Chapter Sixty-Three: The Allied Forces

The sound of drums and horns thundered through the air, deafening shouts rising to the sky as dozens of colorful banners fluttered high above. The roars and cries of battle beasts and war birds whipped up a wild wind, making the forests within a hundred miles sway violently in the gale.

Warriors of the Fire Crow and Fire Leopard clans swiftly retreated up the rugged mountain path, taking position atop the cliffs and guarding the only narrow trail that led up and down.

The shamans of the Fire Leopard clan wore bitter expressions as they mercilessly executed one captive after another from the Blood Crocodile and Ghost Toad clans. Obsidian daggers slit the throats of the prisoners, and as the blood spurted out, it was instantly swept up by a scorching gust, every drop merging into the newly raised ancestral banners of the Fire Leopard clan.

Nourished by the essence and souls of over two thousand captives, more than two hundred phantom fire leopards silently slipped out from the banners, lying in wait amidst the poisonous brambles.

“Fools who have no sense of danger, aren’t they afraid of the Fire Crow clan’s vengeance?” Qingying swung his longbow, standing at the edge of the cliff and shouting loudly.

Ji Hao stood with his arms folded across his chest, gazing at the groups of warriors running back and forth in the distant forests, silent.

In the southern wilds, mustering so many elite warriors from various clans for a joint assault was truly an extravagant feat. The jungle trails were treacherous, and mobilizing warriors from dozens of tribes for an ambush at a specific location required masterful strategy and coordination—a daunting task.

Moreover, the warriors of the southern wilds were famously voracious. A single warrior at the Wu Person level could consume dozens of pounds of meat a day, and the appetite of shamans, both minor and great, was even more insatiable. Gathering the elite from so many tribes meant that the logistical burden could easily devour several mountains of beast meat in a short time.

Whoever orchestrated this spectacle had invested an astonishing amount of manpower, resources, and wealth.

Fire flickered in Ji Hao’s eyes as he carefully identified the banners fluttering in the distance. Having activated his innate Golden Crow Eyes, he could now see the movements of even the tiniest insect within a dozen miles.

As the banners waved, Ji Hao recognized the totems painted upon them one by one.

“The Green Ox clan, the Wild Ox clan, the Barbaric Ox clan… Ah, the famed Three Oxen tribes. Aren’t they supposed to be neutral?”

“The Saber-Toothed Tiger clan, the Furious Lion clan, the Wind Hawk clan… Hmph, these usually cautious, scattered tribes, are they courting death?”

But soon, Ji Hao spotted totems among the banners that made him feel a mounting pressure.

“The Fierce Ghost clan, the Shadow Fiend clan, the Insect Gu clan… Damn it, even these strange groups that never associate with the southern tribes have gotten involved? Are they trying to challenge the Fire Crow clan? Challenge the dominion of the land?”

Whether it was the Three Oxen tribes or these mid-sized groups like the Saber-Toothed Tiger, Furious Lion, and Wind Hawk, they had always kept to themselves in the southern wilds, never daring to provoke overlords like the Fire Crow or Blackwater Mystic Serpent clans. They hovered between the two great factions—unlikely to rise to power, but with little fear of ruin, remaining neutral.

If someone offered them enough benefits and profits, it was understandable for these neutrals to band together and try to carve a piece of fat from the Fire Crow clan.

But the Fierce Ghost, Shadow Fiend, Insect Gu, and several other clans were different. They never fit in with the rest of the southern tribes, forming their own unique lineages that even the mighty Fire Crow clan preferred not to antagonize.

Take the Fierce Ghost clan, for example. They lacked bloodline inheritance, but possessed a bizarre “Fierce Ghost Legacy.” For generations, they had worshipped malevolent spirits and evil ghosts of the mountains. When their infants were born, they merged with these spirits, becoming neither human nor ghost, and gained all manner of strange and unimaginable abilities.

Though their numbers were few, the ghosts they inherited were powerful. A newborn that merged with a fierce ghost immediately possessed the strength of a minor shaman, and once fully grown, had the power to rival a great shaman.

The Shadow Fiend, Insect Gu, and other such clans were also of this alien breed—barely human anymore, more like some other race that only resembled people.

Normally, these alien clans rarely interacted with outsiders, and few tribes were willing to deal with them.

Yet today, no fewer than a dozen such totems appeared before Ji Hao.

“A tremendous undertaking… Whoever you are, is all this really worth it? Is it for my father and mother, or is it for me?”

Ji Hao stared at the fluttering banners, exhaling heavily. Turning to Qingying, he said quietly, “Uncle, release the wind sparrow.”

Qingying’s face twisted as he nodded, carefully drawing from his robe a tiny, palm-sized, emerald-tailed bird. This was a wind sparrow unique to the Qingyi clan—small, elusive, and able to blend into dappled shadows mid-flight, making it nearly impossible for even the sharpest hawk to detect its passage.

“Go, to Cold Creek Valley! Good sparrow, tell Elder Brother Ji Xia what’s happening here!” Qingying fed the wind sparrow a few pellets made from his own blood mixed with the essence of five grains, and whispered to it.

The sparrow tilted its head and, in a crisp, clear voice, repeated Qingying’s words, not missing a syllable.

“Yes, just like that—tell Brother Ji Xia that this is a trap laid by others.” Qingying squinted, raised his hand, and the wind sparrow gave a sharp cry, turning into a faint streak of wind and vanishing into the sky, covering seven or eight miles in the blink of an eye.

But from the side, a blast of black wind howled forth—within it, dozens of iron-clawed, vulture-like birds, each no bigger than a palm and wreathed in ominous energy, shrieked as they surrounded the wind sparrow.

The emerald sparrow darted and twisted with astonishing agility, evading claw after claw in a heartbeat.

Just as it was about to escape with its tiny body and lightning speed, a sharp, ghostly wail of a child echoed from afar.

Atop a treetop several miles away, beneath the totem of the Shadow Fiend clan, a bare and ghostly infant, utterly devoid of human warmth, stood swaying on a branch. It let out a bizarre wail toward the wind sparrow.

With just that one cry, the sparrow, previously flying with peerless elegance, seemed struck by lightning. Its body jerked, and it plummeted heavily from the sky.

Leaves rustled below as a venomous green python silently poked its head from the thicket and swallowed the wind sparrow in a single gulp.

Ji Hao’s heart sank, and Qingying’s face turned so grim he nearly burst into tears. “Hao, I raised that sparrow since I was a child—those bastards, I’ll kill every last one of them!”

Across the river, the dense forest parted as two massive trees were pushed aside. A towering figure, three zhang tall, emerged carrying a wooden stake on his shoulder. The giant, bare-chested and covered in twisted ghostly faces of a pale green hue, looked at Ji Hao and Qingying’s group and rumbled in a deep voice, “Come out and beg for mercy on your knees, and we’ll only kill half of you!”

The forest quaked with strange, ghoulish laughter echoing from the depths of the woods.

***

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