The following day, the group slept heavily until Ruo Zhiwei woke them one by one. Because the borders of the Demon Realm, much like the realm itself, were devoid of light and sun, everyone had assumed it was not yet dawn.
As they began their ascent, the new disciples from the Inner Sect were still dazed and half-asleep. The experienced senior brothers formed a perimeter around them, staying alert for danger from all sides. Song Shenshi and Lu Xiangyu remained at the rear.
Once on the mountain, they realized that Wangyue Mountain was not the small, bald mound they had seen from the sky. At the foot of the mountain lay a faint, dried-up riverbed; after crossing it, the terrain transitioned from sand to black soil.
The trees on the slopes remained half-dead, their leaves long-since weathered and as brittle as paper. The surroundings were so silent that the only sound was the soul-shuddering crunch-crunch of their own footsteps.
Under the dim light, they were accompanied by nothing but groves of withered trees that looked like a chaotic dance of demons. At first, the group found them terrifying, and the senior brothers leading the way never let go of their sword hilts. However, after half an hour passed without incident—and with no sign of the so-called demonic cultivators—the tension began to thaw.
Their group wasn’t large, consisting of just over twenty people. As the line grew sparse and elongated, some couldn’t resist chatting with those beside them. Hearing the bird-like chirping of voices rising ahead, Lu Xiangyu—who could never stand loneliness—became restless.
Seeing that Song Shenshi hadn’t even bothered to take her Qingling Sword out of her storage bag, Lu Xiangyu tucked her own dark iron sword under her arm and sidled up to the female lead.
“Senior Sister, I want to ask you something~” Lu Xiangyu said cheerfully.
Song Shenshi glanced at her lazily, looking as though she truly had stayed up all night meditating. “What is it?”
“Come closer.” Lu Xiangyu moved mysteriously to her ear, her voice no louder than a mosquito’s buzz. “I think the person who poisoned you is right here in our group.”
“…” Song Shenshi didn’t know what expression to make, but Lu Xiangyu sensed a hint of exasperation on her face.
“I’m serious!” Lu Xiangyu really wanted to jump up and shake Song Shenshi awake.
In the original novel, the female lead’s journey was smooth from start to finish, without any of those depressing “low before the high” plot points. The brainless cannon fodder characters the author threw out never lasted more than a chapter before getting their faces slapped. Why was it that now, over a small matter like poisoning, the female lead was so indifferent about finding the culprit?
Lu Xiangyu’s chubby, bun-like face puffed up with frustration, but she quickly turned serious again.
“Senior Sister, think about it. Is the group we met at the tavern the same people who poisoned you?” Lu Xiangyu hadn’t said it outright, but she was convinced they were. “Everyone in the sect knows you have an Immortal Physique. The poison’s origin is unknown, but its actual effect on you is minimal—at most, it just prevents you from using your sword techniques right now.”
“That person just wanted to spite you.”
There were two people in the current Wangyue Mountain expedition who fit the bill.
“The Du family’s young master, Du Yifeng, fought a hundred people in a row years ago only to lose to your sword, which he considered a ultimate humiliation. I heard that for the past three years, he has forfeited immediately whenever he encounters you in the sect competition.” Lu Xiangyu stroked her chin, seriously analyzing the situation for her. “Moreover, Du Yifeng often acts lawlessly in the Outer Sect. Many people in the Outer Village fear him; it’s highly likely he coerced them into causing trouble for us at the tavern.”
Song Shenshi glanced at her and finally said, “You have a point.”
“So you don’t think it’s him?” Lu Xiangyu gnashed her teeth. “There’s one more person. I think Senior Sister Ruo Zhiwei is also very suspicious.”
“Tell me more.” Song Shenshi listened to her rambling as if it had nothing to do with her.
“It’s hard to say, but I feel there’s something strange about Ruo Zhiwei…”
Lu Xiangyu spent a long time babbling her theories, only to see Song Shenshi remaining completely unbothered. She suddenly grew angry, pinching Song Shenshi’s arm and shaking it.
“Senior Sister, do you really not intend to find out who it is?” Lu Xiangyu frowned, her expression solemn. “Someone who can administer poison within the sect and incite the Outer Village to rebel is someone who could stab us all in the back right here on Wangyue Mountain.”
“Then what do you plan to do?”
“…” Seeing Song Shenshi turn the question back on her, Lu Xiangyu’s anger flared even more.
She turned and walked away, gritting her teeth in secret. Song Shenshi was as impenetrable as a stone wall. Even though Lu Xiangyu secretly intended to stir up internal strife in this already fragmented team, the points she had raised were actually logical.
The group continued their ascent for a long time, stopping once to eat dry rations and replenish their strength. Just as they thought they might reach the summit without incident, they finally discovered something unusual in the woods.
A disciple with excellent lightness skills heard a sound and darted into the forest, returning only moments later.
“Senior Brother Qin, what did you find…?”
Qin Hang lifted his sword. The bright blade reflected a thin, cold light in the darkness. A thick, murky black blood flowed slowly down the edge, and impaled on the bottom third of the blade was a small beast, pierced through the chest.
“See for yourselves,” Qin Hang said.
“What is this?” Ruo Zhiwei walked over, looking confused. Once she saw the “animal” clearly, she couldn’t help but gasp.
