Chapter 1438: One Hundred Thousand Crow Generals

The black mist clinging to each crow without dispersing in the wind seemed almost to breathe. Through their Dharma Eyes, the yin qi circulating throughout the immense cavern could be seen flowing continuously into the sleeping, dark-feathered crows.

The magnificent scene, rendered in firelight across the underground space, left Yun Ji stunned. She seemed to have understood something and began scanning the crows as though trying to count them.

Niu Youdao had been mentally prepared, yet even he was shaken when he saw the true scale with his own eyes. The legend he had searched for had become reality before him, and the scale was simply enormous.

To create so many of these things in complete secrecy, without leaking so much as a whisper to the outside world, Dong Guo Haoran and the others must have poured an unimaginable amount of effort into this place.

Niu Youdao could almost picture Dong Guo Haoran standing here after everything had finally been completed, looking over the scene before him. Had the old man felt that even death would hold no regret after this?

Yun Ji was hardly ignorant. Her lips moved. She swallowed, then asked hoarsely, “Are these the legendary Crow Generals?”

Niu Youdao came back to himself and nodded. “They should be.”

He turned, took a stopper from beside the stone doorway, and plugged the opening from which the lamp oil was flowing.

Yun Ji watched the movement and remembered how he had found the ignition point almost by instinct. “You seem very familiar with all this, almost as though you’ve been here before. But judging from the way you searched earlier, you clearly haven’t.”

Niu Youdao smiled wryly. “You’re thinking too much. It’s my first time here. I simply have experience with underground mechanisms like these. Old Dong Guo’s little tricks may not even be as sophisticated as what I know. Once you see a few signs, you know roughly how it works. There are only so many variations.”

Yun Ji was slightly taken aback. “Experience?”

She did not quite understand what he meant.

Niu Youdao did not explain. Some things did not need explaining. Trying would only leave her more confused.

He looked at the luminous pearl in his hand and put it away. With the winding fire-dragon illuminating the cavern in broad, magnificent light, the pearl was no more useful than the glow of a grain of rice.

Since they had come all this way, they naturally had to enter and inspect the place. There was no possibility they would simply stand at the doorway, take two looks, and leave.

Niu Youdao glanced at the steps and descended. Their clothes fluttered as the two walked down the tall flight together.

Yun Ji kept looking around as she moved, still shaken. “How many Crow Generals are there?”

“If I’m not mistaken, there should be around one hundred thousand. Looking at the scale, even if the count is off, the difference won’t be large.”

“One hundred thousand?” Yun Ji was visibly moved. “That’s enough to form an army.”

“According to the clues and accounts I’ve seen, that was the intention from the beginning.”

The two walked among the forest of sabers, spears, swords, and halberds, inspecting the place. They discovered nine openings in the cavern floor. The roaring yin wind poured upward through all nine vents. When they probed them with spiritual power, the openings seemed bottomless. Neither could tell where they led or how such dense yin qi formed below.

One thing, however, was certain. Whoever had chosen this hidden place had done so precisely because of those nine vents of yin wind.

“I’ve been to Xianyin Mountain. The natural earthly yin qi here is every bit as dense as what gathers there. The difference is that Xianyin Mountain’s yin qi is exposed to the surface, while this place is buried deep underground. In a hidden, uncanny place like this, I truly don’t know how your master Dong Guo Haoran ever found it.”

“He probably didn’t,” Niu Youdao replied. “This isn’t the sort of place one can deliberately search for. Without a precise target, even if a hundred cultivators at your level passed through the underground river, they might still never discover it. If it were easy to find, it would hardly have waited for him. Ghost cultivators sensitive to this sort of thing would have found it long ago, and it could never have remained hidden for so many years.”

“Prince Ning led armies through this region in wartime. Only with large numbers of people spreading everywhere would someone have had much chance of stumbling onto it by accident.”

As he spoke, Niu Youdao walked to a stone wall where water trickled continuously. He could not tell where the water came from or where it drained through the cracks. He wet his fingers and smelled them, found nothing unusual, then flicked the water away.

Turning back, he suddenly froze.

“Don’t move!”

A treasured sword had been planted upside down into a rock. A crow perched on the hilt at exactly Yun Ji’s eye level, and she had instinctively reached out to touch it. Niu Youdao’s urgent shout stopped her.

Realizing she might have been about to do something she should not, Yun Ji withdrew her hand. “We can’t touch them?”

Niu Youdao walked over and studied the Crow General.

Its glossy black feathers were shrouded in baleful yin qi seeping from the gaps between layer upon layer of plumage. It continuously absorbed the yin qi around it. Between its tightly closed eyelids, strange red light seemed to drift and flicker, giving the thing an unmistakably sinister air.

He shook his head. “No. They’ve remained immersed in yin qi ever since entering dormancy. If they come into contact with the aura of the living, we may wake them.”

“What would happen if they woke?” Yun Ji asked. “You went to so much trouble to find this place and finally found them. Don’t you intend to take them away?”

“Take them away?” Niu Youdao gave a soft laugh. “From the moment they were refined, they were never something just anyone could control. Other than the commander capable of awakening and directing them, no one can take them anywhere. They are loyal to one person alone. If they disobey, their souls and spirits can be dispersed at any moment.”

“To put it plainly, this is an army of the dead. Each crow had a dead person’s soul fused into it while the bird was still alive. Once refined into a Crow General, it is neither truly living nor truly dead. It can move freely through the world of the living... and according to the records of the refinement method, it can also wage war in the Netherworld.”

