The He Family's guards descended the damp, sloping trail toward the foot of the mountain. Dense trees and wild grass surrounded them, an expanse of green broken only by a winding mountain path, trampled into existence by passing hunters and woodcutters.
Several sedan bearers carried a soft-topped sedan chair along the trail, their steps heavy. The procession seemed sealed inside a stuffy gourd, not a sound escaping from it the entire way.
Strangely, everyone from the He Mansion—the bearers, guards, and servants alike—had a faint gray pallor about them. One by one, they were taciturn and silent, utterly lacking the air of the living.
The sedan chair was carried down the slope like that. Just as it reached a narrow mountain path, an accident struck—
A sudden bang exploded from the road ahead. Several smoke bombs burst, and great clouds of colored smoke billowed into the air.
As soon as the smoke rose, the sound of arrows slicing through the air came from among the trees on either side of the path.
The archers hidden along the mountainside had used the colored smoke as their signal. At once, a flurry of whooshing sounds swept along both sides of the trail. Hundreds of arrows flew through the air with a vicious whistle, thunking into the ground in a row before the sedan chair.
Several guards escorting the sedan were struck by multiple arrows, pinned like hedgehogs. A few others had arrows driven through their hands and feet, and writhed and twitched on the ground.
It was a silent massacre. The many guards in front of the sedan had no time to draw their swords or flee. They seemed not even to have time to make a sound before the force of the arrows pierced through them and felled them all in an instant.
The archers hidden in the trees drew and loosed without pause, arrows flying in a chaotic rain. The soft-topped sedan chair—the place where He Ping was seated—was pierced by countless arrows, turned into a massive target.
Sharp, barbed arrows whistled in. The soft-topped sedan had no iron plates to fend them off. Like a waterskin riddled with holes, it was shot through and through. At this point, even if the person inside had been made of iron, there could be no chance of survival.
"Kill!"
Xiao Hao drew the beast-faced axe at his waist, raised it in one hand, and bellowed from high ground.
In an instant, the Long Wind Society members lying in ambush on both sides surged forward like a swarm of bees.
No matter how elite the He Mansion's guards were, they had been caught off guard by that volley of arrows and suffered heavy casualties. Once surrounded by Long Wind Society members, they were plunged into a brutal melee.
"Get out of my way!"
Long Wind Society's "fierce general," Yan the Second, led the charge, brandishing a horse-chopping saber. He surged forward like a rolling gale, blood spraying in his wake.
Smoke and dust parted as his blade swept through the air and severed a man's head. A guard nearby moved in, but before he could draw his sword halfway, an elite archer hidden in a tree shot a barbed arrow straight through his forehead.
"Kill! Kill every last one of them! Remember, don't let a single person escape!"
"Smiling Leopard" Xiao Hao wielded an axe in each hand and laughed uproariously, a demonic grin appearing on the side of his face.
He swung a broad axe in a circle. A casual sweep was enough to cleave several figures in two. In the blink of an eye, the mountain path became a field of carnage, one scene of unspeakable slaughter after another unfolding before them.
Moments later, corpses littered the path and blood stained the ground. The sight was too gruesome to bear. Not one of the He Family's burly servants or guards had survived. The Long Wind Society had taken the whole He Family, pot and all.
"Everyone, remember to gather up all the bodies, then dig a pit and bury them. Make sure we do this cleanly."
As he ordered his men to dig a pit and bury the dead, Xiao Hao strode over to the sedan chair, bristling with arrows.
He had to admit, the ambush had gone far too smoothly. Even a seasoned veteran like Xiao Hao found it almost suspiciously easy. He needed to confirm whether He Ping inside the sedan was really dead.
"With the sedan shot to pieces like this, the grown man inside was a sitting duck, shot until he was nothing but a pincushion..."
A cold smile tugged at Xiao Hao's mouth. He reached out to lift the curtain, but at that very moment, a strange hand shot out from inside and clamped around his neck.
The hand was carved from wood. Its palm tilted upward, fingers like iron pincers locking unerringly around Smiling Leopard's throat. Had it been anyone else, this grip would have bulged their eyes and tongue out and crushed their bones.
Fortunately, Xiao Hao was born with monstrous strength. He clamped down hard on the wooden hand with one hand and swung his axe with the other, chopping fiercely into the sedan.
Smiling Leopard reacted with astonishing speed. Xiao Hao was skilled with broad axes. He had studied under the Cuiyue Sect of Wuding Mountain on Qinggeng Peak, mastering the unusual axe technique Mountain Crushing Break. This strike, "Split the Armor, Draw the Nail," came down with astonishing force and ferocity.
