A Night in the Mountains
Mu Yu’s team explored the forest for roughly two hours to find their way out of the peculiar forest. Hao Yingjun struggled to squeeze through the trees due to his physique and would grumble whenever the branches grazed him. Sadly for him, nobody felt sorry for him.
“Hong Yan, I’m bleeding,” bemoaned Hao Yingjun.
“Hah, trees scratching a cultivator. You suck,” Hong Yan responded.
Hong Yan went over to the small and quiet creek Mu Yu mentioned. Pebbles lied dormant at the base of the clear creek. The creek ran through the forest, but they weren’t sure where it led to. Trees and more trees grew along the bank. Expecting to not get lost traversing the forest was almost absurd.
They filled their water containers with water and their spiritual energy. Mu Yu. Sunset was around the corner; entering the forest was unadvised at that hour.
Cheng Yan rendezvoused with the group after going up to the sky for an overhead view. Besides the lack of birds, nothing was out of the norm.
Xue’er sat near Gu Yitian and fantasised, while he didn’t even spare her time of the day.
Juggling stones, Hong Yan, in a worried undertone, questioned, “Do we really have to spend ten days in this forest?”
“Don’t worry, Hong Yan. How about I tell some jokes? Once upon a time, there was this chubby bl-”
“You are the joke,” interjected Hong Yan, brushing Hao Yingjun off.
“Oh, you smile at the sight of me? Terrific. Don’t take your eyes off me for the next ten days, then,” replied Hao Yingjung, picking up stones and copying Hong Yan.
The spat amused Mu Yu, who sat on one of the large rocks by the bank. At the very least, Hao Yingjun brought the laughs.
The only clue they had to work off was the hunter’s report, which were elemental demons and a youth in red who saved him.
Mu Yu: Wait! Would he be the same youth that’s now leading Daoist Qing Song by the nose? Why would he have come here? If he was kind enough to rescue the hunter, why would he force Daoist Qing Song to be pledge subservience to him? There aren’t many cultivators who wear red. Either way, he’s after Shifu. Fortunately, he can’t search all of Moyun Mountains solo. I wonder if he’s still at Green Pine Sect and if Daoist Qing Song has ascended to Primordial Infant Realm.
The only thing Mu Yu was glad about was his shifu had returned to Mount Dustfallen.
“Let’s rest here for the night and continue tomorrow morning,” instructed Cheng Yan, before going off to collect branches for a fire.
“What’s the plan if we start a fire and a fire demon crashes the party?” queried Hong Yan.
“That’d save us the trouble of searching,” answered Hao Yingjun, throwing a branch into the fire.
“There’s not even an animal to hunt,” complained Xue’er, taking a bite of her dry rations nobody relished.
“We’ll have to tough it out for now. Let’s take turns sleeping. We’ll have two people on watch while the others get some shut eye,” proposed Cheng Yan.
“I’m with Hong Yan, then,” Hao Yingjun blurted right away.
“No thank you,” responded Hong Yan.
Hao Yingjun shrugged. “Okay, in that case, I can watch you sleep.”
Both options were nightmares to Hong Yan. Hopeless, she cursed him and opted to keep watch with him on the end. It was better than having him stare at her all night.
“I’ll be with Brother Gu Yitian. Dustfallen Sect can stay as a stable,” Xue’er said.
“It’s best we don’t have people from the same sect in a team. We need to keep vigilance as our priority,” Gu Yitian asserted, knowing it wasn’t fun and games if those from the same sect banded together to try something in the middle of the night.
Mu Yu sarcastically asked, “Oh, I see. Chubby over here is stronger than your senior sister. If he attempted to harm her, would she be his match? If you wanted to ham Xue’er, would she be able to fight back?”
Hao Yingjun: “Hey, Brother Mu Yu, what are you saying? I would never hurt Hong Yan.”
Cheng Yan: “Enough. We’re all here to achieve the same goal. We have to trust each other, not second guess each other. The idea was to give everyone more time to rest. Since you’re not happy with it, we’ll split up into teams of three. Xue’er, you and I will be a team. The other three are the obviously the other team.”
