East of Lost-Trace Lake, more than a dozen peaks stretched for twenty or thirty li. The once lush forests on every mountain had been hacked away here and there, like strips of green cloth covered in patches.
Those patches were temporary lairs the demon fiends had built after felling ancient trees. Crowds of heads could dimly be seen; a cursory sweep across the mountains revealed no fewer than ten thousand people. Some of these demon fiends were cultivating, some refining treasures, some wrestling naked for amusement, and others quarreling over encroaching on one another's territory. It was truly a foul haze of smoke and miasma, with demons dancing in wild disorder.
Perhaps no one would believe it, but this mob of demons, with no rules governing their conduct or order to their cultivation, actually belonged to the same cult: the Yelang Cult.
This demonic cult had been founded less than two years ago. It was a minor branch of the Southern Demon Cult, and its leader was Yao Kaijiang, known as Blue-Faced Yelang.
One peak in the middle of these dozen or so mountains had no demon fiends stationed there to disturb it. The entire mountain still retained its primeval forest, but its summit had been flattened, and a bronze war chariot stood upon it. Four bronze horses were harnessed before the chariot, their bodies blue-gold, their eyes scarlet, their breath like fire. It was impossible to tell whether they were living creatures or puppets.
Three bronze warriors stood on either side of the chariot, each fully nine feet tall, clad in armor and holding a long dagger-axe, utterly motionless.
A burly man sat cross-legged inside the chariot. He looked even larger than the guards beside him, perhaps some ten feet tall. He wore a black robe draped askew, exposing