Chương 125: When Arrows Turn to Dust (1/3)

The journey pushed them deeper into the untamed wilderness, each step carrying them further from the known world and into a realm where time itself had grown twisted and violent.

The closer they drew to the colossal, mist-shrouded base of Cloud-Mirror Mountain, the more perilous the terrain became. The air grew heavier with each mile, pressing against their chests like an invisible hand. This was no longer merely a forest; it was a graveyard of epochs past—a charnel ground where the bones of forgotten ages jutted through the earth like broken teeth.

Scattered among the massive, weeping roots of the ancient pines were the horrific remnants of catastrophic battles fought by entities whose power defied mortal comprehension. The very ground seemed to remember the violence, the stone itself scarred and melted in places, as though the earth had screamed and frozen mid-cry.

Shi Yan walked past the shattered head of a stone guardian beast, his boots crunching softly against scattered fragments of jade-veined granite.

A carved head the size of a reinforced command bunker? His eyes traced the massive, moss-choked jawline slowly, methodically cataloging dimensions and structural integrity with the cold efficiency of a military engineer surveying enemy fortifications. The stone was ancient beyond measure, its surface pitted and eroded by countless centuries of wind and rain, yet still radiating a palpable aura of menace.

If the body matched these proportions, the creature was effectively a walking battleship—something that could level city walls with a single swipe of its claws. Now, its unseeing stone eyes were half-buried in the invasive purple blight that crept across its surface like a diseased rash, its jagged fangs—each one the length of a grown man—draped in rotting vines that hung like funeral shrouds.

Gray fungus bloomed in the deep cracks of its nostrils, and a faint, acrid smell of old incense and decayed offerings lingered in the air around it.

"Do not step too close to the teeth," Ye Bing warned, her voice low and clipped. She didn't bother looking at the monument, her gaze remaining fixed on the treacherous, misty shadows ahead, her pupils darting from one potential threat point to another with the practiced vigilance of someone who had survived ambushes before.

"That is a Heaven-Swallowing Suan Ni. The sect that raised these wards was ground to dust thousands of years before the first Cloud-Mirror Patriarch ever drew breath. Their dynasty is dead, their disciples scattered to the winds or fed to the earth, but the lingering intent sealed within that stone will still crush the soul of anyone foolish enough to disrespect it." Her scarred fingers flexed slightly against her sword hilt, an unconscious gesture of wary respect.

Suan Ni? The lion-like creature? Shi Yan filed the term away in his mental database, cross-referencing it with fragments of the host's scattered memories—images of ancient texts, illustrations of mythical beasts with flowing manes and eyes that burned like furnaces. He didn't reply, but he smoothly shifted his path a half-step to the right, his massive frame moving with surprising fluidity as he adjusted his route to maintain a calculated, safe clearance from the ancient stone.

His breathing remained steady, controlled, but his eyes never left the monument until it had passed well behind them, swallowed once more by the oppressive forest.

Further down the trail, they skirted a sundered bronze bell the size of a carriage, its metal surface green with verdigris and etched with thousands upon thousands of microscopic script characters that still glowed with faint golden light. It had been split perfectly down the middle, a clean, impossibly smooth cut that gleamed like polished glass even after untold centuries.

The edges of the severed metal were razor-sharp, and the air around it hummed with a barely perceptible vibration—the residual echo of whatever catastrophic technique had cleaved it in two. Shi Yan could see his own distorted reflection in the bronze as they passed, the Yaksha mask staring back at him like a vengeful ghost.

Before long, Ye Bing gestured sharply with two fingers—a curt, commanding motion—forcing him to step wide around a series of deep, bowl-shaped craters in the bedrock. Each crater was easily ten feet across and perfectly circular, the stone surrounding them radiating outward in concentric rings like ripples frozen in time. The craters were terrifyingly pristine, their surfaces unnaturally smooth and reflective.

The rock had been flash-melted into smooth black glass by centuries-old Sword Qi, the ancient technique transforming solid stone into something resembling polished obsidian. The glass gleamed wetly in the dim light, and faint wisps of pale mist rose from its surface as though it still retained some lingering heat.

"Do not touch the glass," Ye Bing warned succinctly, her eyes scanning the dark forest canopy above with barely concealed tension, searching for movement among the twisted branches.

"The residual Sword Intent from the Pre-Epoch has not faded. If your flesh brushes it, the latent Qi will mistake you for an intruder and sever you at the joints." Her voice carried the weight of experience—someone who had seen what happened to those foolish enough to test such warnings.

