Mountain-Sealing Talisman

"So this is what a beast tide is."

On the wall, Jiang Mingshan murmured.

Although he was a Rogue Cultivator, this was the first time he had ever seen a beast tide.

What the magistrate called a "small-scale beast tide" was, in his eyes, a standard large-scale spectacle.

The first to rush to the city wall were a pack of wild wolves from the mountains. Their eyes gleamed with an eerie green light in the dim light, their fur was tangled, and drool hung from the corners of their mouths. When they ran, their limbs barely touched the ground, and they were as fast as streaks of gray lightning.

They crashed into the city gate with a dull thud, sending wood chips flying and the thick iron bolts creaking.

Next came a dozen or so wild boars with bared tusks, their size comparable to giant oxen, which lowered their heads and rammed into the foundation of the wall, each impact causing the entire section of the wall to tremble.

The air was also turbulent. A dark swarm of crows swept in, darkening the sky. Unlike ordinary birds that would fly around in panic, they swooped down straight for the defenders on the city wall, their sharp beaks and claws aimed at the eyes and exposed skin. One soldier couldn't dodge in time and was pecked until his face was covered in blood. He screamed and rolled off the city wall.

Snakes slithered up the city wall through the cracks, centipedes and scorpions emerged from the drainage ditches, and even a few mandrills, half a person's height, mingled among the beasts, baring their teeth and throwing Law Technique at the city wall.

They were clearly not ordinary wild beasts; the mandrills' eyes gleamed with an eerie red light, and their movements were perfectly synchronized, as if they were being controlled by something.

The county town's defensive array was no joke. As the light membrane rose to three zhang above the battlements, it closed in, forming an inverted bowl-shaped barrier. Dozens of wolves, unable to stop in time, crashed into it, their skin scorched and torn by the golden flames. They howled and rolled backward, with a few sparks still clinging to their fur.

The flock of crows in the air tried to bypass the barrier from above, but the golden flames seemed to have eyes. Dozens of chains formed from flames shot out from the top of the barrier and swept across the air. The crows were caught in them and instantly turned into clumps of charred ash, which fell down like a black snowfall.

As soon as the city's protective formation was completed, the county gates immediately swung open, and a troop of soldiers from the county charged out. Leading them was none other than the Wu Hun Instructor, wielding a large sword. Wherever he went, all the demons fell to his blade. His body, with its superbly honed muscles and skin, was virtually immune to most attacks; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him a humanoid Demon Beast. His subordinates included master chefs from other martial arts schools as well as elite soldiers from the county government.

As for the Wu Hun himself, he charged in amidst a tidal wave of demonic Yao Qi, and emerged moments later carrying a bloody lion's head.

Jiang Mingshan himself was almost stunned.

When did cultivators with three Spirit Root become so powerful?

At this moment, the demons that rushed in from the weak points of the county's protective formation began to climb onto the walls, and some even rode on their demonic clouds to pounce.

In Jiang Mingshan's eyes, the sword intent transformed into a line, and his fingers formed a sword. Wherever the sword light passed, the Demon Beast were all split in two.

After killing more than a dozen Demon Beast, Jiang Mingshan withdrew his sword intent and took several deep breaths. Although he possessed the "One-Line Sword Physique," his Law Power was too shallow, and the Three Flowers he had condensed were only the "Flower of Essence." He was quite strained in both controlling his sword intent and sustaining his Law Power, making him a glass cannon type of player.

He looked around and found that the other Rogue Cultivator had already started fighting the Demon Beast, and most of them were not performing as well as him.

However, he did not see the "Fellow Daoist Hu" he had just met; he must have been assigned to another section of the city wall.

Meanwhile, Hu Mang was standing on the outskirts of the beast tide, looking at Wangsong County shrouded in billowing demonic smoke and thick fog, and sighing with emotion.

"Goodness, a battle to defend a county town has turned into a special effects blockbuster of a war between good and evil. The Demon Beast and mortals in this world are truly ferocious."

Hu Mang had been watching for quite a while, and he deeply felt the difference between the monsters of the two worlds.

To put it simply, if a thousand-year-old Demon Beast is placed here according to the standards of Heavenly Gate, it would at most be a hundred-year-old demon beast.

Conversely, if it were a thousand-year-old demon from here, placed in the Heavenly Gate, it would probably have at least the cultivation level of the Nascent Soul Late Stage, and might even be able to touch the Spirit Transformation.

There's no way around it. One is in a low- Spiritual Qi environment, and the other is in a top-tier Spiritual Qi environment. Even if they share the same bloodline and both absorb and exhale Spiritual Qi, how could their cultivation levels possibly be the same?

Not to mention, how could the bloodline of Demon Beast nurtured in a top-tier Spiritual Qi environment be the same as that in a low-level Spiritual Qi environment?

Putting everything else aside, even though he's a top-ranked, first-class protected demon of the Heavenly Gate, he's just one of the "Eight Fox Clans of Wang" here. They have clans, and probably more than one!

Judging from County Magistrate Hu's completely unsurprised expression, he has most likely seen many of his own clansmen before.

The reason this cheap fox brother sent him out was actually to ask him to do something, and this thing didn't involve much risk.

After killing the demon and taking the treasure, those two True Disciples of the Divine Sword Sect, true to the nature of sword cultivators, would most likely just pack up and leave. So someone sealed the demon's Demon Acupoint, preventing the mountain's terrain and ley lines from continuing to tremble, and thus ending the beast tide as soon as possible.

