Where Immortals Once Walked

“You’re not a ravenous devourer, and you don’t have a mother-body to borrow power from. If you create a blood-and-flesh fortress, you’ll be relying entirely on the brain core itself. The dregs of divine energy inside it are pitifully small... Hm, you’ll probably only be able to activate it once, and it will probably only last for four hours at most. Also, the fortress you’ll be able to create will be much smaller. It definitely won’t be anything as sprawling and complex as the Red Peak Mine underground palace,” said the Red General. “You can treat it as a magical artifact. If you can lure enemies into battle within it, you’ll gain a substantial advantage. As for exactly how to use it, you’ll have to figure that out yourself when the time comes.”

It’s only got a pitifully small amount of divine energy, and it can still generate an entire blood-and-flesh fortress out of nothing?

He Lingchuan felt that the Red General’s definition of “pitifully small” did not match his in the slightest. Then again, she was actually the God Mitian. From that vantage point, perhaps this really was just mere crumbs to her.

Still, holding the ravenous devourer’s brain core in his hand, he suddenly felt that all the suffering of the past few hours had not been in vain.

But when he remembered what it had cost to obtain this thing, his smile faded.

“By the way, the moment you use the ravenous devourer’s brain core, you’ll almost definitely alert the Ferry-Crossing Mother. The two are of one lineage. As long as the Ferry-Crossing Mother still exists, it will sense it.”

He Lingchuan asked carefully, “What kind of consequences are we talking about?”

“As long as you don’t bow and worship it, don’t call upon it for divine descent, there usually won’t be any immediate backlash.” The Red General’s tone turned lazy, almost indifferent. “But it will remember you.”

So I’ll be remembered by a god?

He Lingchuan understood the subtext perfectly.

I guess that unless I have no other choice, I shouldn’t use this thing.

He still had another question.

“This mission...” Why had it been assigned to patrol guards in the first place? But then, He Lingchuan hesitated and said instead, “No, never mind, it’s nothing.”

“We only discovered midway that one of the ferry-crossing ghostspawn that appeared this time was a ravenous devourer.” The Red General seemed to hear the unsaid words distinctly. “But even if there had been no ravenous devourer, this assignment still should not have been given to you.”

If she said it should not have been, then when they returned to the city, someone would have to bear responsibility. Someone would pay a price.

Before the moon even climbed above the treetops, the group finally returned to Red Peak Town.

As they rode out of the empty wilderness and back toward people, a flood dragon-headed faceplate seemed to form over the Red General’s face all on its own, hiding her true features behind the ferocious visage of a black flood dragon.

Now and then, He Lingchuan glanced over. Behind the flood dragon mask, it felt as if there was only darkness.

Normally, when a person wears a mask, at least their eyes would be visible. The shape of the socket, the lines at the corner, the spacing of the pupils—none of that could be hidden from anyone who knew them well.

But the Red General’s mask was strange. The flood dragon’s eyes were filled with a formless, depthless darkness. Even when she walked straight into the lamplight, it was as if the light simply could not reach in.

The rest of her armor was equally striking, consisting of dark red mail with black accents, forged so precisely that every joint moved flawlessly with her body. An understated flood dragon’s head in dark gold adorned her chest.

With that mask added on top, a sharp, ruthless aura surged off her in waves.

The townsfolk of Red Peak Town came out to watch. A child of four or five caught sight of the Red General, took one look at that mask, and burst into howling tears on the spot.

When He Lingchuan glanced away from the sobbing child, he spotted Hu Min’s familiar face. The other party gave him a quick grin, went first to murmur a brief report to the Red General, then came back to greet him properly.

Once the group moved indoors, the seriously wounded were carried off for treatment. The Red General walked over to where the unconscious woman had been laid on a stretcher and passed a hand lightly over her face.

The woman let out a faint cry and woke.

Her expression was flooded with panic. She tried to sit up and failed; her limbs trembled uselessly.

