The Demonic Daoists

Shi Feiyang asked exactly where the children had disappeared, then told the villagers, "I'll help you find them. Every second counts—we must find them alive or recover their bodies. There's no time for idle talk."

He rose high into the sky and first used his true-water inner core to conjure great quantities of moisture, which spread in all directions and condensed into clouds. Then he used his escape technique to travel through the clouds in search of his targets. Only this way could he conceal himself completely, leaving not the slightest trace.

The terrain around Mount Xiandu rose and fell endlessly, with a peak here and a river gorge there. Rain was plentiful and the woods dense. Finding someone in this vast wilderness was no different from fishing a needle out of the sea.

Fortunately, Shi Feiyang could fly, and his dragon eyes possessed astonishing vision. Hidden in the clouds, he could even clearly see ants hunting insects on the ground. He reasoned that if practitioners of an evil path had truly captured so many children in such a short time, their ritual site could not be far away. He first limited his search to a radius of a hundred li, then expanded it to three hundred after searching that area once.

At last, as dusk began to fall, he discovered his targets on a small hill.

A large rock had been arranged as a Ritual Altar, covered with yellow cloth bearing the Eight Trigrams. Upon it burned candles as thick as an arm, alongside a bundle of incense and three large bowls containing clear water, rice, and black beans. Eighteen triangular command flags stood around the Ritual Altar, and three small bright-yellow banners stood at its corners. There were also a ritual sword, a ritual ruler, a ritual mirror, and other implements.

Many pagoda trees stood before the Ritual Altar, and a child was tied to each of the nearer ones, boys to the east and girls to the west. Their clothes were gone, replaced by red bellybands—vivid scarlet bellybands dyed with blood and embroidered in gold thread with grotesque, terrifying talismanic symbols.

They were bound with black carpenter's ink line, strung with spirit money and affixed with talismans. Though it only wound around them three or four times, their limbs were limp and numb, leaving them unable to struggle. Some children hung their heads, already dead, blood streaming from their eyes, ears, mouths, and noses. Others still lived, utterly terrified, tears pouring down their faces. They opened their mouths wide to scream, yet could not make a sound.

Three Daoists stood behind the Ritual Altar.

The one in the middle wore a crane-patterned cloak and a jade crown. With a childlike face and three long strands of beard beneath his chin, he had the bearing of an immortal and the bones of a sage, like Lü Dongbin in a painting. He was chatting with the other two.

Hidden in the clouds, Shi Feiyang listened to the information revealed in their conversation and soon felt an overwhelming urge to frown.

These three actually had Great Possession backgrounds!

The altar master in the center was surnamed Yue and named Yue Qinbin. He ordinarily cultivated on Mount Heng in Hunan and was a favored disciple of Wutai's Grandmaster Taiyi Hunyuan Ancestor.

The two guardians beside him were Fire-Wing Vajra Hu Shi and Lotus Wanderer Sun Fu, Yue Qinbin's junior fellow disciples. Their cultivation sanctuary was the Immortal Banyan Temple on Chaoyang Cliff, at the summit of Mount Wuyi in Fujian, not very far from here.

The two largest Sword Immortal sects in the Zu Mountain World were the Emei Sect and Wutai. Both had spread their branches far and wide, with accomplished disciples throughout the world establishing separate retreats and independent establishments.

Both sects were renowned for forging swords. This time, Yue Qinbin intended to forge a type of sword belonging to Wutai: the Divine Infant Sword.

Forging this sword required the living souls of many boys and girls whose birth dates and hours were compatible. As these children died, Evil Technique drew out their souls. After death, they had to endure the agony of soul-refining, tortured over and over by Evil Technique until they brimmed with malice and became demonic infants and vengeful ghosts. They were then tempered a thousand times and fused into the sword. Once forged, the sword still had to kill many more children, using their blood to temper its edge before it could reach full perfection.

The conditions for forging this sword were also exceptionally stringent. It could only be forged during a single month every twelve years, and the birth dates and hours of the eighteen children were crucial. This was especially true of the two who served as the principal souls: one had to be born in a yang year, yang month, yang day, and yang hour, while the other had to be born in a yin year, yin month, yin day, and yin hour. Not even a single two-hour period could be off.

Because this sword grievously violated the harmony of heaven, its forging rarely went smoothly. All manner of unforeseen incidents often interrupted the process, ruining the work just short of completion.