Gu Yitian: “Hmph.”
Mu Yu’s team was on watch duty first. Hao Yingjun only stopped flapping his gums with Hong Yan after everyone else dozed off. Needless to say, he was the speaker, and she was responsible for filtering her ears.
The blue haze of day had lifted to reveal the stars and sky’s argent smile. The only audible sounds were crackling flames and occasional rustling leaves. Mu Yu was rendered perplexed upon hearing faint tweets he never heard during the day. It didn’t make sense. In addition, the scent he caught a whiff of earlier grew more and more prominent. He thought it was his imagination since the others didn’t smell it.
“Is it just me, or are there more sounds around?” whispered Hong Yan.
Mu Yu and Hao Yingjun simultaneously and exchanged eye contact. Hao Yingjun asked, “How about we go check it out?”
“I’m against it. It’s too dark, therefore too risky,” Mu Yu conveyed.
Mu Yu crept over to a tree by the creek and sent his divine sense into the tree. A snake from the fifth treetop behind Mu Yu slithered over and monitored at a magpie singing jovially from the treetop, oblivious to the snake’s presence. A squirrel came out of nowhere, bouncing from tree to tree. Two spiders hastily crawled along tree leaves and began their web project. A rabbit hopped out into the open and bit into two strands of grass on the ground before sprinting off. A leopard lying in ambush sprang and pursued the rabbit.
Mu Yu opened his eyes. He was surprised non-nocturnal animals were active at night. Perhaps something changed them…? He went back to the team and quietly reported, “Something isn’t right. The wild beasts and insects are active now of all times.”
“Huh? Where were they during the day, then?” Hong Yan inquired.
Mu Yu shook his head.
“Did I just hear a tiger?” remarked Hao Yingjun.
The others focused in on their surroundings. They could hear the tiger’s voice from the forest on the other side of the small creek. Hong Yan flinched and got up. Noticing her look around, Mu Yu asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nature calls,” answered Hong Yan.
Hao Yingjun rose to his feet and thumped his chest. “Since it’s dark, I’ll go with you.”
“Get lost!” exclaimed Hong Yan, running off to a tree. “If I see you anywhere near me, you’ll be in for it.”
Hao Yingjun scratched his head. “Be quick, then. How about I ask Xue’er to go with you?”
“Just… leave her alone. More importantly, how much do you know about the youth who rescued the hunter?” Mu Yu inquired.
Hao Yingju searched his database before answering, “I don’t know anything about him. Heaven forbid I could figure out who’d have so much free time on his free hands to come here and coincidentally rescue an ordinary hunter. Frankly, it’s hard to believe the story when we only have one testimony. We’re only here to entertain the request. The elders don’t believe elemental demons are hanging out around here. I’m starting to question its truth now that I’m here and have witnessed some unexplained phenomena. Apparently, he took the hunter straight out of the mountain before vanishing without a trace.”
“Did the hunter provide a description of the individual?”
“My father reckons it would’ve been hard to describe the elemental demons so vividly unless he actually saw them. There was also the conversation between the wood demon and fire demon. There’s no reason for an ordinary human to fabricate the story, especially considering the fact they wouldn’t lie to us.”
“Where did the elemental demons go after we defeated them seventy, eighty years ago or whatever it was?”
Discovering how ignorant he was, Mu Yu made up his mind to ask his shifu about the elemental demons when he had the chance. It would be stupid for him to not know anything about them when he possessed their ability.
“As far as I know, they were practically exterminated, but I don’t know where they went. The records say that humans sealed five of their leaders in a robust formation. Without their leaders, the minions were panic-stricken and routed, exterminated for the most part. Some supposedly fled to places humans couldn’t enter, such as the oceans, volcanoes or dark underground places.”
“Aaahh!”
Mu Yu and Hao Yingjun juddered upon hearing Hong Yan’s scream. Hao Yingjun instinctively raced over to her.
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