After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 24: Chapter 25: Red Cliff Road

’I guess I’ll just have to be clever from here on out.’ Hee Lingchuan changed the subject. ”Dad, why do we absolutely have to go back to the Great Capital?”

”The Hee Family’s legacy is there. Is there any reason for a son of the family not to return?”

Hee Lingchuan rolled his eyes. ”There are eyes and ears everywhere. Do you have to make me spell it out?” He leaned close to his father’s ear, his voice as faint as a mosquito’s buzz and easily drowned out by the sound of hooves. ”The Emperor had our whole family killed. Why are we going back to risk our lives for him?”

Hee Chunhua frowned. ”Where else would I fulfill my ambitions?”

’How can a man build a legacy without support?’

”The Baling Kingdom in the west would work, too. Doesn’t our Qiansong County border four kingdoms? And that Demon nation to the northeast doesn’t seem so bad...” Keeping a sharp lookout, Hee Lingchuan dodged a slap Hee Chunhua aimed at his head. ”Besides, things are a mess at home. Any peasant who raises a flag dares to call himself a warlord! And look abroad—they change emperors like it’s a revolving door! I heard that in the Xuan Kingdom to the east, they’ve had eleven emperors in twenty years. The shortest one only lasted nineteen days on the throne.”

’Talk about a high-risk profession.’

’What’s gotten into this brat? Is treason all he thinks about?’ Hee Chunhua’s face was stern. ”How can those petty kingdoms compare to Da Yuan? We have been a nation for over sixty years, after all. Our institutions are well-established.”

Heh. Hee Lingchuan let out a long breath. ”We barely made it out of that alive. And you’re still not going to have a heart-to-heart with me, Dad?”

Hee Chunhua, startled, suddenly stared at him. ”What has possessed you?”

The question came so unexpectedly that cold sweat broke out on Hee Lingchuan’s back.

”Huh?”

’My eldest son has courage to spare, but he’s not the perceptive type. He shouldn’t be able to tell I’m holding something back.’ Hee Chunhua gave him a hard look and said in a low, serious voice, ”Don’t ever say things that could get your head chopped off again.”

A gust of sandy wind blew past, and Hee Lingchuan sneezed.

’Dad’s pretty shrewd himself.’

The man was a master schemer. But that, oddly enough, put him at ease.

’It might look like the Hee Prefect was passively dragged into this vortex, but behind it all, who was really scheming against whom?’

* * *

National Preceptor Sunx’s convoy finally reached the Red Cliff Trade Road.

After passing through the mountains, a vast, boundless world of yellow sand opened up before them.

One sand dune after another stood in the hot wind. Some were as small as mounds of dirt, while others towered hundreds of feet high, comparable to mountains. But unlike mountains, they were not solid; some giant dunes could vanish overnight, only to reappear suddenly in other hollows.

All vegetation was gone. There wasn’t a single speck of green.

As far as the eye could see, there was only a desolate expanse.

The Red Cliff Road cut through the middle of the desert, wide enough for several carriages to travel abreast. The original color of the stone bricks was long gone, worn uneven by the endless trampling of traveling merchants. Some bricks were new, as Black Water City and the neighboring kingdoms were each responsible for maintaining certain sections of the road. Other ancient bricks remained, their surfaces layered with varying shades of black.

This made the Red Cliff Road resemble a giant, gray-black snake slithering across the Desert Sea.

Zeng Feixiong, walking beside the Hee father and son, saw Hee Lingchuan’s curiosity about the bricks and explained, ”They’re covered in bloodstains, some new, some old. There are a lot of Sand Bandits on this road, so there’s always fighting.”

”Right, some of the stains are over a hundred years old. The Red Cliff Road was Panlong City’s old transport route for troops and grain. They say countless massacres took place along these roads.”

To besiege a city, one had to cut off its reinforcements and supplies.

Hearing this, Hee Lingchuan felt a fierce aura of blood and violence wash over him.

