Chapter 161 – Replacing the Heavenly Pillar
The Fish Breath Cauldron and the Bing Yi Bell.
When the two sacrificial vessels, gifted by the Divine Lord to the Cold Wilderness Clan in ancient times, were unearthed, the ground in Plum City began to shake violently. The city was situated at the confluence of three southward escape routes—the Changlan, Cypress, and Hongdou Straits. Snow tumbled from the crenellations of the city tower. At the gate, those at the back fell forward, while those in front were shoved, all of them cramming into the gateway together.
“Get back! Get back!”
The Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples guarding the city shouted as they spread their arms, struggling to hold back the tide of people surging inward.
Mule and horse carts clogged the entrance as the crowd swarmed. The Mountain Sea Pavilion, having forcibly taken control of Plum City, had sealed the city’s other three main gates under the order of Pavilion Master Zuo Yuesheng. All the refugees could only squeeze in here, and despite the disciples’ efforts to maintain order, the area was packed to a standstill. Most of the elderly had already perished on the long journey, and many of those who remained fell in the crush, never to rise again. Some mothers fought to lift their children high, lest they be trampled into a new patch of mud beneath the adults’ feet, but often, both mother and child were pushed to the ground and overrun by hundreds of pairs of feet.
The weather was brutally cold.
The blood of the fallen quickly froze into a silent, unnoticed layer of ice.
Cold sweat beaded on the foreheads of the Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples. Zuo Yuesheng had ordered them to guard the gate, ostensibly to prevent demons and spies from the Great Wilderness from infiltrating the city. In reality, they knew all too well that “checking travel permits” and “verifying identities” were mere pretenses. The true purpose of the barriers and checkpoints was to control the number of refugees entering the city.
Plum City had become a reservoir receiving a three-pronged flood, and it was on the verge of collapse.
“Get back! Show your travel permits!” a Mountain Sea Pavilion disciple yelled himself hoarse.
He didn’t dare let all the refugees into Plum City, but he also didn’t dare turn them all away. To do so would instantly ignite the already clamoring crowd—tens of thousands of refugees, no matter how small the proportion of rogue cultivators among them, would become a terrifying force if they stormed the gates together!
“The earth dragon has turned over! The earth dragon has turned over… Ahhh!”
A carpenter, carrying a bamboo basket, cried out in alarm before letting out a bloodcurdling scream. He clutched his throat and staggered backward.
Twisted black smoke rose from the ground. Amidst the smoke, mangled corpses, covered in crackling ice, began to climb to their feet! The Living Corpses lunged into the crowd, their crushed fingers bending at grotesque angles as they dug deep into flesh, their mouths gaping open to bite like wild beasts. In the blink of an eye, sharp screams echoed one after another.
“The Living Corpses are eating people! They’re eating people!”
Someone’s shout ignited the powder keg, and the tide of refugees outside the gate erupted into a full-blown riot.
The previously composed Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples felt their scalps buzz as their minds went blank. This was the first time they had ever witnessed such a horrific scene! It was common knowledge that “when a person dies, their soul returns to the miasma.” After death, unless special means were employed, a person’s soul would drift into the miasma fog. Dead Souls and Wild Ghosts would never appear around a city unless the Miasma Moon arrived and the fog sealed the city.
At this moment, the unbreakable truth of “Dead Souls Enter the Miasma” shattered before their very eyes!
Wisps of black smoke rose from the ground, and mournful wails pierced their eardrums.
The dead souls did not return! The mortal realm had fallen!
“Calm down! Calm down! Don’t push! Don’t shove!” a Mountain Sea Pavilion disciple shouted, trying to stabilize the situation while simultaneously summoning his flying sword to slay the suddenly reanimated corpses. “The Pavilion Master of the Mountain Sea Pavilion and the Buddha’s Son of the Buddhist Sect are in the city! The Pavilion Master and the Buddha’s Son will surely have a way to clear this foul qi and deliver the dead souls! Everyone, please be quiet—ah!”
“Quiet my ass!”
