Chapter 195: Demon? Resources!
In the 5th year, 7th month of the Tian You Calendar, Xuan Chong’s army had fully arrived in the territory where “no human habitation is possible.”
Shrubbery was like an ocean, obliterating all traces of society here. Now even the least human-like Lizardmen, and stick insect-like fake tree people, had left no traces; everything was abstract demons.
Note: Lizardmen are covered in scales and don’t look human, but they are actually human; burning them with Vermilion Bird Fire restores their human form; while other things disappear after being scorched by Vermilion Bird Fire.
Xuan Chong continued to pioneer by establishing a outpost, having Gongshu Wang use Feng Shui to find a suitable location.
After observing the mountains and river directions, Xuan Chong sent the non-commissioned officer corps to survey contour lines.
After confirming this place was indeed suitable as a supply point, he dispatched personnel to garrison this wasteland overgrown with wild grass and build a camp.
However, just after setting up camp, the camp’s logistics officials reported a new situation to Xuan Chong.
Xuan Chong rushed to the excavation site, where a group of soldiers were already standing by the pit with iron shovels, whispering among themselves; after he arrived, they shouted, “The Marshal is here!”, then cleared a path for him.
Digging down a little revealed uniform ramming earth layers. After Gongshu Wang further surveyed with a compass and drew a circle, they continued digging inside it; soldiers hit something solid with iron shovels; prying it out revealed neatly cut bricks and stones.
Xuan Chong examined the brick. According to geography, this place was an alluvial plain with no stone material suitable for building a fortress. So these hard materials were fired from earth, meaning that at least people with Imperial Era technology level had come here to build a city.
But such a city suddenly vanished.
Jia Mude, this living dictionary, when asked by Xuan Chong, said that even the remaining literature records of Li Huo Sect had scant mentions. Then he provided a few suspected records. “In some year, xx rebelled, failed, and fled!” This was after Li Huo Sect became an evil sect, when internal power struggles led some people, feeling there was no future even as an evil faction after betraying Da Yao, to leave Li Huo Sect.
At the same time period, Lingnan had no records of “rebel thieves breaching the pass,” so the escape direction was clearly not north, but further south. And what happened after fleeing south? Vanished without a trace, no news at all.
Next, in several excavation pits, a large number of bones were unearthed. From the soil staining on the bones, theoretically they were about three or four hundred years old. And Da Yao was in its dominant period back then.
Of course, further speculation linked this to the “succession struggle” chaos within Da Yao back then. But the specifics would need to be asked of Jia Mude’s ancestors.
There were no shortage of rebels forced south of Ling River. Then they further split, pushed out of the center, entering this vast sea of trees trying to build a barrier. But ultimately they vanished without a trace, to the point of being dug up now.
So what existence exactly wiped out this feudal militarized force?!
Tiger, leopard, jackal? Joke’s on them; once humans organize on a large scale, tigers, leopards, and jackals are useless.
Over the next two days, Xuan Chong’s army corps discovered ruins at other points suitable for building cities. These ruins were not just from three hundred years ago, but even from seven hundred years earlier;
From the sediment thickness, these cities lasted for several generations after being built, but the “several generations” situation was shocking.
In the first generation tombs, that is, the group that migrated here, they were still normal humans; second and third generations had increasingly protruding foreheads, gradually developing horned people features, and later the mutations became more severe; before destruction, abominations with four arms had already appeared.
“First generation swells, second generation dulls, third and fourth generations lose their roots” Xuan Chong immediately thought if there was something wrong with the local water and soil? He immediately summoned physicians to check the army; if abnormal, return immediately.
The physicians said the camp soldiers were fine, but after understanding Xuan Chong’s worry about “bone deformity issues,” some physicians offered guesses.
In the archaeological pit, physician: “My lord, this may be the effect of abusing a certain secret medicine.”
Xuan Chong: “Secret medicine?”
Physician: “Yes, my lord, the army has it. Native to Southern Border, and during this southward journey, I’ve found the potency here is stronger.”
Xuan Chong: “Explain.”
…Seized the thread…
Xuan Chong wasn’t an archaeologist, but after digging up ruins, he didn’t gasp in awe and imagine an Homeric epic ancient history.
