Chapter 402: How Is This Possible?

It was a good thing that He Lingchuan was riding a cliff ram. A horse would never have managed to scramble up and down these jagged terraces.

“Faster. Go faster!” He Lingchuan urged the cliff ram, his tone unexpectedly urgent. Second Boss Shi did not understand why. He assumed He Lingchuan simply wanted to rejoin the main group, and even pointed out a route. “There’s another small path over there. It’s steeper, but if you go down from that side, you can actually get ahead of the caravan.” The escort unit’s switchback road wrapped around more than half of Mount Fengmo; climbing like this was essentially taking a shortcut.

Only, it was a shortcut no normal party could take.

By now, people were trickling in from several side paths. Upon seeing the ancient ruins, they clicked their tongues in amazement.

They were tourists from other caravans, coming up to sightsee. They were sticking to the proper, designated route, so they were far slower than He Lingchuan and Second Boss Shi by a wide margin.

He Lingchuan had just reached the entrance to the inner mountain path when, from behind, a sudden woo-woo-woo whistle cut through the air.

To be fair, the wind here was fickle; it could sound like wolves howling, ghosts wailing, tigers roaring, flutes whistling, anything at all.

But this whistle from the rear—three long, two short, followed by a rapid staccato—was unmistakably not natural wind.

He Lingchuan’s ears twitched. He turned his head and saw a man standing by the fissure, blowing a long whistle with gusto.

Most whistles were short, no more than a few centimeters long. But the bluish-green whistle in this man’s hand was like half a chopstick, though neither quite bamboo nor quite jade, and with joint-like knots along its length.

And the sound it produced was stranger still. It was softer and deeper than an ordinary whistle, almost like a whale’s song.

He was also channeling true energy into it, making the sound dense and cohesive, so it would not scatter and be drowned out by the surrounding noise.

Up on the mountain peak, the wind cut like a knife and frost bit into one’s flesh like a sword, and no one could endure it barefaced. Everyone wore thick felt hats or scarves over their faces, leaving only their eyes exposed, including He Lingchuan and Second Boss Shi.

But to blow a whistle, a scarf would not do.

The man had to lower his face covering, so his face was revealed.

Fushan Yue!

At the sight of that increasingly familiar face, a shock ran through He Lingchuan’s heart.

So he really had escaped Fufeng City in one piece, and he still hasn’t given up on his mission!

But the State of Shanyu’s envoy had clearly gone east to return home. Why isn’t Fushan Yue chasing him? Why did he follow us here instead?

Has his target changed?

Fushan Yue kept blowing the whistle as he looked around. His eyes turned red.

His behavior was bizarre, but the others did not try to stop him. Only one person complained, “Keep it down! Don’t trigger an avalanche!”

Only He Lingchuan, mid-step toward the stone platform path, suddenly yanked the ram around and made it leap into a deep recess in the mountain wall.

The rock face was full of these hollows carved by wind and snow. Some of these hollows were large enough to fit a house, while others were small enough that only a squirrel could squeeze into them.

This one was a dead-end pocket with no passage behind it.

There seemed to be three large characters engraved into the stone as well, though they required careful reading.

Second Boss Shi was bewildered. “Brother He, what are you—?”

Weren’t we heading down the mountain?

At that exact moment, the mountain’s belly let out another strange sound. It was as if a trapped beast were raging in its den, frantic and furious, its roar thunderous and booming.

Most importantly, the sound came from the fissure.

It was as if some monster were about to leap out from inside.

Even the man blowing the whistle backed away, retreating all the way to the rock wall, yet the whistles never stopped.

And right then, a young man in his early twenties stood at the fissure’s mouth, laughing at his companion. “What are you scared of? The Wind Demon was killed by the Baoshu King ages ago. This bit of noise is just empty wind howling through an empty hole!”

The moment the words left his mouth, the fissure erupted with a howling blast as a savage gale surged outward.

Everyone standing near the opening was blown away without exception. The young man who had mocked the others was the unluckiest. The wind flipped him up like a leaf and launched him straight into the sky.

He Lingchuan shaded his eyes with his hand and estimated the height.

At least thirty-five—no, sixty meters.

If he falls from that height... Well, there’s probably only one outcome.

The gale that burst out of the fissure did not follow its usual route through wall grooves to escape outside. Instead, it looped again and again through the circular mountainside. Each time it completed a circuit, the wind grew stronger by several degrees, and the howls of the wind grew louder, yet the “body” of the wind seemed to shrink, becoming more concentrated.

Those dozen or so people who had come up to sightsee were equally doomed, swept straight into it. Using them as reference points, He Lingchuan saw their spinning radius growing tighter and tighter.

At the same time, loose stones, grit, and accumulated snow were sucked in as well, all churned together into a grinding storm.

At first, some of the people still managed a few screams. Soon after, they were struck senseless by flying debris.

With the debris giving it shape, He Lingchuan could finally see what the “wind” looked like: a perfectly formed tornado, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.

And at the very top were two patches of pitch black that looked like eyes.

He Lingchuan, Second Boss Shi, and the cliff ram pressed themselves deep into the wall recess. Even with a gale that brutal, it could not tear them loose.

The only person still standing out there was the man who had been blowing the whistle.

The tornado seemed to deliberately avoid him.

“Is... Is that the Wind Demon?” Second Boss Shi’s eyes went wide. After a few stunned breaths, he suddenly shouted, “How is this possible?!”

This route had been safe for centuries. He himself had traveled it several times. How was it that they ended up suddenly running into the Wind Demon this time?

Am I seeing a ghost in broad daylight?

Wasn’t the Wind Demon killed by the King of Baoshu?

