Chapter 634: Demon Ridge

A single lamp burned, its flame casting wavering shadows. Blue smoke curled from an incense burner.

Shao Pingbo sat cross-legged on a couch, one arm resting against the low table while the other held a book open before him. An unfinished game of Go lay on the table. In the lamplight, he looked elegant, composed, and scholarly.

Shao Sansheng entered and reached toward him. The room was warm enough, and he meant to remove the silver-fox cloak from Shao Pingbo's shoulders.

The book lifted and blocked his hand.

Shao Sansheng could only give up. In a low voice, he said, "His Majesty fears the Eldest Young Master may be lonely and has specially sent two beauties. Both their looks and bearing are of the highest quality. Shall we accept them?"

Shao Pingbo remained calm. "Imperial favor cannot be refused. Settle them in. How are things over there?"

Shao Sansheng knew what he meant. "Counting the figures together with the news from the east, the eastern and western sides have lost nearly another thousand cultivators between them."

Shao Pingbo's gaze left the book and settled on the chessboard beside him.

He reached into the bowl of stones, picked up a white piece, and pressed it onto an intersection. Then he casually removed several black stones from the board and tossed them aside before returning to his book.

The inexplicable move in the middle of his reading made Shao Sansheng sense something. He ventured, "Eldest Young Master, is there some meaning behind that?"

Shao Pingbo quietly continued reading without answering.

After following him for so many years, Shao Sansheng knew his habits. Silence meant he did not wish to explain.

There was no need to ask again.

Shao Sansheng bowed slightly and withdrew without further disturbance.

Shao Pingbo's eyes lifted faintly. He watched his back disappear, then lowered his gaze to the book once more.

To Shao Pingbo, in a certain sense, he had not been defeated by Niu Youdao.

He had been defeated by that mass of cultivators.

They interfered far too much.

Even now that he was in Jin, it was still the same. The extent to which secular government and cultivation power were fused together left him unable to fully display his abilities.

This was especially true of the group of students he had brought with him.

It was as though they had encountered a curtain of iron. The resistance was enormous. They found it difficult to penetrate the various layers and corners of power and put their abilities to use.

Put plainly, they could not obtain enough real authority.

Those students were his foundation.

If his foundation was unstable, then his own position in the future would never be secure.

Thin the cultivators out a little.

Then thin them out some more.

With fewer cultivators involved, more secular people would have to be employed. More people of genuine ability would be needed to handle affairs.

That would benefit his students, and it would benefit his own present circumstances as well.

As for the thirty percent of supplies being handed over to Zhao, if Jin had maintained its usual hardline attitude and refused, Jin, Wei, and Qi would never have been able to present a united position.

Jin's willingness to bend had been pushed forward by him.

What he was giving Niu Youdao was a catastrophe of annihilation delivered without sound or sign.

He could easily imagine that Yan's three major sects would not allow Nanzhou to break the present deadlock lightly.

They would clamp down on Nanzhou until it could scarcely move, allowing the overall situation to deteriorate farther and farther until the whole structure could be toppled with the lightest push.

He wanted Niu Youdao to watch with his own eyes as everything he had built with such effort in Nanzhou was destroyed.

Before the momentum of the realm itself, Shao Pingbo wanted to see what Niu Youdao could possibly do.

...

Demon Ridge was an existence similar to Star-Plucking City and the Ice and Snow Pavilion.

It lay along the same vast mountain chain as Misty Pavilion, though the two were separated by an immense distance.

Human cultivators might themselves be cultivators, but they still harbored a certain degree of rejection toward demons, monsters, ghosts, and other strange beings.

For that reason, such beings liked to come here to trade.

In some ways, Demon Ridge was a forgotten corner of the world.

Because of the peculiar geography, dense clouds gathered over the region year-round. Sunlight was rarely seen.

Demon Ridge's main complex had been carved directly into an enormous mass of rock, a great mountain shaped almost like a skull.

It was called the Demon Palace, and it had once been the headquarters of the Demonic Sect.

The Demonic Sect, however, had gradually declined.

The reason was that an astonishingly gifted figure had arisen from within its own ranks.

Wu Chang!

Wu Chang, now one of the nine supreme experts beneath Heaven, had been the Demonic Sect's Right Envoy before his rise.

