Chapter 106: Demon-slaying And Apotheosis
On the thirteenth day after Wu Hengyu’s army set off and entered the Grotto-Heaven, in Wu Xu Commandery, Huai Ze. Along the complex marsh edges shrouded in mist, some villages were scattered like stars.
Bai Renfeng flew through the air on his sword and arrived at the southeastern corner of Huai Ze, discovering that within an eighty-li radius along the shore, more than twenty villages were distributed. These villages in the water mist were filled with a strand of Yin Energy. Water algae grew on the earthen walls, as if they had been flooded, and it was currently the shichen hour (7-9 a.m.). Normally in villages, cooking smoke filled with fireworks could be smelled, carrying the scent of burning dry firewood. But this village had none.
Bai Renfeng sensed dense killing intent and noticed lively sounds coming from a village, so he looked over and saw some people in the village beating gongs and drums, holding a bizarre “wedding ritual.” The villagers’ faces showed unnatural smiles, and the voice from the flower sedan chair sounded more like a mad woman singing incoherently.
After Bai Renfeng opened his spiritual eye and carefully observed, he exclaimed in surprise: “Human sacrifice!” Then he observed further; it was not human sacrifice. Seeing the villagers carrying people and goods while walking and beating gongs, he realized this was a tax collection pattern, where cultivators were “stealing the sky and swapping the sun,” pretending to be from the government office to demand “blood food” and “incense and fire” from the foolish locals here.
Suddenly, he sensed something, and his spiritual eye focused on those “islets” in the distant lake marsh. Immediately, he felt a stinging pain in his spiritual eye.
Just as Bai Renfeng closed his spiritual eye, on the lake surface five li away. The originally pervasive water mist was blasted open by a surge of evil qi, forming cloud waves hundreds of zhang high that crashed toward the villages along the lakeshore. And it was not over; the “islet” that Bai Renfeng had seen originally sank with a splash.
The waters of Huai Ze overflowed like a flood, spreading into the villages. All the villages were swallowed bit by bit by the water pools, as if gripped tightly. And these more than twenty villages originally along the shore now all sank to the lake bottom.
Of course, perhaps by the third quarter of the wu hour, with the tide receding, they would emerge again. But were these villages, repeatedly swallowed and spat out by the lake marsh, still human villages?
…The investigation is already complete…
Meanwhile, below the lake marsh, Wu Hengyu’s army had finished assembling. About ten li ahead of the military formation, an “inverted mountain range” hanging upside down from overhead descended from the lake surface above their heads. The tip of this mountain range pointed toward the lake bed where Wu Hengyu’s army stood. The originally flat lake bed was not touched by the mountain tip but instead began to cave in, forming a large basin.
This “inverted mountain range” that appeared so abruptly was the “islet” that Bai Renfeng had seen sinking on the lake surface earlier, namely the rumored “Black Mountain.”
After this “Black Mountain” appeared in the Grotto-Heaven, the originally bright Grotto-Heaven suddenly darkened, as if the lake water interface overhead was shrouded by a black curtain.
Yu Li began to channel magic power. At this time, the lake marsh surface above descended from high up, drawing closer and closer to their heads. It was as if something was about to come down.
According to the ancient Grotto-Heaven traversal situation, as long as everyone entered this water-like ceiling, they would emerge from the surface of another great lake.
This was just like Sadako entering any mirror surface and then crawling out from a television in the real world.
Currently, from Yunmeng Marsh to Huai Ze and other five great lakes, there were Grotto-Heavens below all these lake marshes. Yu Li’s statement that this place could accommodate hundreds of thousands traversing was not exaggerated.
It was just that in ancient times, mountains and rivers were stable and harmonious, and the Grotto-Heaven was still a paradise with various spiritual objects roaming within. But in contemporary times, with the Evil Moon overhead, evil qi permeated between mountains and rivers.
While Bai Renfeng watched the water surface submerge dozens of villages in Huai Ze, Wu Hengyu on the interface below saw this scene: patches of villages emerged on the Grotto-Heaven interface above. In these villages hanging upside down overhead, after the villagers and livestock sank from the lakeside into the water, all flesh and blood on their bodies was scraped clean as if by a butcher, leaving only human and animal skeletons. And around them, dozens of times more ghost demons were feasting gluttonously.