Her face was completely unfamiliar to He Lingchuan. So the human host that the Ferry-Crossing Mother had used for its ghost fetus was not the person he had been suspecting all this time.

So I guessed wrong?

The Red General’s voice was as flat and calm as still water. “Your organs are destroyed. There is no saving you. You’re not writhing in agony right now only because the ravenous devourer injected your body with venom that has an anesthetic effect. I won’t be removing that for you.”

Even so, the stretcher beneath her was soaked through red.

The bleeding simply would not stop. Without intervention, she would have slept her way quietly into death. If the Red General had not woken her now, she would never have opened her eyes again.

“R-ravenous devourer?” Her voice shook. “You... you mean my child? How is it?”

“Dead,” the Red General said. “It used your body to build its fortress and digest its food. Counting it all up, the two of you together ate more than two hundred people. Do you have anything you wish to say?”

“I, I didn’t eat anyone.” The woman struggled to shake her head. “I only prayed to the gods, begged them to lift me out of my suffering.”

The Red General replied coldly, “To pray to the gods, to burn incense and kowtow, people do that by the countless tens of thousands. Few are answered by the Ferry-Crossing Mother.” If it answered everyone, ghostspawn would be running wild across the world.

Tears spilled down the woman’s cheeks. “My life was too bitter. I...” She had believed, with all her heart, that she had moved a merciful god with her sincerity.

“Which god did you pray to?”

“Y-Yaoji,” the woman murmured. “The god answered me, said I would have a lovely child and that, from then on, no one would ever bully me again.”

If you thought about it, those two promises had indeed come true.

The Red General then asked, “Why did you come to Red Peak Town?”

“The god wanted me to stay in Panlong City for a time, but I... I gave birth early by accident. Then, Panlong City wanted to hunt my child down, so I had to move out. But the weather outside the city was freezing. I found a post station and tried to steal some food, and then... then the children ate people again, so I fled north.”

She sobbed and said, “The god was very angry. It wanted me to go somewhere with more people. But I gave birth to the youngest on the road, and after that... I don’t remember anything.”

Hu Min, who had been listening, interjected, “You gave birth to the ghostspawn near the mine?”

“I... I think so?” The woman thought hard. “Before I fainted, I saw a row of single-story houses.”

Hu Min muttered under his breath, “So it was all an accident?”

“Red Peak Mine is sparsely populated. It’s absolutely not an ideal location for building a blood-and-flesh fortress,” the Red General said aloud. “The Ferry-Crossing Mother preys on women crushed by hardship, baiting them with salvation to carry ghostspawn for it. This time, however, it seems to have chosen poorly.”

He Lingchuan could not help but ask, “Why didn’t it just pick someone else?”

“Probably because it couldn’t find anyone suitable,” the Red General answered. “Within Panlong territory, the people already have their faith.”

Within Panlong City’s sphere, most folk believed in Mitian.

When it came to her base or domain, this particular god clearly kept a firm grip.

The Red General seemed satisfied with what she had learned. She turned and left the room.

Willow noticed the woman’s pallor growing worse and brought a bowl of water to her lips. She then said gently, “Stop crying. You should save your strength.”

“I couldn’t keep living like that,” the woman rasped. She clutched at Willow’s hand, tears streaming faster. “What did I do wrong to suffer so much? What did I do? I just didn’t want to die alone in the world.”

He Lingchuan watched from the side for a while, then suddenly asked, “What’s your name?”

At last, someone had asked. The woman turned toward him and said, “Yun Gu, my name is Yun Gu! I’m from Luan City. My family used to... used to...”

Her voice trailed off into a mumble, the words growing softer and softer, until they could no longer hear anything at all.

Willow reached out to feel for a pulse at her neck, then slowly shook her head. “She’s gone.”

She let out a quiet sigh and gave instructions for the people of Red Peak Town to see to Yun Gu’s burial and affairs.

