Chapter 67: Chapter 64: Memorial Ceremony
After solving the issue with the Bear Demon, Li Hao noticed some activity inside a nearby cave.
When he sent his Divine Soul to investigate, he saw seven disheveled survivors, men and women, all aged between twenty to thirty years old, with no children or old people among them.
The seven were shackled by their hands and feet, with the other end of the chains threaded through a slit in a large rock. Unless someone could drag the rock away, there was no way to free themselves.
Having seemingly experienced some terrifying ordeal, all seven had expressions of bewilderment and fear on their faces; some were already numb, lost in a daze.
Li Hao sighed inwardly as he commanded a stone to break the chains, setting them free.
But even as the shackles on their limbs were gone, it seemed they were still bound by other chains.
After a brief moment of being stunned, they looked around blankly, still standing in place, with no attempt to flee.
One of them seemed to recall something and started trembling, curling up on the ground and frantically grabbing the broken chains to wrap them around their own limbs, murmuring pleadings non-stop:
“Don’t eat me, please don’t eat me…”
They were already paralyzed with fear.
Li Hao fell into silence. He wasn’t accustomed to comforting people and felt it was better to give them some time to regain their senses. Meanwhile, he took the opportunity to tidy up everything outside.
He casually controlled objects to gather the corpses of the demons, stacking them into a high platform, arranged it neat and square.
“Lin, as your unworthy disciple, all I can offer are these demons to commemorate your valiant spirit!”
Li Hao flipped his hand and took out a wine gourd from behind him.
Then he unscrewed the gourd and poured the wine over the bodies in front of the altar.
Before him was a sea of blood and corpses, but in his mind, he saw that courtyard bathed in the brilliant glow of the sunset.
It was the night when the man sang poems over drinks.
It was that afternoon when the man, seeing himself unable to absorb the Foundation Establishment elixir, hung his head in sorrow.
It was also that autumn, when fallen leaves landed on the chessboard, and the two bantered and bickered over a game of strategy.
Li Hao shook the wine gourd, which had one last swig left, tilted his head back to drink it, and softly said, “Lin, cheers.”
Afterwards, he stowed the wine gourd, turned around with the Demon-Slaying Knife in hand, and walked toward the forest outside.
In this mountain range that stretched for hundreds of miles, there were tens of thousands of demons, with just the nearby area gathering several tens of thousands.
Whoosh!
Li Hao stood on the leaves of a treetop, his Divine Soul burst out from the top of his skull, guiding the Demon-Slaying Knife, shuttling through the green forest, sweeping in all directions.
Various demons of all races, be they creeping or sleeping, foraging or frolicking, met their end as a dark light streaked by, severing their lives.
The dark light shuttled through the mountains like a flying needle, piercing through the bodies of demon after demon. Sensing the danger, the demons panicked and fled in all directions, but the dark light moved faster.
If it had been an ordinary person at the Fifteen Li Realm, it might not have been so easy to slaughter them, but Li Hao’s range and speed of object control were several times that of an ordinary practitioner in the same realm, and he hadn’t even used any special methods yet.
The tens of thousands of demons that had gathered at the foot of the mountain were terrified, clueless about what was happening. They fled on instinct, while others rushed to the mountain peak to seek answers from their king, but were beheaded before reaching the summit.
The whole mountain trembled violently, as if struck by an earthquake.
The scattered demons, barely ten miles out, were all slain.
Blood stained the shrubs and the earth red, trickling like tiny rivulets along the wrinkles of the land, flowing into lower areas and merging into tears for this mountain range.
The Divine Soul returned to its body, and the dark light settled back into his hand.
Li Hao glanced at it.
Having slain tens of thousands of demons, the blade’s edge was now dulled.
If it weren’t for the coverage of his Divine Soul, the knife would have broken long ago, unable to penetrate the thick bodies of certain demons.
He didn’t stop there but continued with the dull-edged black knife in hand towards a region dozens of miles away. There, some demons, unaware of the situation here, were still wandering near their dens.
Since he was here,
might as well eliminate them all.
“There really are demons gathering here!”
In the high skies above the Black Wind Mountain Range, a stealthy golden light moved through the clouds, which was Song Yueyao’s Divine Soul.
Her physical self was sneaking along the periphery of the mountain range, while her Divine Soul soared, surveying the entire situation of the mountains.
Along the way, she had already seen the traces of many demons.
In the part of the range closer to Yu City, there were only a few demons, with sparse demonic aura, merely small demons that had just become sentient, barely a threat. Even hunters armed with crossbows could scare them off.
But as she went deeper, dense clouds of demonic energy began to enshroud the mountains and forests, and their numbers increased.
“The Yu City guard wasn’t wrong; there’s definitely a gathering of demons here, and it’s very obvious!”
Song Yueyao frowned deeply, “But why, with the situation so clear, did the Yu City guard not feel confident in reporting truthfully, asking the Xia Family for help?”
She couldn’t understand. Didn’t the Yu City guard fear the demons might suddenly attack the city?
Or is it that the Xia Family was unwilling to come, bearing grudges with each other?
But if Cangyu City were to fall and the common people suffered heavy casualties, both the Yu City guard and Xia Family would be held accountable.
She could not understand and felt that the situation was somewhat complicated.
At this moment, as she continued to delve deeper, before long she arrived at the depths of the Black Wind Mountain Range.
Along the way, the toughest demons she encountered were those in the Soul Succession Realm patrolling the mountains, which she easily avoided and went undetected.