All the skeletons struggled; yes, the villagers were not yet dead. In the Grotto-Heaven, they were kept in a state of neither dead nor alive, enduring torment by the ghost demons. And that mad bride originally being welcomed in the lake marsh let out shrill screams, as ghost demons one after another entered the flower sedan, carried her out, and did unspeakable things to her.
As the ghost demons committed their evils, the war drums of the army marching in formation in the Grotto-Heaven boomed. The ghost demons twisted their ugly heads to look toward these uninvited guests.
They gathered like spirits, with ghastly pale faces appearing at their head areas, but with eerie rouge smeared on their cheeks, charging out while singing incoherently. Not to mention that most of them had no armor; even those with some armor had only paper-mache ones.
The Wu Family Army side was strictly on guard; now it was two thousand against four or five thousand ghost race.
In Wu Hengyu’s ear, Yu Li’s voice: “They are servants of the Black Mountain old demon, having consumed other shore flowers from below Huai Ze to gain so-called undead power, transformed into ghost objects. To break into the Black Mountain old demon’s lair, these must be eliminated first.”
Wu Hengyu’s voice boomed across the entire army: “Demons and monsters blocking our army—kill them all!”
The army shouted in unison: “Kill, kill, kill!” Killing intent surged forth.
In the Grotto-Heaven, the “Black Mountain” that had originally hung down “inverted” now retracted, as if cowed.
…Lake surface waves churned…
On the other side, above the Huai Ze water surface, Bai Renfeng and the other four sect senior brothers had just felt the lake surface’s black qi binding them, preventing them from leaving.
Zhu Yanming: “Senior Brother, we are trapped in an illusionary barrier.”
Bai Renfeng: “Form the Five Elements Formation and don’t scatter. The reason those villagers were swallowed by the lake water but did not leave is that they were bound here by the Black Mountain old demon. We must not move recklessly, or the black killing intent will taint our spiritual artifacts.”
Huang Yao pointed at the water surface: “Senior Brother, look there!”
Following his finger, a large amount of white qi appeared at the center of Huai Ze. The lake surface bubbled up like boiling the sea or burning mountains. The “islet” that had originally sunk below the lake water now floated up again, trembling as it surfaced, as if fleeing from an even more terrifying power below the lake surface.
Bai Renfeng: “The army is engaging on the Grotto-Heaven interface; the military killing intent has gained the upper hand.”
Han Jiangxue: “Senior Brother, the black killing intent around us has dispersed.”
Bai Renfeng: “Follow me. We can’t let the Black Mountain old demon escape. Bring the general’s command flag over.”
…A bone bird felled by sword light fell back into the lake water and rapidly sank…
At this time in the Grotto-Heaven below, Wu Hengyu’s elite archers unleashed the first wave of arrow rain. These arrows streaked blue lines through the Grotto-Heaven. The ghost objects tormenting the villagers had no chance even for close combat; with whistling sounds tearing through the air, the heavy arrowheads directly nailed all these ghost objects, infected in the brain by the “evil canon,” to the ground. As black-red blood flowed out, maggot-like things crawled from them.
Within the Wu Family Army, cavalry wearing black iron face masks charged forward with spears to finish them off. These ghost objects turned to flying ash and dispersed upon encountering the killing intent sword light. But soon they respawned in the villages. Of course, it was not without losses; dozens upon dozens of ghost objects died on the battlefield, while respawns came a few at a time.
Yu Li: “Hengyu, you must destroy those ghost villages. Those villagers are using their flesh and blood to sustain these ghost objects.”
Wu Hengyu had no intention of sending soldiers to charge into these evil villages. With the command flag turning, oxen dragged heavy cannons forward to within two hundred paces, leveled the muzzles, and began fierce bombardment. Incandescent projectiles slammed into the earthen walls, easily toppling large swaths of houses and eliciting a chorus of furious shrieks from the village.
After each village was destroyed and turned to bubbles, the mirror surface above played scenes like a projector.
The villages here had originally been harmonious twenty years ago, until a group of deserters invaded and committed evils. At first, these deserters were still human, but later their appearances mutated, and their behavior became increasingly beastly.
In the end, these soldiers who had turned into monsters chopped down the village’s sacred tree, urinated in the village well, looted all gold, silver, and goods, then set fire to the village houses. But they used spells to bind the villagers, forbidding escape or death, and restructured a sealed yin residence feng shui layout. From then on, these villages were reconfigured as nodes traversing into the Grotto-Heaven.
