Where Immortals Once Walked

Bang!

With a deafening bang, a worn-out packhorse was smashed into the ground, its body instantly reduced to a bloody pulp.

Fushan Yue did not even break stride. He lashed out with a kick, sending one of the guards beside him flying. The unfortunate man landed squarely beneath the falling horse. He did not even have time to cry out as his skull burst on impact, and the splatter of brain matter sprayed across the face of the State of Chiyan’s envoy.

The envoy instinctively raised a hand to wipe his face, but before his fingers could touch his skin, his body suddenly went light.

Someone had seized him by the collar and lifted him clean off the ground.

Fushan Yue grabbed the envoy and leaped straight off the cliff!

The two remaining guards roared in fury and charged forward. The Wind Demon exhaled softly, and two concentrated blasts of wind shot out, striking them squarely and hurling them away.

The blasts of wind were precise and controlled.

“Huh? He actually grabbed the Chiyan envoy?” This was completely beyond He Lingchuan’s expectations. He had not expected Fushan Yue’s target to have shifted from the Shanyu envoy to the Chiyan envoy.

Is there some hidden connection between the two?

The State of Shanyu’s already mired in internal strife, but what’s going on with the State of Chiyan?

With so little information in hand, He Lingchuan knew there was no way for him to draw any reliable conclusions.

Debris rained down from above, but the escort troops were made of stern stuff. Even as they scrambled to dodge, they continued firing back whenever they could. With the Chiyan envoy unexpectedly snatched away, failure was inevitable unless they could at least protect the rest of the delegation.

The origin energy around the arrowheads shifted from deep blue to dark green, clear proof that their morale had not collapsed. On the contrary, cornered by disaster, they had rallied together in shared resolve.

This was the one thing the Wind Demon truly feared.

Even if the arrows initially missed, the swirling wind currents would curve them back toward it in the end.

He Lingchuan’s gaze never left Fushan Yue. That was how he noticed that neither Fushan Yue nor the Chiyan envoy had been smashed to pieces. Instead, aided by a gliding wing, they swept back toward Mount Fengmo.

They landed on the lower outer slopes of the mountain, where cavern openings were plentiful. The Wind Demon conveniently blocked the escort unit’s line of sight, and none of them noticed where the two had gone.

Just as He Lingchuan was preparing to slip down and investigate, he saw the captain of the escort unit pull out an object that gleamed with golden light.

It was the spirit seed of the Baoshu King.

It was the very same treasure designated for retrieval by the divine bone amulet.

He Lingchuan immediately reined in his cliff ram.

The appearance of the spirit seed sent the Wind Demon’s fury skyrocketing. Its form began to waver, and then, from either side of its body, it grew thick, muscular arms!

Most of the arrows shot at it were blocked by those arms, then violently flung back toward the attackers.

The Wind Demon surged forward once more, swinging its massive limbs and smashing them into the towering phantom of the great tree. Each blow carried unimaginably powerful wind energy.

Once, twice... ten times.

Each strike landed with tangible weight, resulting in booming sounds resounding across the air.

The wooden staff planted on the ground below shook violently.

After all, it was merely a branch of the Baoshu King, not the whole. It could never wield the full might of its source. That it had endured this long was already remarkable.

At that moment, the escort captain suddenly dropped to his knees. He held the spirit seed aloft with both hands, chanting under his breath.

At the same time, it was as if another deep, resonant voice echoed around them.

Watching from afar, He Lingchuan noticed that the Wind Demon’s body was gradually turning red. It drew all the outer gales inward, compressing them. Even from the opposing peak, He Lingchuan felt the sudden calm. The incessant mountain winds had suddenly stopped.

Concentrating all its power into one point gave it greater destructive force. But this also showed that such a ferocious assault placed an immense burden on the Wind Demon itself.

Both sides were now giving everything they had.

At last, the wooden staff could no longer withstand the strain. With all the pressure focused on it—

Pop.

It was ripped out of the ground.

In an instant, the escort unit lost all protection. Winds approaching speeds of about 250 kilometers per hour or 150 miles per hour—equivalent to a category five hurricane[1]—swept everything into the air.

Whether it be the living or the dead, heavy carriages or massive boulders, nothing was spared.

The barrier had fallen. The Wind Demon had won.

It let out a triumphant howl.

The escort captain could barely keep his footing, but with lightning reflexes, he snatched the wooden staff and slammed the spirit seed onto its tip!

The two objects were clearly ill-matched in shape; it was unclear how they even fit together. Before He Lingchuan could get a proper look, the captain hurled the staff like a javelin straight at the Wind Demon!

At such close range, logic dictated that anything thrown would be blown wildly off course. But this staff was an exception. It cut through the wind energy untouched, flying unwaveringly toward its target—

And plunged straight into the Wind Demon’s head.

The spirit seed erupted in blinding brilliance, like sunlight reborn in a darkened world.

The flash lasted only an instant, but it triggered explosive growth in the wooden staff. It lengthened, thickened, and branched.

He Lingchuan stared, stunned. These were the Baoshu King’s aerial roots!

Without this innate ability, the Baoshu King could never have formed a forest from a single tree, nor supported such an immense canopy.

In just a few breaths, the staff grew into a massive sphere of roots, binding the Wind Demon within. The transformation was so fast that it even severed two of the Wind Demon’s arms.

Up close, it became clear that each root was covered in countless slender aerial filaments, densely interwoven into an irregular mesh that was finer even than human capillaries.