He Lingchuan vaguely remembered that Luan City, once marked on the maps of the Panlong Wasteland, had been wiped out by the State of Xianyou some twelve or thirteen years ago.

It had been erased from the maps along with the lives of countless commoners who had lived within it.

A woman like Yun Gu, alone and unprotected, had managed in the last month of her life to stir up storms that engulfed an entire city. And now she had been ground to dust, returning to the silence she had always lived in.

The air inside the house felt heavy and stale. He Lingchuan hooked and grabbed Hu Min and pulled him outside, then handed him a piece of chewing tobacco.

Hu Min popped it into his mouth, chewed a few times, and exhaled with obvious satisfaction. “You took a hell of a beating this time. Someone’s going to be in very big trouble over it.”

“Why?”

“A mission like this should at least be handled by the Gale Army,” Hu Min said, clapping his shoulder. “Brother, no insult intended.”

“I know. The Red General said the same.” He Lingchuan thought for a moment, then asked, “By the way, why did the Red General come in person?”

“Higher-ups found out that Red Peak Town’s Headman Hu reported false numbers for the mine deaths. He seems to have underreported by at least half, and he deliberately delayed for two days before submitting anything. In doing so, he could tip someone else off first and tell them that there were monsters in the mine. The other party then sent a private task force of about forty to fifty people to deal with the monsters, and all of them died.”

“He reported to someone else first?” He Lingchuan blinked, then remembered Skinny’s discovery. “Right, Red Peak Mine has gold. Outsiders might not know, but Headman Hu definitely did.”

“They were secretly mining gold in there without reporting it to Panlong City!” Hu Min had managed to pry open the headman’s mouth and squeeze out some of the story. “When things went wrong, his first move was to report to his own superior. That person wanted to quietly wipe out the monsters and bury the whole incident. They just didn’t realize how nasty the creatures in the mine really were.”

“And then the ghostspawn went north and ate an entire village.” Hu Min sighed. “Only three of them, and they could eat that much. The Red General decided there had to be a ravenous devourer among them. That’s not something regular troops can handle.”

Hu Min restated, “That’s why I said that someone’s in for a world of hurt. They almost let a ravenous devourer take root and grow up on Chipa Highland. Imagine how big that responsibility is.”

He Lingchuan glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then hooked an arm around Hu Min’s neck and leaned close. “Let me ask you something else. Has the Red General always been... like this?”

“Like what?”

“Wearing that mask all the time for no reason.”

“Uh.” Hu Min shrugged helplessly. “That’s why I told you earlier I couldn’t describe the Red General properly.”

He shot a cautious look toward the main building and lowered his voice to a bare whisper, “Whether it be on the battlefield or in public, the Red General always appears in a mask. She only shows her true face in private. I heard it’s an old combat habit of the ancient gods. Let me tell you something from way back. A few years ago, when the Red General first appeared, everyone was curious out of their minds. But she kept to herself so much that hardly anyone ever saw her. Then there came a long-distance reinforcement mission to an outlying city, a full forced march. Everyone started betting that someone would get a glimpse of her face within a few days.”

“And?”

“And everyone lost.” Hu Min sighed. “No matter the time or place, the Red General never took off that faceplate.”

“Did she eat alone or something?” In war, surely she didn’t have that kind of luxury.

“That’s the scary part.” Hu Min’s voice dropped even further. “According to her personal guards, the Red General doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t even use the latrine.”

“Well, if you don’t eat or drink, of course, you don’t need to visit the latrine. Nothing in, nothing out. Hm...” He realized his focus might be slightly off.

“The Red General is always sharp and energized. She never needs sleep, either,” Hu Min said with a wry smile. “Two years ago, when Baling and Xianyou joined forces to attack the West Bank, the Red General commanded the defense for seven days and seven nights straight without resting for even a moment. Her stamina simply seems bottomless.”