What’s that?!”

”Tornadoes! There are tornadoes coming this way!”

”Everyone, run!”

The people at the front turned and fled, wishing their parents had given them two more legs.

The Stone Gate Merchant Team also saw the tornadoes rounding the mountain. And it was... a whole row of them!

Their scalps tingled, and they were about to turn and run without a second thought. But just then, a Big Horned Sheep leaped up from the steep slope below the path. The sight was perilous, but its footing was sure. Before it even came to a stop, its rider called out, ”Stone Gate Merchant Team, follow me for guaranteed survival!”

Right now, those two words, ”Guaranteed survival!”, were more potent than any oath or vow. What’s more, Shi the Second was on the back of the very same Rock Sheep, urging everyone, ”Hurry and keep up!”

In their moment of utter panic, the sight of the two of them riding this signature Big Horned Sheep was like a ray of hope.

The men didn’t hesitate and immediately followed.

The conventional path back was blocked by the tornadoes. Not wanting to get swept into the sky, Hee Lingchuan had to ride his sheep down a diagonal path, cutting a wide arc beneath the cliff and leaping over the numerous abandoned carriages on the Official Road just to reach them.

It was all thanks to his sheep’s incredible leaping ability, which treated treacherous terrain as flat ground.

Fortunately, he had gotten a clear view of the terrain from the peak of Wind Demon Mountain. He now led the group, with them driving their carriages, toward a hollow on the mountain to their front left.

”W-what?” A few Stewards, their faces pale as they looked at the tornado pillars above the mountain, stammered, ”There’s no shelter from the wind here!”

’They weren’t running away, but heading right into the wind? If it sweeps over us, what’s stopping us from being sent flying? The fact that we’re fatter than everyone else?’

”It won’t be able to sweep you away!” Hee Lingchuan waved his hand. ”If you don’t want to die, run faster!”

At a critical moment like this, whoever spoke with the most confidence became the leader. Gritting their teeth and stamping their feet, they steeled their resolve and followed his command.

Compared to the routed crowd fleeing for their lives up ahead, they were truly going against the flow.

Luckily, this mountain hollow was quite spacious. Most of the Stone Gate Merchant Team’s carriages could squeeze in, but the last seven or eight simply wouldn’t fit.

”Forget those carriages!” Shi the Second decisively called the men inside.

The carriages had barely come to a halt when the tornadoes arrived.

Hee Lingchuan knew the wind was upon them when he saw the sky behind the merchant team suddenly darken.

He remained calm, pulling three Wind Lion Lord statues from his Storage Ring and ordering the men to move them to the three corners of the hollow, at the outer perimeter of their group.

The moment the Wind Lion Lords touched the ground, the men’s clothes stopped fluttering. The hollow had become a safe harbor.

Then, the tornadoes were upon them. Their tails swept past the group, sucking up countless bits of dirt and sand. The once-broad slope was visibly trimmed down before their very eyes.

A single tornado was no match for the Wind Demon’s true form, but their strength was in numbers. With more than a dozen of them working in tandem, the sound of the wind was earth-shattering, a veritable roar of the apocalypse.

Except for Hee Lingchuan, every member of the merchant team was crouched or lying on the ground, hands clasped over their heads, terrified that they’d be blown away if they so much as stood up.

’In reality, what difference would standing up or not make?’

Only Hee Lingchuan stood firm in the center of the three Wind Lion Lords, looking up at the tornadoes.

They seemed to pause, as if to assess this group.

In the past, they would not attack people or fields near a Wind Lion Lord. But today...

Well, this group of people didn’t seem hostile, nor did they pose much of a threat. The tornadoes didn’t linger for long. They swirled away to chase the prey frantically fleeing up ahead.

The merchant team, their nerves finally settling, remained on the ground for a long time before daring to lift their heads, only to find the tornadoes had moved far away.

Just moments ago, the team had been directly in their path, yet they were completely unharmed!

From their perspective, Eldest Young Master Hee’s back looked so tall, so imposing!

He exuded a profound sense of security.

A Steward stammered, ”Young Master Hee, are we... are we safe?”

Hee Lingchuan patted the large head of a Wind Lion Lord. ”It’s fine now. Everyone, get up.”

The men stood on the mountain road, looking left and right, and couldn’t help but shiver. There were no living people left on the road—

—aside from the Stone Gate Merchant Team themselves.

At this moment, the dark clouds in the sky began to scatter. Hee Lingchuan pointed upwards. ”Wait until the sky clears and the sun is out before you move forward. You should be fine then.”

