Chapter 1083: Forbidden Art of the Demonic Sect

The two knew each other. Zhao Xiongge had once spent time at Maolu Villa dressed in his gaudy floral robes, so he knew Yuan Gang was one of Niu Youdao's trusted men.

"He's your Master Dao, not mine. He's inside Sacred Realm..." Zhao Xiongge stopped abruptly. His eyes opened wide, and he seemed to sober in an instant. Half propping himself up from where he had been reclining by the stream, he asked in a clear voice, "You mean he can communicate with the outside world from inside Sacred Realm?"

Yuan Gang said, "I don't know how he's contacting us."

"You don't know?" Zhao Xiongge stared at him. "Then how can you be certain it's really him contacting you, and not someone impersonating him?"

"He can't be impersonated."

Seeing how certain he was, Zhao Xiongge knew there had to be a reason. Too lazy to pursue it, he reclined lazily again. "What is so important that you had to come find me personally?"

"The contact between you and me may not be secure. There are some things that shouldn't be mentioned in letters." Yuan Gang was visibly cautious as he spoke, carefully checking the surroundings.

Zhao Xiongge said, "Relax. There's no one nearby. If an unfamiliar human scent appears within several li, my mount can smell it."

Yuan Gang raised his head and looked at the fierce golden beast standing atop the boulder. The Golden-Furred Hou turned its head and looked back at him.

Yuan Gang asked, "So this is the Golden-Furred Hou?"

"Nonsense. My mount doesn't like listening to nonsense."

"Hrrr..." Yuan Gang suddenly spread his arms and released a low, muffled growl toward the Golden-Furred Hou on the rock.

"Roar..." The Golden-Furred Hou answered, but its imposing air had vanished. Its roar was weak, nothing like the sound that had shaken the mountain forest moments earlier. It scraped its claws uneasily and even seemed to shrink backward.

First Yuan Gang had acted strangely, and now the Golden-Furred Hou's response was wrong. Zhao Xiongge froze with his wine gourd halfway to his mouth, then quickly rose and turned toward the beast.

The Golden-Furred Hou, ordinarily afraid of neither Heaven nor Earth, had actually lowered its tail. Its body crouched low and drew backward, and the ferocity had vanished from its golden eyes. It looked almost as though it feared Yuan Gang.

Never having seen the beast behave like this before, Zhao Xiongge turned back in astonishment. "What did you do to it?"

Yuan Gang straightened and calmly answered, "I only tested its courage."

The implication was obvious: hadn't Zhao Xiongge just said his mount disliked listening to Yuan Gang's nonsense?

Zhao Xiongge looked left and right, first at the Golden-Furred Hou, then at Yuan Gang. Finally, he examined Yuan Gang from head to toe. "I truly couldn't tell. You actually know some beast-taming methods. Tell me, what was that? My Golden-Furred Hou is a relic species from primordial antiquity with an extraordinary bloodline. Even Myriad Beasts Sect can't do anything with it."

Yuan Gang said, "I don't like nonsense. Master Dao sent me to find you."

Zhao Xiongge gave him a cold sidelong look, curled his lip, then lifted the wine gourd and took a swallow. "Speak. What is it?"

"Master Dao says that inside Wuliang Garden in Sacred Realm, where the Wuliang Fruit grows, there are Crow Generals refined by Wu Chang guarding the place. Crow Generals are created with a secret art of the Demonic Sect. Master Dao hopes you can ask the Demonic Sect whether there's some method to neutralize them."

"Crow Generals? Wuliang Garden?" Zhao Xiongge slowly lowered his wine gourd all the way to his side. He had not expected Niu Youdao to send someone to ask about something like this. His expression became exceptionally grave. "What is he planning to do?"

"Master Dao didn't say. I don't know."

