Chapter 78 Struggling mortals

For the next several days, the caravan continued sending teams of Gu Masters to scout the surrounding mountains. The prolonged delay slowly caused dissatisfaction among several Vice leaders, while the deaths of several scouts also gave Gu Masters from other clans an excuse to stir up trouble.

However, Jia Fu was a Rank Four Gu Master who had traveled across the Southern Border for many years. He possessed both strength and experience. After personally investigating those stirring up trouble within the caravan, he dragged out several mortals who had been spreading rumors and executed them publicly before the entire caravan. When blood spilled before their eyes, the complaints and gossip quickly disappeared.

On the fifth day, the scouting teams finally discovered a relatively safe route. It still passed through the territories of two beast groups led by Beast Kings and an area occupied by a large Gu swarm, but compared with the other routes they had investigated, the danger was at least manageable.

To minimize potential losses, Jia Fu immediately reorganized the caravan. The most valuable goods, medicine, and food were moved into the center, with most of the Gu Masters positioned around them. Large transport Gu and beasts such as Black-Skinned Fat Beetles, Treasure Brass Toad, Baggage Toads, and Winged Snakes formed another layer outside them. Their enormous bodies could withstand attacks from ordinary wild beasts and Wild Gu worms, turning them into a moving wall around the caravan.

The outermost positions were left to the large number of mortals traveling with them. In the eyes of most Gu Masters, mortal lives were worth far less than valuable goods. If sacrificing some of them could distract wild beasts and Gu long enough to reduce the caravan’s losses, there was little reason to hesitate.

Naturally, the mortals themselves were unwilling, but they had no power to refuse. Without cultivation, their lives were cheap, and once they chose to follow a merchant caravan through the wilderness, they could only accept such risks.

The reason so many were still willing to take that risk was simple: the pay was far higher than what they could earn by remaining in a clan village. Working there might earn a mortal only one primeval stone in an entire month, while following a merchant caravan could bring around ten. During particularly profitable journeys, the Gu Masters might even increase their payment to twenty primeval stones.

For many mortals, joining a caravan was therefore nothing more than gambling with their lives for wealth.

Over the following days, the caravan traveled more than two hundred miles through the Youling Mountains and successfully crossed the territories of two large beast groups: Shadow Leopards and Dark Poison Scorpions.

The Shadow Leopards were troublesome because they could merge into shadows and move rapidly while becoming resistant to ordinary physical attacks. Fortunately, Jia Fu had considerable experience. He took out hundreds of Light Path Gu that the caravan had originally intended to sell and distributed them among the Gu Masters. Shadow Leopards were naturally suppressed by Light Path methods, so even though most of these Gu were not particularly high-ranked, their combat strength fell sharply under the concentrated light.

There were no truly invincible beasts or Gu in this world. Every method possessed strengths and weaknesses, and victory often depended on whether a Gu Master understood them well enough to exploit them.

Passing through the territory of the Dark Poison Scorpions proved far more troublesome. Their hard carapaces and sharp pincers gave even ordinary members of the group strength comparable to Rank One Gu, while the poison carried by their tails was far more dangerous. Once contaminated by enough of it, even flesh and bone could be corroded away within half an hour.

With no convenient method to counter them, Jia Fu eventually chose the simplest solution. He ordered groups of mortals to move ahead of the caravan and draw away the Dark Poison Scorpions, sacrificing their lives to create a path for the Gu Masters and goods behind them.

The area ahead was a vast dark-green swamp. Translucent bubbles constantly rose from the murky surface before bursting and releasing foul, corrosive gas. Fortunately, one of the caravan’s Gu Masters possessed Fossil Gu, which could harden the soft mud and soil into solid ground, gradually creating a path through the swamp.

However, such a large disturbance inevitably attracted the swamp’s native inhabitants, the Dark Poison Scorpions.

Each Dark Poison Scorpion was roughly the size of a wild dog. Its pair of enormous pincers could easily cut through stone, while the venomous tail behind it could suddenly extend to nearly three meters, making its attacks extremely difficult to avoid.

“Help!”

“Save me! I don’t want to die!”

“Don’t come any closer! Bastard, get away from me!”

Screams echoed throughout the swamp as dark-green scorpion tails repeatedly shot forward, piercing through the chests of fleeing mortals. Some desperately tried to resist, only for their arms and legs to be severed by the scorpions’ powerful pincers. Those struck by the venom gradually turned black, while the most severely poisoned had entire sections of their bodies corroded away.

Before long, nearly every Dark Poison Scorpion in the surrounding swamp had been drawn toward the strong scent of blood and the large number of struggling mortals.