After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 402: Chapter 401: Primordial Power VS Home Ground Battle

On this mountain road, the Fufeng City Guard Team was undoubtedly at the vanguard, with the three envoy delegations sheltered in the middle.

Several merchant teams and other travelers followed behind.

In the procession, the Stone Gate Merchant Team, which had deliberately fallen behind, was sixteenth in line.

The mountain road twisted and turned. Its narrowest sections could only accommodate two carts abreast, though it occasionally widened when passing through a hollow.

As a result, the procession of teams moved like a centipede, stretched out long from front to back.

The distance on the road between the Stone Gate Merchant Team and the Guard Team was at least twenty li. By now, the Guard Team had already rounded the tail end of the opposite mountain, while the Stone Gate Merchant Team was still on the peak of their current one. They could almost see each other across Wind Demon Mountain.

If Shi the Second could have seen this, he probably would have been moved to tears of gratitude.

After leaving Wind Demon Mountain, the tornado maintained a small tail in contact with the ground. From a distance, it looked like an antenna, but up close, it was quite thick. It continuously sucked energy from the ground into its body, causing the vortex to expand once more.

It moved with deceptive speed, seeming slow but covering ground quickly.

By now, the merchants on the road had also spotted the approaching Wind Demon. Amid shouts of alarm, they tried to turn their horses around. In the ensuing panic, a dozen or so horses were spurred too hard. Terrified on the narrow path, they lost their footing, and both horse and cart plunged over the edge.

Other horses simply collapsed where they stood, refusing to get up no matter how much they were whipped.

Of course, most people abandoned their carts and simply ran for their lives.

What good were their goods if they lost their lives?

The Guard Team also saw the menacing approach of the Wind Demon. They were alarmed but not afraid. Before it reached them, the commanding general urgently ordered all personnel to a mountain hollow. There, they formed a defensive perimeter, with the envoys on the inside and the guards on the outside.

He knew perfectly well that with nearly four hundred people on such a narrow road, they could never outrun the Wind Demon in such a short amount of time.

He took out a wooden staff, plunged it into the ground, and roared, ”Unite your strength!”

The three hundred guards roared in unison.

The wooden staff instantly emitted a deep blue light, which expanded into a protective barrier covering the entire group.

This was carved from a branch of the King of Treasure Tree, and carried a portion of its Demon Power and Divine Techniques.

”Nock your bows!”

At the general’s command, the men unslung their longbows, nocked arrows to their strings, and took aim.

The arrowheads glowed with the same blue light.

”Fire!”

Three hundred arrows flew as one.

It was impossible to miss such a massive target.

But within the tornado were countless debris—rocks, sand, even rubble from the Piaomiao Sect ruins—all of which could act as a shield, blocking attacks while moving at high speed.

Of the three hundred arrows, more than half struck the debris. Only a hundred or so made it into the vortex.

The guards saw over a hundred points of blue light flicker, like bursts of static electricity in the clouds, as the Wind Demon let out a furious roar.

It was formless and intangible; ordinary weapons were useless against it. However, the Primordial Power imbued in the arrows was the natural bane of all Demons, and the Wind Demon was no exception.

For the demon, the pain was akin to being struck by a hundred arrows.

But when it sensed the aura emanating from the wooden staff, the Wind Demon’s rage skyrocketed.

King of Treasure Tree!

The mortal enemy who had brought it to the brink of annihilation over four hundred years ago hadn’t come in person, but had sent this troop instead.

How could it possibly miss such a heaven-sent opportunity for revenge?

With a surge of power, the three hundred-odd arrows spun a few times in the gale, then suddenly reversed course, whizzing back toward the crowd.

They shot back even faster than they had first flown from the bowstrings.

The blue barrier flickered but intercepted them all.

At that moment, however, the Wind Demon surged up the high mountain and slammed into the rock face.

Those massive boulders looked majestic, but their bases had long been severely weathered. Now, with a powerful shove from the Wind Demon, they toppled like jade pillars and cascaded down the steep slope. With a thunderous RUMBLE, they gathered unstoppable momentum. Some even split in two, tumbling down side-by-side.

It was a landslide of hundreds of tons of earth and rock, and the Guard Team was right at the bottom of the slope.

Faced with an attack of catastrophic proportions, the light barrier seemed far too flimsy. No one had any confidence it could hold.

A chill ran down the spines of several envoys. Not daring to watch, they turned away and covered their heads.

Just as the boulders rolled down with the force of a Thunderbolt, the phantom image of a colossal tree appeared above the crowd. Its branches and leaves reached for the heavens, a perfect image of the King of Treasure Tree.

Boulders larger than millstones were deflected one after another as they struck the canopy. Only smaller rocks slipped through the gaps between the leaves to crash onto the ground below.

The members of the Guard Team sprang into action, batting away the ones that slipped through.

The Envoy from the Chiyan Kingdom was struck between the eyebrows by a piece of shrapnel, which carved a long, bloody gash. Clearly, the phantom tree had no intention of intercepting such minor annoyances.

It prioritized the major threats, refusing to waste its power on blocking every last piece of debris.

The Guard Team’s mission was a matter of the Demon Kingdom’s honor, so the King of Treasure Tree had specially granted them a more than ample supply of Primordial Power. But even that power was not limitless.

The tornado paused in mid-air, seeming to both observe and contemplate.

Of course, the Guard Team’s rain of arrows served as a reminder that a battlefield was no place for contemplation.

A dozen breaths later, it had swept to the other side of the mountain. With the peak as a barrier, the humans could no longer shoot at it.

The general scrambled up the mountain ridge on all fours. Without a word from him, two of his Personal Guards followed close behind. If they just took the beating passively, no amount of Primordial Power would be enough. They had to fight back.

