"That mountain..."
Meng Tian sat on his horse and gazed into the distance.
A shadow flashed past and appeared on the ground, half-kneeling before Zhao Gao's mount.
Meng Tian said, "My Lord Zhao's subordinates move so quickly. We had only just arrived in the Southern Border, and someone was already here to receive us."
"His Majesty's affairs—naturally, servants like us must do everything in our power."
Zhao Gao smiled faintly, then his smile vanished. He looked toward the man on horseback and said, "What did you find?"
The man from Net reported, "My Lord, we found out that it is Nine Saints Mountain in the Southern Border, named for the nine founding ancestors of the Nine Li Kingdom. There seem to be legends of spirit beasts in the mountain, but..."
Zhao Gao's eyes flashed. "But what?"
The spy said, "Legend says that within that cave dwells the Southern Border's sacred beast, the Iron-Eating Beast, not a black tortoise. Some also say they once saw a black tortoise haunting that mountain. The only thing the accounts have in common is that every year, the nine kingdoms of the Southern Border must offer sacrifices to these spirit beasts once."
"Oh? An Iron-Eating Beast?" Zhao Gao's gaze flickered.
Meng Tian said, "I once heard that in the ancient era, the divine beast beneath the seat of Chiyou, ancestor of the Southern Border's Nine Li, was precisely the Iron-Eating Beast. It was an extremely powerful, fierce, and terrifying monster, able to swallow gold and eat iron, incomparably formidable."
"Later, during the time of King Wu Geng of Shang, Grand Preceptor Lu Chuan once captured a strange Iron-Eating Beast. After defeating the Southern Border barbarians, he gifted this strange beast to the Southern Border as a token of repaired relations. For more than three hundred