Naturally, the Wind Demon did not submit quietly. It dissolved into streams of wind and tried to escape.

But every filament glowed with golden light, working together to form an unyielding barrier that forcibly held the Wind Demon inside.

It battered the interior again and again, making tremendous noise, yet failing to break free.

This was one of the Baoshu King’s signature monster techniques: the Root Binding Technique.

Anyone with eyes could tell that the escort captain was using the spirit seed’s power to subdue the Wind Demon. A spirit seed of the Baoshu King could grow anywhere within the realm into a border-guarding tree sentinel; its internal monster energy was staggeringly abundant.

And trees’ abilities to block wind, stabilize sand, and absorb water were beyond dispute.

In an age where heaven and earth spirit qi was thin, perhaps only the Baoshu King, with its unique gifts, could accomplish such a feat.

The escort captain’s ability to wield the spirit seed came from communicating with the sliver of spiritual awareness left within it by the Baoshu King itself.

Of course, deploying it was a last resort. If too much of the stored power was consumed, the seed might never successfully mature into a guardian tree, and that was an outcome disastrous for the stability of the Baoshu State’s northern frontier.

In this era of scarce spirit qi, the Baoshu King required thirty-six years to nurture a single such spirit seed.

Yet between grim necessity and the delegation’s survival, the escort captain ultimately made his choice.

With the Wind Demon bound, the raging gales abruptly weakened. Objects fell from the sky like dumplings dropped into boiling water.

The first guards to hit the ground scrambled to rescue the wounded.

Fortunately, the envoys from states of Xuluo and Baixiang were both still alive, though injured to varying degrees. The Xuluo envoy, in particular, had been saved only because his belt snagged on a low tree mid-fall. Once rescued, both men did the same thing, which was to gasp desperately for air.

Inside the high-speed wind vortex, breathing had been nearly impossible.

Those who had been swept into the vortex earlier would either have been crushed by flying debris or suffocated into unconsciousness or even death.

Many others were less fortunate, tumbling off the cliff entirely and shattering beyond any hope of rescue.

The escort captain also jumped down. After barely catching his breath, he hurriedly resumed chanting, determined to finish subduing the Wind Demon. No matter how formidable his martial prowess, against a formless enemy like this, brute force was useless. He could only rely on the incantations taught by the Baoshu King.

Learning on the fly had its drawbacks.

The spell was viciously long and tongue-twisting, filled with syllables that hardly sounded human. The Baoshu King itself could recite it with ease, but if the escort captain mispronounced even one sound, he had to start over.

The more he erred, the more anxious he became; the more anxious, the more mistakes he made. Sweat poured down his face until, at last, he had no choice but to take a deep breath and begin again from the start.

During all this, the Wind Demon was far from idle. It spun violently inside the root sphere, recreating a vortex that drew in the surrounding north winds to replenish itself.

The root sphere was not under the Baoshu King’s direct control; it operated according to fixed parameters. It prevented things inside from escaping, but it did not stop external forces from entering.

Thus, even imprisoned, the Wind Demon could continuously draw power from the outside world.

As its struggles grew more violent, the floating root sphere began drifting eastward toward the ruins of the Ethereal Sect. It moved quickly at a speed of about eighty kilometers or fifty miles per hour.

The escort captain saw this but had no good countermeasure. All he could do was steady his tongue and hurry the incantation.

Learning from his earlier mistakes, he closed his eyes, calmed his mind, and recited each word slowly and carefully. This time, he made no errors.

But halfway through, a series of thunderous rumbles echoed from behind.

At first, the wind drowned them out. Then the ground began to tremble.

Several guards noticed first and turned around, only to blanch in terror.

“Captain! Captain! Rockslide!”

Seven or eight massive boulders that had earlier been flung into the air by the Wind Demon had fallen back onto the ridge. Whether by coincidence or deliberate design, they were now rolling straight toward them, gathering speed and momentum.

Two of the boulders shattered partway down into four or five pieces, but they did not slow. In fact, they even accelerated. Even broken apart, they were more than capable of killing.

With the spirit seed’s barrier gone, if those rocks hit, everyone would be reduced to pulp.

Yet the escort captain stubbornly continued chanting.

Left with no choice, his bodyguards grabbed him and carried him aside, shouting, “Move! Everyone, move!”

A massive boulder reached them and suddenly split in two. Shards sprayed in all directions.

The escort captain was forced to raise a shield to block them and was knocked back several steps. The incantation broke once more.

Chaos erupted, and everyone scattered to dodge. Now, there was no one left to protect him.

Several unlucky guards were struck head-on and screamed as they plunged off the cliff.

Those watching were horrified. No one dared approach.

The captain was furious but helpless. Gritting his teeth, he took a deep breath and started chanting again.

But that delay gave the Wind Demon its chance. Slamming the root sphere upward, it moved past the summit of Wind Lord Cliff.

At this point, He Lingchuan could more or less guess why the Wind Demon was so determined to return here. As he urged his mount downhill, however, he frowned.

The mountain’s belly or interior was no longer empty.

Smart people were everywhere. Some merchants and travelers had realized that the official road was the Wind Demon’s hunting ground, while the opposite mountain peak remained untouched. As long as they stayed away from crowds, the Wind Demon ignored them.

So they had crossed over.

In He Lingchuan’s eyes, though, they were simply walking into their own deaths.

1. Note that this is as per the Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale, which is used internationally. Fun Fact, China uses the Extended Beaufort Scale, so the raws actually stated force/level 18 storm. ☜