Chapter Ninety-Five: The Mastermind Behind the Scenes [Please Subscribe]

Zhou Yi stared fixedly downward.

As the cries and howls rose, the ghostly lights below seemed to multiply several times over.

The men at the mountain pass began firing flaming arrows into the middle of the valley. As the arrows shrieked through the air, they struck the villages one after another, and fences and piles of firewood were the first to catch.

With the blaze growing fiercer, the eerie lights within the villages were illuminated as well.

Sophia, standing beside Zhou Yi, suddenly seized his hand and stepped back at once, nearly losing her footing.

Fatty clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from crying out.

Those so-called ghostly lights were not flames at all, but the eyes of people.

Like zombies, they had white fur covering every inch of exposed skin. They kept bounding along the ground, arms raised before them, agilely leaping aside to evade the fire arrows, as though utterly terrified of flame.

Only one word filled Zhou Yi’s mind now: zombie. Wasn’t this thing just a zombie?

These zombie-like creatures began gathering in the open ground where there were no houses. The clothes on their bodies looked extremely similar to the garments Zhou Yi and the others had stolen after coming out of the Gobi.

If one judged by dress, weren’t these just ordinary villagers?

Zhou Yi was puzzled. Could someone have turned these common people into zombie-like things?

Cheng Zhi remained remarkably composed. He turned his head to look at Zhou Yi.

“Sir, are these zombies?”

Zhou Yi nodded.

“More or less. True zombies are usually formed over decades or even centuries when resentment from dying with unresolved regrets gathers in the throat, allowing them to absorb the lunar yin and slowly take shape. Their bodies may undergo corpse transformation because of corpse poison or because of the feng shui of their burial ground, growing fur all over and becoming invulnerable to blades and spears.

“Of course, anyone bitten by a zombie will also be infected with corpse poison and become something similar. I think these villagers have merely been bitten and contaminated with corpse poison. Still, these zombies are weak; otherwise, Yingzhou City and Mount Qingcheng would have fallen long ago.”

Fatty blinked, his expression full of doubt.

“Is that analysis reliable?”

Zhou Yi shook his head.

“Not at all. Still, can you catch one for me to examine?”

Fatty immediately wilted. He hurriedly lowered his head and moved over to Cheng Zhi’s side, obediently looking down below.

By now, the fires in the villages had already lit up the night sky.

The figure of the black-robed Imperial Preceptor still had not appeared, which left Zhou Yi somewhat puzzled. The black-robed Imperial Preceptor had clearly come today looking for trouble; at the very least, he should have shown himself. Yet he was nowhere to be seen.

Then a horn sounded from Mount Qingcheng. At the front of the formation stood a white-haired elder with billowing sleeves, who roared at the crowd:

“Follow this old man and slay the fiends!”

The shout seemed to carry some peculiar power. Zhou Yi felt his mind shake as if struck, and for a moment he even felt the urge to rush down and join the battle.

Fatty and Cheng Zhi beside him both began breathing more heavily. Zhou Yi quickly slapped them both, and only then did they come back to themselves. Sophia looked a little confused.

“What’s wrong?”

Zhou Yi frowned.

“There’s something mixed into that shout. I don’t know what it is, but after hearing it, your blood starts to boil. You even want to rush out and fight those zombies to the death. I think that old man must be the strongest person on Mount Qingcheng.”

Sophia pressed her lips together, the worry on her face deepening.

“Are these zombies, these so-called fiends they’re talking about, really that powerful?”

“I don’t know. Let’s keep watching.”

The four of them all looked down into the valley. The troops outside the mountain pass had also begun their charge. They were farther from the village, and though mounted, they were still not as fast as the cultivators rushing down from Mount Qingcheng.

By now, they could see the battle clearly through the telescope.

Those cultivators dropped into the valley in groups of three, forming an offensive formation of sorts. With one attacking and one defending, they maintained perfect order and began to cut their way in from the edges, slaughtering the zombies as they went.

Whenever blades and swords fell, bursts of sparks flashed from the metal impact.

The zombies were not cut down at once. They seemed puzzled that the weapons were striking their bodies. When they reached out to seize the blades, the cultivators actually could not wrest them free, and the weapons were yanked from their hands.

Some zombies simply snapped the swords and sabers in two; others tossed them aside and started hopping toward the trio. Their movements were erratic, lunging suddenly to one side, which left the cultivators flustered and barely able to defend themselves.

Nearby, a smaller zombie seemed much weaker. Under the combined attacks of another trio, one of its arms was soon severed, and its scream was shrill enough to make one’s skin crawl.

The surrounding zombies all threw back their heads and howled, then rushed over to help.