Instead, following the Eastern mindset of digging up ancestors, he cross-referenced events from his region’s civilization history materials for verification.
Xuan Chong believed these extreme southern area city-building activities were related to turmoil events in Da Yao’s southwest direction; otherwise, there wouldn’t be such large-scale organizations migrating into the jungle.
Xuan Chong immediately piloted his mecha back to Lingnan, requesting statistics from the database, and sure enough found literature confirmation. Four hundred to three hundred years ago was Li Huo Sect’s fall to evil chaos, and seven hundred years ago was Southern Border’s Ba Wang rebellion.
So the origins of these extreme southern city ruins could basically be confirmed as built by outward-migrating populations after turmoil on Da Yao’s borderlands.
Another question: how exactly did these ruins cities end?
Xuan Chong picked up a bone from the pit for comparison. Years of military experience allowed him to clearly identify what weapons caused marks on leg bones and rib bones.
Xuan Chong discovered something strange: the bones of late-period deaths had no saber and spear chopping cuts, but mostly fractures. Indeed, Xuan Chong had encountered such monsters during southward “demon-exorcising,” but they weren’t a threat! A hundred-man tactical squad could clear them without losses. Even if the humans fleeing south here abandoned armor, after building the city, these monsters still posed no threat?
Xuan Chong: Could it be some large-bodied monster cluster that confronted the humans from the start of their southward city-building, and when the humans weakened, immediately launched an attack, exterminating the city?
Subsequently, Xuan Chong discovered a stone well in the central area and fished out a batch of white jade bamboo slips from it. Xuan Chong identified this as Da Yao’s writing style from eight hundred years ago, with a sentence: “Eight hundred li thorny belt, vegetation turns to spirits!”.
Jia Mude, called over, with his vast knowledge, immediately recalled a Li Huo Sect record “Southern Border Monster Hunt Chronicles.” The book mentioned Wood Imps hiding in mountain streams in the south.
Jia Mude then explained the situation in detail to Xuan Chong and the generals.
Wu Zhantie laughed heartily, not believing these monsters posed much threat.
Xuan Chong’s southward journey had swept clean all jackals, tigers, leopards, and individual mountain imps along the way after establishing natural villages. And assisted the natural villages in preliminarily building city defense works mainly of stone with wood as auxiliary. So threats from mountain imps and such aberrations were negligible.
However, Jia Mude drew the wood imp illustration from the book he saw: a lush tree monster, and for size comparison by its leg was a Southern Border rhinoceros. This rhinoceros was dog-sized next to the human leg.
The numerous Wu Family officers and soldiers gasped; this was giant beast level. But Jia Mude continued drawing, depicting dense low shrubbery, and just when everyone thought he was artistically filling in, he added eyes to these bushes.
Xuan Chong issued alert orders to all fourteen major camps of the whole army.
Staff Department formulated a plan: all camps build simple earth barriers, have shield soldiers in the camps switch to axes to clear surrounding trees, and stay vigilant for possible tree signs.
…Monster domain…
Meanwhile, Wu Qing shared his information: before Wu Fei brought education and indoctrination to Southern Border, among the Southern Border shamans’ various odd techniques, there was one for reattaching severed limbs.
Xuan Chong: “I know this, a tree sap that can glue limbs.” At this, Xuan Chong realized something and stared at Wu Qing.
Wu Qing said: “These shamans have some forbidden techniques in old skin scrolls; if the tree sap quality is high enough, it can graft sacred beast flesh to cultivate ‘dragon skin warriors.'”
Xuan Chong understood what all those various demons he encountered earlier were about. Tigers with vines, beasts with tongues turned to venomous snakes. These fusions were all Southern Border tree sap.
Of course, it wasn’t just Southern Border barbaric shamans with forbidden techniques; some physicians in Lingnan also had similar ones, namely face-swapping techniques.
Some elderly faded women abducted young girls to use as “painted skins,” relying on a special tree sap to paste on faces.
This special tree sap was very difficult to cultivate; each sect showed their skills; righteous sects injected special stone powder into spiritual trees to form spiritual tumors, evil sects used flesh cultivation; as for now, the medical tree sap used in Wu Family Army was from grafting carnivorous trees, then feeding the carnivorous trees boiled lard.
