Chapter 98: Giant Dragon’s Back

Chapter 98: Chapter 98: Giant Dragon’s Back

Chen Yue shot up silently from the ground. With a light tap of his feet, he appeared on the branch of a tree near the camp, his gaze fixed on the distant source of the suona music.

One look was all it took. Despite his resolute will, Chen Yue’s pupils couldn’t help but contract.

On the desolate road a few hundred yards from the caravan’s camp, a funeral procession had appeared out of nowhere.

The procession consisted of twenty to thirty people, all dressed in coarse white hemp robes and pointed white hats, their heads bowed as they walked in silence.

Four people at the very front carried an ink-black, thin-walled coffin. It seemed incredibly light, as their steps were strangely buoyant.

Those following behind held paper effigies of people and horses, soul-summoning banners, and other such items, all fluttering in the night wind.

No one in the procession wept or spoke. There was only the shrill, eerie sound of the suona, its source unknown, echoing ceaselessly across the open wilderness.

Then there was the gait of the funeral-goers. They didn’t walk normally. Their bodies were tilted slightly forward, shoulders almost still, as if pulled by invisible strings as they slowly approached the caravan’s camp.

A sudden uproar erupted from the caravan camp ahead.

The caravan camp ahead was instantly thrown into alarm. A multitude of torches were hastily lit, their orange-red glow dispelling a patch of darkness and illuminating the guards’ panicked faces.

All the guards had already drawn their swords, their blades gleaming coldly. They formed an Array Formation, their eyes locked on the bizarre, approaching funeral procession, cold sweat beading on their foreheads.

From within the camp came the suppressed gasps and sobs of women and children. The caravan supervisor, Qiu Jin, stood atop a wagon, his face ashen, shouting commands to the guards.

The commotion also startled Shen Dujiang and Hu Shaoyu. Although they were some distance away, a Martial Artist’s senses are naturally sharp when it comes to sinister, cold energies. They woke instantly, their faces pale as they stared toward the caravan.

Lin Quan, however, who had no Martial Arts training, had no reaction to this sinister energy in his deep sleep. In fact, it was as if he were being soothed or suppressed, causing him to sleep even more soundly, completely unaware of the imminent danger.

Chen Yue stood in the tree, his gaze fixed on the funeral procession.

Suddenly, Chen Yue’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Just as the funeral procession approached the caravan from one side, another group of figures emerged silently from the impenetrable darkness at the other end of the desolate road.

It was a wedding procession!

This group also had twenty to thirty people, all dressed in bright red celebratory robes, carrying an eight-man sedan chair draped in red and decorated with festive colors.

At the front, some carried large red lanterns, some held placards with the "double happiness" symbol, and others played sheng and xiao flutes.

Unlike the deathly, bizarre funeral procession, this wedding party exuded a twisted, cold festivity. Against the dim torchlight and the dark night, the bright red color was so vivid it was piercing, looking as if it might drip blood.

The moment the wedding procession appeared, as if disturbed by the commotion, the curtain of the great red sedan chair’s side window was gently pulled aside by a slender, delicate hand with nails painted bright red.

The curtain was lifted just a corner, revealing the partial silhouette of a bride in a phoenix coronet and robes of rank, along with the delicate hand holding the curtain.

BZZZT!

Inside his Sea of Consciousness, the Heart Nourishing Technique began to operate automatically at an unprecedented speed, without any prompting from Chen Yue. A cooling sensation surged through him.

At the same time, the Heart Tiger, which had fused with the Martial Dao Will of the Tiger Roar Golden Bell Shield, seemed to sense a mortal threat. It let out a silent yet ferocious roar deep within his Sea of Consciousness, shaking his Divine Soul.

A bizarre assault—a mixture of extreme bewitchment, icy stillness, and a sense of great terror and misfortune—traveled along Chen Yue’s line of sight like an invisible poisoned stinger, stabbing fiercely at his Sea of Consciousness.

’I can’t look!’

Chen Yue’s scalp went numb. The instant his Heart Tiger roared and the Heart Nourishing Technique sent its warning, he instinctively tore his gaze away from the lifted corner of the sedan chair’s curtain.

Chen Yue had looked away, but many in the caravan lacked his keen Heart Spirit perception and reaction speed.

The moment the curtain was lifted, revealing the pale hand with red nails and the silhouette in the phoenix coronet, many of the caravan guards and workers who had instinctively glanced over met the sight within the sedan chair head-on.

"Ah!"

"My eyes!"

In the next instant, a series of short, shrill screams erupted from the caravan camp.

All who had seen the sight inside the sedan chair, regardless of their Cultivation level, began to slowly bleed a thick, crimson fluid from the corners of their eyes.

They clutched their eyes, collapsing to the ground and curling up in agony. Some fainted on the spot, while others made ragged, gurgling sounds, their Divine Souls clearly having suffered unimaginable damage.

All this, from just a single glance!

"The Red and White Fiends... It’s the Red and White Fiends! Close your eyes! Everyone, look down! Don’t look!" an experienced elder in the caravan shrieked.

The camp instantly fell into chaos as panic spread like a plague.

CLANG!!!

The deep, sonorous toll of a great bell suddenly boomed from the center of the caravan camp.

The sound was so solid it seemed tangible, instantly overpowering the eerie suona and dispelling some of the bone-chilling cold that had pierced their Divine Souls.

Chen Yue whipped his head around to look.