The arrows the general fired even carried a faint red glow, which was extremely harmful to Demons.

However, this was a formidable foe that had once battled the King of Treasure Tree himself. Furthermore, the battlefield was a mountain peak—the Wind Demon’s absolute home turf, where replenishing its energy was all too easy. Even if the King of Treasure Tree were present, felling this foe would be difficult. What hope did a few humans have?

Ignoring their arrows, the tornado had already moved behind the mountain, where it mercilessly sucked up the merchant teams there.

Amid terrified screams, people, horses, carts, and cargo were all swept into the sky.

The faces of all who witnessed it drained of color. The fugitives on the road cursed themselves for not having been born with two more legs.

The Wind Demon scooped up these people, horses, and carts, and then hurled them down upon the Guard Team.

After all, the phantom tree was just a Divine Technique, not the King of Treasure Tree in person. It could determine that the incoming boulders and arrows were enemy attacks that required interception. But the people, horses, and cargo falling from the sky were not inherently aggressive, so the phantom of the ancient wood paid them no mind.

But these things, swept up by the gale, fell with the force of their own weight compounded by the wind’s speed. They hit like cannonballs, their power not to be underestimated.

Unfortunately, the several hundred people were all crowded into the hollow, making them a concentrated target for the Wind Demon. With a series of sickening CRUNCHES, a dozen or so guards and members of the envoy delegations were smashed into pulp by the carts and other heavy objects before they could even utter a sound.

This move alone revealed the Wind Demon’s considerable intelligence.

Several attendants from the delegations, scared out of their wits, turned and fled, attempting to escape the killing field.

Where could they possibly run, right under the Wind Demon’s nose?

They didn’t make it two steps before the storm swept them into the sky, with no telling when, or if, they would ever come down.

Seeing this tactic was effective, the Wind Demon immediately turned to grab another merchant team to use as ammunition.

The caravans further back were now deserted, with over a hundred carts and horses left behind. The Wind Demon could just scoop them up and use them. It was both a logical and convenient course of action.

It seemed to be enjoying itself. After hurling two salvos, it moved back along the mountain road, intending to scavenge for more ”tools.”

The carriages took up a lot of space. One or two more volleys, and the envoys and their guards would have nowhere left to stand.

Several peaks away, the Stone Gate Merchant Team had no clear idea what was happening up ahead. All they could hear was the whistling of the wind, and they could see what looked like a massive tornado in the sky.

The tornado had swept up so much debris that it had turned black, looking particularly malevolent. Furthermore, its path seemed to shift back and forth, making it completely unpredictable.

Other than that, there were people from the front lines sprinting back for their lives, screaming as they ran:

”The Wind Demon is coming! The Wind Demon is coming!”

’The Wind Demon? The legendary Wind Demon from the Piaomiao Sect?’

The members of the merchant team trembled in fear, endlessly thankful they hadn’t gotten any closer.

...

While the Guard Team was struggling to cope, Hee Lingchuan, who was on the slopes of Wind Demon Mountain, had his attention focused not on the tragic scene across the way, but on Fushan Yue at the summit.

The Official Road was a scene of utter chaos; no one had the time to look up toward the main peak of the Piaomiao Sect.

But just as the Wind Demon slammed into the phantom tree, a small black dot on the summit darted forward and leaped off the edge!

Fushan Yue!

Hee Lingchuan had been watching his every move and had quietly been making his way up the mountain. He now rode his Rock Sheep straight to the summit, stopping at the very spot where Fushan Yue had just stood.

It offered the best vantage point for surveying the entire scene.

’This guy single-handedly orchestrated this whole mess, and then just sat on the mountain watching the show until now.’

Of course, the distance from the summit to the Official Road on the other side was too great for any person to cross. Only a winged Flying Bird could make the journey.

And so, Fushan Yue grew wings.

Strictly speaking, they weren’t wings, but wide, leathery membranes he stretched between his arms and legs, allowing him to glide on the air currents like a flying squirrel!

Hee Lingchuan muttered, ”This guy’s really got all the gear.”

’He’d had to risk his life riding a Rock Sheep, leaping between perilous cliffs and ridges, just to rush back to the Official Road. How could his arduous journey compare to this scoundrel’s effortless descent from the heavens?’

But Fushan Yue was gliding straight toward the Wind Demon. In less than ten breaths, he was sucked into the raging vortex!

He was as helpless as a leaf caught in a whirlpool.

’What’s he playing at?’ Hee Lingchuan stared, dumbfounded.

Immediately after, however, the Wind Demon began to hurl things downward with a series of THUDS—carts, cargo, people... and Fushan Yue!

People rained from the sky, a dizzying sight. But with his hard-won visual acuity, Hee Lingchuan was still able to pick out Fushan Yue from the dozens of others falling at the same time.

After being battered against all sorts of debris within the vortex and then slammed to the ground by the Wind Demon, an ordinary person would have been dead or crippled. But this guy’s body seemed to be forged from iron. He hit the ground, rolled, and immediately scrambled to his feet. Dodging left and right, he evaded two more falling carriages and charged straight into the group of envoys.

’Fishing in troubled waters?’ Hee Lingchuan narrowed his eyes. ’Let’s see who your real target is!’

There wasn’t a single safe spot left in the hollow. Everything depended on the guards’ agility as they protected the few envoys, dodging and weaving.

Fushan Yue reached their side in two leaps.

’Normally, if he’d dared to approach the delegation like that, the guards would have driven him off immediately. But with everyone’s attention fixed on the sky, how wary would they be of another ”person”?’

’People were raining down from everywhere, after all.’

”Watch out!” Fushan Yue yelled as he tackled the Envoy from the Chiyan Kingdom.