In an instant, the battlefield became a chaotic mess, and the mounted troops had already reached the front lines.

The cavalry charging in first smashed straight into the zombies. Instead of the zombies being knocked flying as expected, the horses neighed in agony as they were torn apart, and the riders were hurled from their saddles.

A female zombie leaped straight up to one fallen rider, opened her mouth, and bit into his neck. He did not even get the chance to cry out before he went still.

Zhou Yi shuddered and lowered the telescope. He had not expected these zombies to be so fearsome. Glancing left and right at the terrain, confusion also welled up in his mind.

To form zombies here—could this place truly be a gathering ground of yin?

Sophia, who had originally worn a calm expression, now could not help covering her mouth. Such a blood-soaked, brutal scene was something she had never witnessed before.

Even from such a distance, the stench of blood was already assaulting their nostrils.

Within the valley, cultivators and soldiers lay scattered everywhere. Although some zombies had been slain, the number was far too small.

At that moment, Fatty suddenly pointed down the foot of the mountain and whispered,

“Look quickly, that old man seems pretty formidable!”

Following the direction of Fatty’s finger, Zhou Yi looked over.

Indeed, the old man really did seem formidable. With a long sword in hand, he moved with startling speed. Wherever he passed, zombies were cut down, and he also managed to save several of the cultivators.

Zhou Yi noticed that each time the old man thrust his long sword, he spat a mouthful of blood onto it, muttering under his breath the entire time, as if he were using his own blood to slay the zombies.

The method was effective enough, but with so many of them, would he not eventually spit himself dry?

Sure enough, after killing around twenty, the old man’s speed visibly slowed. At times when he paused, he even had to lean on the sword to support his body.

Yet the number of zombies remained astonishing, as though endless, pouring nonstop out of the village.

Meanwhile, the number of Mount Qingcheng cultivators and those soldiers kept dwindling.

Battle cries, sobs, screams, and groans rose and fell without end, filling the entire valley.

Time ticked by second by second. More than half of Mount Qingcheng’s people had been lost when the elder suddenly leaped up and shouted down into the valley:

“Everyone withdraw to the mountain!”

This was clearly an order to retreat. Zhou Yi hurriedly focused on the scene below. The soldiers were ordinary men, after all, so their losses were even more severe. Seeing that the Mount Qingcheng people were pulling back, they too fell into utter chaos.

And then—

A furious roar rang out above the valley.

Hearing that sound, all four of them immediately crouched down with their hands over their heads.

It was not a sound a human being could make. The moment they heard it, their throats seemed to turn bitter and their minds trembled. Zhou Yi braced himself against a rock and stood up, and at last the black-robed Imperial Preceptor appeared.

The black-robed Imperial Preceptor had his arms spread wide and his head slightly raised. That terrible roar had actually been made by him.

The battle below had already been fierce. With that howl added, the zombies went mad, surging toward the soldiers and the cultivators of Mount Qingcheng. None of them bothered to defend themselves anymore; they simply lunged in to bite.

The black-robed Imperial Preceptor opened his mouth again. This time, though he seemed to make no sound at all, Sophia clapped her hands over her ears and curled in on herself repeatedly.

Zhou Yi reached out and helped her upright, his face filled with concern.

“Sophia, what’s wrong? Did he emit some kind of ultrasonic high-frequency sound?”

Sophia pressed her hands to her temples and gave a faint nod.

“That sound feels like it’s about to split my head open. He’s summoning something—I don’t know what—but the sound carries boundless power.”

Zhou Yi looked into the valley.

The bodies that had been bitten and scattered across the ground had now begun to stir under that silent howl. One by one, they started crawling up from the earth, and as they stood, white fur spread over their bodies.

Once they found the living, they immediately began tearing into them, regardless of whether the victim was from Mount Qingcheng or among the soldiers.

In an instant, the valley plunged into even greater chaos. The elder had already dragged several people up to the mountainside. Seeing the black-robed Imperial Preceptor standing at the edge of the peak, he seemed to finally understand everything.

The old man was truly enraged. He pointed at the black-robed Imperial Preceptor and roared:

“How corrupt and depraved must the Liang Emperor have been to grant you the office of Imperial Preceptor? I never imagined you would knowingly break the law and violate the taboo, cultivating the art of immortality, and then abusing the Liang Emperor’s trust to bring the army here under the pretense of exterminating fiends, all to purge my Mount Qingcheng.

“Do not hide like a turtle in its shell. Since you have become a demon king, come down at once and fight this old man. Even if I die in battle, I will not allow you to slaughter cultivators so wantonly. Take this!”