Shi Yan nodded silently, his gaze lingering on the glassy craters for a moment longer. Though there was probably no effect on him as she mentioned—it only pertained to Qi—he had no intention of testing that hypothesis. The glint of the glass reminded him too much of radiation-scorched earth, the kind of dead zones where conventional rules no longer applied.

But regardless of what she said, xianxia terrain was not like navigating a conventional warzone. There were no clearly marked minefields, no standardized rules of engagement. It was like walking through a minefield where the unexploded ordnance was fully sentient, invisible, and hungered for blood—where the very ground beneath your feet could suddenly decide you were the enemy and erase you from existence without warning or mercy.

They marched in unbroken silence for another two hours, their footsteps muffled by the thick carpet of rotting needles and decomposing leaves. The only sounds were the occasional drip of water from overhead branches, the distant cry of some unseen bird, and the rhythmic creak of Ye Bing's sword scabbard against her hip.

Around the twentieth mile, the terrain dipped sharply, plunging them downward into a wide, heavily forested valley that yawned before them like an open mouth. The transition was abrupt and jarring. The towering pines grew closer together here, their gnarled trunks pressing in from all sides like the bars of a cage, their interwoven branches completely blotting out whatever miserable gray light remained of the morning.

Thick roots erupted from the earth at irregular intervals, forming natural obstacles that forced them to climb and weave constantly. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Here, the valley was choked with a low-hanging, unnaturally dense gray fog that clung to everything it touched like wet silk. It moved sluggishly, almost deliberately, swirling in lazy eddies that defied the complete absence of wind.

The temperature plummeted immediately, the cold so sudden and vicious it felt like plunging into ice water. Frost began to form on the edges of Shi Yan's mask almost instantly, delicate crystalline patterns spreading across the iron like spider webs. The dampness in the air no longer felt like regular winter rain; it felt heavy, oppressive, clinging to the skin like the freezing breath of an open tomb.

Each inhalation burned the lungs with cold, and each exhalation emerged as thick white vapor that hung in the air for several seconds before dissipating. The mud beneath their boots turned slick and foul-smelling, reeking of old sulfur and decayed marrow—a nauseating combination that reminded Shi Yan of mass graves left too long in the sun.

Suddenly, Shi Yan raised a clenched right fist, the universal military signal to halt, his arm shooting up in one smooth, decisive motion.

But how could Ye Bing have understood such foreign gestures? Thus, only after Shi Yan's hand physically blocked her path—his arm extending across her chest like a barrier—did she stop, her boots skidding slightly in the treacherous mud.

She cast him a sidelong glance, her sharp pupils narrowing behind the moisture-mask. She did not ask vain questions, nor did she hesitate or demand an explanation—such luxuries had no place in hostile territory. Instead, she dropped into a flawless, low crouch, her body folding downward with the liquid grace of a predator preparing to strike, her scarred face an impassive mask as her knuckles whitened against the cold hilt of her broadsword.

Her breathing slowed deliberately, her chest barely moving as she prepared for violence.

Closing her eyes for a fraction of a second, Ye Bing sank her focus into her Sea of Consciousness—that internal realm where her cultivation foundation resided. She expanded her Spiritual Sense outward like a casting net, pushing her awareness beyond the boundaries of her physical body and into the world around her. It unfurled like invisible fingers, probing, searching, tasting the ambient spiritual energy for any disturbance or anomaly.

An illusion? A formation? She frowned, a thin line forming between her scarred brows. To a cultivator of her caliber, the physical eyes were often deceitful, easily tricked by low-level illusion arrays or simple darkness. True sight came from the soul.

She swept the dense, swirling fog with her mental awareness, her Spiritual Sense darting between the massive pine trunks like a phantom, searching desperately for the telltale fluctuations of ambient Heaven and Earth Qi, the localized gathering of Yin or Yang, or the sharp, stinging presence of another being's killing intent—anything that would explain why he had stopped.

Yet…nothing.

The mist was an absolute, terrifying void. She sensed no fluctuation of Qi, no disturbance in the natural flow of spiritual energy. She felt no hostile auras lurking in the shadows. The world reflected back to her soul was perfectly, chillingly empty—as though they stood alone in a dead world.

"What is it?" she whispered, her voice a thin thread barely carrying past her own lips, almost swallowed by the oppressive silence of the valley.

Shi Yan didn't look at her. His attention remained fixed, absolute and unwavering. He kept his eyes locked dead ahead into the impenetrable gray wall of the valley, his pupils dilating slightly as he stared into the fog as though seeing something beyond mortal perception.

Slowly, deliberately, he reached up to the base of his skull, right where the cold iron strap of his Yaksha mask dug into his skin. His fingers moved with surgical precision, probing beneath the mask's edge until they found the swollen, mutated nerve cluster hidden just beneath his hairline—a biological modification the System had forced upon his flesh during enhancement.