”Where are you going?” Shi the Second now saw him as a human Calming Pill; he felt anxious whenever Hee Lingchuan wasn’t around.

”To settle a score. I’ll see you up ahead.” Throwing these words over his shoulder, Hee Lingchuan’s sheep leaped twenty feet in a single bound, disappearing into the rugged mountains in the blink of an eye. ”Don’t worry, the Wind Demon won’t be showing up again anytime soon.”

***

By the time the Wind Demon finished dealing with the Guard Team captain and returned, it found that the remaining members of the Guard Team had already fled halfway down the mountain. It was furious.

The Guard Team was, after all, protected by Primordial Power. The row of small tornadoes was no match for the Wind Demon’s true form, so they had only lost about twenty men before the rest ultimately escaped.

There was no forest here, but there was a Stone Forest. The ground, eroded by glaciers over long years, was pocked with countless holes. The stone pillars rose and fell at different heights, making the terrain far less open than the mountaintop.

Lacking the howling north wind as a constant source of replenishment, the Wind Demon gave chase for a few hundred yards before realizing its movements were severely restricted.

These humans had also scattered, some even hiding in underground caves. It had to expend great effort just to catch one or two.

After a thirty-minute stalemate, the Wind Demon had no choice but to retreat sullenly.

Another major reason was that it was also heavily injured.

Every attack from the Guard Team had been infused with Primordial Power. For a wild monster like itself, the potent Primordial Power of the Treasure Tree Kingdom was almost unbearable. If not for the howling winds on the summit providing the perfect home-field advantage, and if not for the timely replenishment from the Meridian Divine Wind, it would have been the one fleeing in disarray after exhausting its power against the three hundred guards’ repeated assaults.

Besides, did they think it was so easy to break free from the root ball grown from the King of Treasure Tree’s Spirit Seed?

The power of the Meridian Divine Wind had been mostly consumed by then.

What it needed to do now was return to the Wind Cave beneath the Piaomiao Sect ruins as quickly as possible to lick its wounds and recover its Primordial Qi.

With the Wind Demon occupied with the Guard Team for so long, what merchant team would dare to linger on the Official Road? Those who could turn back had turned back, preferring to return to Black Stone Stronghold and wait a few more days for the official road there to be repaired. Others simply moved far away, retreating to a safe distance to watch this Wind Monster return to Wind Demon Mountain.

Of course, most of them didn’t make it.

Up and down the mountain, the road was paved with bones.

Shi the Second remembered Hee Lingchuan’s words. When the dark clouds scattered and sunlight once again bathed the Mortal World, he led the Commerce Association’s team forward.

As promised, the journey was peaceful. Nothing happened.

If one ignored the corpses and wreckage of carriages hanging from the cliffs and roadsides, it was as if the path had returned to normal.

As for Hee Lingchuan, he found a large boulder to hide behind. Seeing that no one was around, he secretly took out the fragments of the root ball from his Storage Ring to deal with them, lest delays breed trouble.

And indeed, he found the Spirit Seed.

Perhaps because its Demon Power was exhausted, the object no longer glittered with an imposing golden light. It had reverted to the appearance of a pale-yellow seed, coated in a hard shell with faint speckles.

If he hadn’t personally seen the Tree-man hand it to the Tang State Minister, Hee Lingchuan would have mistaken it for a bird’s egg. He gave it a squeeze and found it a bit brittle. Any more force and he might crush it, which wouldn’t meet the Divine Bone Necklace’s requirements.

He quietly brought the object close to the Divine Bone. It once again glowed with red light and, without any hesitation, sucked the seed in.

The Divine Bone Necklace had swallowed something as massive as Second Madam Zhu’s Relic Shell without any effort, so Hee Lingchuan didn’t think this was a big deal at all.

He understood now. What the Divine Bone Necklace wanted, the Grand Square Pot also wanted.

’What does this Divine Artifact want with a tree seed?’

Hee Lingchuan didn’t waste the remaining root fragments either, feeding them all to the Soul-Catching Mirror.

”Ah, this... this... oh, all of this!” the Mirror cried out in joy.

During the King of Treasure Tree’s birthday celebration, it had wished for just a single branch.

It never expected its wish to come true so quickly, and with a portion several times larger.

’Master is being far too generous!’

...

At the same time, a powerful, ancient roar erupted from White Cloud Mountain.

The sound wasn’t world-shaking, but it instantly spread throughout Fufeng City, shaking the spiritual qi and blood of all living beings and causing a deep unease to settle in their hearts.

Whether man or woman, old or young, human or Demon, everyone immediately stopped what they were doing and looked north with trepidation.