The reason for choosing the Hu Mang is simple: it is a half-demon. As long as it reveals its demon form, it will be mistaken for one of the demons on the mountain. Especially during this sensitive time of beast tide, it will not be attacked by the demons.

Sure enough, the Hu Mang transformed into a humanoid fox demon and stood on the earthen slope for half a day, but the bloodthirsty Demon Beast didn't even glance at it.

He even had time to ponder what County Magistrate Hu had given him: a "Mountain-Sealing Talisman" carefully selected by the local earth god.

"Is the talisman given by the Earth God really that effective? It can suppress the power of an entire mountain?"

The Hu Mang toyed with the talisman, muttering to itself.

The talisman paper was bright yellow, thicker than ordinary yellow paper, with neatly trimmed edges. It was covered with densely packed talismans drawn in cinnabar, the strokes winding like snakes, faintly glowing with a very light red light. If you smelled it up close, you could also smell a trace of aged incense, mixed with some indescribable earthy smell—it really did smell a bit like Land God Temple.

"The talismans of the Heavenly Gate have all become code in the hands of programmers. Code naturally doesn't have different ranks, but the talismans of the Azure Mysterious Realm seem to have a hierarchy, from Subordinate First Rank to ninth rank, from acquired to innate."

However, the "Mountain-Sealing Talisman" in Hu Mang's hand is neither Innate Talisman nor Postnatal Talisman; it is a Divine Talisman.

As Hu Mang was playing with it, he finally heard a familiar sword cry.

The sword's cry traveled extremely far, as if it came from the ends of the earth, yet it pierced through the wind and the roars of beasts with unparalleled clarity, landing directly in one's ears; the sound was long and clear, carrying a chilling sharpness, as if a peerless sword was slowly being drawn from its sheath in the heavens above, and the sound alone was enough to make the Yao Qi within a radius of hundreds of miles freeze.

A few breaths later, two sword lights flashed and disappeared in the air.

Hu Mang grunted in response, knowing it was his turn to get to work.

The ancient demon's cave was easy to find; it was located in the cave inside a mountain, where the Yao Qi was strongest. As soon as the Hu Mang jumped in, it smelled a strong stench of blood and then saw an enormous snake carcass.

The snake carcass was coiled in the open space in the center of the cave. Its size far exceeded the Hu Mang's expectations—the diameter of its body alone was nearly as thick as two or three people could hug. Its entire body was covered with jet-black scales, each the size of a palm, with edges that gleamed with a cold metallic luster.

The snake's body coiled up in circles, forming a fleshy mound like a small mountain. The high bulge in the middle, presumably where the snake's head should have been, drooped limply on a boulder.

The snake's head had been severed, the cut clean and smooth, as if it had been chopped off by an extremely sharp weapon.

The flesh at the cut was a strange dark purple, the blood had long since congealed into a thick scab, and it emitted a nauseatingly sweet and fishy smell.

The snake's eyes were still open; they were a pair of amber vertical pupils. Even though it had lost its life, they still exuded a chilling and intimidating aura, making people afraid to look at it for too long.

"Good heavens, this thousand-year-old demon is indeed ferocious!"

This was Hu Mang's first reaction, and his second reaction was, "What a damn waste!"

There's an old saying in Heavenly Gate: "Practicing swordsmanship will ruin three generations, while crafting talismans will destroy a lifetime." However, since the path of code cultivation was discovered, the latter part of the saying has been rarely mentioned. But because of the existence of the Flying Sword Gang, the stereotype of "practicing swordsmanship will ruin three generations" has become more and more serious.

In the resource-rich world of the Azure Mysterious Realm, any rare treasure can be obtained with a sword, so the poor sword immortal evolved into a wasteful sword immortal.

The kind of person who only eats fried rice at buffets!

These two sword immortals didn't even manage to extract the gall bladder of the thousand-year-old snake!

This was something even Hu Mang, a man of considerable wealth, couldn't stand.

Although his Storage Bag couldn't hold it all, he could drag it back to Zheng Family Garden.

When the research building was being constructed, he had already had a huge storage room dug for him underground in Zheng Family Garden, specifically to store things that couldn't fit in Storage Bag.

So, the Hu Mang activated the "fragment" and, with tremendous effort, dragged the giant snake over.

After working for quite a while, the Hu Mang reappeared on the mountaintop and activated the "Mountain-Sealing Talisman".

"Town!"

With a low shout, the Divine Talisman flew out of his hand, transforming into an earth-yellow beam of light that pierced straight into the ground. The moment the beam touched the ground, a visible shockwave spread outwards from him, causing grass and trees to bend, stones to tremble, and even the air to ripple.

Immediately afterwards, a continuous rumbling came from the depths of the earth.

A yellowish-brown line spread out from where the Divine Talisman landed, running along the ridge, ravines, and valleys, deeply penetrating every inch of soil and rock like the roots of a tree.

Wherever those patterns touched, the land polluted by the Yao Qi began to regain its original color, and the withered grass and trees began to sprout new buds at a speed visible to the naked eye. The lingering stench and oppressive feeling in the air also dissipated rapidly.

The distant roars of beasts also completely ceased.

Seeing the commotion that stretched across dozens of surrounding mountain peaks, the Hu Mang was stunned.

Could this local deity also be a construction worker?