Suddenly, a rotting stench wafted through the forest ahead of her.
Song Yueyao’s face changed slightly, and she stopped in her tracks, cautiously extending her Divine Soul ahead to investigate.
Soon, she beheld an unimaginable scene.
Rivers of blood flowed through the mountain forest, nearly all bodies of water were dyed red with fresh blood, and the bodies of demons were strewn about.
Song Yueyao was stunned for a moment, having initially thought that the putrid wind was caused by demons capturing and harming members of the Human Race. She hadn’t expected it to be the demons’ own blood!
Her face showed astonishment and doubt. What on earth had happened here?
Hesitating for a moment, she let her Divine Soul carefully advance in stealth. Soon, she reached the corpses of some demons, quickly checked them, and discovered that the wounds were fresh, the death no more than an hour old.
Someone was killing demons!
The thought popped into Song Yueyao’s mind, sending a jolt through her heart. Could it be another Inspector from the Monster Suppression Department?
There was only one Inspector in Cangyu City’s Monster Suppression Department, in the Divine Travel Realm, tasked with guarding this city on the border alongside the Defender of Yue City.
She was a parachuted officer, temporary, with a tenure not meant to last long in Cangyu City.
In the midst of her astonishment, Song Yueyao had her Divine Soul scout ahead. If she could meet the other party, they might assist each other and gauge the situation here.
However, as she delved deeper, the expression on Song Yueyao’s face turned increasingly shocked.
All along the way were demon corpses!
Everywhere she looked!
Packed closely together, her Divine Soul saw at least ten thousand by her reckoning!
The density of demons gathered here certainly qualified as a small-scale demon wave, but what was most shocking was that all these demons were dead!
Controlling so many demons must definitely be the deed of a Great Demon!
But where was that Great Demon?
Song Yueyao had never clashed with that Inspector, but considering what she was seeing, she doubted she could achieve such a feat herself, nor did she possess the courage to try.
As her Divine Soul continued forward, she saw even more demon corpses, even more than before. Among them were some with massive bodies, showing signs of transforming—evidently demons close to the Divine Travel Realm. But without exception, all were dead, with surprisingly consistent wounds, all pierced through vital points by a sharp weapon.
Before long, Song Yueyao arrived at the foot of a great mountain.
She could vaguely make out that at the mountaintop, a thick and heavy demonic aura was brewing like clouds!
Such a fearsome demon mist was unmistakably the work of a Great Demon, and judging by the color of the demonic aura, there was more than one!
Her heart raced with fright, feeling the urge to turn around and flee, but the sight of demon corpses scattered at the mountain’s base and the eerie silence at its peak spurred an unbelievable thought in her heart.
Suppressing her fear, she allowed her Divine Soul to soar silently, concealing its presence while peering down at the demon clouds below the mountain summit.
This glance left her expression frozen.
A platform piled with the bodies of over twenty Great Demons stood erect at the mountaintop, arranged neatly and orderly.
As a light breeze passed by, she could even see some of the demons’ solidified eyeballs, which retained the terror and fear of their final moments.
Song Yueyao stood stiffly, too shocked to utter a word.
The number of Great Demons was more than she had expected, and all of them… all were dead!
These were all Great Demons from the Divine Travel Realm. Who could have killed all of them?!
That Inspector? Impossible, they were also of the Divine Travel Realm.
Accomplishing such a deed, even for the top talents in the Divine Travel Realm, would be exceedingly difficult unless it were someone from the Fifteen Li Realm!
Was it a general sent by the Xia Family?
Or perhaps a passing expert from some sect?
Song Yueyao came back to her senses and suddenly noticed several figures emerging slowly from a cave atop the mountain, all members of the Human Race, looking bedraggled as if they were survivors.
She swiftly set off towards the mountaintop and approached the survivors.
“Were you all captured by demons?” she immediately asked upon seeing the survivors.
Expecting that they would feel safe upon seeing her Monster Suppression Department uniform, she was taken aback when they trembled at the sight of Song Yueyao, their eyes showing a fear as if they had sighted a demon.
“Don’t, don’t capture us!”
“Please, let us go!”
The survivors collapsed and began kowtowing and weeping in despair.
Song Yueyao was dumbfounded.
Her mind couldn’t quite catch up for a moment, and after a short pause, she angrily said, “What nonsense are you talking about? I am an Inspector from the Monster Suppression Department, here to rescue you.”
“Spare us, my lord, please spare us!”
The survivors kept on kowtowing and begging for mercy.
Song Yueyao watched in silence, wondering if they had all been driven mad by the demons.
If that were the case, she likely wouldn’t get anything useful from them, thinking the expert who had slain the demons had already deduced the survivors had gone mad.
However, these Great Demons had clearly died not long ago.
With this in mind, Song Yueyao didn’t bother with the survivors any longer and swiftly spurred her Divine Soul to scout in all directions.
Soon, she came across a blood trail, with demon corpses all along the way.
She hurriedly followed it.
Not long after, as Song Yueyao landed on a tree branch, she stopped dead in her tracks.
In an open area of the mountain forest ahead, there lay demon corpses all over, all of them ape demons, seemingly a tribe.
But at this moment, they had all been slaughtered.
Blood pooled on the ground, and in the midst of these corpses, stood a young man.
He wore the most common dark uniform of a Monster Suppression Officer and held in his hand a damaged and worn demon-slaying knife.