Chapter 400: Mountain of Sand Scorpions

First, two enormous pincers punched through the desert surface. Then a gigantic, hideous sand-scorpion head thrust up through the sand.

A vast body heaved its way free, dragging behind it a tail like a massive pillar. The poisonous stinger at the tip of that tail and both enormous pincers were golden. Crouched upon the desert, the creature looked like a small mountain. Even without counting its tail, its body exceeded ten zhang in length.

Beside it, ordinary sand scorpions the size of calves suddenly looked tiny and delicate.

The woman exclaimed, "A sand scorpion that huge?"

The man stared intently. "There are stories that this desert contains a Scorpion Emperor and Scorpion Empress. Supposedly, the Scorpion Empress remains deep underground and never shows herself. She is responsible for reproduction, and her body is enormous, even larger than the Scorpion Emperor's. No one knows exactly how large."

"This one's size matches the descriptions of the legendary Scorpion Emperor. It should be him."

As they spoke, the so-called Scorpion Emperor was already rumbling away. Its legs were long, its movements astonishingly quick. Even the distance covered by a casual stride was something ordinary sand scorpions could not compare with. It looked like a small mountain racing across the desert.

Countless lesser sand scorpions were knocked over or sent flying by its passage, while a stark trail remained carved across the sand behind it.

Looking around again, everywhere they could see, sand scorpions were racing in the same direction.

"This probably isn't hunting," the man said, shaking his head slightly. "What kind of prey could tempt the Scorpion Emperor himself to come out and hunt?"

He turned toward the woman. "Sir, shall we go take a look?"

The woman nodded. "All right. Let's broaden our horizons."

The man pointed. The multicolored flying bird immediately beat its wings and shot forward, following the direction the Scorpion Emperor had taken.

It passed over the charging Scorpion Emperor and continued toward the place where the swarms were converging, flying swiftly to investigate.

Along the way, they saw sand scorpions far smaller than the Scorpion Emperor but still many times larger than ordinary specimens. Those too were racing in the same direction. It seemed every sand scorpion in the desert had gone mad. Armies of them were converging from every direction. The spectacle was extraordinary.

Standing on the flying bird, the man grew increasingly certain this was no simple feeding frenzy...

The moment Elder Bai saw Yuan Gang charging recklessly again, he shouted in fury, "Do you think I don't dare kill you? No one will know if I kill you here. You're the one seeking death, so don't blame me!"

His sword swept outward. A razor-sharp wave of sword qi thundered forward. Yuan Gang charged without fear of death. Both hands gripped his saber. Veins bulged across his body.

"Wu-aow!"

The Three-Roars Saber roared. A blazing streak of saber light cleaved violently forward.

Boom!

The sword qi shattered. The Three-Roars Saber vibrated with a deep humming sound.

Yuan Gang was forced backward through the violent blast, his feet plowing across the sand. His hair burst loose and whipped wildly around him. Elder Bai's heart jolted.

Once again, he experienced firsthand the brute strength Yuan Gang could unleash at full power. That strength was genuinely frightening. Yet even while sliding backward, Yuan Gang broke into another charge. He ran directly into the raging wind and attacked again.

"Reckless fool, courting death!" Elder Bai sneered.

His sword swept horizontally, then chopped vertically. Two waves of sword qi burst out one after another.

Boom!

"Wu-aow!"

Another tiger roar. Yuan Gang's saber violently cleaved apart the first wave of sword qi.

But after being forced back again, he had no time to deal with the second one following close behind.

Caught off guard, he could not unleash a second full-power counterattack in time.

As he slid backward, he brought the saber horizontally in front of his body.

He flipped the edge away, braced one forearm against the flat of the blade, and used it as a shield to meet the second wave of sword qi head-on.

Boom!

The sword qi shattered.

"Puh!"

Blood sprayed violently from Yuan Gang's mouth. This time, the impact lifted him completely from the ground and hurled him away.

