Chapter Ninety-Four: Wails Across the Land

After holding his breath for quite a while, Zhou Yi secretly opened one eye.

The Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor had already left that spot. Moving with astonishing speed, he had leaped several times and was already at the foot of Blue City Mountain.

After a slight pause, he looked around, then gave a whistle toward the sky. The huge bird circled down in a steep dive and landed beside them.

The Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor seemed to whisper a few words into the bird’s ear. The bird kept shaking its head and letting out terrifying cries, and only then did the Imperial Preceptor step onto its back. As the bird took flight, it carried him straight up the mountain.

It looked as though he had sent the bird to scout. Fortunately, they were hiding in plain sight. The Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor had not noticed the ground beneath his feet; otherwise, they would not even have known how they died.

Zhou Yi had excellent eyesight, and he saw the bird’s head clearly. It was bald and bare of feathers. This was not an eagle at all, but a vulture. The fact that such a creature could be tamed and even carry a man up to the mountaintop was astonishing.

Only after the figure vanished did Zhou Yi let out a breath.

“The Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor has gone up the mountain. Should we stay here and wait, or go down and investigate the village?”

At this point, Sophia no longer dared to act recklessly. After all, with Fatty and Cheng Zhi in tow, she could not simply carry all three of them along. It would be wiser to observe for the time being.

“Let’s watch a little longer. According to the letter, experts, strange practitioners, and soldiers from both Wanzhou City and Yingzhou City are supposed to come here. If we go down now, we may end up as part of the encirclement.”

Zhou Yi nodded. His thoughts matched Sophia’s exactly.

They looked around. Their current position was fairly good, right on the side of the ridge. Behind them lay a gully, like a natural trench. Hidden inside it, they could not be seen from the village below or from anywhere on Blue City Mountain.

“Do you have binoculars, Sophia?

Let’s observe from here for a while and see what they do next. That Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor carried the green-clad woman up there. Whether that means he is going to settle accounts or interrogate her, we do not know. At the very least, we need to find out whether these so-called fiends really exist, and what they are.”

Sophia rummaged around and, surprisingly, found three pairs of binoculars. She tossed one to each of them but kept none for herself. Zhou Yi knew her senses had already been heightened beyond the limits of ordinary people, so such tools were of little use to her.

Zhou Yi took out some food and handed portions to the others, then drank some water while surveying the village below through the binoculars.

Several villages were scattered throughout the valley. Each one was not large, perhaps only twenty or thirty households, but after scanning them all, he found not a single person.

That puzzled Zhou Yi. Could it be that the villages were already empty, everyone killed by those fiends?

He lowered the binoculars. Fatty and Cheng Zhi kept watch, while Zhou Yi motioned to Sophia. The two of them moved to the side of the gully. Seeing how cautious he was, Sophia quickly came over.

“What is it?”

“In all of those villages, there is no one at all. If there really are fiends, could they be hiding in the dark corners of the thatched houses?”

Sophia paused.

She had just extended her perception and found nothing unusual whatsoever. Not only were there no people, she could not even sense poultry or livestock. If things were really as Zhou Yi said, then why did these fiends resemble the Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor so much?

“By your reasoning, it’ll be dark soon. If we stay here, won’t we become bait? Besides, if I can’t sense them at all, does that mean these fiends are the same kind as that Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor?”

Zhou Yi fell silent.

Earlier, he had already been trying to judge whether the aura on the Black-Robed Imperial Preceptor was no different from that of the dead. If these fiends belonged to the same lineage as him, then was this so-called encirclement actually a conspiracy?

“Let’s observe first. See whether this is truly an encirclement or just a pretense. Maybe the court is only using this as an excuse to seize Blue City Mountain. If it is the latter, we should leave at once to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.”

Sophia nodded.

“All right. Since it’s almost dark, we’d better hide ourselves.”

Zhou Yi returned to Fatty and the others, then reached out and poked Fatty.

“Try your earth powers. See if you can control these stones, or at least the harder earth here, and make us some cover. Leave an opening for observation, narrow enough to crawl in and out through.”

Fatty blinked, stuffed all the sausages in his hand into his mouth, took a sip of water, swallowed, and wiped his lips before saying, “I’ll give it a shot. I’m full and hydrated, so I’ve got plenty of strength.”

Zhou Yi shook his head and crouched beside him.

“Remember that green-clad woman I mentioned? She infused the properties of spirit stones into tree branches. You can try the same line of thought. Maybe it’ll work differently. After all, you’ve absorbed quite a lot.”