A rogue cultivator in a brown turban, gripping a short spear, roared, the veins on the back of his hand bulging as his face twisted into a horrifying grimace.
The Mountain Sea Pavilion disciple clutched his throat, his fingers trembling as he tried to recall his flying sword, which was circling through the crowd. The other disciples guarding the gate were busy slaying the Living Corpses and were too late to save him. The turbaned rogue cultivator thrust his arm forward, and the red spear pierced the disciple’s throat, the tip emerging from the back of his neck.
With a backhanded pull, the rogue cultivator yanked the spear free. A spray of warm blood arced upward, splattering against the gate’s barricade.
“Mao Jia!”
The remaining Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples cried out and turned to apprehend the spear-wielding cultivator.
“Come on!” The turbaned rogue cultivator, his eyes bloodshot, brandished his red spear like a madman. “Come and kill me! I’ve seen through it all! What bullshit Mountain Sea Pavilion! What bullshit Buddhist Sect! You’re all the same damn birds of a feather! You just don’t want to let us into Plum City! You want to force us to our deaths!”
The turbaned rogue cultivator laughed hysterically, parrying a flying sword with his spear and charging toward another Mountain Sea Pavilion disciple who was forming a blade seal with his hands.
“Come on! Come kill your grandpa!”
A harsh wind gusted from behind. The turbaned rogue cultivator, having taken only two steps, slammed heavily to his knees with a thud. Crack, crack. The Mountain Sea Pavilion disciple with the gaping hole in his throat, his face now a ghastly purple and his eyes rolled back to whites, had latched onto him with a terrifyingly blank expression and was now ravenously tearing at his flesh.
“…My heavens!”
The disciple forming the blade seal felt his scalp tingle. The horrifying scene before him showed that even cultivators would now instantly turn into walking corpses upon death. Heavens above! What in the world was happening?
Fear had completely erupted. The order before the city gate had utterly collapsed. No one knew what was happening, but in this situation, the gate just within reach became the only path to survival. The crowd roared, pushing and shoving, desperately trying to flee into the city. The twenty or thirty Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples were completely unable to control the situation.
But then, the unexpected happened.
“Close the gate! Close the gate! Don’t let them in! If they get in, we’re all finished! All of us!”
The refugees who had already made it through the gate watched in terror as the Living Corpses mauled people in the crowd outside. They began to shout, and dozens, then hundreds of them, pushed against the heavy, iron-bound city gate, desperately trying to close it. Those who had just broken through the barricade now became its defenders, kicking and shoving to keep the refugees behind them out.
Amidst the curses, the few meters of the gateway instantly became a battlefield of internecine slaughter.
The riot was so terrifying that bodies piled up like mountains in the blink of an eye.
The Mountain Sea Pavilion disciples tasked with guarding the gate stood on their swords in mid-air, momentarily stunned into inaction.
In their shock, a horn sounded.
The sound came from the direction of the City Divination Department, the ancient ox horn producing a deep, resonant tone that vibrated through the cold air. The crowd, swept up in fear and fury, was stunned by the sound and stood frozen. Amidst the horn’s call, a white jade and gold pavilion slowly flew in from outside Plum City—it was the Cloud Treasure Ship that had brought Zuo Yuesheng to the West Continent.
The Cloud Treasure Ship, as massive as a small town, passed over everyone’s heads.
Gears turned and mechanisms activated. Golden chains shot out, their ends attached to heavy stone anchors that crashed down on both sides of the city gate, securing the Cloud Treasure Ship above the northern gate tower. Following this, the exquisite nine-story pavilion, like an eight-treasure spinning top, began to rotate. Its cyan-gold glazed roof shimmered with a brilliant light that scattered in all directions, and the statues of beasts and immortals on its four ridges came to life.
The immortals showered down a flowing light, and layers of Sanskrit chanting descended from the heavens.
Wisps of black smoke rose into the air. One by one, the walking corpses devouring the living slammed back into the snow.
The commotion and slaughter before the gate finally subsided somewhat. The refugees crammed in the gateway retreated, while those outside surged forward. But before many could push their way in, a deacon in a silver cloak descended from the treasure ship. With a wave of his sleeve, there was a loud rumble.
