Chapter 87: Madness

By Blue Jade Lake, deep within the jungle.

The endless torrential rain came roaring down. The forest shuddered beneath the storm, while thick layers of mist spread wildly through the mountains. Apart from the howl of wind and rain and the restless sway of branches and leaves, there was no other sound in the woods.

Even the fiercest beasts could not be bothered to leave their lairs to hunt in the rainy season. Unless driven mad by hunger, all manner of birds and beasts curled quietly in their nests, enduring the ceaseless torment of day after day of rain.

As the mist parted, dozens of armored Ka warriors, their four eyes gleaming like ghostly flames, moved soundlessly through the forest.

They seemed like emissaries from the underworld, tasked with reaping lives. Wherever they passed, whether beasts hiding in tree hollows or birds crouched in their nests, all were quietly slain by a mere touch.

No bird or beast could make the slightest sound. The places they passed grew even more deathly still, and only the shrieking wind and rain ruled everything.

Behind these Ka warriors, hundreds of enormous Bladefin Spiders advanced swiftly and without a sound through the woods. Riding atop them were great numbers of dark-skinned warriors in light armor, a black mass moving toward the palace of the Savage Maiden.

Those hundreds of Bladefin Spiders carried at least ten thousand warriors. Every one of them wore a grim, hard expression, their eyes cold and resolute. They were plainly elite soldiers of the highest order. Their soft armor and weapons occasionally flashed with faint light. By the standards of the southern wilderness, every piece of armor and every weapon they carried was a fine sorcerous implement.

Behind this formation of Bladefin Spiders, twenty metal centipedes, each a hundred zhang long, threaded through the mountains and forests like a gale.

Upon their backs, nearly a thousand Ka warriors stood or sat, wearing cold smiles as their greedy eyes peered through the dense canopy toward the palace far ahead, set in the cliffside and seeming to float among the clouds.

On the foremost metal centipede, Jiang Yao's face, hideous as a wrathful ghost's, trembled faintly. Her eyes were filled with venomous flames as she ground her teeth and cursed under her breath.

Clearly visible on Jiang Yao's throat was a black scar the size of a thumb.

Some days earlier, Jiang Yao had gathered an allied force of dozens of tribes to besiege Ji Hao. Yet Ji Hao had turned the tables, using the soul-summoning spell of the Great Shaman Priest of the Ghostshade Tribe to disguise himself as though controlled by that priest. He had then openly approached Jiang Yao and dealt her a mortal blow.

Fortunately, Jiang Yao still possessed a life-saving talisman bestowed by Jiang Bo, and in the end she had managed to escape with her life, though grievously wounded.

But Ji Hao had summoned Qing Fu's inherited sorcerous treasure, the Life-and-Death Thorn. Those three black Life-and-Death Thorns, refined and nourished by the Great Shaman Priests of the Green Yi Tribe for over ten thousand years and passed through the hands of more than a hundred shaman priests, struck Jiang Yao with devastating force.

If not for the Great Shaman Priest of the Bi Fang Tribe standing behind her, able to marshal the tribe's many rare medicinal herbs to save her, Jiang Yao would already have been dead. Even with Jiang Bo's timely treatment, the poison of the Life-and-Death Thorns still left her with the cruelest of scars.

Her throat, her heart, and her lower abdomen, the three vital shaman apertures, had all been pierced by the Life-and-Death Thorns. The shaman poison had spread through her entire body. Jiang Yao, who had only broken through into the Great Shaman realm less than two years ago, had been knocked back down into the Little Shaman realm. Worse still, the ravaging poison had left her, even among Little Shamans, among the weakest of them all.

Her plan shattered, her body grievously wounded. If these had still been bearable, then Jiang Xue's death had driven Jiang Yao nearly to the brink of despair.