Elder Bai was about to rush in and finish him when he abruptly swung his sword sideways instead. A pack of leaping sand scorpions had launched themselves at him.

His sword slaughtered a swath of them, while a sweep of his arm blasted another group away. But sand scorpions were already attacking from every direction.

He knocked aside those in front, only for more to surge in from all sides without hesitation. They came from the ground. They sprang through the air. A savage all-out attack engulfed him.

At the same time, the sand scorpions pouring in from every direction rushed toward Su Zhao, who lay on the ground vomiting blood and barely able to move.

Seeing pincers waving and poisonous stingers coming toward her, Su Zhao could not even rise. A miserable smile appeared on her face. Slowly, she closed her eyes and waited for death.

Yet when the mass of sand scorpions reached her, they suddenly split left and right. They flowed around her and continued charging forward. On either side came the constant rustling rush of scorpion bodies. Su Zhao slowly opened her eyes again.

Groups of sand scorpions streamed past her without touching so much as a hair on her body.

She stared in surprise, unable to understand why they would not attack her.

What she did not know was that after traveling pressed close against Yuan Gang for so long, her body was covered in his scent. That was why she had escaped this calamity.

Lying amid the rushing swarm and watching countless sand scorpions race past her was an experience she had certainly never imagined.

She struggled to lift her head, then weakly let it drop back onto the sand. Her breath came raggedly. Blood seeped repeatedly from her mouth and nose. Her injuries were severe.

Earlier, trapped inside the spiraling gale, she had lost all sense of direction. Her sight and hearing had been thrown into chaos.

By the time Elder Bai's sword qi struck, she had been unable to react in time and could not meet it properly head-on.

And before that, carrying Yuan Gang across the desert had already consumed a great deal of her spiritual power.

When she was forced to resist that blow inside the tornado, she had been caught unprepared and her spiritual power was already insufficient. The sword qi had severely wounded her in an instant. Her spiritual power was something Yuan Gang could not compare with.

But the toughness of Yuan Gang's fleshly body was something she could not compare with either.

"Peh!"

Yuan Gang spat out a mouthful of blood and rolled back to his feet.

Seeing sand scorpions rushing toward Su Zhao where she lay unable to move, he immediately ran toward her. He charged through the scorpion horde.

When he saw Su Zhao lying there breathing weakly amid the flying sand, relief flashed across his face. He dropped to one knee beside her.

Amid the thunderous rustle of countless scorpions, he shouted, "How are you? Cough, cough!"

Su Zhao coughed, and blood welled from her mouth. She weakly blinked at him. She no longer had the strength to speak. Yet a faint smile rested on her face. There was even something comforted in it. This man had once again exceeded every expectation she had of him. He could actually clash head-on with her master. He seemed even harder to beat down than she, a cultivator, was.

Yuan Gang could see at once that her wounds were grave. He looked back at Elder Bai, who was buried beneath wave after wave of attacking sand scorpions. His desire to keep fighting vanished. He reached down and lifted Su Zhao horizontally into his arms. Pain immediately twisted her features.

Many of the bones across the front of her chest had been broken. Being carried like this was torture. Yuan Gang understood the pain.

His voice was low. "Endure it."

Then he began running with Su Zhao in his arms. He darted left and right at full speed, avoiding the incoming sand scorpions.

Boom!

A group of attacking sand scorpions exploded outward. Elder Bai shot free from the swarm and pursued them again.

He stepped from one leaping sand scorpion to another, sometimes slapping them aside with his sword, borrowing force from their bodies as he skimmed onward in pursuit. Judging by that ability alone, Yuan Gang understood one thing. They could not escape like this. He suddenly stopped.

"AAAH!"

He threw his head back and unleashed an enraged roar. The sand scorpions around him, which until then had been rushing only toward the battle, abruptly turned. They charged at Yuan Gang. Within moments, the swarm buried him. More and more sand scorpions rushed in and piled atop one another. Soon they had formed something like a hill.