Fatty was not stupid. A little thought and he understood what Zhou Yi meant. He could not exactly crouch, so he dropped to one knee and braced both hands against the stones on either side of the gully. He closed his eyes, and a faint yellow glow sank into the rock.

Zhou Yi’s eyes lit up. Fatty had finally come to his senses.

As that pale yellow light flashed, the stones on both sides began to grow like bamboo shoots. Before long, they had formed something like a low wall about a meter high.

When he opened his eyes, Fatty was drenched in sweat. Looking at his handiwork, he clenched his fist with gusto.

“Damn, not bad, not bad. So it can be used like this too. Come on, all of you get inside. I’ll seal the top right away.”

That would have been fine if he had not said it. The moment he did, Cheng Zhi was the first to move aside.

“Fatty, you should seal yourself in first. We’ll go in through the opening you left. Better make it bigger.”

Fatty shot him a glare. This kid was such a coward, making it sound as if Fatty were the unreliable one. Ignoring them, Fatty went back to his little house-building project. Wherever something was lacking, he touched it up. Wherever edges needed to be joined, he went over and pulled and pressed them into place.

In just over ten minutes, a rather convincing fortress emerged. Compared with the surrounding terrain, it did not look out of place at all. It was like a huge boulder, even the material resembling the real thing.

Zhou Yi glanced at Sophia, then took Cheng Zhi and crawled through the opening on the side.

Once they stood up, the opening allowed them to see the valley below and the direction of Blue City Mountain.

Fatty clapped his hands and jerked his chin at Cheng Zhi.

“Your turn. The stone’s there. Add some withered branches and dead grass around it. That’ll make it look more real. If anyone comes, I’ll just seal the opening. I doubt they’d ever imagine people could be hiding inside a rock.”

Cheng Zhi nodded. He had prepared for this already. Picking up the dead branches he had just pulled from the ground, he kept jamming them into the cracks between the stones. Soon, clusters of dry twigs appeared one after another. To be honest, it really did look somewhat natural.

By the time they finished dressing the hideout, night had fully fallen, and the others followed Zhou Yi up into the opening.

The height of the standing space was just enough for their heads to rise above it. Where the edges left larger gaps, Fatty added more stones. Looking at this rock-like fortress, he felt a great sense of accomplishment.

By then it was too dark to see much through the binoculars. Zhou Yi tossed them aside and stared down at the village below. In the utter blackness, it seemed as though faint pinpricks of light were flickering here and there.

“Look down there. Lights are floating through the village!”

Zhou Yi stood up at once.

When he stood beside Sophia and looked down, sure enough, each of the villages below had flickering points of light, drifting about like ghostly flames.

This was the old world, of course, and there were no electric devices with breathing lights. So what exactly were those? Could there really be fireflies in the dead of winter?

Zhou Yi also grew alert. His gaze shifted toward Blue City Mountain, where, at some point, people had begun standing along the edges of the buildings. Torches in their hands seemed to be lighting one after another, and that side of the ridge was already packed with people.

Zhou Yi reached out to Fatty, and Fatty, being fairly quick-witted, handed him the binoculars. After all, Zhou Yi’s eyesight was still inferior to Sophia’s.

After a careful look, he found that everyone standing along the edge of Blue City Mountain was dressed in green. Aside from slight differences in their hats, the style of their robes was the same as that of the green-clad woman.

They were all fully prepared. Some were even pointing toward the villages and shouting.

Following the direction they indicated, Zhou Yi looked over.

Sure enough, at the outer entrance to the valley below, many people had gathered in a dense black mass. They too were holding torches and standing ready.

Fatty leaned in and asked in a very low voice, “Boss, are they really trying to kill fiends?”

Zhou Yi shook his head.

He could not tell either. This had already gone beyond his understanding. The ghostly lights in the villages were growing more and more numerous, and the scene had an eerie, supernatural air to it, truly unsettling.

“Let’s keep watching. Don’t get involved. The moment those people approach this ridge, seal the opening first.”

As he spoke, the ghostly lights below seemed to gather. They drifted toward the mountain pass, then floated toward the foot of Blue City Mountain.

Faintly, one could hear crying and wailing, from adults and children alike. The sound echoed throughout the valley, spreading in all directions.

With those cries, the surrounding temperature dropped sharply. Before long, frost had gathered on the stones outside their observation point.