Treasure Deer, Demon Traitor, Bountiful Harvest! Silver Carp Transformation Complete, Iron Bones Bear Alight the Spinal Column Great Dragon!

The great sun sank, and the moon hung high in the sky.

Outside Anning County, the Five Hundred Li Mountain Road stretched without end!

Two figures traveled through it.

Great Xuan's territory was vast. Cangzhou lay in the far east; though it fell under Jiangyin Prefecture's jurisdiction, it was trapped amid layer upon layer of towering, overlapping peaks.

To reach the prefecture, one had to travel by several waterways controlled by the government's county offices.

As for the Five Hundred Li Mountain Road beyond the county, its outskirts were ringed by villages and mountain towns, serving as "sentry posts and arrow towers," scattered like stars and forming the "ramparts" of this small mountain city.

Yet the farther one ventured dozens of li inward, the more desolate it became. Lions, tigers, wolves, and leopards roamed freely, brigands ran rampant, and it was said that heretical demon cultivators hid secret treasure vaults there.

Ordinary people—even the leaders of the Three Great Gangs and Four Great Halls, such as Lion, Leopard, Eagle, Falcon, fist, spear, saber, sword—would not dare enter alone so arrogantly.

But.

Duan Chenzhou dared.

Even though he had never been here before.

At first, when Ji Xiu left Anning for the first time and stepped beyond the county for the first time, he had been somewhat excited.

But after Duan Chenzhou urged their horses onward, stopped at a mountain manor, left the horses behind, and entered the mountains overnight, traveling for two hours—

When the air fell silent, leaving only the incessant rustling of the two of them trampling through shrubs and wild grass—

Other than ordinary, heedless wild beasts, they had not encountered a single awakened or aged spirit creature.

"How strange. Don't the books say that beasts and demons become wildly feral beneath the moonlight and emerge at