Chapter 144 — A Chance Encounter

The catastrophe began in the spring and summer of that year. Even a thousand years later, the people of the world would still remember those terrifying, maddened days with perfect clarity.

In the far south of the southern frontier, deep within the Ten Thousand Mountains of Wilderness, countless monstrous beasts and alien tribes had suddenly come swarming forth. Their numbers were beyond reckoning, and every one of them thirsted for blood. They spared neither man nor woman, old nor young—whoever they saw, they killed. Many of the vicious creatures were gluttonous for human flesh, and wherever they passed they left scenes too ghastly to behold.

The calamity erupted first in the southern frontier lands nearest the Ten Thousand Mountains of Wilderness, then spread swiftly across the whole of the southern frontier. The five tribes of the south—the Miao, the Zhuang, the Tu, the Li, and the Gaoshan—rose up to resist.

But against countless monstrous beasts and alien tribes—and above all against the dozen or so strange and monstrous demons among them whose demonic power and shamanic arts were exceptionally formidable—the resistance of the five tribes was no more than a mantis trying to stop a chariot. In the blink of an eye they were crushed, and the southern frontier was drowned in blood, its fields and roads strewn with corpses.

News of this shook the world and spread through every land. The common folk of the Central Plains were startled anew with each passing day, living in constant dread. Those who dwelt near the southern frontier gathered up their families and fled north, hoping only to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the calamity.

Every cultivator under heaven was stricken with alarm. Even the Orthodox and Demonic paths, long locked in their covert struggles, now stayed their hands for the time being, quietly watching the movements in the south and beginning to reckon up their own countermeasures.

The great Orthodox sect of the south, the Burning Cloud Valley, happened to have its valley master, Yun Yifeng, leading the vast majority of its disciples on a visit to Mount Canglan to call upon Daoist Zhenren Daoyan—and thus by sheer fortune escaped the disaster.

It was said that when the news arrived, Valley Master Yun Yifeng, then at Mount Canglan, heard of the miseries of the southern frontier folk and beat his breast and stamped his feet in anguish, declaring that had he been present he would never have suffered these demons to run rampant and poison the people. So profound was his grief and self-reproach that he had it in mind to take his own life in apology to the world. Fortunately his disciples on either side held him back, and the elders and chief disciples of the Canglan Sect added their earnest persuasion, until at last Valley Master Yun grew calm and swore that with the full strength of the Burning Cloud Valley he would avenge this sea of blood upon the people of the southern frontier.

Before long, Yun Yifeng proclaimed to all cultivators under heaven from Mount Canglan that the present calamity had in truth been raised by a single demon beast; that this demon's arts were formidable and its nature savage, and that unless the whole world joined to strike it down, it could not be withstood. In light of this, the Burning Cloud Valley and the Canglan Sect jointly called upon all cultivators of the world to gather the strength of all under heaven and slay the creature.

The next day, the Brahma Sound Temple, having received the news, made its formal response, endorsing the call of Qingyun and the Burning Cloud Valley, and announced that it would send men to join the alliance before long.

The Orthodox path threw itself into urgent planning and deliberation, dispatching several bands of outstanding disciples south to investigate the true nature of these monstrous beasts and alien tribes—for only by knowing both oneself and the enemy could one fight a hundred battles without peril.

Yet the three great factions of the Demonic Sect, which in ordinary days were so arrogant and aggressive—the Hades King Sect, the Ten Thousand Poisons Gate, and the Soul-Bewildering Sect—all fell suddenly quiet, as though watching one another, in no hurry to make any move. And so, beneath this gathering storm, the Central Plains sank for a time into a strange and unnatural calm.

That eerie calm was broken at last on the day before the summer solstice, when the monstrous beasts and alien tribes that had ravaged the southern frontier beyond recognition finally came charging into the Central Plains.

At the very first, however, the common folk suffered surprisingly few casualties, for a full month earlier the people in the regions near the south had already fled clean away. It was only that these monsters seemed ever more numerous and spread ever more swiftly, and in the space of a glance they were about to press into the heartland of the Central Plains. When that time came, it would be the hour when all living things under heaven sank into misery.

Whether these were astonishing tidings or rumors impossible to tell true from false, the news that shook men's hearts came indeed one after another: yesterday it was said a village had been bathed in blood, today it was rumored that a whole great city had been reduced to ruins. Every day spent in terror and dread, for anyone at all, was a day of unbearable suffering and panic.

Yet to a man whose heart was dead within him, it seemed to matter not at all even if everyone in the world perished. Mingli had been keeping company with Zhou Yixuan, little Wan, and the Wild Wolf Daoist and his group for over a month now, and even he did not know why he had followed them all this while. Perhaps he had long since felt there was nowhere left to go, and so let things run their natural course.

Of the whole party, Zhou Yixuan was the most opposed to Mingli's staying with them. Not only did it mean one more mouth eating for free, but the fellow would not even do odd jobs like the Wild Wolf Daoist—carrying baggage, that sort of thing. All day long he did nothing but drink or sleep, and worse, he often needed someone to look after him.

And as for eating for free, Mingli did no more than drink a little wine. Zhou Yixuan's greatest thorn in the eye was in fact the three-eyed monkey that followed at Mingli's side. Little Gray not only had a shocking appetite, but a capacity for drink far beyond that of Mingli, who was drunk after a single cup. A great sack of strong liquor poured down the monkey's throat, and its face did not even flush. Had little Wan not insisted, no matter what, on bringing along this man and his monkey, Zhou Yixuan would long since have run as far away as his legs could carry him.

As for the Wild Wolf Daoist, ever since that night when murder suddenly rose in his heart and he had plotted to strike Mingli down, only to be discovered and stopped by Little Gray and in the end spared by Mingli himself, he had grown even more silent and taciturn, often going days without speaking a single word.

Yet in these past few days, whether it was the grumbling, complaining Zhou Yixuan, or little Wan, or even the silent Wild Wolf Daoist, all had gradually noticed that Mingli seemed somewhat changed. Though it was hard for them to put it into plain words, Mingli was indeed slowly coming back to himself. The clearest sign was that his bouts of drunkenness had begun to grow fewer; sometimes he would go a whole night without drinking at all. But his behavior remained just as strange—Mingli would often sit together with Little Gray, facing north, staring blankly as though lost in some private trouble.

News of the southern calamity, carried north by the refugees flooding toward the north, gradually spread as well, and Zhou Yixuan and the others came to know of it.