Where Immortals Once Walked

Who among those I know could possibly be in Lingxu City? Is she talking about Hong Chenglue?

Despite He Lingchuan’s clear curiosity, Li Qingge did not elaborate. She only blinked at him and said, “Good night.”

* * *

He Lingchuan opened his eyes and found the sun already past its zenith. In another four hours, it would already be sinking below the horizon. He froze for a beat.

He was back in his soul land again, riding on horseback. Ahead and to the left loomed a magnificent city wall, but it was not one of Panlong City.

He looked around. The entire Broken Blade Squad was with him, and traveling with them were more than thirty Gale Army soldiers.

At the very front was a blazing red cloak.

The Red General?

We’re following behind her?

He Lingchuan snapped back fully and realized the wall they were passing felt uncannily familiar.

This is the palace city of West Ji!

When the Panlong Army had stormed the capital of the State of West Ji, it had taken only half a day for them to reach the royal palace, but taking the royal palace itself had taken them more than ten days. The Panlong army had surrounded it, forcing the King of West Ji and whatever remained of his officials, troops, and citizens to suffer from the slowly but surely accumulating waste within the palace city until they ultimately surrendered to the army.

Because of that, He Lingchuan had a deep impression of the palace fortress’s exterior, though only the exterior.

As for the inside, this was his first time making it in.

During the siege, more than ten thousand soldiers had been crammed inside, filth and stench amassing everywhere within. Thankfully, all that grime had long since been cleaned away. As far as He Lingchuan could see, the palace complexes linked end to end. The palace city appeared well planned, exquisitely built, and refined.

Doorboard, walking behind him, also looked around and said, “So during the siege, those ten thousand officers and soldiers plus Huyan Zhao were all squeezed in here, and it wasn’t even crowded. Everyone had a place to live.”

Willow spat. “Outside, the people are starving and broken. Inside, it’s carved beams and painted rafters. West Ji deserved to fall!”

He Lingchuan whispered, “Are we still going to return to the motherland to the east?”

At that, Willow only shrugged. Meanwhile, A’Luo glanced around before saying, “We haven’t received news from Panlong City yet. The Red General brought us here first to handle something.”

They followed the Red General toward the inner western side of the palace city.

The farther west they went, the fewer buildings there were, yet the more people appeared.

They were all civilian craftsmen. On the inner side of the palace city, they had erected scaffolding, and there were more than two hundred men clanging away with tools, chiseling at the wall.

A large section of the wall had already been dug out. From the outside, it looked like an enormous breach.

Everyone arrived bewildered.

During the siege, the West Ji Royal Palace had been largely intact, attacked only briefly. So why were they destroying it now?

General Nanke seemed to be acting as foreman. When he saw the Red General, he stepped forward at once. “The craftsmen are complaining. The wall is unbelievably hard. After half a day, they’ve only opened this much. They don’t even know how many chisels and stone hammers they’ve broken.”

He Lingchuan and the others exchanged looks.

The wall looked tall and thick, sure, but how could it be hard to this extent?

Two hundred craftsmen working single-mindedly had spent half a day on it. If this were wartime, who would ever have the luxury of slowly tunneling through a wall like that? To make your way through it, you would probably have to pile up bodies.

The Red General was studying the wall as well. “Are you sure that this is the part that’s breachable?”

“The records say that when Bei City fell in the past, this was the only breach they managed to open.” General Nanke gestured, calling over an elderly palace attendant. “This man participated in building the West Ji Royal Palace back then, so he’s practically a living map.”

The palace attendant bowed deeply to the Red General. “Th-this lowly one is surnamed Chang. I’ve served in the palace for more than ten years. General, just give the order!”

The Red General pointed, and Attendant Chang nodded rapidly. “This is the right spot! West Ji’s palace city was built on the foundations of an older city called Bei City. The palace wall largely reused Bei City’s old wall, simply widening, thickening, and raising it until it became what you see today.”

Bei City? He Lingchuan had never heard the name, but A’Luo murmured, “So this is Bei City...”

He Lingchuan turned to look at Doorboard and Willow, but they looked equally clueless.

Good, so it’s not just me.

A’Luo took one look at their expressions and knew class was in session. He whispered his explanation, “Over a thousand years ago, a city was built here. It was called Bei City. Later, it was invaded by foreigners and fell. I’ve heard legends about it. I just didn’t expect the West Ji Royal Palace to be built on Bei City’s ruins.”

Doorboard snorted. “Sounds like the fengshui here is terrible.”

Bei City was invaded by outsiders and fell.

West Ji built its palace atop that foundation, only to be ultimately invaded by Panlong City and fall.

They were many years apart, yet history simply repeated itself.

Attendant Chang continued, “And this is us cutting from the inside. The outer side of the palace wall does not fear cannon fire or divine technique bombardment. It doesn’t fear battering rams or ground-collapsing siege engines either.”

Doorboard rumbled, “Then the defensive arrays must be incredible.”

Attendant Chang smoothly followed. “The most astonishing part is that there’s no need to deploy defensive arrays at all. It’s still able to achieve that effect even without such arrays.”

The Gale Army soldiers looked startled.

No arrays meant energy saved. War was always a contest of consumption, and if the wall itself was this hard, it would be a nightmare for any attacker.

“They say back then, the foreign enemy attacked for more than four months, sacrificing twenty to thirty thousand lives, before they finally opened that breach in the wall,” Attendant Chang said. “The king’s, ah, I mean, the Huyan Family valued precisely that advantage, so they used it as the foundation for building this palace city. They did patch the breach afterward, but the repaired portion isn’t as hard as the older wall segments.”

