Ch. 33
Chapter 33: A Monster Blocks the Road
The night was black as ink.
Cold moonlight filtered through layer upon layer of overlapping branches and leaves, casting mottled patches of light below.
When the mountain wind blew, the woods gave rise to a mournful whistling sound, as though countless resentful spirits were weeping, or wild beasts were growling before choosing their prey.
But for escorts like them, who had spent years licking blood from the edge of the blade, such an environment was long since nothing unusual. It did not affect them much.
Especially with the fine horses beneath them. Under their masters’ control, the beasts moved almost no worse than they did by day, every step steady and sure.
Chen Guan did not deliberately increase their speed. He maintained an unhurried, ordinary pace from beginning to end and rode leisurely onward.
Although Luo Tong and the others found it strange, none of them asked any questions.
Very soon, they reached the entrance to the ancient road Chen Guan had mentioned before.
Reining in their horses, the group looked up ahead.
What ancient road?
Before them there was only a stretch of desolate ground completely overrun by thornbushes and weeds.
Shrubs taller than a man blocked the way so thoroughly that one could not tell where the road ended and the mountain wall began.
Clearly, no one had set foot here for many years. Nature had long since hidden the road once again.
Naturally, that was no obstacle to Chen Guan.
【Route Map】Activated.
He directly opened the map, tugged on the reins, and drove the white horse beneath him straight into that dark and desolate forest.
Though Luo Tong and the others were full of questions, they said nothing and immediately urged their horses onward, following close behind Chen Guan.
They controlled their reins with the utmost care, doing their best not to crack whips or make noise, afraid that even a single whinny from one of the horses might alarm whatever unknown terror lurked within this forest.
The surroundings were terrifyingly still. The only sounds were the crunching of hooves stepping on dead branches and fallen leaves.
As they pushed deeper in, the long sabers and heavy swords in their hands tightened unconsciously, and their focus rose to an unprecedented height.
Because they had sharply sensed that something had changed.
The dead silence that had accompanied them for two days and two nights was gone.
From the black forest around them came the rising and falling chorus of insects and birds!
Under the present circumstances, with the Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes still tracking them, this return of ordinary woodland sound did not reassure them in the slightest. If anything, it only felt more unnatural, leaving every heart lodged high in the throat.
Such a situation usually meant only one thing—
those Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes were gathering elsewhere, preparing to unleash their next, even fiercer assault!
Only now that their pressure had lifted did the insects and birds dare to cry out again.
Yet at the head of the group, Chen Guan remained as calm and unhurried as before, as though the insects’ cries and the hidden danger all around them had nothing to do with him.
He simply rode on at ease, adjusting their direction now and then as he led them step by step deeper toward the Ten Directions Marsh.
As time passed, the nameless unease in everyone’s hearts grew stronger and stronger.
At the very rear of the convoy, Liu Shuo sat atop a large black horse with a longsword in hand. He glanced once toward the front ranks, and his brows drew together ever so slightly, though he said nothing.
Then suddenly, the view before them opened up!
The ancient trees and deep ravines vanished the instant they pushed through the last belt of brush.
What filled their sight was a boundless stretch of black.
Of course, it was not truly some flat black carpet before them, but rather an endless marshland overgrown with strange thorns and weeds.
Only because the ground was so level, and the night so dim, did it look from afar like some gigantic sheet of black cloth spread from the horizon all the way to their feet.
This meant they had officially entered the domain of the Ten Directions Marsh.
Chen Guan did not hesitate in the slightest. Urging his white horse onward, he continued forward.
Behind him, Luo Tong opened his mouth as though he wanted to ask something. But when he looked at Chen Guan’s calm back, he ultimately held his tongue.
And behind Luo Tong, the caution on the faces of the other escort masters had by now turned into deep confusion.
By all reason, those Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes should already have caught up and done everything in their power to stop them from entering the Ten Directions Marsh.
Yet all along the way, everyone had kept their hearts suspended in their throats, expecting those monsters to burst from the woods at any moment.
But in the end, not only did no Grudge-Bearing Demon Apes appear, not even a single ordinary demon or fiend showed itself.
So the group continued forward for another dozen or so li, and still encountered no danger of any kind.
At last, Luo Tong could no longer hold back.
“Escort Master Chen... don’t you think this road has been far too strange?”
Chen Guan did not even turn his head. He merely spoke four flat words:
“Prepare for battle.”
“What?!”
Everyone’s hearts jolted. All their doubts vanished at once as they gripped their weapons tightly.
Chen Guan also reined in his horse, and the hand resting on the horse-cleaving saber at his shoulder tightened slightly.
Only after waiting several breaths in silence did he slowly speak.
“We walk in accordance with the Heavenly Dao. We are merely passersby, wishing only to borrow passage through this place... I wonder whether the honored Demon Immortal might be willing to grant us this convenience?”
“Kekekeke... Hahahahaha!”
A woman’s shrill laughter suddenly rang out ahead of them, yet somehow also seemed to come from behind, as though fingernails were being scraped across iron, making everyone’s eardrums ache.
The moment Luo Tong and the others heard that voice, their hearts contracted violently!
A monster!
And not just any monster, but a great demon already capable of human speech!
Demons and fiends were the general term for both demonic beings and fiendish beings, while the Grudge-Bearing Demon Ape belonged purely to the latter, as a fiendish creature.
Demonic beings, meanwhile, were divided more finely.
The first kind was the demon beast. They were simply beasts whose bodies had mutated after absorbing demonic qi—like the black bears they had encountered before, which knew only how to charge and rampage.
These demon beasts were the most common thing one met on the road, and the kind they killed the most. They were little more than hide stock.
They possessed no true intelligence and could not speak human language. They acted entirely on animal instinct, but were often monstrously strong. Some powerful demon beasts could even smash a small mountain apart with a single paw.
The second kind was the spirit, which had developed in the opposite direction.
They also cultivated demonic qi, but lacked such overwhelming bodies. Instead, they could shed their beastly shells, assume human form, and mingle within the towns and markets.
As in the stories told among the common folk, the tavern owner in some town might really be a Yellow Weasel Spirit in disguise, or the famed courtesan of some pleasure house might actually be a Fox Spirit.
Such spirits possessed very high human intelligence and had long since grown accustomed to human ways of life. But their individual strength was generally not great, and they could only rely on illusion arts and demonic tricks to protect themselves.
Most feared of all, however, were monsters.
They combined the strengths of the first two kinds. Not only did they possess the terrifying fleshly power of demon beasts, they also possessed intelligence, could cultivate their own unique innate divine powers, and were able to speak human language, with intellect no less than that of humans themselves.
For example, the legendary Blazing Firebird was said to have cultivated from an ordinary bird. Not only did it understand human nature and weigh profit and harm, it could also spit out heaven-burning flames that swept through all things.
Something like the one before them now... was either a spirit, or a true monster.
But in the deadly and unpredictable Ten Directions Marsh, it was obvious that a pampered spirit would have no place to live.
That left only the final possibility—
a monster.
Although Luo Li’s cultivation was not high, she still heard the undisguised killing intent in that shrill laughter.
“Since you’ve come,” the monster’s voice said, cold as ice, “then... stay here forever!”