Chapter 403: Origin Energy vs. Home-Field Advantage

On a mountain road like this, the Fufeng City escort troops would definitely take the lead, keeping the three delegations protected in the middle.

Several merchant caravans and other travelers followed behind.

In terms of marching order, the intentionally lagging Stone Gate Merchant Caravan was sixteenth in line.

The mountain road twisted and coiled. At its narrowest points, it could only accommodate two wagons side by side, though whenever the road curved into a mountain col between peaks, the space opened up a little.

As a result, the moving groups resembled a centipede, stretched long from head to tail.

The road distance between the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan and the escort unit was at least ten kilometers. By now, the escort troops unit already rounded the far end of the opposite mountain, while the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan was still on this side, and they were close enough that they could almost see each other across Mount Fengmo.

If Second Boss Shi could witness this scene in person, he would probably be moved to tears.

Once the tornado left Mount Fengmo, it kept a slender “tail” touching the ground. From a distance, it looked like a mere wire; up close, it was thick and robust, constantly sucking energy up from the earth into itself as the ring of wind expanded again.

Its movement speed seemed slow, yet in truth was frighteningly fast.

At this moment, the merchants on the mountain road also saw the Wind Demon bearing down. Amid screams, some tried to wrench their horses around.

But in doing so, they only drove the animals too hard. The horses were already panicked, the road was narrow, and one misstep was enough. More than a dozen horses and wagons slid right over the edge, tumbling down into the abyss.

Some horses simply collapsed to their knees on the spot, refusing to rise no matter how hard they were whipped.

Of course, even more people abandoned their wagons entirely and bolted backward without a second thought.

If you lost your life, what was the point of goods?

The escort troops, naturally, saw the Wind Demon charging in as well. They were startled, but not afraid. Before it could reach them, the commanding officer barked urgent orders. The entire unit sprinted into a col, forming a tight defensive formation with envoys in the center, guards on the outside.

The commanding officer knew very well that they were nearly four hundred strong, the mountain road was narrow, and there was no chance they could outrun the Wind Demon in such a short window.

Hence, he produced a wooden staff, slammed it into the ground, and roared, “United in strength and purpose!”

Three hundred guards shouted in unison.

The staff flared with deep blue light, expanding into a protective dome that covered the entire formation.

It had been carved from a branch of the Baoshu King, and carried a portion of its monster energy and divine technique within it.

The officer commanded, “Bows!”

The guards unshouldered their longbows, drew, and nocked arrows.

Blue light shimmered at the arrowheads as well.

“Loose!”

Three hundred arrows flew at once.

A target that large was impossible to miss.

But the tornado was packed with debris, including stones, mud, sand, and even rubble from the ruins of the Ethereal Sect. At high speed, all of it acted like moving shields.

More than half the arrows struck debris instead. Only a little over a hundred penetrated into the ring of wind itself.

The guards saw those hundred-odd sparks of blue light flare abruptly, as though lightning erupting inside clouds, while the Wind Demon let out a furious roar.

It had no true body; ordinary blades, spears, and arrows meant nothing to it. But the origin energy attached to those arrows was the natural bane of all monsters, and even the Wind Demon was no exception to this principle.

Its agony was no different from being riddled with a hundred arrows.

Yet when it sensed the aura coming from that wooden staff, its rage surged even higher.

Baoshu King!

Its mortal enemy, who had nearly destroyed it four centuries ago, had not come in person, but it had sent this very unit.

What better gift from the heavens than a chance for revenge?

The Wind Demon heaved with effort. The three hundred arrows spinning within the gale suddenly reversed course and shot back along their original paths, straight toward the guards.

They returned even faster than when they had first been loosed.

The blue dome flickered, blocking them all.

But at that same moment, the Wind Demon slammed into the mountainside above them.

Those massive boulders looked majestic, but their bases had been severely weathered for ages. Under the Wind Demon’s shove, they toppled like fallen jade pillars and thundered down the steep slope, unstoppable. Some even split in two mid-fall, rolling together as a pair.

That was tens of thousands of kilograms of rock and earth, aimed straight at the escort troops at the bottom.

Before an attack on the scale of a natural disaster, the glowing dome looked far too thin. No one had any confidence that it could hold.

Several envoys felt their hearts go ice-cold, and they did not dare look. They turned away and covered their heads.

Just as the boulders came crashing down with the force of thunder, a gigantic phantom tree appeared above the formation, its towering branches and leaves spreading skyward, identical in shape to the Baoshu King itself.

Boulders as large as millstones struck the canopy and rebounded away. Only smaller stones slipped through the gaps between leaves and fell to the ground.

The guards struck those “leaks” away with their own hands.

The envoy from the State of Chiyan was clipped by a flying fragment, resulting in a long gash splitting his brow and blood streaming down from the wound. However, the phantom tree clearly had no intention of intercepting every little pebble.

It prioritized the big threats and let the small ones pass. It would not waste power blocking every fragment.

The escort troops’ mission was tied to the monster state’s honor. The King of Baoshu had allotted them ample origin energy, but even so, that power was not infinite.

The tornado paused in midair, as if observing or thinking.

But the escort troops’ arrow barrage reminded it that there was no time for hesitation on a battlefield.

After a dozen or so breaths, the Wind Demon swept behind the mountain. With the ridge as a barrier, human arrows could no longer reach it.

The commanding officer sprinted up the ridgeline, climbing hand over hand. Without needing orders, two personal guards followed. If they only endured blows passively, no amount of origin energy would be enough. They had to counterattack.

