Chapter Fifty: The Gourd

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“Wooo—!”

All of a sudden, Tu Zhu gave a piercing whistle. At once, the Tianshan Escape generals scattered across the battlefield abandoned their opponents and the Eagle Yang soldiers fighting beside them, then swiftly converged. In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, they had gathered into a single group.

Then, under the astonished gazes of humans and demons alike, Tu Zhu sprang into motion and led the charge toward the outer mountain pass.

Cloud-Stack Manor faced north from its southern side. With precipitous peaks like ten thousand blades on either flank, only the front and rear offered passage. A half-step great demon stood before them; thus, the rear had become the manor’s sole route to survival.

This was the first time Liu Chou had witnessed Tu Zhu in actual combat.

Tu Zhu wielded two short daggers. Though small, they possessed astonishing might. With a single thrust and sweep, he stirred the space several yards before him into a violent upheaval. Explosive ripples spread across the solid mountain wall, instantly hurling away every demon nearby. A sweeping strike sent the wind surging for several yards; even the air seemed cleaved in two, while the ground split open in a deep ravine.

Liu Chou and the other commanders followed close behind, charging in a straight line. Every man gave his all, racing madly ahead. Dust billowed across the open ground Tu Zhu had carved through the horde. They plunged into it, then sped through before the demons could close the gap, never pausing for an instant.

They had charged more than a hundred yards into the demon formation before the stunned monsters finally came to their senses. Shouting and howling, they tried to give chase, only to discover that even more soldiers were following Tu Zhu’s path of escape and attempting to break through. They immediately changed targets, surrounding and slaughtering the soldiers behind them without leaving a single survivor.

Yet immense numbers of demons were still rapidly converging ahead of Tu Zhu and his companions, attempting to block their path and trap them. But with Tu Zhu’s ghostlike advances, feints, turns, sudden changes of direction, and reversals, interception became exceedingly difficult. Every time, he managed to evade the main body of demons at precisely the right moment and break through at the weakest point. Though this lengthened their route, the distance between them and Cloud-Stack Manor was rapidly increasing. Farther and farther they went...

Tu Zhu’s decision directly caused the Eagle Yang Army’s battle line to collapse. The soldiers suffered catastrophic casualties, but he did not care. Before a half-step great demon, even if the Tianshan Escape forces remained behind, they would amount to no more than a few additional corpses in the demons’ food stores. They could change nothing.

Weigh the advantages and disadvantages. Choose between life and death. That was all.

The battlefield began to descend into chaos. The Eagle Yang soldiers behind the mountain had completely lost their bearings. Some fled after Tu Zhu. Some turned and retreated into the manor. More had no idea where to go. They followed the charge for a while, but when they saw Tu Zhu and the others disappearing into the distance and the demons pouncing upon and tearing apart those in front, they panicked and stumbled back. Before long, they found themselves surrounded by demons and hopelessly outnumbered. Some hid in corners, trembling uncontrollably. Others went berserk, raising their weapons and charging the demons, only to be bitten or torn to death.

Only a handful of seasoned veterans, realizing that the situation was beyond saving, wisely withdrew into the manor and joined the other human forces, hoping that sheer numbers might allow them to survive.

After witnessing Tu Zhu’s strength, most of the demon scouts and senior scouts chose to prey upon the weak rather than confront him directly. But there were exceptions. Just as Tu Zhu and the others had broken halfway through the demon formation, a giant axe-wielding insect demon suddenly blocked their path.

It was a savage, enormous creature. Its upper body reared high, with six legs trailing behind it. Its forelimbs were two gigantic axes, whose edges glimmered with a deep blue sheen and were almost completely smeared with blood and shredded flesh. The insect demon stood nearly twenty feet tall and possessed a massive frame. At the end of its grotesque mouthparts were pincers, with inverted fangs jutting from them. Standing before the group, it was nearly as large as the Bixi mechanical beast—truly a terrifying sight.

Unlike the other demons, this one was covered in gleaming bronze armor plates, each linked to the next like the overlapping scales of a heavily armored knight.

It was a mantis.

Tu Zhu suddenly accelerated. When he reached the mantis demon, he twisted sideways, narrowly evading an axe crashing down upon his head. Then he began circling its enormous body without pause. The mantis demon’s twin axes came down one after another in an unbroken storm, yet not one found its mark. Tu Zhu evaded every blow.

Against a demon of such immense size, the best method was to circle, evade, and wait for an opening. Tu Zhu had said as much during the Ghost Valley lessons. Yet few could perform it with his ease and precision. Nearly half the time, he did nothing but dodge, but whenever the mantis demon revealed a weakness, Tu Zhu’s short daggers left a deep slash across its body.

His attendants also halted and immediately formed a killing formation. While ensuring that Tu Zhu could not be attacked from the side, they fought desperately to preserve themselves.

Liu Chou had remained in the center of the formation. By the time he arrived, Tu Zhu had just circled around to the mantis demon’s flank. Both axes had struck the ground, leaving the creature wide open. Tu Zhu suddenly lunged in, and his daggers flashed three times, carving three enormous gashes across the mantis demon’s abdomen.

After the three strikes, the mantis demon let out a terrible scream. Though protected by its armor plates, its abdominal shell had nevertheless been cut open, nearly spilling its entire belly onto the ground.

Amid the scream, one of the mantis demon’s hind legs suddenly stabbed forward. It caught the instant of vulnerability after Tu Zhu’s final slash. By the time he tried to withdraw his blade, it was already too late. The lunging limb struck him squarely in the chest. Had he not twisted aside with all his strength, it would have punched several holes through his body.

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Even so, the thrust tore away a great mass of flesh and shattered his right shoulder. The mantis demon flung him several yards through the air. He crashed to the ground and violently spat out a mouthful of blood.