The small beast resembled a piglet, but its body was quite long and rounded. Its skin was pink and entirely hairless, with a short, cute, curled tail. Ruo Zhiwei reached out and pulled it off the sword.
The creature was already dead. Through the wound in its chest, one could faintly see its bones and internal organs, but its head was bizarre. It looked underdeveloped; while it had the shape of small ears and a nose, they were covered by a layer of pink flesh-membrane the same color as its skin. Its eyes hadn’t opened yet either. The only part fully developed was the “piglet’s” mouth.
But it wasn’t a pig’s mouth. It was split into four segments like a mantis, lined with rows of fine teeth, with a long, bright red tongue lolling out from within.
“This is a larva split off by that demonic cultivator,” Ruo Zhiwei said casually after examining it, tossing it to the side of the road. “If you see these, just kill them.”
“But be careful. Don’t let them suck your flesh and blood. It’s going to get more dangerous from here on out.”
“Yes!” The disciples straightened up, their spirits instantly becoming alert.
Just as Ruo Zhiwei had predicted, the woods on the mountainside grew increasingly dense. The forest was filled with a constant rustling sound, and the disciples of the Haiqian Sect showed no mercy. They killed every creature they encountered, leaving a wall-like pile of pink, fleshy carcasses lining both sides of the path.
Yet, the small beasts seemed endless, swarming out from the forest in a relentless tide.
Fortunately, they were largely non-aggressive. Without using spiritual power to probe carefully, one could barely even sense demonic energy from them, let alone engage in a proper magical duel. Consequently, the journey became a monotonous slaughter. But as the killing dragged on, it was inevitable that the disciples became splattered with the black blood of the creatures. Before long, their clothes reeked with a foul stench, and the dried gore on their skin began to itch unbearably.
“Can’t these things just die and stay dead?” someone in the vanguard complained, earning murmurs of agreement from the others.
The most relaxed people on this journey were likely the two slackers at the very rear.
Lu Xiangyu was quite bold. Because the path was being cleared ahead, very few beasts reached the back of the line, and both she and Song Shenshi were too lazy to kill them anyway. Lu Xiangyu found a carcass that wasn’t too badly mangled among the roadside piles, wanting to see just how bizarre these things were. To her surprise, one beast—whether it had been merely stunned or was playing dead—suddenly lashed out with its tongue the moment she pulled it out.
Thanks to her quick reflexes, she stomped the long tongue firmly under her foot.
“Eeya… Meeya…”
Hearing that the beast could actually make a sound, Lu Xiangyu pried its mouth open with a wooden stick to inspect it, then finally slit its throat to finish it off.
Following Ruo Zhiwei’s example, she cut open its abdomen to examine its internal structure. It had a full set of internal organs, appearing to be a standard vertebrate mammal. However, when she cut open its head, she found the brain was even smaller than it appeared from the outside. Aside from the mouthparts, it lacked all other facial features, and the skull was filled only with a thick layer of yellow fat.
“Strange… no trachea or nose for breathing? Only an esophagus?”
Lu Xiangyu sliced off the long tongue beneath her foot, but the surroundings were too dark to see any further abnormalities. Noticing the group had moved quite far ahead, she stood up.
I really can’t use common sense from my previous life to judge this world, she thought to herself.
Still, the tiny brain suggested these creatures lacked intelligence. The group easily fought their way to the middle of the mountain, where the number of beasts increased, turning the ground beneath their feet into a muddy mire of gore.
“Keep up! There’s something ahead!!”
At Du Yifeng’s shout, the disciples in the middle and rear who had fallen behind quickly rushed forward.
The group formed a small triangular formation to fend off the dense, countless swarms of small beasts. Even though some of the creatures didn’t even have an offensive stance, they threw themselves wave after wave against the blades of the outer disciples. Soon, everyone’s face was smeared into a reddish-black mess of foul blood.
“These monsters are much more agitated than before. There must be something up ahead that makes them uneasy, something that doesn’t want us to approach,” Du Yifeng said. He was already the leader among the senior brothers, and with Song Shenshi currently fading into the background, the command naturally fell to him.
Du Yifeng brandished his sword and shouted, “Everyone, give it your all! We’re charging up!”
“Charge!!!”
The crowd let out a blood-pumping roar, their eyes turning red as they hacked through the beasts. They soon fought their way to the edge of a cliff.
The carcasses of the small beasts were tossed over the cliff like rain. Within fifteen minutes, the dense swarm on the cliffside had been mostly cleared away, leaving only a few trembling survivors hiding in the woods.
Though these beasts weren’t particularly aggressive—at most, a careless person might lose a small patch of skin and flesh if bitten—it was nothing like the horror stories some senior brothers had told about victims being sucked dry into mummies.
Exhausted but relieved to see the beasts mostly eradicated, the group finally caught their breath.
“Senior Brother Du, what’s over here?” someone asked curiously.
Du Yifeng didn’t answer. He simply gripped his sword and walked slowly in one direction. On his Daoist robes, the entire sleeve of his sword-arm had been soaked black with foul blood. Combined with his silent, grim expression, he looked somewhat terrifying.
“Brother?” Seeing that his expression was off, Du Yuxi quickly moved to his side.