Jiang Xue's father, Jiang Shu, was an elder of the Bi Fang Tribe and a key general in Jiang Bo's faction, one of the right and left hands by which Jiang Bo extended his grip on tribal power. Jiang Xue, Jiang Shu's only daughter, was an important piece used by Jiang Bo and Jiang Shu to further their efforts to win over and control Ji Shu, as well as a crucial channel for strengthening the Bi Fang Tribe's infiltration of the Fire Crow Tribe.

With Jiang Xue slain, Jiang Yao had no way to answer to Jiang Bo or Jiang Shu.

"I will make them die," Jiang Yao growled in a frenzy, her voice hoarse and strained. From pupil to sclera, both her eyes had turned an eerie crimson, and the entire sockets shone with a fevered, deranged bloodlight. "Ji Hao, Ji Xia, Qing Fu, and everyone connected to them, all of them must die. They all must die!"

With a faint hiss, black smoke suddenly rose from the dark scar on Jiang Yao's neck. The shaman poison not yet fully dispelled corroded the fine flesh around her wound, making Jiang Yao wince in pain so sharply she nearly fell from the back of the metal centipede.

Diro, standing beside her, caught her at just the right moment, and his hands never let go afterward.

"Respected Lady Shaman Priest, your injuries are truly severe... Surely you have not yet exhausted those marvelous secret medicines of the Witching Medicine Sect?" Diro exclaimed theatrically, drawing in a deep, intoxicated breath. The faint fragrance lingering on Jiang Yao's body sent him into wave after wave of delight and enchantment.

The barbaric continent, the wondrous jungle, the noble and beautiful shaman priestess of a mighty tribal people—all of it held irresistible allure for Diro. He swore that he had already been utterly captivated by Jiang Yao's astonishing charm.

Now that Di Sha had left the Southern Wastes, the Bloodfang Band belonged entirely to Diro. He had more than enough power to do something for this beautiful, enchanting, and noble shaman priestess—of course, on certain conditions. He could not possibly make such a sacrifice for nothing, could he?

How exalted were the nobles of the Yu Clan? Diro would never be foolish enough to offer anything for free.

"Lord Diro!" Jiang Yao laughed softly, her scarlet eyes fixed tightly upon him. "Help me eliminate Ji Hao and Ji Xia's entire family, wipe out all my enemies, and I can promise you any reasonable request."

"Any request?" Diro's heart leaped with joy.

"Any request. Yes." Jiang Yao's voice turned chillingly cold and merciless. "Then right now, I want you to kill everyone in this palace, all of them, down to the last one. I know you people have your own powerful formations. I need you to lay down the strongest formation you command within this palace, capture Ji Hao alive, and kill everyone else."

Jiang Yao was breathtakingly lovely, and at this moment killing intent surged around her, with faint traces of bloodlight coiling all over her body. In Diro's eyes, she was like a poisonous exotic bloom, overflowing with a charm so intoxicating one could never free oneself from it.

"The most beautiful noble ladies in the imperial capital do not possess even one ten-thousandth of your beauty!" Diro said with a shrug and a sigh. "Oh, I truly am jealous... Very well, I can do anything for you... I really ought to consider carefully whether I should challenge your husband to a duel and kill him before your very eyes."

"Kill Ji Shu?" Jiang Yao laughed softly, then said with mad delight and malice, "If Lord Diro performs well enough this time, I would not mind giving you such an opportunity. To be honest, I am already somewhat weary of that useless man."

Diro let out an excited roar, then waved his hand hard.

Great swathes of faint gray mist mixed into the rain and drifted into the palace on the gale.

The guards standing outside the palace swayed, then suddenly bled from all seven apertures and collapsed soundlessly. Large groups of Bloodfang Band warriors surged up the steps. They rushed to the guards who lay paralyzed on the ground, raised their heavy weapons, and hacked down without mercy.

The sound of bones and flesh shattering kept coming from inside the palace. The thick smell of blood had barely begun to drift out before the rain battered it away completely.

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