That’s the weakest section? He Lingchuan drew in a cold breath.

No wonder the Red General had chosen to surround them rather than carry out a full-on siege. It seemed that she’d rather spend precious time grinding them down in a war of attrition. She must have known this piece of history in advance.

Otherwise, the Gale Army would have had to test the hardness of Bei City’s wall with their lives.

The Red General scoffed. “So what if the walls are strong? I still took the West Ji Royal Palace without losing a single soldier.”

A wall could be as strong as iron, and a cannon could be sharp, but the master of the palace had been cowardly enough to open the gates and surrender in person.

Victory and defeat were never decided by external conditions alone.

Attendant Chang laughed nervously. “Y-yes, yes, the Red General is wise and mighty!”

As they spoke, several craftsmen on the scaffolding suddenly shouted, “There’s something! There’s something embedded inside the wall!”

In the blink of an eye, the Red General was already on the scaffolding that was six meters above the ground, standing right beside the craftsmen.

A craftsman flinched so hard he nearly toppled backward.

The Red General caught him by the shoulder with one hand. With the other, she plunged her bare hand straight into the wall and began tearing material loose.

Powder and chunks of mortar rained down.

Her hand was more effective than a chisel.

General Nanke and the others gathered below to watch. Something seemed to be emerging from inside the wall. It looked thick and hard, yet not like stone.

At the very least, the shape was not stone.

The Red General stopped and blew out a short breath.

A gust of wind swept through, clearing away all the floating dust. The object underneath revealed its true form.

General Nanke blurted, “Is... is that bone?”

Only half was exposed. It was the color of jade, yet under sunlight it shimmered with a metallic sheen. When struck with iron, it rang like a bell or a chime, leaving a lingering resonance.

But no one could mistake the shape.

It was a bone, one that spanned at least a meter of the exposed wall, and who knew how long it extended within.

Doorboard murmured, “That’s not a human bone.”

No bone in a human body was that long.

Another craftsman pointed up at the palace wall. “There’s one there too.”

Everyone looked up. Sure enough, slightly over a meter above, they found another bone glimmering with a jade-white light.

The outer wall that West Ji had added later had already been cleared; what the craftsmen were excavating now was Bei City’s original wall.

Does this mean that Bei City’s ancient city wall had been built with bone after bone embedded inside?

Willow shuddered. He Lingchuan, meanwhile, was reminded of a legend from his own hometown.

The Red General wore a mask, so no one could see her expression, but her voice remained calm and unruffled as she said, “This is the secret behind Bei City’s wall being so extraordinarily hard.”

In other words, the wall’s hardness is because of these bones?

She casually produced a dagger and chipped at the bone twice.

Sure enough, she could not chip it.

Then the Red General took out a small vial and poured its liquid onto the bone.

A soft sizzle sounded as white smoke rose. Those with sharp noses, such as Willow and He Lingchuan, caught a strange, sour scent.

The Red General kept pouring the acidic liquid. Foam soon flowed down the bone. When it dripped onto the mud wall, nothing happened at all.

Before long, a small hole had been eaten into the bone.

The Red General took up a pick with a hooked edge, inserted it into the hole, and scraped.

The pick’s hooked edge seemed to come away with a smear of black substance.

The Red General examined it closely. He Lingchuan suspected she even sniffed it.

After that, she jumped down from the scaffolding and said with regret, “It’s no longer active. None of it can be used anymore. No need to dig further.”

General Nanke was still staring at the bones. “What are these things, exactly?”

“Divine remains.” The Red General dusted off her hands. “In the Ancient Era, many gods fell into the mortal realm. These are their bones.”

Everyone who heard it felt a chill creep through their spine.

Ancient Bei City used gods’ bones to build its walls?

Yes, where there was war, there were corpses. The world-ending war of antiquity had been unimaginably brutal. It would not be strange for divine remains to have fallen to the mortal realm.

Most of the craftsmen were locals from West Ji. The moment they heard her words, they backed away, no longer daring to strike the wall.

Some even prostrated themselves, whispering prayers, begging the gods to forgive their blasphemy.

“Their burial ground is probably nearby. The people of Bei City simply used what they had on hand.” Who wouldn’t want an unbreakable wall? “For the locals to have obtained the remains so easily, either the gods died here and were never properly interred, or the seal on their tomb was broken or failed.” The Red General then turned to Attendant Chang and asked, “Do you know where the divine tomb is?”

Attendant Chang had been gaping in shock as well. Now he shook his head hard and answered, “No, the old records never mentioned any divine burial ground, General.”

“A pity. These bones embedded in the wall have lost their activity. Aside from being harder than stone, they’re no different from rock.” The Red General then asked him, “Think carefully. Is there any place in the palace where flowers and grass remain green year-round, unaffected by bitter cold or scorching heat?”

“Green year-round?” Attendant Chang did not even need to think. “There is! When the whole capital is covered in snow, that place is still full of red blossoms and green grass! The former queen had these orchids that she really loved, and if they were planted there, they could bloom all year without withering, and you wouldn’t even need to tend them carefully. Ah, it’s in the western garden of the royal palace! It’s only about four hundred paces from here.”

“Lead the way.”

Attendant Chang’s distance was remarkably precise. When he said four hundred paces, he meant almost exactly four hundred paces, with barely any deviation.

They entered the garden and were immediately presented with the sight of rare flowers and exotic plants growing everywhere, arranged in careful layers. It was pretty much impossible to find a spot throughout the entire area with withered grass or yellowing leaves.