The carriage reached the entrance to Endless Cliff Village at sunset. Beyond the village lay Sunwood Forest.
Though it was dusk, the square at the village entrance bustled with activity. People came and went, festive smiles brightening every face, and large white lanterns hung all over the sprawling banyan tree at the entrance.
Endless Cliff Village was one of the larger villages in the area.
Its population numbered in the tens of thousands.
This was Fu Shaoping's first visit.
The road into the village was packed with paper effigies.
His carriage could not get through, so he had to stop. He was just about to ask the villagers to clear a path.
Suddenly.
A dark figure lunged at him.
It had been hiding among the paper effigies, and Fu Shaoping had not noticed it, but his reflexes were lightning-fast.
He immediately used Ethereal Steps and dodged aside.
The figure missed him and hit the ground hard.
Looking closely, he saw that the dark figure was actually a living person.
The woman's hair hung loose, and her white robe was so smeared with plant ash that it had turned pitch-black. Her robe gaped open at the chest, her two full breasts quivering.
Even after falling, the woman did not cry out in pain.
She scrambled toward Fu Shaoping on all fours.
"My lord, my lord, save my child! Someone took my child! My lord, save my child! Someone took my child!"
She repeated those same few words over and over.
Just then.
The people working in the square finished erecting the last sacrificial pillar. Turning to see Fu Shaoping in his Martial Suppression Guard uniform, their faces instantly went pale.
Among them.
The priestess directing everyone in the square glared at the middle-aged man behind her.
"Qiu Chang, keep that mad wife of yours under control!"
"I-I locked the door before I left!"
The middle-aged man looked miserable, but he clearly feared the priestess. He hurried forward, first bowing to Fu Shaoping before trying to pull his wife away.
But the woman in white clutched Fu Shaoping's hem and refused to let go, looking at him in anguish.
"My lord, save my child! Someone took my child! My lord, save my child! My lord!"
Everyone in the square.
Their expressions changed at once as they watched Fu Shaoping nervously.
The priestess's gaze sharpened, and she snapped.
"What are you standing around for? Help pull her away before she offends his lordship!"
"Yes!"
Everyone answered in unison.
They rushed over, hoisted the screaming woman up in a tangle of hands, and hurried into the village.
The priestess stepped forward and bowed in apology.
"My lord, I'm terribly sorry. Qiu Chang's wife had a difficult birth, and the child died just after being born. She couldn't bear the terrible news and lost her mind. Now she tells everyone she meets that someone took her child. Ah, her husband buried that stillborn baby himself on Five-Finger Slope below Sunwood Forest."
Beside her, Qiu Chang hastily chimed in.
"Yes, yes, I buried the child myself. I buried the child myself."
Fu Shaoping frowned.
He had not said a single word.
Yet the priestess had launched into an explanation on her own, as though afraid he might misunderstand something.
Anyone with eyes could see that something was wrong.
No.
There was something wrong with the way every villager looked at him. There was not a trace of reverence in their eyes. Instead, they seemed to blame him for intruding on their territory.
Fu Shaoping glanced at the altar enclosed by the five sacrificial pillars.
A sacrificial table stood at its center.
Flowers adorned its sides, but the tabletop was completely bare. At first glance, it looked rather like a coffin waiting to receive a corpse.
Throughout the square.
Apart from the priestess speaking.
Everyone else remained silent, as though they had been poisoned mute.
Misgivings stirred in Fu Shaoping's heart.
He decided to hold his position.
He would first enter the forest, find Old Zhan, and ask a few questions.
So he merely waved a hand and said.
"Clear the road. I need to get through."
"One moment, my lord."
The priestess seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. At a wave of her hand, the villagers promptly stepped forward and moved the paper effigies aside.
As Fu Shaoping drove his carriage out of the square, he saw a woman come stumbling over from the far end of the village.
"Priestess, Chunhua's about to give birth! She's about to give birth!"
By then, the carriage had already drawn away from the square.
Fu Shaoping glanced back.
He saw the villagers holding white lanterns, following the priestess in a great procession toward the far end of the village.
Everything about this seemed eerie.
"Hyah!"
Fu Shaoping urged the Green Jujube Horse on with his whip, picking up speed.
He passed through the village.
As he neared Sunwood Forest.
He saw from afar that Five-Finger Slope was covered in graves. They were all tiny mounds of earth, each marked with nothing more than a simple wooden board. Written on the boards were labels such as "the child of such-and-such a family," without even a name. Clearly, Five-Finger Slope was reserved for burying children who had died young.
Only.
The entire slope was densely packed with grave mounds, numbering in the thousands. It was a truly horrifying sight.
Clop, clop, clop.
The carriage entered along a narrow path through the middle.
When it reached the center.
Suddenly.
He saw a ghostly face protruding from a grave mound on his left and nearly jumped. He called it a ghostly face because half of it looked as though someone had bitten it off while its owner was still alive, leaving a gaping hollow.
"Who are you?"
Fu Shaoping was, after all, a martial artist.
Though a chill ran through him.
He was not truly afraid.
He merely tightened his grip on his martial suppression saber.
"Yee-ah!"
The ghostly face let out a strange cry and darted among the grave mounds like a monkey. In the blink of an eye, it vanished into the densely packed graves, leaving no trace.
With the situation still unclear.
Fu Shaoping resisted the urge to give chase.
He decided to find Old Zhan and ask what was going on first.
After passing through Five-Finger Slope.
A towering wall came into view.
A stone gate a hundred zhang tall stood in the eastern wall. This was the entrance to Sunwood Forest.
Sunwood was a top-grade tier-one spirit wood, an excellent spiritual material for both pill refining and artifact forging. Several dozen Cave Sun Hounds were kept in the forest to guard it.
Bang, bang, bang!
Fu Shaoping knocked on the stone gate.
Someone poked his head out of a blockhouse behind the wall and called out.
"Who are you, and what brings you here?"
"Fu Shaoping of the Martial Suppression Guards, here to see Commandant Zhan!"
As he spoke.
Fu Shaoping held up his Town Martial Token toward the blockhouse.
After a short wait.
The gate slowly creaked open.
An apprentice Martial Suppression Guard came out and apologized. Only after checking Fu Shaoping's Town Martial Token did he let him through. "Commandant Zhan is at the Forest Lodge on the western side. My lord, the forest is vast. I'll guide you there."
A large number of convicts also worked in the forest, felling sunwood.
As the carriage drove through the forest, he saw bare-chested convicts in ankle shackles carrying sunwood to the collection point. Night was fast approaching, and it was clearly time for work to end.
The Forest Lodge was a stilt house.
On the ground floor.
From a distance, Fu Shaoping spotted Old Zhan reclining in a wooden rattan chair, dozing.
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