Atop a green-canopied carriage in the center of the caravan, two figures now stood.

One of them held an object with both hands shaped like a much smaller version of a bianzhong chime bell. Its entire body was a dull, Ancient Bronze color, its surface covered in densely packed runes.

Beside Yali stood another old man, his aura every bit as powerful as Yali’s. His face was currently flushed red, veins bulging on his forehead, as he tightly gripped a small mallet also cast from Ancient Bronze.

The head of the mallet was resting against the small bronze bell in Yali’s hands. Clearly, the earth-shattering toll had been produced when this old man struck it with all his might.

That single strike had left his aura fluctuating and his face flushed, a clear sign of immense exertion.

The bell’s toll manifested as visible, pale-gold ripples of sound, which rapidly expanded outward in all directions from the bronze bell.

Wherever they passed, the grayish-black mist that had quietly crept in began to rapidly dissipate and recede.

The sound ripples moved with incredible speed, sweeping over the bizarre funeral procession and the great red sedan chair with its lifted curtain in the blink of an eye.

Under the impact of the pale-gold sound waves, the funeral-goers, the wedding party, the black coffin, the red sedan chair, and even the pale hand and the silhouetted bride...

...all of it began to distort and ripple violently, like a reflection in water disturbed by a stone.

Then, before everyone’s eyes, the two bizarre processions, along with the piercing suona music, vanished without a sound, like flowers in a mirror or the moon’s reflection in water.

The wilderness returned to silence, leaving only the whistling of the night wind and the chorus of ragged gasps and suppressed sobs from the caravan camp.

Many of the guards and workers collapsed to the ground, drenched in cold sweat, their faces pale as they gasped for air, boundless terror lingering in their eyes.

Those bleeding from their eyes were hastily helped up and attended to.

At some point, Shen Dujiang and Hu Shaoyu had silently appeared at the base of Chen Yue’s tree. They looked up at him, the lingering fear still visible on their faces.

Shen Dujiang wiped the cold sweat from his brow. He looked at the two figures standing atop the carriage in the distant camp, his eyes lingering on the small bronze bell in Yali’s hands, which had now dimmed. He let out a long sigh of relief.

"We were right to follow this caravan! They really did have a trump card for dealing with things like this. That bell must be an incredibly powerful Spirit Soldier!"

Hu Shaoyu, standing beside him, nodded repeatedly, his voice trembling with residual fear.

"Yeah. If we were traveling alone, we would have been the ones to run into those Red and White Fiends tonight."

Chen Yue leaped down lightly from the tree, his expression grave.

After a brief period of chaos and tending to the injured, the caravan camp did not choose to hold its ground until dawn.

Instead, under the command of Yali and the other old man, the guards forced themselves to rally and quickly packed up. They decided to set off immediately, braving the darkness to travel through the night!

Evidently, the appearance of the Red and White Fiends had made the caravan leaders acutely aware of the extreme danger of this place. They didn’t dare to linger for another moment, even after having just used the bronze bell to repel the evil entities.

Seeing this, Chen Yue’s group of four naturally didn’t dare to delay either.

Shen Dujiang and Hu Shaoyu quickly hitched the horses to their carriage and woke the still-slumbering Lin Quan, planning to continue following the caravan.

At least that way, they would have an extra layer of protection if they encountered similar malevolent beings.

Traveling at night, visibility was extremely poor. The moon was hidden by clouds, and the starlight was dim.

Neither the caravan ahead nor Chen Yue’s group behind dared to move too quickly.

The sound of carriage wheels rolling over the rough dirt road was exceptionally clear in the silent wilderness. Everyone was on edge, weapons in hand, guarding against any unknown dangers that might lurk in the darkness.

Every rustle of grass in the wind, every hoot of an owl, made their hearts tighten.

Fortunately, the rest of the night passed without incident.

When the first sliver of dawn appeared on the eastern horizon and the faint morning light began to dispel the thick darkness, the taut nerves of everyone—both in the caravan ahead and in the carriage with Chen Yue’s group of four—finally began to relax.

...

「Thirteen days passed in a flash.」

During this time, the caravan ahead had stopped in three more towns of varying sizes to rest and resupply.

Chen Yue’s group of four maintained their unspoken agreement, keeping their distance, and the two parties had no further interaction. However, after the night of the Red and White Fiends, the caravan’s wariness toward the four "tails" behind them seemed to have lessened somewhat.

On this day, the official road underfoot became noticeably wider and smoother. It was paved with a mixture of flagstones and rammed earth, wide enough for several carriages to travel side-by-side.

The flow of people, horses, and carriages clearly increased, a far cry from the desolate, uninhabited feeling of the previous days.

The scenery along the road also gradually changed from barren hills to cultivated fields and scattered villages.

The sinister, cold aura in the air also seemed to have been diluted by the growing population and the open terrain.

Hu Shaoyu sat on the shaft of the carriage, squinting as he carefully identified the terrain by the roadside and in the distance. A look of irrepressible excitement and joy slowly spread across his face.

He suddenly pointed toward the horizon, his voice trembling slightly with excitement.

"Look! Ahead! Celestial State Prefecture! We’re finally here!"

Everyone followed his gaze.

In the far distance, where the heavens met the earth, the majestic silhouette of a massive city had appeared.

Even from several miles away, the sheer scale of the city was staggering.

The towering city walls were like the spine of a great dragon, winding endlessly into the distance, their ends out of sight.