Canyun Mountain.
While Wu Dao and the others were trapped in the Strange Fog Forest Sea,
Whoosh~
Mist churned along the mountainside.
Flickering with a firefly-yellow glow, two figures strolled out.
They looked up. Ahead, moonlight dappled the mountain forest, where nightingales sang and insects chirped. It was a world apart from the silent sea of fog behind them.
The two were
Mao Ba and Yun Tianliu.
"Whew, thank you for the warning, Daoist. Otherwise, I'm afraid I would have been trapped in that sea of fog too."
Yun Tianliu glanced back at the fog with lingering fear, then cupped his hands and bowed to Mao Ba.
"You're too kind, Fellow Daoist Yun."
Mao Ba smiled faintly and waved a hand. "We both come from righteous sects. We should stand together as one.
"Zhao Wei and Meng Qingshan are both remnants of the Giant Whale Sect, which once wreaked havoc across the land. A leopard can't change its spots. At the end of the day, they're birds of a feather.
"Not to mention,
"they're consorting with such a vicious, bloodthirsty fiend!"
Mao Ba still seemed to resent Wu Dao's slaughter right in front of him. His voice was edged with grievance. "If they really got their hands on the Flesh Tai Sui, that would be helping a tyrant do evil.
"That's why I had to play a little trick. They won't be able to get out of this Illusion Mist Realm for a while."
"You're absolutely right, Daoist. If only I had the strength..."
Yun Tianliu nodded, a trace of murderous intent in his eyes. Meng Qingshan, Zhao Wei, and Wu Dao—all of them, in his view, were no good.
"Heh, there's always another day. For now, we should..."
Boom!
A heavy impact, like a meteor crashing to earth, cut Mao Ba off.
The two of them started in unison and turned around.
Amid flying dirt and shattered stone,
a nine-foot, iron-forged brute stood tall, baring a mouthful of terrifying black shark teeth.
"Daoist, you've got quite the nimble feet."
Wu Dao rolled his stiff neck, joints cracking. His half-smile made Mao Ba and Yun Tianliu feel as if a vicious shark had fixed its gaze on them.
Boom, boom, boom—
Before the two could recover, three more figures came crashing down from above.
"Haha, as expected of Immortal Sect disciples. Your methods truly are extraordinary."
Amid the rumbling laughter,
the moonlight gleamed off Meng Qingshan's bald head, making it almost blinding. Behind him stood the lifeless Yingsha.
"Damn it, what a rotten stroke of luck..."
Zhao Wei was the last to arrive, cursing under his breath.
Compared to the others, he looked rather disheveled. He was covered in blood and bits of flesh, as if he'd just been through a slaughter.
As expected...
Not one person in the Divine Strength Realm was simple.
Wu Dao wasn't surprised to see the three of them.
The Divine Strength Realm already involved a transformation of the spirit. Zhao Wei, in particular, was a Fist Dao Grandmaster with at least forty years of cultivation; his spiritual discipline was no small thing.
Meng Qingshan and Yingsha were even more formidable.
It would have been strange if they'd been trapped in the fog illusion so easily.
Still,
Wu Dao was curious where all the chunks of flesh on Zhao Wei had come from.
"Ran into those three unlucky fools..."
Seeing the confusion in Wu Dao's eyes, Zhao Wei explained helplessly, "They were already completely under the spell. The moment they saw me, they started shouting for my blood..."
Wu Dao nodded, understanding.
The Tyrant Whale Fist was a fierce external art, brutal and savage, liable to take a life at any moment.
Though Zhao Wei seemed amiable on the surface, like a good-natured old man, he was certainly no soft-hearted saint underneath.
They were only three insignificant nobodies.
So what if he'd killed them?
No one cared.
Right now, there was something else that mattered more...
"Ahem. I never imagined this fog could be so strange. I was caught in its spell before I even realized it. I miscalculated..."
Under everyone's accusing stares,
Mao Ba forced out an explanation, inwardly regretting his earlier arrogance and underestimating the group.
"Heh, there's no need to blame yourself, Daoist. No one in this world knows everything."
Meng Qingshan offered a hollow laugh.
Wu Dao and Zhao Wei said nothing.
After all,
they still had to rely on Mao Ba to find the Flesh Tai Sui. This wasn't the time to fall out.
But after what had just happened,
none of them would blindly take Mao Ba at his word again.
As for his having schemed against them,
they would settle that score when the time came to turn on him.
And so, each with their own calculations, they chose to hold back in the face of their shared goal, maintaining for now the appearance of harmony and mutual benefit.
The Green Crane led the way.
With Mao Ba at the head, the six of them plunged back into the vast mountain forest after a brief silence.