But the axe whistled down with a whoosh and, before it could even split the curtain, struck something as hard as refined steel. The recoil split Xiao Hao's palm at the base of his thumb.
"What... what is this?"
His eyes widened. Another wooden arm emerged from behind the curtain and stopped the axe in mid-swing. Though its five fingers were clearly carved from wood, they had a strength exceeding iron. With a forceful twist, it shattered the axe blade with a crash.
"You... what... are... you...?"
Smiling Leopard's eyes bulged, and his face turned the color of purple-brown sauce. He released the axe handle and clutched the motionless wooden hand around his neck with both hands. Then the hand squeezed just slightly. With a crack, the man's neck snapped like a dry branch.
"Boss Xiao is dead!!!"
Yan the Second's eyes went wide, and the members around him were dumbstruck. No one could have imagined that a big shot like "Smiling Leopard" Xiao Hao, one of the foremost figures in the martial world, would die here.
Amid a series of clacking sounds from wooden joints twisting and turning, the sedan curtain was pulled wide open. A bizarre figure stepped out.
"What... what is that?"
Panic erupted through the crowd.
The thing that emerged from the soft sedan chair was a misshapen creature. It had a human head, but no features.
Its body was made of wood. It hunched over, its back curved, and casually waved a hand, tossing aside Xiao Hao's lifeless corpse. Four long arms with ball-shaped joints hung from its body.
"...A spider demon. Is that a spider demon?"
Yan the Second's voice nearly broke. He couldn't make out what the thing was, only that the monster had four hands and four feet, like some half-human, half-spider creature.
"Help... help me!!!"
Suddenly, a cry rang out nearby.
It came from one of the Long Wind Society members, a man assigned to dig in the nearby woods. He came running over, panic written all over his face.
"Save me! Those corpses..."
As he cried out for help, something reached out from the pitch-black woods and grabbed him by the chin.
It was a human hand, its skin mottled with livor mortis.
The man let out a scream. In an instant, several more pale hands reached out from the darkness behind him, grabbing his shoulders and wrists. Then they dragged him into the blackness.
"AAAAAAAH!"
The man screamed. Before long, the sound of crunching and chewing came from the dark woods.
The Long Wind Society members were panicking now. No one knew what was happening in the woods. A short while later, a pale, bloodless face emerged from the darkness.
"Th-that's one of the He Mansion's guards."
Someone recognized him. The man's face had been split in two. Then they saw its owner: a man in a guard's uniform, one hand severed and one leg dragging behind him, stumbling out of the woods.
Several more shambling, corpse-like figures followed behind him. They chewed on flesh, and one of them clutched a leg covered in bite marks.
The blood-mouthed man opened wide, his bloodshot eyes fixed blankly on the crowd.
At the sight before them, the Long Wind Society members gaped, their bodies stiffening.
"Ghosts!"
Someone screamed. The others drew their weapons again, for more and more figures were slowly emerging from the woods.
More terrifying still, the bodies of the guards and servants that had yet to be carried away—the corpses with severed limbs and guts spilling out—were struggling to rise from the ground.
The scene grew eerie and uncanny. The many corpses rose like puppets on strings, pulled up by an unseen force. Expressionless, they reached their claws toward the members gathered there.
"Wh-what are all these things?"
Yan the Second's throat tightened, and a thread of panic crept into his voice.
"Archers! What are the archers doing?"
The archers lying in ambush and keeping watch on both sides had fallen silent, as if their banners had been lowered and their drums stilled. The woods, too, were deathly quiet, lending the scene an unnerving air.
"A net is set for fish, and the swan is caught within; the mantis schemes greedily, yet the sparrow lurks behind. A trap hides another trap, and change breeds change. What can your clever schemes possibly be worth..."
Suddenly, a hoarse, strange voice with an uneven cadence drifted over from somewhere.
Yan the Second's heart lurched. He looked up abruptly, staring at the sky in disbelief. Above the mountain path, a black-robed figure seemed to hang in midair. Countless long, shadowy threads radiated from him in every direction, crossing and weaving through the air to form a net.
Only when Yan the Second looked up did he realize that the Society's archers had been bound by threads and suspended in the air, like prey caught in that web.
The black-robed figure wearing a ghost-mask sat in the middle of the bizarre web like some monstrous spider, plucking at the threads with his fingertips and toying with everyone below.
"As the saying goes, 'Man schemes against the tiger, but the tiger schemes against man in turn.' You plotted every detail, and now the time has come to pay."
The black-robed figure gave a cold laugh and moved his ten fingers. A blood-soaked slaughter was about to begin.