Lives as Firewood

After they left Ailin County's city walls, a heavy gloom settled over the entire party.

Three or five li farther along, the sky abruptly darkened. It looked as though rain was coming, yet also as though a veil of gray gauze had shrouded heaven and earth.

The scenery along the way only made their hearts quail further.

Around Ailin County, they could still see some green: nameless weeds and small trees. They were hardly lush, but at least they were alive, offering a slender thread of vitality.

Here, however, that vitality swiftly vanished. Forests covered entire slopes, yet they consisted of nothing but blackish-brown dead stumps. Not a sound stirred among them. It was deeply unnerving.

No one spoke. They simply kept their heads down and pressed on.

Before noon, they had traveled twenty li and reached their destination.

From afar, they could make out a ruined temple.

The temple's once-upswept eaves had long since collapsed, exposing charred rafters. More than half its walls had fallen as well.

Beside the temple lay a jumble of other ruins. Houses, courtyard walls, wells, and broken pagodas sprawled every which way. Who knew how bustling a neighborhood this had been seven years ago?

The entire area surrounding the ruined temple had been cordoned off.

Beyond the barricades and fences, tents stood one after another. Armored soldiers moved back and forth through the encampment.

Outside the tent area, bodies wrapped in straw mats lay in neat rows.

Their own dead appeared to have been treated with reasonable care, but no one bothered with the enemy corpses. They lay scattered everywhere, unattended. Beyond the barricades, the bloodstains, bodies, and severed limbs were a shocking sight.

Most of those corpses were humanoid, dressed in rags, their flesh shriveled and blackish-gray. They looked less like living people than dry bones dug out of graves and draped in a layer of skin. A few had the shapes of beasts, though it was impossible to tell what creatures they had been in life.

Four people were already waiting for them outside the encampment.

As Jiang Che's party approached, all four wore expressions like survivors who had narrowly escaped a calamity.

Once they drew close and met, Du Yongchang brought Hu Yan, their leader, over to exchange a few words with them, then waved them away.

When Hu Yan returned, her face looked grim.

Though she had already learned something of the situation from Jiang Che the day before, she still struggled to contain herself when confronted with the reality.

Back among the party, she considered for a moment before telling them what had happened:

"They were the previous batch of Registered Disciples, who came here three months ago. There were thirteen of them when they arrived. Now only those four are alive. For most of those three months, things were manageable. Only three people died in total. But six days ago, when the siege of this ruined temple began, another six died one after another."

"Even now, they still haven't forced the True Demon out. Today, those four are finally free. We're the ones who'll suffer next."

Everyone's expression soon turned as grim as Hu Yan's.

But now that they were here, how could there be any talk of retreat?

They followed Du Yongchang, who had stood silently nearby, into the encampment, where three more Qi Refining Cultivators appeared before them.

Du Yongchang introduced them one by one.

Aside from the two Qi Refining Cultivators from Azure Mystic-Steward Wei and Steward Pang-there was another man in dark-red military dress, clad in formidable armor, with a long saber at his waist. He was Great Wu's garrison commander in Ailin and also served as county commandant. His surname was Li, but his given name was unknown; Du Yongchang addressed him only as County Commandant Li.

Steward Pang paid no attention to the newly arrived Registered Disciples, merely exchanging a few words with Du Yongchang. He was changing shifts with Du Yongchang and returning to guard Ailin Town, while Du Yongchang would take his place here.

After Steward Pang left, Steward Wei and County Commandant Li departed as well. Only Du Yongchang remained to assign everyone their duties.

Jiang Che's seventeen-person party, together with four local Outer Disciples from Ailin, made twenty-one Azure Mystic disciples in total. They were divided into seven groups, each leading twenty armored soldiers along a different route toward the ruined temple to carry out the purge.

Their objective was to clear every Demon Monster from the buildings around the temple.

"The ruined houses on the outskirts are where the Demon Monsters hide." Du Yongchang's voice held not the slightest emotion. "Your task is to clear them out, one building at a time, and kill everything inside."

One building at a time... How many lives would that cost?

But there was still nothing they could say.

As their leader, Hu Yan divided everyone into groups.

Just as they had agreed the previous night, she placed herself, Jiang Che, and Zhang Erguo together.

They then met the twenty armored soldiers who would accompany them. The officer leading those soldiers was a man with a brutish, fleshy face named Chen Mou.

Under the oppressive atmosphere, no one even felt inclined to exchange pleasantries. Jiang Che, Zhang Erguo, and Hu Yan, along with Chen Mou and his men, soon reached their assigned position.

Once they opened the battered gate in the fence and stepped through, life and death would be left to fate.

Before a half-collapsed house, a soldier drew a deep breath, summoned his strength, and kicked the door open. Another soldier hurled a jar of lamp oil into the house with all his might. A third followed close behind and tossed in a torch.

With a whoosh, the house immediately burst into flames!

As the flames surged, several figures rushed out of the fire, shrieking.

Behind them, ten crossbows were already drawn and ready. They unleashed a volley straight at the doorway.

Bolts sliced through the air. Most of the Demon Monsters charging out fell on the spot, but one, its body wreathed in flames, broke through the hail of bolts and pounced on the armored soldier who had thrown the torch. With claws and teeth tearing together, it killed him on the spot.

Zhang Erguo was the first to reach it. His pair of Gourd Hammers whipped through the air and smashed down hard on its skull, blow after blow. The Demon Monster's head was crushed at once, sending black blood spattering everywhere.

Only after it fell to the ground and the flames died did they see clearly that it was a desiccated corpse, though its strength was roughly that of the Early Embryonic Breath stage.

This was the first ruined house they had cleared since entering the danger zone.

It had gone fairly smoothly.

Seeing that the Demon Monster was dead, Jiang Che, who had already advanced with his hand on his sword, ready to follow up at any moment, stopped approaching. Instead, he watched the motionless corpse with anticipation in his eyes.

A speck of light that only he could see drifted out and sank into his body.

At that moment, Jiang Che put his greatest worry about this expedition to rest.

Killing Demon Monsters could bring him gains!

Not much, admittedly. The wisp of transmigration energy Jiang Che received from the Demon Monster that had just died beneath Zhang Erguo's Gourd Hammers amounted to only a third of what an ordinary Early Embryonic Breath cultivator would provide.

Though both were at the Early Embryonic Breath level, there was a considerable difference between Demon Monsters and cultivators.

Even so, it was still good news.

The sect's reward-that hefty amount of merit contribution-was certainly important. It was his outward reason for gritting his teeth and signing up for this dangerous assignment. But Jiang Che knew full well that transmigration energy was what mattered most!