He applied a precise, agonizing measure of physical pressure with two fingers, pressing down until pain lanced through his skull like a white-hot spike.

A sharp, metallic taste instantly flooded his mouth—copper and iron, the taste of blood forced through altered pathways. Blood rerouted through his carotid arteries, surging directly into the augmented sensory nodes behind his ears, flooding them with oxygen and activating dormant neural pathways. His jaw clenched involuntarily against the sensation.

[Acoustic-Blood Tracker: Engaged.] [Output restricted to 20%. Radius: 100 meters.] The world of visual sight immediately fell away, replaced by an overwhelming, terrifyingly detailed blueprint of three-dimensional sound and biological vibration. Colors disappeared. Shapes dissolved. In their place emerged a living map of pure sensation—a tactical overlay constructed entirely from auditory input and seismic disturbance.

He heard everything.

He heard the patter of every individual raindrop striking the mud, each impact registering as a tiny percussive note in the symphony of the forest. He heard the scurrying of blind corpse-rats navigating the hollow root-systems three hundred feet to his left, their tiny claws scratching against decomposed wood. He heard the slow creep of fungi expanding across bark, the barely audible whisper of moss absorbing moisture.

He cataloged the rhythmic, highly disciplined, and incredibly slow thumping of Ye Bing's heartbeat beside him—fifty beats per minute, controlled, professional, the pulse of a trained killer waiting for the signal to strike.

But drawing the entirety of his tactical focus was a massive, thundering rhythm directly ahead, emanating from deep within the fog.

Thump... Thump... Thump.

The heartbeat was slow, erratic, but unnaturally loud, echoing like a muffled bass drum through the heavy fog—each beat powerful enough to send faint vibrations through the ground beneath his boots. Accompanying it was a wet, sickening, tearing sound—the unmistakable, visceral noise of a massive jaw ripping open dense muscle and snapping through thick bone with casual, brutal efficiency. The crunch of marrow being pulverized. The wet slap of torn flesh hitting mud.

The grinding scrape of enormous teeth sawing through sinew.

[Entity Recognized: Yin-Corrupted Iron-Spined Ape] [Cultivation Resonance: Furnace-Core Realm / Kindling (Tier-2 Early Stage)] [Threat to Current Vessel: MODERATE.] [Estimated Yield: ~12, 500 Dao Embers] Oh? When this transparent screen flashed before his consciousness—crisp, clinical, utterly dispassionate in its assessment—Shi Yan was surprised. A flicker of genuine interest passed behind his eyes. It can even display data on a creature I cannot see with my eyes?

The System continued to reveal capabilities he hadn't fully understood, peeling back layers of functionality like an onion.

Although he was quite surprised for a moment, he then calmed down, his breathing returning to its steady, measured rhythm. He looked at the information briefly, parsing the tactical data with practiced efficiency before conveying it.

"From the heartbeat, it must be a demonic beast," Shi Yan said, his voice low and even, devoid of fear or hesitation. His gaze remained fixed on a massive, vaguely outlined shadow moving sluggishly within the dense fog, exactly eighty zhang ahead—a hulking silhouette that occasionally broke the uniform gray with darker patches of movement.

"Probably around Furnace-Core Realm, early to mid stage. And it's feeding." He paused, his head tilting slightly as he listened to another wet crunch echo through the fog.

"On something large."

Ye Bing narrowed her eyes, peering intensely into the swirling, suffocating gray mist ahead. She pushed her Spiritual Sense to its absolute limit, funneling her cultivation into her perception until her brow ached with the strain, veins standing out faintly at her temples. Yet, her mental feedback returned completely blank once more—an empty canvas where there should have been the vibrant brushstrokes of a living creature's spiritual presence.

A sense of doubt raised in her heart, cold and unwelcome.

"I sense nothing," she whispered, a rare flicker of tight unease entering her voice, her fingers tightening imperceptibly on her sword.

"Are you certain?" Although they had become allies, blind trust was still foolish—a lesson carved into her flesh by past betrayals. Trust had to be earned, verified, tested.

Although he had proven his capability multiple times already, this was the reason why she only asked this, not doubting him more harshly or accusing him of deception outright.

While Ye Bing was pondering and doubting him, her mind racing through possibilities, Shi Yan himself had his eyes narrowed upon hearing her explanation. His jaw tightened beneath the mask.

How could a massive, Tier-2 demonic beast—something that should be radiating spiritual pressure like a bonfire in the dark—completely evade the supernatural, soul-based radar of a veteran like her?