Child of Calamity

When An Jing returned to the riders' camp covered in blood, the displaced people nearby immediately scattered in fear. The one-eyed squad leader and the white-robed scholar, who had heard the screams long before, both wore approving smiles.

"Not bad."

An Jing saw the shrewd light turning in the scholar's foxlike, narrowed eyes as he looked him up and down. "You did even better than we expected."

"You flatter me, sir." An Jing bowed slightly. The one-eyed squad leader waved his hand, and two riders led An Jing into the camp to change his clothes and wash up.

Not long after An Jing returned to the riders' camp in a fresh set of clothes, they had gathered enough children. The riders called out to one another and prepared to leave.

The sun was setting, sinking behind the mountains. The light behind the thick, leaden snow clouds grew dimmer and dimmer, and the whole world was shrouded in a hazy gray-blue.

An Jing stood on the road at the edge of the displaced people's camp. He turned and looked back, seeing an endless white wilderness, towering mountain ranges without end, and a vast city that stretched from the foot of the mountains to their slopes, encircled by a great river.

The Northern Frontier's scenery was the most magnificent in all of Da Chen. Mingshan City was imposing and grand, worthy of being the greatest city in the Northern Frontier.

But now, the Frost Calamity had brought disaster.

In An Jing's eyes, the mountains veiled by wind and snow, flickering in and out of sight, seemed to come alive. Their shadowy depths were like the body of a demon god, supporting the heavens above and treading upon the earth below. The city's lamplights became countless indifferent eyes, gazing down upon the teeming masses of humanity.

Lowering his head, he saw the parents who had sold their children waiting on either side of the road.

Some were numb; others watched their children with tears streaming down their faces as they said their final goodbyes.

An Shen Shi, who had regained some strength after taking medicine and eating, was there too, waiting for her child.

"Jing'er."

Her dry eye sockets held no tears. Across the frost-covered road, An Shen Shi met her child's gaze.

"Stay alive." Her hoarse voice delivered her final instruction. Even An Jing, who had always been so strong, could only force a smile at that moment. "Mother, you have to stay alive too."

"If I'm lucky enough to get out, I'll go south—to Linjiang, Beirui, or Broken Blade Mountain... Mother, stay alive. Wait for me."

"Wait for me to come back!"

An Jing climbed into the carriage the riders had prepared. He shared one last look with his mother.

The woman gazed after the carriage until her solitary figure disappeared in the heavy snowfall.

Inside the carriage.

After parting from his mother, even An Jing, blessed with Past Life Wisdom since childhood and far more mature than his peers, couldn't help feeling grief.

But he took a deep breath, suppressing every emotion, his gaze growing profound.

His mother was a martial artist, and she had eaten her fill. Even if she couldn't get into Mingshan City, she could at least cross Huai River Pass and head south. Broken Blade Mountain was already far away, and the region around it was rich in resources, beyond the reach of the Frost Calamity. Perhaps she could even find a few relatives and establish herself.

—Huh? There's incense burning in this carriage? These people are pretty well-off.

Then again, these people had even set up free clinics to treat the displaced. They were surely not short on supplies...

His thoughts wandered far before he pulled them back. An Jing realized there were eight people in the carriage with him, and it was roomier than he'd expected.

He looked around. They were all children about his age, boys and girls alike. An Jing also spotted the girl who had suffered severe frostbite and been treated by the physician.

It seemed they had been sorted by age.

The children had only just left their parents and ought to have been making a racket, but now every one of them hung their heads or turned their faces away, keeping their mouths shut.

After all, they weren't ordinary children. They were refugees who had endured the Northern Frontier's Frost Calamity and crossed mountains and wilderness alongside their parents.

The children who had kept fussing had long since died. Some had even been captured and eaten.

It sounded cruel, but when it really happened, how many more words could you use to describe it?

As An Jing recalled it, he couldn't help clenching his fists. People bartered their children for food, and some refugees even stole and hunted down other people's children to cook and eat.

When a child who had been stolen away had been protected through so much hardship and had barely survived, even the strongest parents would break. Their anguished curses and sobs lingered in the wind and snow for a long time.

Back then, he'd had to look after his mother. If he'd been alone, with nothing holding him back, he would have drawn his blade and slaughtered every one of those beasts. Unfortunately, those vermin ran too fast. He'd only managed to kill one.

Pulling himself back from his memories, An Jing looked around. The other children riding in the carriage with him had most likely witnessed those same scenes.

After seeing such things, even cheerful children had fallen silent.

Even after leaving their parents, once the initial grief passed, their thoughts would quickly shift to the simplest concerns.

—Will I get enough to eat at the next meal?

At least they wouldn't be eaten.

In that case, better save their strength for the inspection by the "wealthy household" ahead.

As he breathed in the faint scent of wood inside the carriage and listened to the wind outside, An Jing recalled the kind of carriage he'd seen earlier.

This wasn't an ordinary wheeled carriage. It was a large covered sleigh, like a snow-sled, able to carry far more people and supplies than a regular carriage, especially suited to traveling across snow.

The horses were extraordinary too. They must be "Northwest Frost Cavalry," horses unafraid of ice and snow.

A carriage like this couldn't have been built in a short time. It must have been prepared well in advance. Had these mysterious people foreseen this Frost Calamity?

Was that why they'd made such thorough preparations, waiting for nature to weed out those with insufficient "Heavenly Fate" before buying up survivors like him—"children of calamity" who had escaped the disaster?

Thinking this, An Jing gradually grew drowsy.

His constitution was excellent, and he had an exceptional Root Bone, but he had gone hungry for a long time. After finally eating his fill, his body was digesting the food, and an irresistible weariness washed over him...

