The blazing sun hung high overhead. A long river, mostly dried up, stretched across the land.
This place lay on the edge of Yunze Prefecture, near Danhe Prefecture.
A ragged group of people trudged along the river. From time to time, someone would turn toward the riverbed and rummage through the mud for something.
As they drew closer, it became clear they were all displaced refugees, drifting along the road.
Most followed the river, where grass roots and tree bark could be found along the banks. If they were lucky, they might even find dead fish or shrimp.
At noon, many refugees dozed beneath the trees, hoping to wait out the worst of the sun before walking on again later.
"Give it back! That fish is mine."
"Let go. Keep pestering me, and I'll beat you to death."
"Don't hit my mother! We don't want the fish." Cries from a woman and child rang out across the riverbed.
The people sprawled beneath the trees turned their heads to look. A man and a woman were fighting in the mud over nothing more than a sun-dried dead fish.
Not one of the two hundred or so people there stepped in. Their faces were numb; they had seen too much of this sort of thing.
The young preyed on the old, men preyed on women, and the strong preyed on the weak... In the end, the old, the weak, women, and children were always bullied the worst.
If a family, or a group traveling together, had no man among them, they were unlikely to survive the journey.
And if there was a pretty young girl among them, her fate was worse still. Such a family often died out before traveling far, while the girl was carried off.
In this age, people were no better than wild beasts in the mountains and forests: the strong lived, and the weak died.
There had been kindhearted people, but aside from a rare few with formidable strength, the rest had long since become dry bones by the roadside.
"My master, Lord Liu, is taking on six child servants. Two full meals a day!"
"My master, Lord Wang, wants seven child servants. Once we've taken them, we leave at once."
"My master, Lord Yan, needs eight this time. He'll even pay one qian of silver a month." ...
The refugees looked up and saw a group of men dressed as household servants shouting in the distance. They were even cursing at one another.
These servants were dogs to their masters, yet even when they came out to recruit servants, they had to compete for face.
As for the child servants they took back, a sturdy boy might become a household guard, while a pretty girl who grew up might become a bedchamber maid.
The sickly and ugly ones, meanwhile, would do the dirtiest, lowliest labor. It was common for their masters to beat them to death.
Even so, for the refugees, this was a way to stay alive.
"Hurry, let's go over!" Nearly all the refugees who had brought children with them rushed toward the men.
On the riverbed, the mother and child who had been shoved into the mud struggled to their feet as well.
"Four taels of silver for a boy, two for a girl." A servant opened the wooden cage on the cart.
There was only a little dry grass on the bottom. The wooden cage looked just like something meant for livestock.
"I don't want silver. Two sacks of grain will do. Xiao Man, come here. Go with them, and you won't have to go hungry." As she spoke, the woman tried to send her child up onto the cart.
"Look at my child—he's sturdy, with a big frame. He's only a little thin."
"Look at my child. She's a girl. One sack of grain will do. Yingying, hurry and get up." ...
More than eighty refugees, along with the servants from the various households, crowded together. Over a hundred people jostled and shouted without end.
Beneath the trees, the other refugees were watching the spectacle when they suddenly felt the ground beneath their heads tremble.
They all turned to look. The very next moment, terror seized them, and their bodies instinctively curled into tight balls.
"Hyah! Hyah!"
"Hyah! Hyah! Hyah..."
Beneath the blazing sun, a column of a hundred soldiers galloped past on horseback.
The entire column moved as one, in perfect formation from top to bottom, whipping up a howling gale.
The Demon-Blood Steeds thundered along with astonishing force, rising and striking the ground almost in perfect unison.
Where they passed, the trees and grass on either side of the road thrashed wildly in the gale, and even clods of earth split apart.
At the rear of the column was a battle chariot pulled by a pair of horses. Its curtains did not flutter in the wind; instead, they bulged outward on all sides.
Any martial artist there could have seen at a glance that a master who had reached the Five Viscera Realm was inside. This was a martial artist's true qi leaving the body.
The first three realms of martial arts cultivated true qi. The fourth major realm forged the golden body and refined qi into astral force.
As for the second major realm, a martial artist had to nourish the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys internally before their body could withstand the powerful true qi that left it.
"Stop!" The soldier at the head of the column sharply lashed his horse and roared.
The hundred or so riders behind him obeyed, halting their forward charge in just two or three strides.
"Get out of the way, all of you! Clear the road!"
His roar was full of force, but the refugees feared the servants would leave. They kept trying to push their children onto the carts.
His shout not only failed to drive the refugees away, it made them and the servants start tugging at one another. One side wanted to leave, while the other clung to them desperately, insisting they take the children.
The leading soldier didn't shout a second time. A cruel smile tugged at his lips as he turned and walked toward the battle chariot at the rear.
"Captain Ma, ignorant troublemakers are blocking the road ahead."
"Cut them down. Why disturb my cultivation?" A man's indifferent voice came from inside the chariot.
"There are quite a lot of them! Some are from wealthy households, too."
"Wealthy households? A pack of mongrels who came into a little money but have neither power nor influence. Cut them all down!"
"Understood." The smile at the corner of the leading soldier's mouth grew wider.
He knew exactly what Captain Ma would say. He had reported it only to have someone else share the blame.
"We are under orders to slay demons. Anyone who blocks our way dies!"
At the roar, a hundred Demon-Blood Steeds charged forward. The soldiers on their backs wore iron armor and wielded long sabers.
The column surged across the road like a torrent of iron. Every soldier had practiced martial arts, refined qi into the marrow, and possessed a powerful physique.
Opposing them were almost entirely frail refugees. As for the twenty or so household servants, they had only learned a few superficial tricks from their masters.
"Ah! Ahhh..."
There was no suspense. Screams and wails rang out across the road, and there was nowhere for them to run.
Beneath the trees, the remaining refugees were terrified out of their wits. Many broke down sobbing on the spot.
The column was like a boulder crushing meat. Wherever it passed, corpses littered the ground. Human bodies were trampled to pieces beneath iron hooves!
Even after the soldiers had ridden far away, the hundred or so refugees beneath the trees still sat huddled in fear, as if they had been frightened witless.
By evening, the sky had gradually darkened.
A gale rose, and in the blink of an eye, rain poured down in torrents.
The refugees were frail and didn't dare get soaked. They all huddled beneath trees with broad canopies for shelter.
Beneath the gloomy sky, another horse-drawn cart came down the road.
The cart didn't look very large. Its curtains were pieced together from animal pelts, and it looked like a hunter's cart.
At the front sat two hunters in straw rain capes, one old and one young.
"Whoa..." The Old Hunter suddenly stopped the cart.
Corpses lay everywhere ahead of them. The scene was horrific, and they were blocking most of the road.
"Old Huang, there are some dead people outside, aren't there? Clear the road, then find shelter from the rain as quickly as you can." A man's gentle voice came from inside the cart. He had already caught the smell of blood.
The Old Hunter shuddered at the voice, realizing that Second Master had spoken.
Second Master looked like a scholar, but over the eight days they had been traveling, he had already slaughtered several groups.
The grandfather and grandson hadn't even seen how Second Master attacked. They had only seen vines and branches writhe everywhere, while every bandit or fool who blocked the road was skewered like meat on a spit.
"Yes, yes, I'll get us moving right away." Old Huang patted Little Fuzi beside him.
Little Fuzi had grown into his frame and was strong now. He quickly climbed down and dragged the corpses blocking the road aside.
A moment later, the cart disappeared into the curtain of rain, leaving behind the refugees struggling to survive in the downpour.