This time,
every one of them stayed on full alert, their gazes fixed on Mao Ba up ahead until the sweat prickled down his back.
Canyun Mountain was enormous.
Even though they had reached the mountainside, the terrain was still not especially steep.
Ancient trees towered all around, so huge that four or five people could barely encircle their trunks. The forest was untouched and primeval, and the people moving through it seemed tiny.
They traveled another ten-odd miles.
Wu Dao, who had kept all five senses open, twitched his nose and caught the heavy scent of blood.
He wasn't the only one.
Everyone smelled it. They quickened their pace and hurried toward its source.
They pushed through the dense foliage.
An open, marshy valley came into view.
Beneath the bright moon,
a stream burbled past, and water plants grew thick along its banks.
Fruit trees crowded the valley, their red and green fruit filling the eye.
On some of the thick trunks, they could see simple houses built from branches and leaves, linked to one another by vine ladders.
There were quite a lot of them.
There must have been forty or fifty treehouses, forming what looked like an isolated, primitive human settlement.
But...
This place, like a Shangri-La, was now shrouded in a thick stench of blood and the reek of death!
Wu Dao swept his gaze across the valley.
Inside the treehouses, in the water, on the stones, in the fruit trees...
More than a hundred contorted White-Haired Ape corpses lay motionless in heaps, their blood running in streams and staining the valley's water plants red.
Why heaps?
Because
those corpses really did look like flattened dough or putty, nothing but limp piles of flesh. Some had even been stretched seven or eight meters long, a sight that made one's skin crawl.
Clearly,
the "bones" of these White-Haired Apes had vanished.
Or rather...
they'd been eaten!
Are apes and humans really the same?
Looking at the hellish scene of flesh beneath the moon, Wu Dao felt no stir in his heart, yet a question suddenly surfaced in his mind.
Still,
apes did seem more intelligent than most animals.
And...
Wu Dao noticed the crude "clothing" of leaves and grass on the White-Haired Apes, as well as "weapons" scattered here and there.
They knew to cover themselves, used tools with ease, and built houses.
The intelligence of these White-Haired Apes had clearly reached the level of primitive humans.
So,
was this making up for quality with quantity?
Wu Dao had a guess.
"Damn, we're a step too late..."
The moment Mao Ba saw the scene in the valley, he leaped to the side of an ape corpse and reached down to examine its still-unclotted blood. His expression darkened.
"This demon is extremely cautious. It knew it had been exposed as soon as the Chang Ghost in Panshui Town was subdued. It wouldn't have been able to transform in peace.
"So it chose the next-best option: using the bones of these near-human White Apes to force a transformation.
"At this point, it might already have..."
"Who's there?!"
A sudden shout cut Mao Ba off.
Meng Qingshan, closest to the valley's exit, roared. Yingsha, who was with him, had already darted ahead.
Wu Dao immediately looked up.
On the canopy of a fruit tree at the valley's entrance,
clearly visible in the moonlight,
stood an old man less than a meter tall. He was chubby and round, with long ears and a wide mouth, scantily clothed, and looked like a clay statue of an Earth God from a temple. He watched them with a jolly smile.
Like a man, yet not a man!
His entire body was blood-red!
Threads of bright-red flesh writhed like earthworms and long bugs, while his face twisted and changed. It was utterly revolting!
The Flesh Tai Sui?
It had already transformed?
Boom, boom, boom!!
In an instant,
greed burst forth in the eyes of everyone present, like a volcano erupting after a long suppression. They stamped on the stones and trees beneath their feet and shot toward the Flesh Tai Sui like cannonballs.
"Hehe... fun... this is fun..."
The old man formed from the Flesh Tai Sui only laughed "foolishly." His figure flickered, and he vanished from the treetop without a sound.
"What a bunch of reckless fools!"
Mao Ba was a step behind. Seeing Yun Tianliu chase after it without a moment's hesitation, he couldn't help but curse in exasperation, then urged the Green Crane to follow.
Different horizons,
different ways of handling things.
In Mao Ba's view, the Flesh Tai Sui had already transformed. Though it was only a half-finished transformation, its strength had already surpassed Foundation Establishment.
A demon that had completed five hundred years of cultivation
had already developed the "Demonic Arts" people often spoke of, wielding powers beyond the mundane and beyond comprehension.
Though those Demonic Arts were weak,
they still surpassed brute strength by far.
As for human cultivators,
only those who reached the Innate Realm could truly transcend the ordinary and escape the limits of simple flesh-and-blood strength.
If you weren't strong enough,
charging in without understanding the danger
would most likely end with a nasty lesson!
Before you continue