Zhao Xiongge's eyes flickered. He was clearly extremely cautious about the matter. After considering it for a while, he slowly said, "Crow Generals are evil demonic things. Since Wu Chang refined them, naturally they're under Wu Chang's control. If they can be controlled by him, that means their fiendish spiritual power is limited and they haven't developed minds of their own. Otherwise, once their demonic self-will emerged, Wu Chang would have difficulty controlling them. So the Crow Generals Wu Chang refined shouldn't be indestructible. An ordinary Golden Core cultivator ought to be able to kill one. Neutralizing them is simple enough: kill them directly."

Yuan Gang said, "I should explain Master Dao's meaning more clearly. Wuliang Garden is heavily guarded. The Crow Generals guard the Wuliang Fruit tree, and people can't approach it easily. By 'neutralize,' Master Dao doesn't mean killing them. He means controlling them so they don't create a disturbance and alert anyone."

Niu Youdao had not explained things that explicitly, but Yuan Gang had worked with him for many years. Niu Youdao only needed to say a little for Yuan Gang to understand what he meant.

Zhao Xiongge raised an eyebrow. "Niu Youdao isn't planning to steal the Wuliang Fruit, is he?"

"Master Dao didn't say he was going to steal the Wuliang Fruit. You're asking me, and I don't know."

"Talking to a fellow like you is truly dull." Zhao Xiongge rolled his eyes at him in disdain, but quickly turned serious again. "To control a Crow General, you need to know the trigger used by the person who refined it. So other than the refiner himself, an outsider cannot control it."

Yuan Gang said, "It's a secret art of the Demonic Sect. Master Dao told you to ask the Demonic Sect."

The meaning was concise and clear: just because Zhao Xiongge did not know did not mean the Demonic Sect did not.

Naturally Zhao Xiongge understood, but he did not follow Yuan Gang's suggestion. "No need to ask. I live at Demon Ridge and have had deep dealings with the Demonic Sect. I've asked about this kind of thing before. Controlling a Crow General refined by someone else is almost impossible. At most, you can influence it briefly."

"Tell me how to influence it."

"To refine a Crow General, you first have to find crows that live in places heavy with yin energy, crows that habitually dwell around graveyards, for example. And they must have eaten human corpses. Then you seize the spirit of a dead person and draw it into the crow during the refining process, allowing the dead spirit to persist by inhabiting the crow's yin-heavy body. Given enough time, the two fuse into one. Then, using the secret art, you refine it further and have it absorb enough yin energy until it becomes an evil thing that is neither human nor ghost nor beast. That is a Crow General."

"The spirit inside a Crow General is, after all, still the spirit of a human being. It only believes the crow is its own body because the evil art has induced that perception. If you can find the human remains from that spirit's former life and let the Crow General see its original bones, the spirit inside will suffer a moment of confusion. It will briefly lose its focus and become absent-minded."

"If Niu Youdao wants to steal the Wuliang Fruit without being discovered, that brief interval should be enough for him to act."

Zhao Xiongge had already guessed what Niu Youdao intended. Yuan Gang's questions made the objective too obvious. Yet Zhao Xiongge showed neither surprise nor objection. If anything, the detail of his explanation sounded almost as though he deliberately wanted to help.

Yuan Gang was not stupid. He heard the implication and stared at Zhao Xiongge for a moment. "Can a Crow General tell you who it was before it died?"

Zhao Xiongge shook his head. "Its mind hasn't awakened. It can only caw like a crow. It can't speak human language, so it can't tell you."

"Then finding the dead person's bones would be nearly impossible."

Zhao Xiongge lifted the wine gourd and took another swallow. "There's still a chance. The more yin energy a Crow General absorbs, the stronger its attacks become. This evil art is rather like fusing a ghost cultivator with a body of flesh and blood. It is a true deviant demonic art, and the slightest mishandling can create a catastrophe."

"Once the yin energy inside a Crow General reaches a certain level, it develops its own intelligence. As an evil demon, its demonic nature will be extremely strong and unreasonable, and it will no longer willingly submit to outside control. Because of that, even the Demonic Sect itself doesn't use this art lightly. The risk of backlash is too great."

"This is a forbidden art of the Demonic Sect. Although Wu Chang knows how to refine Crow Generals, he did not inherit the forbidden art in its entirety and doesn't fully understand all its strengths and weaknesses. He probably doesn't know that the dead person's original remains can affect a Crow General."