Yu Li: “It seems the Black Mountain demon was originally human and stumbled upon a divine path cultivation method. Clearly, he was too eager for quick success and unwilling to abandon his human body. On one hand plundering the people insufficiently and offering excess, on the other demanding incense and worship belief from the locals here. Thus, under the boost of evil belief, he and his mutated subordinates turned neither human nor ghost.”
At this point, the mirror surface showed the Black Mountain old demon’s wedding scene. Over these twenty years, the villages had no choice but to offer young women in flower sedan chairs sent into the lake water for the Black Mountain demon below to defile for pleasure, whereas true incense gods had no such impure desires.
Back on the battlefield, Wu Family Army cavalry wielded sabers and spears for the final mop-up of the demons. After these demons were stabbed dead, various objects burst from their bodies to varying degrees. Besides some yellow-white goods they had privately hoarded when still human, there were bloodstained hairpins secretly kept by soldiers, and implements polished from unidentified bones.
Before the Wu Family Army soldiers could pick them up, these things quickly fell to the ground, and the land swallowed them like lake bottom silt.
And below the Grotto-Heaven, it was as if the lake water was drying up, with the overhead lake surface drawing ever closer to the army.
Yu Li looked up at the increasingly near interface and slowly said: “It’s coming.”
Closer, even closer, just like diving and surfacing toward the lake surface. —The entire army was about to exit the Grotto-Heaven.
Suddenly, the entire army before them blurred, and the army formation was already standing on solid ground. Looking around, it was a lake marsh, and the army’s position was a shallow island beach. At the center of the island was a pitch-black lakeside mountain top.
Due to the golden light of the Wu Family Army’s pressure, the Black Mountain mist shrank back to the mountain top.
Two shichen hours later, the army completed encircling the island’s mountain top. Then, as the sun set and yin energy surged, the mass of black qi in the mountain top did not dare descend. With the army lighting torches, it still suppressed the great mountain like chains.
Next, the sect disciples advanced into the mountain as vanguard. Earlier, they had been in the thick of a magic battle with this mass of black mist. Now that Wu Hengyu’s army could not catch that demon, these young heroes naturally had to find ways to force the old demon out.
…A wild beehive in the mountain was bitten open by a honey badger lured by spiritual birds…
In the mountain, the Black Mountain old demon, holed up in the mountain stream relying on mist to hide, was extremely bedraggled. Golden thunderbolts falling from the sky continuously struck his origin. Contrary to Yu Li’s guess, Black Mountain old ancestor was not a thug turned cultivator midway; those thugs were actually his tools. He had a thousand years of cultivation. Three hundred years ago, after his soldier’s death, he successfully switched to divine path cultivator using a small red flower.
In the initial three to five hundred years, he still upheld proper law. But after great chaos under heaven, as refugees flooded the mountains and enshrined him as mountain god, they began abandoning the “weak, sick, and elderly” on the mountain, covering them with tombs and offering them to him, letting him taste the mysteries of human three treasures. Then, at bottlenecks, every twenty years he ate a pair of young boy and girl. And now, with chaos under heaven again, having tasted blood food, he began to let loose.
Who knew that just as his cultivation exploded unprecedentedly in recent years, disaster came too.
War drums approached like heavenly thunder. Facing the terrifying army killing intent, the old demon’s supernatural powers all failed; the magic power he once used to summon wind and rain could no longer be mobilized. Just like cloth pinned under an iron lion, the army at the mountain edge now locked down ninety-nine percent of his magic power.
Now these juniors with only a dozen years of cultivation were ganging up on him one by one with dao arts.
The Black Mountain old demon glared hatefully at these young juniors riding roughshod over him and roared: “Don’t bully us too far!” But a new volley of firearm shots added dozens more holes to his black cloth banner-wrapped dharma body, the killing intent bullets lodging in his black smoke-transformed body without passing through.
The Black Mountain old demon steeled his heart, abandoned this daoist abode cultivated for hundreds of years, and fled as yin wind.
But as he entered the clouds, army cannon fire erupted suddenly. Incandescent cannonballs carrying killing intent bombarded his black mist body, forcing him to the ground.
