Chapter 192 — The Most Hopeless Batch

Everyone's eyes lit up at once. Yun Que chuckled. "Into the southern wilds, to see whether the rebels have any true masters among them? Of course we must go! We cannot let those rebellious bumpkins look down on our Taixue Academy. This poor monk will make them awaken to the Buddhist Dharma, take refuge in the Buddha, and set their hearts on goodness!"

Shen Mu shook his head inwardly. These fellows were still underestimating the danger of this journey.

This road would be hard going indeed—a road one might not finish even with one's head lashed to one's belt.

"Life and death are fated. Now we shall see whether Imperial Preceptor Jingping, this man hailed as the foremost under the gods, truly deserves his name!"

Imperial Preceptor Jingping, lightly equipped, strode southward. Shen Mu led the others after him and questioned Si Yunxiang and the rest about what they had encountered on the battlefield, sighing again and again.

Si Yunxiang, Shen Wanyun, and the others had far better luck than Shen Mu. Though they too had been blasted away by the Dutian Demon King, they had not run into a monstrous expert like Long Jiaonan.

The dragon qilin had landed not far from them. It was huge and an obvious target, so they had rushed straight toward it. When the horde of heavenly demons descended, they fought their way through, circling around the dragon qilin.

And when faced with the surging heavenly demon horde, this dragon qilin had fought with terrifying power, and Si Yunxiang and the others had relied on its strength to survive this tribulation.

Shen Mu was surprised and glanced at the dragon qilin. Xue Hu'er whispered in his ear, "Young Master, Big Fellow eats our food and drinks our drink, yet on the road he neither works nor exerts himself. And now, of all things, he protects others but not us. I think that besides squeezing dragon saliva out of him, we could squeeze something else out of him too."

"I was thinking the same thing," Shen Mu nodded.

He looked back at Tianbo City, growing ever more distant, and thought: "Now that Jingping's great army has entered the city, Long Jiaonan should die amid the chaos of soldiers, no? And the Dragon King of the Yulong School is most likely dead too. A pity about the Yulong School's unique arts. The Hongshan Sect has probably been wiped out root and branch. What a pity I never learned a spell like the Demon-Repelling Decree..."

When he had summoned the Dutian Demon King, the Daoists of the Hongshan Sect had arrived, attempting to use the Demon-Repelling Decree to drive the Dutian Demon King back to Dutian. Unfortunately, the Dutian Demon King was too powerful and destroyed them with a single move.

But the Demon-Repelling Decree was a spell specifically meant for dealing with summoned ghosts and gods, exceedingly subtle and ingenious; if performed by a stronger person, it could indeed drive the Dutian Demon King back.

Unfortunately, with the death of the Hongshan Sect's followers, this art had been lost.

Tianbo City was a scene of utter chaos. Soldiers were still repairing the city walls, clearing the rubble of collapsed houses, and hauling debris out of the city.

On the river, thousands of ships and tens of thousands of vessels raced forth, carrying great armies across the river. The troops did not stop in Tianbo City but headed straight south.

Some soldiers in Tianbo City were hunting down remnants of the rebel army and mopping up the heavenly demon horde from Dutian. They discovered that some common folk had survived. A soldier carrying a picture book of the rebel leaders walked among the surviving commoners, comparing them one by one against the portraits.

"That girl is beautifully born."

The soldier walked past a panic-stricken young woman and praised her inwardly. She wore a dark green long skirt that fell to the tops of her feet, her hair done up in a palace bun, her brows delicately painted, a light dusting of powder on her face, a small red mouth like two crimson pearls, and slender, curving willow brows. One glance told him she was a lady of a great house in Tianbo City.

The soldier looked at her a couple of times more, then walked elsewhere. The girl's eyes were like autumn waters, and from her left earlobe hung a bright red jade earring. Suddenly the earring moved, stretching its body.

The earring was in fact a small red snake, threaded through her earlobe—it looked as though it were carved from red jade, but it was a living creature.

If Shen Mu had been there, he would certainly have ordered the soldiers to seize this woman.

He had seen Long Jiaonan's true face; when Long Jiaonan molted, he had seen every inch of that body. When this woman had just crawled out of her skin, she had not been adorned; now, restored to the dress of a daughter, she looked nothing like the bewitching young master of the Yulong School!

Several soldiers were moving corpses in the city, tossing them onto carts and pushing the carts outside the city for burial. Long Jiaonan followed behind, weeping, "Good sirs, is my father's corpse among these?"

The soldiers halted. "Little lady, there are too many corpses in the city, and we do not know which is your father. Take a look—is he on the cart?"

Long Jiaonan looked over them and shook her head. "I did not find him."

One of the soldiers said, "Most likely he is out at the potter's field beyond the city. General Yu ordered us to dig several large pits there to bury the corpses. All the bodies are carried there, and the pits have not yet been filled in. Why not come with us and take a look, little lady?"

Long Jiaonan thanked them and followed the soldiers out to the potter's field beyond the city. There, a great pit had been dug, some ten zhang deep or more, filled with thousands upon thousands of corpses.

Long Jiaonan looked up. Beyond this pit, the potter's field held dozens more like it, and at the edge of each pit soldiers were pushing carts forward and dumping the dead into the pits.

Long Jiaonan looked around, then suddenly called out loudly, "Father, Father! Your daughter has come to find you. If you can hear me, answer me!"

She called several times, and the soldiers were caught between laughter and tears. "This woman must have lost her mind."

Just then, a faint voice came from one of the great pits: "I am here. I am molting, but I am too badly wounded..."

The soldiers at the pits were all dumbfounded. Then an officer suddenly said, "Something is wrong here! Everyone, be on guard!"

Hearing this voice, Long Jiaonan smiled and laughed softly. "Little Red."

The tiny red snake hanging from her left ear stretched its body, dropped from her earlobe, and the instant it hit the ground it swelled enormously, becoming in the blink of an eye a colossal serpent. It opened its mouth and spewed poisonous wind, sending the soldiers at the potter's field reeling.

The giant serpent moved like wind, devouring soldier after soldier, while Long Jiaonan walked into the pit, flinging corpses aside one by one, until at last she dug out the Dragon King, buried among the mass of bodies.

"Your daughter thought you had died!" Long Jiaonan said with a giggle.

"Daughter?" The Dragon King of the Yulong School gave a cold snort.

Long Jiaonan's expression shifted slightly, and she lowered her head. "Your son thought you had died..."

The Dragon King sat up. "I feigned death and hibernated, deceiving that demon god, and was thrown into this mass grave as a corpse. I only wonder how the Red Flood-Dragon is faring."

He pursed his lips and gave a low whistling cry, and before long a small monster with claws—neither snake nor dragon—crawled out of the mountain forest.

The Dragon King breathed a sigh of relief and examined the Red Flood-Dragon's wounds. "Both the Red Flood-Dragon and I need to molt and rest for a time. Good son, I leave matters to you for now. Let us go!"