The city gate was closed.
However.
The city’s horn did not fall silent. Instead, it let out a long, mournful cry.
Across the Twelve Continents, every city had its bell, and every pool its horn. The bells of the four directions would ring to announce the passing of the Miasma Moon and the opening of the four wilds. The sound of the horn, however, held the exact opposite meaning: the horn’s call summoned the miasma. Thud. Someone’s knees hit the frozen, blood-stained ground, then another, and another… a dark mass of refugees fell to their knees.
After a brief silence, cries of despair drowned out the wind.
On the distant horizon, a viscous black miasma churned and surged, rushing forward like a tidal wave. Within the fog, countless overlapping shadows could be vaguely discerned.
—The largest Desolate Calamity since the Night of Dusk and Dawn’s Division had just begun.
***
“…They’ve come, just as I expected.”
Zuo Yuesheng lowered the telescope made of ice glaze.
The one piloting the Cloud Treasure Ship was not him, but Monk Budu.
Zuo Yuesheng and Old Heavenly Craftsman were leading the disciples of the Heavenly Works Mansion in a race against time on Plum City’s Heavenly Lake Mountain. The place that West Continent scholars and poets used to praise as the “Pure Land of the Heavenly Lake” had now been transformed. High furnaces lined the foot of the mountain, and from time to time, summoned heavenly fire rained down, blanketing the ridges. Dark red flames spewed ceaselessly from the furnace mouths, day and night, melting glowing Silver Essence Jade Marrow that flowed in a continuous stream through exquisite channels into the grooves of a grand array pre-carved by Chou Bodeng.
The rolling heatwaves had melted most of the snow on Heavenly Lake Mountain.
The meltwater converged into streams and waterfalls, cascading down the steep cliffs like white silk ribbons, forming the anchor lines for the Star-Chart Grand Array. The ancient plum trees on the mountain continuously drew life force from the earth, becoming nodes for the array. At the mountain’s base, the qi auras of mortals became the scattered dust of the formation.
The mountains hummed and the rivers stirred.
Only the peak of Heavenly Lake Mountain remained serene, where a lake of celestial water, its surface veiled in light, lay as still as a silver mirror.
“These bastards don’t even let you catch your breath.”
Old Heavenly Craftsman sat cross-legged on a rock by the Heavenly Lake, puffing on his dry pipe.
He was shirtless, revealing muscles as gnarled and powerful as coiled flood dragons. The snow on the peak had not melted, and the wind was bitterly cold, yet steam rose from his body as if he himself were a furnace.
“Expecting them to give us a break is less realistic than hoping the Great Wilderness destroys itself. Besides, what they want to do is far easier than what we’re doing,” Zuo Yuesheng said, then laughed self-deprecatingly. “No wonder Lu Jing is always grumbling that characters in novels at least double their power when they go berserk… In this world, it’s so much easier to be a villain or an evil demon than a good person.”
“I’ll go check on the situation in the city,” Old Heavenly Craftsman said, knocking his pipe and sending a few sparks flying. He muttered, “Hundreds of thousands of refugees… if this turns into a riot, we’re in for a world of trouble.”
Before he could get up, the chief steward of the West Continent’s Mountain Sea Pavilion branch hurried over.
“Is there trouble already?” Old Heavenly Craftsman was taken aback.
The chief steward quickly replied, “There was a small disturbance at the north gate, but the Buddha’s Son has already quelled it. Someone bearing Young Master Lu’s token is requesting to see the Pavilion Master.”
“Lu Shiyi?” Zuo Yuesheng was surprised, then nodded. “Let him come up.”
A short while later, a sickly-looking young man in white, his face etched with anxiety, strode quickly up Heavenly Lake Mountain.
The moment they saw each other, before Zuo Yuesheng could even ask his identity, the man spoke directly, his words spilling out in a rush.
“Reporting to the Pavilion Master, Zi Jin has finally learned what the Beast Taming Sect truly intends to do!”
“They want to…”
“Shift the Heavenly Pillar!”