Now after fighting into Southern Border, the tree sap from many trees here was much stronger than traditional Southern Border shamans’ tree sap; so potent that this tree sap could directly melt flesh, remolding decayed skin into youthful state.
Of course, it could also mix alien flesh into the body, and that was the origin of demons.
Several hours later, in the first major camp, the logging squad sent an alert and shot red fireworks, indicating casualties.
Xuan Chong’s prepared reserve team brought those troops back; on the stretchers, some seed seedlings were growing in the flesh; Xuan Chong had people wipe with strong saltwater; as soldiers screamed in pain from salt on wounds, these eerie plant seedlings lost vitality first! These spores growing in flesh were hard to eradicate, but couldn’t withstand external salting.
Xuan Chong now had an idea. In the southward jungle, salt was indeed a strategic material; in the future, it could be used for control through this resource.
…Flocks of birds flee, jungle falls silent, killing intent rises…
Multiple Wu Family Army camps suffered attacks, fireworks bursting over each major camp to transmit information.
From the first camp’s defense view, the camp perimeter fifty paces were cleared; beyond fifty paces in the shrubbery, trees shook, wooden monsters of various sizes creaking out from the forest.
The first anti-cavalry tripping rope line was quickly breached; tree imps’ branches entwined the sturdy wooden fence, even tree imps flinging batches of poisonous insects like hot peppers toward the Wu Family Army camp.
These wooden monsters twisted their bodies eerily; even pierced by crossbow bolts, they remained unmoved. This left the original shooting crossbowmen momentarily panicked.
Non-commissioned officers immediately used tin horns to report: “Attention, the enemy has no pain sensation, but is slow! Spearmen stab active joints, shield soldiers watch for heavy blows from thick branches, dodge flexibly, don’t hard block!” Thanks to Xuan Chong’s prior alert, soldiers had already built barriers, and spear weapons were switched to hook scythes and halberds suitable for “hooking and cutting.”
Then hook scythe soldiers from the army took the stage, using hook scythes to slash tree imps’ lower body vine connections to the ground. The softer the vines, the more water; draining the juice turned the hard wood chunks into dead wood.
These wooden monsters’ rigid bodies were hung with many vines; their main tree bodies looked hard, but the wood moved solely by these juicy vines, principle similar to how an excavator arm moves by hydraulic rod pressure regulation on fluid.
Halberds and hook scythes could better hook and sever these vines, like cutting wheat.
In front of the half-meter high temporary barrier, these small tree imps soon met obstruction from halberd soldiers behind the barrier fences, quickly piling up.
The front row of several hundred tree imps slowed more when climbing over the fence barrier, instead becoming obstacles blocking the rear advance.
These tree imps were on par with ordinary armored soldiers in strength and defense, but a tier slower in reaction speed, same level as zombies.
Just as humanoid tree imps were stuck immobile before the camp fences, they entered second stage.
Some tree imps began sprouting vines from rough bark, different tree imps’ vines gathering like snakes mating into clumps.
Soon on tree imp corpses appeared vine demons the size of small dogs.
These vine demons, like yarn balls in the tree imp group, very lightly leaped over fences after detaching from tree imps. Some soldiers accidentally touched by vine branches screamed immediately, as these vine demon things were like castor beans, covered in numerous poison stings.
First camp non-commissioned officer immediately said: “Fall back to second position!” After soldiers withdrew, forty to fifty vine demons surged in, advancing like tumbleweeds, constantly probing the ground with one or two branches, rolling charges.
However, these vine demons hit the second defense line’s barbed wire. Blocked by the wire, these small soldier types were stabbed back by infantry.
Wu Family Army, fighting smoothly, cut vines like old farmers harvesting wheat, one swing slicing large swaths, very efficient.
Ultimately, these tree people severed bodies piled at the main gate. But large amounts of vines kept sprouting from the tree people fracture points, intertwining. Just as this pile of wood eerily reassembled into something before the fence.
Ang Ri rode Tai Yue Luan to the gate; this twenty-meter wingspan giant bird folded wings, turning into an energy ball.
Then like a marble dropping, it landed on these vines; fireball instantly became fire vortex, and at fire tornado formation instant, updraft lifted Tai Yue Luan.