’So much brutal slaughter, so many vibrant lives, so many resolute cries to protect home and country... In the end, it was all buried by the endless yellow sand, with nothing left to show for it.’

Three years after Panlong City fell, the Xiluo Kingdom was destroyed. Six years after that, the Xianyou Kingdom fell as well.

The pair of old rivals had fought for decades, only to both bite the dust in the end, tumbling into the annals of history.

”Is that why everyone flies the ’Zhong Flag’?” Hee Lingchuan pointed to the tall banner at the very front of their convoy.

This was clearly an army of the Da Yuan Kingdom, led by the highly respected National Preceptor Sunx, yet the convoy’s banner was embroidered with the large character for ”Zhong.”

’Incredible that people today, traveling to the ends of the earth, have to fly the old flag of a previous dynasty.’

In fact, it wasn’t just their convoy; nearly every traveling group on the Red Cliff Road had a Zhong Flag raised high, as if sending a message to the entire desert.

Of course, all convoys would take down their Zhong Flags after leaving the Red Cliff Road and before entering the territory of another kingdom, which was why Hee Lingchuan had only ever heard of the flag and rarely seen it.

”Vengeful Spirits and mutated monsters roam the desert, eating whatever they can catch, but they won’t set foot on the Red Cliff Road. That’s because this is the route the Great Wind Army marched countless times. Everyone flies the Zhong Flag to pay tribute to the old Great Wind Army and to ensure their own safety.”

’If you ask me, that’s not a tribute,’ Hee Lingchuan thought. ’It’s a flat-out imitation.’

Zeng Feixiong pulled away the cloth covering his face, spat into a handkerchief, and tucked it away. ”You can’t just spit or piss anywhere on the Red Cliff Road. You have to collect it and carry it with you. Otherwise, it’s seen as an act of disrespect and will anger the Heroic Spirits here.”

Hee Chunhua added, ”In the past, many kingdoms didn’t believe in these superstitions and forbade their merchant caravans from flying the Zhong Flag on the Red Cliff Road. The result—”

”—was that they eventually had to allow it,” Hee Lingchuan finished, understanding. ”No point for the living to pick a fight with the dead.”

Just then, several loud shouts came from behind them.

Everyone turned to look. From another convoy traveling behind them, a small, snow-white puppy had run out. In just a few bounds, it left the Red Cliff Road and darted toward the nearest sand dune.

Its owner, a little girl of about five, instinctively gave chase the moment the puppy slipped from her grasp.

Soon, she too had stepped off the Red Cliff Road.

Before her family could react, a Porter rushed up from the rear, shouting at her, ”Come back! Get back here!”

These were the shouts Hee Lingchuan and the others had heard.

The child’s mother, a noblewoman, walked over and said with displeasure, ”Quiet down! Don’t scare my daughter!”

”If she doesn’t come back now, your daughter will be gone!” the Porter roared back. ”Get back here! The monsters are coming to eat people!”

The desert was empty, like a still painting. Not a single wild animal was in sight.

The little girl stopped, looked back at the convoy, then at the little white dog in the distance. She hesitated.

The mother said with disdain, ”You go get her.”

The Porter refused, unwilling to take even a single step off the Red Cliff Road.

The mother had no choice but to stride toward her daughter, scoop her up, and turn back.

Nothing happened.

”Useless ma—” Before the noblewoman could finish her insult, the ground beneath her feet suddenly caved in.

A giant mouth shot up from below and swallowed her and the child in a single gulp.

The screams were horrifying, but brief.

At that moment, they were less than three steps from the Red Cliff Road.

After devouring the two, the monster didn’t immediately dive back under the sand. Instead, it moved quickly toward the white puppy not far away.

The creature looked a bit like a flounder, with its mouth on the top of its head. Its body was shaped like a large, round disc, flat and smooth, and its color was nearly identical to the yellow sand. If it hadn’t leaped out on its own, even Hee Lingchuan might not have spotted it up close.