Dense layers of scorpions stacked higher and higher, enough to make anyone's scalp crawl. The mountain of sand scorpions continued rising. More bodies piled onto it every moment. Yet Yuan Gang, inside that mass, was not actually buried.

The scorpions stacking around him had deliberately constructed a small hollow space within the mound.

Looking at the dense tangle of scorpion bodies forming walls, floor, and ceiling around him, Yuan Gang seemed to understand something at last.

Earlier, when he saw the sand scorpions apparently obey his roar and attack Elder Bai, he had vaguely sensed something. But he had not understood it.

Just now, driven into a corner with no road left to escape, he had simply decided that if calamity was unavoidable either way, he might as well try. The result made everything clear. Perhaps he could not directly converse with the sand scorpions.

But if he could express his emotions strongly enough for them to sense and understand, then he could influence them. He could even direct their behavior.

He regretted only that he seemed to have realized it a little too late.

Yet without passing through this brush with life and death, he might never have realized it at all. The idea would never even have occurred to him.

Su Zhao's eyelids opened and closed weakly as she stared at the impossible sight. The sand scorpions were actually protecting them. Her gaze eventually settled on Yuan Gang's face.

Remembering the way the sand scorpions had avoided them earlier, she understood that this had to be connected to him.

Outside, repeated explosions thundered. Faced with the mountain of scorpions rising before him, Elder Bai was nearly going mad.

Sword qi erupted again and again from his weapon as he desperately tried to blast the mound apart and dig out the people hiding inside.

Yet no matter how many sand scorpions he killed, the creatures showed no concern for their own lives. Even in death, they continued piling into the mound. The more he killed, the higher and larger the mountain became. And their hard shells possessed some defensive strength of their own.

Looking around, Elder Bai saw still more sand scorpions streaming in without end. There was nowhere left to stand on the ground.

Every patch of sand was covered by crawling bodies, pincers, and raised tails.

Relying on profound spiritual power and fast movement, Elder Bai avoided their attacks.

He tried to remain airborne as much as possible, repeatedly using the scorpions themselves as stepping stones while circling the mound and attacking without pause. But this could not continue forever.

If he kept consuming spiritual power this way, sooner or later he would exhaust himself and be forced down.

At that point, no matter how profound his cultivation, the scorpion horde would kill him.

Yet if he simply withdrew, how could he explain himself when he returned?

Damn it!

Never in his life had he encountered such a bizarre situation during a pursuit. Never had he known sand scorpions could behave like this. Could that fellow actually command beasts? Fortunately, a large flying bird soon appeared in the distance. Blind Man and the clean-shaven man had arrived.

They had followed the river, discovered Yuan Gang's diversion, then immediately doubled back and traced the trail to this place.

Blind Man sniffed the air. "There seem to be a great many sand scorpions gathered here."

He could not see. The clean-shaven man, however, could see everything below clearly.

Never in his life had he seen so many sand scorpions gathered in one place. The sight genuinely astonished him.

Then he saw Elder Bai leaping around the mountain of scorpions, attacking it from every angle, and could not understand what the man was doing.

Seeing his own people arrive, Elder Bai immediately flew to the top of the scorpion mound.

He borrowed force from it once, then shot through the air toward them.

The clean-shaven man guided the flying bird over at once and caught him in midair.

The moment Elder Bai landed on its back, the clean-shaven man pointed downward. "What is this? What's going on?"

Blind Man tilted his head slightly, listening.

Elder Bai said through clenched teeth, "The targets are hiding inside. That boy can actually summon the sand scorpions to help him. It's completely unbelievable. Even I can't do anything to him."

"Summon sand scorpions?" The clean-shaven man stared in surprise, then looked down again. "No wonder they ran into this desert."

Elder Bai, however, had turned his gaze toward the distance. A giant multicolored flying bird was approaching from afar with two people standing on its back.

[End of Chapter 400]