This mass of black smoke from the Black Mountain old demon condensed from several hundred meters in the sky to the ground, like a video of “black smoke rising” playing in reverse.
After the smoke condensed, the Black Mountain old demon horror-struckly discovered he had fallen into the military camp, surrounded by soldiers holding shields with faces like vajra, with long contradiction shields forming an impenetrable wall within dozens of zhang.
Just as he whipped up black wind to force these armored soldiers back a bit, a general riding a strange beast emerged, raised his spear, and thrust directly at him.
Black Mountain old ancestor felt excruciating pain assail him. The final scene was seeing strands of black qi on his body turn into flying insects, then the black qi dissipating in the sunlight, with resentful souls liberated and turning back to surge into his body, gnawing at him like maggots.
At this moment, Black Mountain old ancestor vaguely recalled the sutra chapter from the dao art heart scripture he obtained when he first cultivated.
This fiend muttered: So there is indeed fate in the void. A small flower condensed on his dharma body. As karmic sins surged toward his origin, the magic power he painstakingly gained from harming the human world was absorbed by this small flower.
The Black Mountain old demon finally saw clearly that this small red flower had karmic ties to the general in this incoming army and the woman beside him.
When Yu Li inserted the flower into her hair bun, this millennium ghost understood that his survival all these years was merely making wedding clothes for others.
…Postscript…
After the Black Mountain demon in Huai Ze was exterminated, the next day under true sunlight, the liberated villages by the lakeside all set off firecrackers, beat gongs and drums, sighing that heaven had opened its eyes.
These years of “demons and monsters rampant” had made the locals here suffer unspeakably. No one could endure the nonstop calamity day and night. Moreover, every month all villages being dragged into the lake, with all people and livestock turning into blood-red skeletons enduring torment, was a nightmare.
As for that “Black Mountain islet” that could freely float up and down and roam at will in Huai Ze, Wu Hengyu carried an inscribed text to the highest point of this island. As the inscribed text was placed, the flow of qi in the mountains and rivers was fixed; this lakeside mountain islet could no longer move.
Without an imperial court edict, Wu Hengyu did not dare let the army linger long-term and quickly had them return to the Grotto-Heaven, but he left a twenty-man squad stationed locally to ensure the Wu Family Army collected merchant goods in the lake marsh.
…Incense and fire dividing line…
And Bai Renfeng and the others, each household erected plaques enshrining these sword-controlling young heroes.
Of course, specially building ancestral halls was impossible. Most of the ancestral halls built today would only be worshipped for a few generations before being dismantled in the investigating censor’s “elimination of licentious worship.”
Bai Renfeng and the others reported this demon-subduing and evil-exorcising process to the local Demon Suppressing Division. Though they did not understand the rules their sect master had told them before descending the mountain, they followed them.
Yu Li knew very well why their sect required these third generation disciples to report demon-slaying to the Demon Suppressing Division after. It was to record this merit in Da Yao’s archives.
Da Yao established the Demon Suppressing Division to learn from the lesson of the previous Da Cheng dynasty, when the divine path casually collected incense and fire in the countryside. This led to evil cultivators hyping end-world great tribulation on one hand while collecting savior belief on the other, messing up the human realm terribly.
After Da Yao was established, all matters harming the people and land were handled by the Demon Suppressing Division, and even occasional sect demon exterminations had to be reported to it. As for why sects cooperated?
For example today, in a hundred years when Bai Renfeng and these young heroes had no hope of immortality, after soldier’s death they could sense the power of incense and worship offered by locals here. If they obtained an imperial degree through sect relations, they could become land gods.
Of course, even as “land gods,” they could at most linger in this world for a few hundred years. Mortals are forgetful; with turmoil under heaven, changes in great rivers and mountains and rivers, and natural and man-made disasters, villages often could not endure long. Even if villages survived disasters, after a generation changed, they forgot to worship, and many land temples were abandoned this way.
Unless advancing further to become city gods of great cities, or being enfeoffed by the Son of Heaven as mountain gods or river earls of famous mountains and great rivers. Of course, these positions were extremely hard to obtain.
Yu Li gazed at Wu Hengyu: “Every sect in chaotic times sends disciples down the mountain to gain fame for the sect. At the same time, if they identify children of auspicious qi in the great tribulation, they recruit them into the sect early. Because this involves enfeoffment at the level of mountains and rivers and famous cities.”