During that brief period, one strange incident after another had occurred.

The Demonic Sect's Sect Leader, who was also Wu Chang's adoptive father, died.

Wu Chang did not become Sect Leader afterward.

From then on, the Demonic Sect had no Sect Leader, and it no longer had a Right Envoy either.

Many years ago, the hereditary Saintess who had dedicated her entire life to the Demonic Sect unexpectedly entered into a relationship between man and woman.

Wu Chang was furious.

When the Saintess died, the office of Demonic Sect Saintess disappeared with her.

Today, the Demonic Sect had only one person left truly managing its affairs: the Left Envoy.

With absolute strength behind him, Demon Ridge naturally became Wu Chang's territory.

Out of regard for old ties, Wu Chang did not drive the people of the Demonic Sect away.

The Demonic Sect remained behind to keep house at Demon Ridge, in a position somewhat like the City Master of Star-Plucking City.

One could say they were Wu Chang's people, yet somehow they also did not quite seem to be.

On a cliff, Zhao Xiongge sat with one leg hanging over the edge. One hand braced against the rock while the other raised a wine gourd to his mouth.

"ROAR!"

Not far away on a dangerous slope, the Golden-Furred Hou suddenly lifted its head and roared toward Heaven. Its fangs were fearsome, its claws terrifying, and its powerful tail rose like a steel whip.

It seemed to be warning Zhao Xiongge that someone was approaching.

Or perhaps it had sensed a change in Heaven itself.

The dark clouds covering the sky twisted strangely.

A shaft of light pierced down through them, fantastical between Heaven and earth, adding a strange brilliance to this dim world.

The wine gourd in Zhao Xiongge's hand stopped in place.

Wine clung to the newly grown whiskers around his mouth.

With drunken, unfocused eyes, he stared at that wondrous shaft of light as though remembering something.

A smile slowly appeared in his eyes, the smile of a man lost in old memories.

A figure flew over from not far away.

It was a man whose face always seemed to carry the faintest smile. There was a trace of weathered experience within that smile, while his sharply cut, resolute features also held a certain gentleness.

The combination gave him an unusual masculine charm.

He wore smooth black robes and drifted through the air with the effortless grace of an immortal.

Long hair streamed behind him in the wind, half black and half white, the white concentrated toward the ends.

This man was Nantian Wufang, Left Envoy of the Demonic Sect.

After landing, he flicked both wide sleeves. His long robe streamed behind him as he too bent his legs and sat cross-legged beside Zhao Xiongge.

He glanced at Zhao Xiongge's entranced expression and asked, "What are you smiling at?"

Zhao Xiongge answered like a man talking in his sleep.

"So beautiful."

"Perhaps." Nantian Wufang also watched the shaft of light for a while.

Then he said slowly, "You ran off to Maolu Villa and alarmed that person. He has already asked about the matter."

Zhao Xiongge asked, "He didn't force you to deal with me?"

"He can't find the Demon Canon, so he won't kill you lightly. That thing is useful to him. He won't give up on it easily."

Nantian Wufang spoke casually, then asked, "You were the last person to have contact with the Saintess. Did you truly never see the Demon Canon?"

"How many times have I said it? I truly never saw it."

"At the very least, you're the person most likely to know where it went."

"I don't know."

Zhao Xiongge raised the wine gourd and drank again.

Nantian Wufang said, "Be more careful in the future. Otherwise, you're only creating trouble for yourself. He may not be able to kill you, but he can imprison you."

Zhao Xiongge said, "I can't simply stand by and watch the Shangqing Sect's incense line be cut off."

Nantian Wufang said, "What you did may not have helped him. Misty Pavilion is probably already watching him."

Zhao Xiongge chuckled. "Are you worried about him, or are you worried about someone else?"

"You're thinking too much."

Nantian Wufang's voice remained mild.

He reached over and snatched the wine gourd from Zhao Xiongge's hand.

Not minding that it was dirty, he tilted his head back and gulped the wine down.

After drinking his fill, he tossed the gourd back with easy grace.

Then he added, "The situation this time is too large. Even if you wanted to help him, you probably couldn't. This time, he's truly in trouble."

Zhao Xiongge hugged the wine gourd against his chest and shook his head lazily from side to side.

"Not necessarily. Dong Guo Haoran accepted a fine disciple."