The arrows the officer fired even carried a faint red glow, and this was especially devastating against monsters.

But this was an enemy that had once fought the King of Baoshu itself. And this battlefield was the Wind Demon’s absolute home ground. Here, replenishing its energy was effortless. Even if the Baoshu King personally came here, pinning the other party down would not be easy, let alone a few humans trying to do the same.

The tornado ignored their arrows. It had already moved behind the mountain and mercilessly sucked up the merchant caravans on that side.

Amid shrieks, people, horses, wagons, and cargo all rose into the air together.

Those who saw it turned pale. The fleeing travelers on the road only cursed that they had not been born with two more legs.

The Wind Demon seized the swirling mass of people, horses, and wagons, then flung it back toward the escort troops’ heads.

The phantom tree was a divine technique, not the Baoshu King’s true presence. It judged incoming boulders and arrows as hostile attacks and intercepted them, but falling people, horses, and cargo did not “possess intent to attack,” so the phantom tree ignored them.

Yet once those things were whipped up by the gale, their speed combined with their weight made them hit like cannonballs. The destructive force they presented was immense.

Worse, several hundred people were crammed inside a single col, and the Wind Demon’s attack was highly concentrated. With a deafening series of impacts, more than a dozen guards and mission members were smashed flat without even getting a sound out.

That single move alone revealed that the Wind Demon’s intelligence was far from low.

A few mission laborers were so terrified they lost their wits. They turned and ran, desperate to put distance between themselves and this place of seemingly imminent death.

But under the Wind Demon’s gaze, where could they possibly escape?

They did not even make it two steps out of the protective dome before they were swept into the sky. No one knew when or if they would ever hit the ground again.

Seeing how well its attack worked, the Wind Demon immediately turned back to seize new caravans to throw.

The rear groups had already fled, leaving only a hundred-plus wagons and horses behind. The wind demon could simply pick them up and use them—conveniently, logically, and with alarming ease.

It seemed to be enjoying itself. After smashing things down twice, it drifted along the mountain road farther back, intending to gather even more “projectiles.”

Wagons took up space. If it threw another one or two rounds, the envoys and guards would have nowhere left to stand.

Several ridges away, the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan could not see clearly what was happening up front. They only heard the roar of the wind and caught glimpses of a gigantic tornado in midair.

So much debris had been swept into the tornado that it had turned black, looking especially sinister. And its route seemed erratic as it moved back and forth in an unpredictable manner.

Other than that, there were only living people running back from ahead, screaming as they ran as fast as they could: “The Wind Demon’s here! The Wind Demon’s here!”

The wind demon? The very one from the legends of the Ethereal Sect?

The members of the various caravans trembled with fear, and they became endlessly grateful that they had not stayed too close to the escort unit.

* * *

Now, while the escort troops were struggling desperately to survive, He Lingchuan, who was at Mount Fengmo’s belly, was not focused on the carnage across the way. Instead, his eyes were fixed on Fushan Yue up at the summit.

Down on the official road, everything was chaos. No one had the spare attention to look up at the Ethereal Sect’s main peak.

But right as the Wind Demon slammed into the phantom tree, a small black dot suddenly dashed out, taking two quick steps before leaping off the summit!

Fushan Yue!

He Lingchuan had been watching his movements the whole time and had quietly edged closer to the peak. Now, astride the cliff ram, he charged straight up the mountain and arrived at the exact spot where Fushan Yue had been standing.

The view from this point was the best possible vantage point over the entire situation.

This man had orchestrated a catastrophe on this scale, and then simply watched from above, as though enjoying a show, watching all the way until now.

Of course, the summit was far from the opposite official road. No human could cross that distance by force alone. Only winged birds could.

And so, Fushan Yue grew wings.

Strictly speaking, they were not true wings. He stretched broad membranes between his arms and legs, forming wide gliding flaps. Then, like a flying squirrel, he rode the airflow forward in a smooth glide!

He Lingchuan muttered, “This bastard really came fully equipped.”

He had ridden a cliff ram and risked his life leaping from cliff to cliff, scrambling over ridges, rushing back to the official road the hard way, but how could that compare to this man casually dropping from the sky?

However, Fushan Yue was gliding directly toward the Wind Demon. In less than ten breaths, he was swept into the violent ring of wind!

Like a leaf caught in a whirlpool, helplessly dragged along.

What’s he doing?

He Lingchuan stared, momentarily stunned.

It was then that the Wind Demon had begun throwing things down, wagons, cargo, humans... and Fushan Yue.

Bodies rained from the sky in a dizzying blur. Yet with the sharp eyesight he had honed through diligent training, He Lingchuan still managed to pick Fushan Yue out among dozens of falling figures.

Inside the wind ring, slammed against all that debris, then hurled down hard, an ordinary person would be dead or crippled. Yet Fushan Yue’s body seemed forged from iron. He hit the ground, rolled, and sprang back up.

He dodged left and right, narrowly avoiding two falling wagons, then charged straight toward the delegations.

“Fishing in muddy waters?” He Lingchuan narrowed his eyes. “Let me see who your real target is!”

In the col, there was not a single safe spot left. The guards relied entirely on quick footwork to shield the envoys, pulling them from place to place.

With two bounding leaps, Fushan Yue reached them.

Normally, if he dared approach any of the diplomatic groups like this, the guards would have driven him off instantly. But right now, everyone’s attention was fixed upward. How much vigilance did they still have for “a person” on the ground?

People were falling from the sky everywhere.

“Watch out!” Fushan Yue shouted as he threw himself over the envoy from the State of Chiyan, knocking the other party down.