"If he doesn't know that, then after seizing the dead person's spirit, he wouldn't necessarily grind the corpse to dust and destroy it. In other words, there may still be a chance to find where the dead person's body was buried."

Yuan Gang listened carefully. He knew how serious the matter was, and the moment he found a point of doubt, he asked, "Wu Chang once controlled the Demonic Sect. How do you know he never fully learned the Crow General refining art?"

"I told you. This is a forbidden art. It has always been held by the successive Saintesses of the Demonic Sect and is not passed on lightly. Even the successive Sect Leaders of the Demonic Sect never learned it in full. Naturally Wu Chang never received the complete inheritance."

At that, Yuan Gang's gaze flickered. He had heard certain rumors too, rumors about Zhao Xiongge's old relationship with the Demonic Sect Saintess.

"With only what Wu Chang knows, he can control a Crow General for at most ten years. Once that limit approaches, Wu Chang has to destroy it and replace it with a newly refined Crow General. Otherwise, he will lose control and suffer the consequences."

"You can have Niu Youdao investigate and confirm that point. See whether the Crow Generals guarding the Wuliang Fruit tree are replaced periodically. If they are, then what I've said must be correct."

"So long as you investigate people who disappeared during the relevant period, there's a chance of finding the remains belonging to the spirits used in the refining."

"There's one other point that can help Niu Youdao confirm the dead person's identity. When a Crow General transforms into human form, the outline of its features resembles the person it was before death."

"If none of these methods work, then it will depend on Niu Youdao's own ability. See whether he can learn from Wu Chang what trigger he uses to control the Crow Generals. If he can learn that, then he can control them directly. But Wu Chang is no easy man to deal with. I advise him not to take that risk unless he absolutely must."

With that, Zhao Xiongge raised the gourd and drank, clearly finished with the subject.

Yuan Gang asked, "That's all? Nothing else?"

"Nothing else." Zhao Xiongge asked in return, "Do you have anything more?"

Yuan Gang shook his head.

"Then let's each get lost on our own." Zhao Xiongge flashed upward and landed astride the Golden-Furred Hou atop the boulder. He swung the wine gourd and smacked the beast on the head with a crisp thump. "Useless thing!"

The Golden-Furred Hou seemed highly intelligent. It weakly glanced back at Yuan Gang below, then shot away with a whoosh, carrying Zhao Xiongge deep into the mountain forest at astonishing speed.

...

At the Demon Fox Bureau, Niu Youdao shut himself alone inside his study, holding a letter in his hand.

Yuan Gang's message had already arrived. It gave a detailed account of the reply to Niu Youdao's instructions and relayed Zhao Xiongge's explanation in full.

The contents left Niu Youdao with a headache. More precisely, the Crow Generals inside Wuliang Garden were the source of the headache.

Entering Wuliang Garden was possible, but the nonhuman creatures guarding the fruit tree were troublesome. The human guards could be dealt with somehow. The Crow Generals were harder, because there was no way to communicate with them and no obvious point of leverage that would keep those evil creatures from sounding the alarm.

Given the strength of Wuliang Garden's defenses, seizing the fruit by force was almost impossible. Theft was the only realistic path.

And according to his plan, if he stole it, the theft had to happen without a sound. No one could know the Wuliang Fruit had been taken. Otherwise, even if he obtained it, he would be hunted down afterward.

He had planned this matter for a long time, only to be stymied in the end by the Crow Generals Wu Chang had stationed there. With no other option, he had Yuan Gang go consult Zhao Xiongge.

Zhao Xiongge had indeed provided several methods, but every one of them required an extraordinary amount of trouble.

"Even Wu Chang doesn't know all this. How does that drunkard know the Crow General refining art so clearly? Did the Demonic Sect Saintess even tell him a secret art like this?"

Leaning back in his chair, Niu Youdao stared at the letter and muttered to himself for a while.

[End of Chapter 1083]