...

"Little Sister, does it look good?"

Shang Shuqing had been on her way to find Niu Youdao when she ran into Guan Fangyi coming from the same direction.

Guan Fangyi shook her head lightly, making the gold buyao in her hair sway, and asked the question with obvious pleasure.

Shang Shuqing studied it for a while.

She could not see anything especially remarkable about it.

It was simply a gold hairpin, so golden that it could hardly be more golden. There was no gem or other ornamentation, only pure gold.

It looked rather like something a wealthy landlord's wife might wear.

Shang Shuqing had no idea when Guan Fangyi's taste had turned toward something so gaudy.

Even so, she smiled and nodded. "Anything looks good when Elder Sister wears it."

"Insincere." Guan Fangyi giggled and pointed toward the sky. "It's a little gaudy, yes, but at least Heaven finally opened its eyes and that fellow finally gained some sense. He actually knew to give me something like this. It made me quite happy."

Shang Shuqing looked surprised. "Master Dao gave it to you?"

"Yes. Even hearing it, you hardly dare believe it, do you?"

Shang Shuqing could not help looking at the hairpin twice more.

This time, faint envy appeared in her eyes.

Just then, Niu Youdao emerged from the courtyard carrying a leather pouch.

Seeing the two women, he asked, "Talking badly about me behind my back again?"

"Guilty conscience!" Guan Fangyi shot back contemptuously.

Then she swayed away, waist twisting, round fan moving lazily in her hand, the bright gold ornament on her head bobbing with every step.

Niu Youdao and Shang Shuqing watched her go.

After a moment, Niu Youdao sighed. "This woman. All day long she just wanders around. She doesn't know how to work diligently at cultivation, and her brain isn't especially sharp either."

"I genuinely wonder how she managed to survive all those years in a wolf-and-tiger place like the Qi capital while making such a spectacle of herself."

He shook his head repeatedly.

Shang Shuqing covered a smile. "Elder Sister is a blessed person."

In truth, she really was somewhat envious of Guan Fangyi.

She had noticed that Guan Fangyi and Niu Youdao fit together remarkably well.

There was something about their words and manner around each other that created the illusion they were people of the same age.

Shang Shuqing had known Black Peony too, yet she had never felt anything similar between Black Peony and Niu Youdao.

After speaking, Shang Shuqing looked as though she wanted to say something but hesitated.

Niu Youdao turned his gaze back to her. "Something wrong?"

Shang Shuqing tested the waters. "I heard that the reinforcing army led by Su Qitong, Provincial Inspector of Haozhou, was defeated by the rebels again. This is already the third wave of reinforcements to be defeated."

As she finished, she watched his expression carefully.

Shang Chaozong truly had grown anxious.

His own efforts had failed, so he had secretly reached out through his younger sister and asked her to think of some way to persuade Niu Youdao.

The moment Niu Youdao heard the words, he understood what was happening.

He gave her one sentence and walked away.

"Wait. You must be able to keep your composure!"

Shang Shuqing watched him leave.

Somewhat dispirited, she lowered her head and did not dare say anything more.

She felt increasing pressure whenever she was before Niu Youdao.

Even when he sat there with his eyes closed and allowed her to comb his hair, he somehow gave her an inexplicable sense of pressure.

...

After leaving the villa, Niu Youdao went straight to the guest courtyard.

There he met Yun Ji, who wore a veil over her face and refused to show her true appearance.

Once the two were seated in the reception room, Niu Youdao placed the leather pouch on the table.

"These are the Spirit Essence Pills for your cultivation. They should be enough to last you for a while."

Yun Ji nodded slightly in thanks, then asked, "How did the investigation into that man go?"

Niu Youdao said, "Prepare for the worst."

Yun Ji was startled. "Could he really be..."

Niu Youdao raised a hand and stopped her.

Some things could only be understood without being spoken aloud.

"Brother Yun Huan is still on the road with his people. They should arrive within a few days."

"Ghost Mother has also already led the ghost cultivators of Xianyin Mountain this way."

"In short, I'll play the entire show to the end. You should act as though nothing happened as well."

"Stay here and cultivate in peace. I've already ordered people to prepare a cave for you. It won't interfere with your cultivation."

Yun Ji could only nod solemnly.

[End of Chapter 634]