He hurriedly asked He Lingchuan, “Brother He, how did you know this thing was about to come out?”

However, He Lingchuan did not respond at all. Instead, he focused intently on something else: Wind Lion Lord statues.

Yes, there were two Wind Lion Lord statues placed in this recess as well, one on each side. The left one was about a person’s height, while the right one stood at about one meter tall.

He Lingchuan’s eyes widened as he examined the statues’ backs, and he asked a question that seemed completely out of place, “There’s no wind in this recess. Why?”

To avoid being dragged out, he had even shoved the cliff ram deeper in. But standing here, they felt no wind at all. It was as though the tornado had selectively ignored this hollow.

He had even stepped outward earlier, only to feel the faintest breeze, as if they were in a different world from the apocalyptic scene outside.

Second Boss Shi was still in shock and repeated dumbly, “Why?”

With the horrors unfolding before us, Brother He’s actually paying attention to this kind of detail?

He moved closer and saw that the snow on the Wind Lion Lords’ backs had been wiped away, revealing fine lines.

There’s an array engraved on their backs?

“Maybe it’s because of them.” He Lingchuan casually pointed downward. “Look at the terraces below. Where there are Wind Lion Lords placed nearby, has any of that area been damaged?”

Second Boss Shi instinctively looked down.

Sure enough, the terraces with Wind Lion Lords stationed nearby were still covered in thick snow, untouched by the tornado’s suction. But the areas without Wind Lion Lords looked as if they had been vacuumed clean, scraped bare and tidy.

Of course! The Wind Lion Lords were meant to ward off wind and suppress evil!

No wonder the Ethereal Sect scattered them throughout their territory. They aren’t just for decoration; they’re protection against the Wind Demon.

“These statues were carefully refined and then engraved with arrays. They’re not ordinary items.” After a quick review of the markings, He Lingchuan finally felt steady.

The Literature Pavilion in Panlong City contained plenty of array diagrams, especially combat arrays, and he had studied more than a few.

Even if he could not claim mastery, he could at least tell genuine work from junk.

He glanced at Fushan Yue again and realized the man was indeed standing within the Wind Lion Lords’ coverage. Even facing the Wind Demon head-on, all that happened was that his robes whipped and fluttered.

By now, the tornado in the mountain’s belly was compressing tighter and tighter.

But that did not make anyone feel safer. If anything, it felt like squeezing a balloon to its limit—once it hit the threshold, it would explode.

When the wind ring’s radius shrank to about ten meters, the tornado let out a roar that shook the heavens.

As if the sky responded, thunder suddenly rolled across what had been a perfectly clear morning. Great masses of dark cloud drifted in from nowhere, quickly blotting out the sun.

The world dimmed in an instant. The clouds hung low like a city under siege.

Fushan Yue had already climbed to higher ground. Now he extended an arm without hesitation, pointing straight at the escort troops on the opposite mountain road.

The gesture was saturated with killing intent.

The tornado seemed to receive its order. With a scream, it surged out from Mount Fengmo’s golden peak and charged straight across toward the other side!

Second Boss Shi shouted, “Has he lost his mind?! He summoned the Wind Demon to attack the escort troops!”

“He hasn’t lost his mind. He came here to kill,” He Lingchuan said coldly.

Fushan Yue never acts without purpose. Who knows what he’s set his sights on this time? Could he be coveting the King of Baoshu’s spirit seed as well?

He Lingchuan scooped up a handful of snow and slapped it onto the engraved writing on the rock wall, rubbing hard.

The snow sank into the grooves and outlined the strokes. At last, he could make out the inscription in the ancient immortal script: Wind Lord Cliff.

Second Boss Shi stared for a long moment, then suddenly bowed deeply to He Lingchuan. “Thank you for the warning, Brother He. Otherwise, our caravan would’ve been finished!”

Now he could see clearly that the escort troops were the man with the whistle’s true target. Thankfully, he had listened to He Lingchuan and had the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan lag more than five kilometers behind. That spared them from becoming collateral victims.

This caravan was the lifeblood he and his brother had built over half a lifetime. If it had been destroyed by the Wind Demon, it would have crippled them.

A benefactor, truly a benefactor.

“As I should,” He Lingchuan said with a small smile. Then he extended one leg and nudged a broken roof tile down into the mountain’s belly.

His footwork was good, and his aim was accurate. The tile tumbled from terrace to terrace, picking up speed, until it finally dropped toward the long fissure.

Once it fell in, it was like wood dropped onto water: right before He Lingchuan’s eyes, it wobbled in midair for a long moment, then abruptly floated back up.

This was exactly the phenomenon Second Boss Shi had described earlier: objects that fall in do not sink.

The fierce wind rising from underground could blow anything back up.

Which meant the fissure’s earlier abnormal silence had all been because of the Wind Demon.

So what had that thing been doing inside? Lying in ambush? Charging up?

And the one who blew the whistle was clearly Fushan Yue, but where had he even gotten another Wind Demon?

Most importantly, why is he attacking the King of Baoshu’s escort troops? What sane person would do something like this?

He Lingchuan thought for a moment and ran a small test.

He took both Wind Lion Lords and put them into his storage ring.

Instantly, the full mountain wind flooded into the recess, mercilessly scouring every bit of exposed stone.

This confirmed his guess that these statues truly repelled wind.

He placed the Wind Lion Lords back where they were, then said to Second Boss Shi, “Stay here. Don’t run around,” before swinging up onto the cliff ram.

He rode along the mountain wall toward the summit, and as he went, he casually collected several more Wind Lion Lords that were each nearly the height of a person.

Better safe than sorry.