Yue Qinbin had first gone to Flying Thunder Cave on Mount Wuyi to seek a capable fellow sect member named Seven-Handed Yaksha Long Fei, only to find him absent. Long Fei had gone to Mount Jiuhua to visit a friend. Yue Qinbin therefore settled for his next choice and went to Chaoyang Cliff to enlist Hu Shi and Sun Fu's help in forging the sword.

Yue Qinbin told them, "I tried forging the Divine Infant Sword once before. Not only did I fail, I nearly lost an arm. This sword violates the harmony of heaven more than any other. Apart from the person who first devised it, no one has ever succeeded in forging one. I hope you two junior brothers won't take offense, but I originally came to Mount Wuyi to ask Senior Brother Long Fei for help. When I found him away, I had an ominous feeling. I fear my chances of success are still slim this time. If our sword duel with the Emei Sect weren't imminent, I wouldn't take such a desperate risk and insist on forging it."

Hu Shi said, "Senior Brother, why dampen your own spirits like this? Haven't we captured these children quite smoothly over the past few days? The sword is already half finished. The wind is calm, the waves are still, and we've sailed along with the breeze at our backs. Where has there been even the slightest setback?"

Sun Fu agreed. "Exactly! Senior Brother will certainly forge this sword successfully this time. Then you can wield it to sweep away those pigs and dogs of the Emei Sect, dig out their ox bezoars and dog gallstones, and finally vent all the anger we've swallowed over the years."

Shi Feiyang had originally assumed they were ordinary, unaffiliated evil Daoists who had captured children to practice sinister arts, and that he could easily deal with them. He had never expected them to belong to Wutai. They had an organization behind them: kill one, and a whole pack would come after him. Moreover, Wutai had deep reserves of strength. Grandmaster Taiyi Hunyuan Ancestor had fought two sword duels against Qi Shouming, the Emei Sect's leader. In the first, he had lost an arm. In the second, just as victory was within his grasp, the Three Immortals and Two Elders had ganged up on him and beaten him to death.

Shi Feiyang still had some reservations about killing members of Wutai. Had he known nothing of this, that would have been one thing. But now that he had encountered it, he could not simply watch so many children below be killed and have their souls extracted to refine a demonic sword.

He glanced back at Dinghu Peak and considered how cramped the terrain there was, incapable of nurturing a True Dragon. He had long thought of heading out to sea. Today, he would kill these three Demon Daoists and then go to the Eastern Sea. A dragon returning to the vast ocean—that was where a dragon truly belonged.

Wutai was currently locked in sword duels with the Emei Sect, and the conflict was growing ever fiercer. Once the two duels ended and Grandmaster Taiyi Hunyuan Ancestor passed away, the enormous Wutai sect would crumble apart. By then, none of its disciples would have the leisure to seek revenge for these men. Even if they did find him, who would fear whom was far from certain.

Having made up his mind, he rode his escape light within the clouds, his enormous body slowly swimming as he adjusted his position and found the best angle. He activated the two Inner Cores in his belly, one water and one fire, setting them revolving around each other faster and faster until they formed a Water-Fire Taiji Diagram. Then he abruptly opened his mouth and shot both Inner Cores out, sending them crashing toward the ground from midair!

The last time he had ambushed Wei Fengniang and Bruninga, he had directed every attack at Bruninga, whose magical power was stronger. This time, too, he used both cores together, concentrating his firepower on Lotus Wanderer Sun Fu at the far right. He intended to eliminate one of them first.

Below, the three were imagining the coming sword duel, picturing themselves beating the Emei Sect's immortals until they crawled about searching for their scattered teeth. Just as their conversation grew animated, a streak of fire suddenly plummeted from the clouds, hurtling straight down like a comet. All three cried out in alarm and hurriedly released their Flying Swords and protective magical treasures to block it.

The Ritual Altar had Altar Guardian Gods, guardians Yue Qinbin had taken in and refined with magic until they had become powerful beings. They were the first to sense the incoming attack. A plume of black smoke shot out of a gourd, and four Altar Gods appeared within it. One wore iron armor and carried a great saber; another wore a scholar's robes and held a judge's brush; one wielded twin sabers, and the last held a longsword. Black-and-red blood energy wreathed their bodies, and they stood three or four zhang tall upon the Ritual Altar, shouting in unison, "What demon dares run wild here!"