In this twenty-meter diameter flame vortex, tree imps piled at first camp’s main gate twisted and swelled like “shrimp chips” in a frying pot. Twenty seconds later, when the fire vortex ended and soldiers used spears to hold dry firewood preparing to ignite damp smoke, Ang Ri shouted: “Extinguish it, extinguish it, you wasteful bunch, burn just enough, we need live ones!”
Thus soldiers at the main gate pulled out the few half-cooked tree imps. Skilled soldiers used straw ropes to bind the writhing tree imps. Tree imp wounds oozed some sap liquid. This sap was scraped off.
Soldiers collected dozens of jars of tree sap, sent to the army’s medical corps and masters for research.
…Multiple places…
Besides the first major camp, the third major camp also suffered tree imp attacks. Since camps were standardized, defenses were similar, using fences and low walls to block. Similarly used fire to burn piled tree imps.
The two camps on two battlefields had identical barrack structures and same military organization, so enemy attack response procedures were consistent; their attitude toward defeated tree imps was strikingly uniform.
Two teams of about two hundred twenty laborers from third major camp, while cleaning the battlefield and dragging out these burned tree people, Shen Wanqing looked at these vegetation essences with a hint of heartache.
He stepped forward to inspect each, having people drag out the charred tree spirits, of course not for treatment. Because they were beyond saving anyway; prepare to give them a quick end.
Soldiers used large axes to chop tree spirits into segments, then used roasting bamboo sap method to force out juice from fractures.
Shen Wanqing, as a sect member long serving as spiritual planter, rubbed the tree imp secreted vegetation-smelling gel with fingers and immediately discerned its medicinal properties.
Then ordered everyone to capture live ones.
When Wu Zhantie came to inquire, Shen Wanqing told him: “This is Grass Returning Pill, can treat miasma, poison repellent. Even widens meridians, top-grade for martial cultivators.”
Wu Zhantie brightened at the words! Truth is, these Wu Family Army southern route troops weren’t afraid of fighting, but of unprofitable fights.
Wu Zhantie requested to test the effects. He found some martial cultivator soldiers with hidden injuries, had them mix with alcohol and consume.
As Shen Wanqing said, these meridian-injured officers and soldiers, after using and regulating breath, had internal injuries repaired. Innate bone essence stirred, communicating with accumulated blood energy in acupoints. Faint signs of breaking through to great innate.
In the past, when Wu Family Army campaigned Southern Border, after confirming capturing slaves to open trade routes would improve their hard days a bit, calls to war on Southern Border were like tigers and wolves pouncing on fat meat.
Southern Route Army’s military soul wasn’t some “great righteousness” but profiting with sabers and spears. When a place had fertile land and good mines, it would involuntarily sprout Southern Route Army military households.
…Way of Man, take from the insufficient to give to the surplus…
That night, Wu Zhantie in his tent opened the issued ceramic bottle. After uncorking, he saw the clear “Grass Returning Spiritual Liquid” inside, took a deep breath and drank it all; whole body strength rapidly circulated. Surrounding lamplight flickered in his aura.
But he also felt essence flowing in his body. Especially the hidden injury in his crotch showed further healing signs. Inspiration struck; he repeatedly tempered this essence, then felt not only the ugly tumor gone, now even stronger and larger.
Wu Zhantie laughed: “This is good stuff!”
On the other side, Shen Wanqing also looked at his officer-level Grass Returning Pill allocation. After consuming, his body meridians widened, and such martial cultivation aptitude change made his heart restless, a killing intent rooting deeply in him. Shen Wanqing couldn’t help recalling his sect’s warning: drawing killing intent into body is the martial cultivator path, we seekers of longevity must keep Dao Heart pure.
But now, heaven and earth vegetation essences greatly benefited cultivation!
Shen Wanqing adjusted emotions, but Dao Heart couldn’t suppress the killing urge! He walked out of the tent, then stunned—not just him, the entire camp was enveloped in vast killing intent.
In an instant, killing intent rushed his heart again, “seize”plunder”cultivation is defying heaven!” various thoughts surged.
But with the army horn sounding, he jolted awake, killing intent obediently suppressed. The army’s “Martial” character banner fluttered, its rules suppressing all soldiers’ ferocity.