The mantis demon roared like thunder. Ignoring the wound in its abdomen, it continued rushing toward the spot where Tu Zhu had fallen.

Tu Zhu’s attendants hurried forward to intercept it, each raising his weapon and lunging at one of the demon’s flanks. But a senior scout who had nearly reached the monstrous-demon realm was far beyond their ability to withstand. The huge axes swept sideways, instantly severing the two men at the waist. Before the creature’s tremendous strength, Tu Zhu’s attendants possessed no more than the fighting power of fifth- or sixth-rank lesser demons. They had no chance of resisting.

The great axes had barely been drawn back when a long iron staff appeared before the mantis demon, descending from the air. The creature was startled, but with its savage nature fully aroused, it immediately raised its right leg and lifted the great axe to meet the blow.

Liu Chou gathered his strength and shouted. The iron staff collided head-on with the great axe.

Staff and axe rang together with the sound of clashing weapons. The mantis demon was knocked sideways by the tremendous force. Shock and fury filled its eyes. Though it had suffered from meeting the blow from below, this was the first time in its life that it had been bested in a contest of strength by a human.

The human looked astonishingly small in the mantis demon’s eyes, yet his strength was the exact opposite of his appearance. His thin, withered body concealed power greater than that of many tiger, leopard, and bear demons. The mantis demon was deeply shaken.

It quickly steadied itself and raised its other great axe. But when it lowered its head to search for the human, it found no trace of him. Somehow, the man had vanished.

The mantis demon’s roar grew even louder. It shook its head frantically, while its six hind legs spun and stamped wildly, attempting to force the human hiding beneath it into the open. At the same time, it held the great axes defensively before its body, alert to an attack that might come at any moment.

Then came a faint twang—the heavy bowstring of a human crossbow snapping taut.

A black, gleaming streak appeared in the eyes of the onlookers and slammed into the back of the mantis demon’s skull.

A vast cloud of blood burst into the air. The helmet atop the mantis demon’s head, along with half its skull, exploded into fragments. Only after suffering that devastating blow did the creature realize where the human had been hiding—

Behind it, upon its back.

But it was already too late. The Thousand-Weight Bolt had been fired from point-blank range. Its force was enough to split mountains and shatter stone, far beyond what the mantis demon’s body could withstand.

The mantis demon began to stagger and spin. Unlike a human, its head was merely an auxiliary brain. Its true fatal point was the heart. Thus, although Liu Chou’s Thousand-Weight Bolt had plunged it into madness and chaos, it was still not enough to kill it outright.

“Move!”

Seeing Tu Zhu’s attendants lift him to safety, Liu Chou immediately shouted. He no longer entangled himself with the mantis demon. While the demons had yet to seal every opening, he called for the others to leave.

The breakthrough formation changed at once. Liu Chou charged at the very front, followed by the attendants supporting Tu Zhu. Not one of them spared a glance for the bodies of the two dead attendants. They left without hesitation, and no one looked back.

In a battle like this, even the desire to grieve came at too high a price.

Escape was within reach. They were almost free...

Suddenly, a colossal roar erupted from the battlefield. Nearly all the demons came to a halt and began screaming with all their might, howling at the sky beneath the moon. From the corner of his eye, Liu Chou caught a crimson glow behind them. The group instinctively turned while still running, only to see a gigantic gourd suspended in midair, flames coiling around it. Its blazing mouth was aimed at the human army before Cloud-Stack Manor—and at the manor itself.

Beneath the gourd hovered an ancient, stooped woman beneath a vaulted canopy. Her face was covered in wrinkles that radiated malice and savagery. As she surveyed the humans, her eyes held an endless sea of death.

“Strike!”

The old woman slowly uttered the word with her toothless mouth.

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At once, the mouth of the enormous gourd spewed forth a colossal torrent of flame like a waterfall. It surged toward the people and buildings of Cloud-Stack Manor like a raging river of fire. In an instant, the entire human army and the manor were transformed into a sea of flames, ravaging Danfeng.

Mountains and rivers turned to ash,
Scorching waves sealed the hidden dragon;
Smoke veiled cloud and moon,
Wind swept half the mountain down;
The great river boiled white,
Blood churned, setting the waters in motion;
The setting sun smoked across half the face,
And ten thousand miles of night lay blurred in light.

The flames raged with the speed of a collapsing mountain. Of the entire Eagle Yang Army, only a scant few with profound cultivation managed to escape by sheer luck. Everyone else was buried in the fire, beyond all hope of salvation.

Screams and wails filled the sea of flames. Countless people rolled and crawled through the fire, seeking shelter. Some even leaped directly into the manor’s water jars and mountain streams. Yet before the flames’ immense heat, the water itself soon boiled. Those hiding within were scalded alive, then cooked into pots of human broth.

Tu Zhu witnessed the scene. His entire body burned with fever from his wounds, yet his heart had turned to ice.

“As expected... as expected of a half-step great demon...”

Powerless, he could only close his eyes and let the tear at their corners fall. But when he opened them again, the trace of pity had vanished, replaced once more by cold severity and demonic allure.

“Right... charge another ten yards, then turn left... Hurry, to the right...”

Though Tu Zhu could no longer lead the way himself, he could still direct them. Carried on one of his attendants’ backs, he began giving Liu Chou directions. Guided by his instructions and driven forward by Liu Chou’s breakthroughs, the demons around them gradually thinned until they had escaped the encirclement entirely.

At last, they broke free of the demons. But when they looked back, the raging fire had completely swallowed the manor. Flames soared into the heavens, while demons prowled beyond the blaze, hunting and killing. After that single battle, the Eagle Yang Army was erased from existence.

The hunters, after enduring one transformation after another, had ultimately become the prey.

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