"Mm? This doesn't feel like ordinary drowsiness?!" Only then did An Jing realize something was wrong with the scent of incense in the carriage. No matter how tired he was, he shouldn't have been so exhausted that he could barely control his own thoughts.

An Jing looked around again, taking a careful look. His expression flickered with surprise. No wonder the other children had all been silent—they'd already fallen asleep. He was the one who had held out the longest!

But even he could no longer keep his eyes open. Before long, he sank into a deep sleep.

Outside the carriage.

A rider looked back at the carriage, rather surprised. "He finally fell asleep. That boy—Soul-Calming Incense is supposed to knock an ordinary person out cold within two breaths, but he lasted a full quarter of an hour!"

"I think I understand why the higher-ups placed so much importance on this recruitment drive. The Child of Calamity's aptitude really is extraordinary!"

"No kidding."

Another rider cut in. "I thought this bunch of refugees would all be scrap metal. Looks like there are some good ones after all!"

"Quiet." A more experienced rider rebuked him, shaking his head with a faint, wry smile. "Those who can't enter the sect might still end up as our fellow disciples someday. And those who do enter... Heh."

The veteran rider clicked his tongue, his tone full of meaning. "If those Master Wus remember your careless sneering and disdain later on, just imagine what might happen to you..."

He didn't need to say more. The meaningful silence was frightening enough.

"Y-yes, I know..." The rider shivered, abruptly sobering from his excitement. He resumed his earlier silence, showing no emotion or preference.

"Keep it that way," the veteran rider said softly. "Let's keep moving and save our strength."

After that, the snowy night passed in silence.

Over the next few days, aside from stopping to set up camp and eat, An Jing and the other children continued their journey in their sleep.

Perhaps they didn't want the children to know how far they were being taken or where they were being sent. Or perhaps it was simply easier to manage them that way. After all, on a long journey, it was easier to let them sleep all the way to the end than to look after them while they were awake.

During this time, many different caravans converged from all directions. Some came and went, and the white-robed scholar left partway through the journey.

Overall, however, the whole group continued to gather strength.

By the later stages, it had become a large convoy of more than twenty carriages.

An Jing tried to figure out where he was, but even he could only tell that they were moving southwest. They had already begun to leave the reach of the Northern Frontier's Frost Calamity, and the snow carriages had been replaced with ordinary wheeled ones.

But he didn't know which region of Da Chen they had reached.

"The forest back home was a cool-temperate coniferous forest, while the one I saw last time was a temperate montane coniferous forest."

An Jing wasn't sure. Da Chen was so vast that it was hard for him to comprehend. After all, this was a world with Heavenly Fate and the Martial Dao, where great power and immortality existed. "We probably haven't left the Northern Frontier entirely. Are we at the border between the Northern Frontier and the Northwest?"

"Come to think of it, words like 'cool-temperate coniferous forest'... What did I do in my previous life?"

With such questions in mind, amid the carriage's blurred sense of time and space, An Jing could only make a rough estimate.

About ten days later, the mysterious people's carriage finally reached its destination.

A manor deep in the mountains and ancient forests.

White mist filled the mountain ridges, and a tributary of an unnamed river flowed beside the mountain road, its surface shimmering.

As the mountain road wound onward, it grew increasingly dilapidated. They passed villages where no one seemed to have lived for days.

Soon, the scenery, where traces of people could still occasionally be seen, was gradually replaced by dense vegetation and towering cliffs.

Layer upon layer, they formed a dense forest that spread across the whole mountain range like a maze. Small, low shrubs, green as jade, grew across the steep cliffs like Dragon-Snake scales, making these towering mountains of the Northwest seem like parts of some enormous creature's body.

At last, the mountain road came to an end.

Before the depths of the dense forest, the road that had been passable abruptly stopped, as if even the laborers who had built it had been powerless against this ancient forest. Only narrow mountain paths remained, winding into the woods like blood vessels—the final compromise.

By then, nearly every trace of human presence had vanished, leaving only the most primitive wilderness.

The carriage jolted along the rugged mountain path.

Along the way, everyone had begun to realize that the people who had bought them probably weren't servants from some wealthy family.

Ordinary high-ranking households wouldn't transport them in such a secretive manner. Even if they had a hidden manor, they wouldn't build it so deep in the mountains.

In Da Chen, even three-year-old children knew the saying: Don't enter the mountains.

Mountains were home to spirits, anomalies, demons, and ancient beasts. They also held countless strange, forbidden places that could stir the power of the land and give rise to all manner of Divine Anomalies.

The mountains within Da Chen's borders that had already been cleared out were safer. At most, they held a few young, inchoate spirits. Da Chen didn't discriminate against such spirits, either. As long as they obeyed the law, respected human ways, and spoke human language, they were treated as equals.

But the borderlands... They held too many anomalies and too many monsters. Too many people had entered them and never returned.

When they realized they had entered the deep mountains, even the somewhat clever children grew gloomy. There was no way any of them could survive here alone and make it back out.

Anyone who built a manor in these mountains, whether part of the righteous path or a heretical sect, belonged to a secretive organization. They would never again be able to return to the world under their ordinary identities.

But no matter what the children thought, this was the truth.

They were already here.

"Get down."

After the carriage had jolted along for a long while, it stopped, and a rider called out, "We're 'home.'"

An Jing let out a deep breath.

The moment had finally arrived. He calmed himself, ready to face the "home" that awaited him.

An Jing glanced at the seven others in the same carriage, who were still groggy, then turned and stepped down first.

A mountain manor, laid out with strict precision, came into view.

But before An Jing could take a closer look, he heard a familiar voice.

"Not bad."

Turning his head, An Jing saw the one-eyed martial artist, the rider leading their convoy, watching him.

The man laughed in his gruff voice. "You're the best of this batch of newcomers."