“I don’t know where this so-called Netherworld is, but the records say Crow Generals can cross between the realms of yin and yang and survive in both. They were never something anyone could casually command. What would you use to control them?”

“If any random person could control them, with cultivation as high as yours, do you think I would have dared bring you here so casually?”

Yun Ji stared in shock. “They can cross between the realms of yin and yang, unconstrained by either? And every Crow General contains the soul of a dead person...”

She looked around at the immense number of Crow Generals and grew even more horrified. “How many human souls had to be imprisoned and fused into them? If that is truly what happened, then binding such a vast number of dead souls and cutting them off from the cycle ordained by Heaven—wouldn’t that make their creators demons and heretics? Weren’t they afraid of Heaven’s retribution?”

“These things should never have existed in the mortal world to begin with. Calling them sinister creations would not be an exaggeration. As for whether their makers were demons, that’s harder to say. It depends on what the user intends to do with them.”

“And as for Heaven’s retribution, who knows what Heaven thinks? Human notions of right and wrong may not suit Heaven’s appetite at all. Justice lives in the hearts of men. Expecting divine punishment to preserve justice in this world would be laughable.”

As he spoke, Niu Youdao suddenly looked at the Crow General before them and sighed. “Still, none of the people who refined these things came to a good end. Maybe they really were struck by Heaven’s retribution.”

He looked back at Yun Ji. “If you wake them now, they’ll immediately regard you as an intruder. These sinister things have been absorbing yin qi here for more than thirty years. Think about what that means. It’s equivalent to cultivating day and night for more than thirty years without stopping for a single moment. More than thirty uninterrupted years of cultivation. Do you understand what kind of concept that is?”

Yun Ji sucked in a sharp breath. “Wouldn’t that mean this place effectively contains one hundred thousand Golden Core cultivators? An army made of these Crow Generals... how could anyone stop it?”

“I’m afraid that comparison still understates them. These things can fly through the skies, sweep across the realm, come and go like the wind, and fear neither death nor injury. Can ordinary Golden Core cultivators compare?”

“The number of cultivators beneath Heaven may exceed theirs, but aside from Nascent Soul cultivators, I’m afraid that even if every cultivator beneath Heaven joined forces, they still might not be able to stop this army. And if you wake them here, your earth-escape art won’t be much use inside all this rock, will it? Is there any need to provoke a battle?”

Yun Ji looked around in astonishment. “Why did your master refine these things?”

“To catch this many crows, imprison one hundred thousand dead souls, and do it all without anyone discovering the operation—how could one man possibly manage that? He would have been busy until who knew what year and month. Some major power had to be cooperating with him.”

Niu Youdao raised a hand and pointed toward the great banner snapping in the wind.

Yun Ji turned. Seeing the character “Shang” across the flag, she understood. She also understood what these Crow Generals had been intended for. “I heard your master had a good relationship with Prince Ning, Shang Jianbo. Then was the rumor true that Shang Jianbo wanted to suppress all the cultivators beneath Heaven?”

“Whether the rumor was true is not the important part. It wasn’t only Shang Jianbo. Of all the states beneath Heaven, which one willingly accepts cultivators standing above it? Which ruler would not want to bring them under control? They simply lack the power to do it. Shang Jianbo was only the one whose intentions were exposed.”

“Shang Jianbo did find a way. And yet...” Niu Youdao paused. “Perhaps you’re right. Maybe everyone involved violated the natural cycle, died for it, and suffered Heaven’s retribution. They created all this but never had the chance to use it, never got to see the cause they planted bear fruit. Instead, it was left behind for later generations.”

He looked around and sighed. “One hundred thousand dead souls. No one could openly kill that many people just to collect their spirits. The disturbance would have been too great. Most of these souls were probably taken from soldiers who died on battlefields.”

“Shang Jianbo spent years campaigning for Yan. Countless men under his command died in battle. Only someone in a position like his could cooperate in quietly gathering this many souls from mountains of battlefield dead without attracting notice.”

“And it isn’t only Shang Jianbo and my master. Wu Chang is probably doing the same thing now. The wars among the three western states have killed countless people. They may have handed him exactly the opportunity he needed. If Heaven’s retribution really exists, then by that logic Wu Chang shouldn’t escape it in the end either.”

Even Niu Youdao smiled at that. It was only a joke.

Yun Ji was stunned. “Wu Chang is also refining Crow Generals on a large scale?”

“Why do you think I had you maintain contact with Ghost Mother? Now that Ghost Mother has suddenly gone silent, if my guess is right, there’s a very high chance Wu Chang’s refinement site is at Xianyin Mountain.”

Yun Ji did not understand. “How do you know he’s refining Crow Generals? And didn’t he already know how to refine them? Why wait until now?”

“The method he had before was incomplete. The Crow General refinement art came from Li Ge, Empress of the Wu Dynasty. Li Ge passed it to her trusted maidservant, who became the founding Saintess of the Demonic Sect. Li Ge left behind a Demon Canon containing the refinement method, and it was secretly passed down from Saintess to Saintess.”

“Before Zhao Xiongge’s Saintess lover died, she entrusted the Demon Canon to him. I don’t know what kind of bewitching soup Old Dong Guo fed Zhao Xiongge, but...” Niu Youdao gestured around them. “This place is the result.”

With his hands clasped behind his back, he continued strolling through the forest of sabers, spears, swords, and halberds, his manner almost leisurely despite the melancholy in his voice.

“When Monkey was taken into the Sacred Realm last time, I had no other choice. I made Zhao Xiongge hand the Demon Canon over to Wu Chang in exchange. That was what saved Monkey’s life.”

[End of Chapter 1438]