Chapter 150 — Frenzy
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 5 of 7
Seven days later, entrusted by the Orthodox leaders—Daoist Zhenren Daoyan, Abbess Pucheng, Yun Yifeng, and the others—a party of Orthodox disciples set out from Canglan Mountain and reached the southwestern lands. Because the matter was grave, all three great sects sent their most capable disciples, and as if by coincidence, these people had long known one another.
Xiao Yichen, Lin Jinghong, and Lu Xueling of the Canglan Sect; Facheng and Fajing of the Fanyin Temple; Li Xun and Yan Fei of Fenxia Valley—seven in all. After leaving Canglan Mountain they traveled with utmost caution, resting by day and moving by night, avoiding clashes with the beast-demons on the road as best they could, racing at full speed toward the southwest, hoping to discover why great numbers of beast-demons had suddenly converged upon that region.
When these Orthodox disciples first set out, though they well knew the danger of the journey, not one of them showed any thought of turning back, for the sake of the common people of the world. But by the seventh day after their departure, every one of them had gone pale and fallen silent day and night—even Xiao Yichen, the most eloquent of them; even Facheng, whose composure was deepest; even Li Xun, who had meant all along to find occasion to speak with Lu Xueling—all had fallen silent.
A journey of a thousand li: the farther south they went, the more horrific the sights. Either whole villages and whole cities lay strewn with corpses and bleached bones, or village after village, city after city stood utterly deserted, fertile fields turned to scorched earth. No one knew why the beast-demons should set fires as well, why they were so cruel and bloodthirsty—just as no one knew when this great calamity would ever end.
Faint ghostly cries seemed to echo forever over the wild southern lands, telling of sorrowful, wretched things long past.
Once they entered the southwestern region, the party grew even more cautious, but now they faced a grave difficulty. First, they could find no local inhabitants at all: the common people had either fled north before the beast-demons came or perished miserably in this calamity. So the Orthodox disciples had no way to question locals about the beast-demons' movements. On the other hand, the beast-demons for the most part could not speak the human tongue; even when they risked capturing a few of the creatures, all they got in answer was roars and struggling—how could anything be learned from that?
At their wits' end, the party conferred and at last, on Xiao Yichen's proposal, resolved to risk shadowing the beast-demons in secret, going wherever the beasts gathered thickest, to see what they were actually about. Thus they tracked them through the southwest for three days and three nights, and several times came within a hair of being discovered by beasts with keen senses and sharp smell and hearing. Fortunately Xiao Yichen, Facheng, Lin Jinghong, and the rest were all people of the keenest intelligence, and each time, at the very brink of life and death, they slipped past without real danger. Even so, they gained little.
Just as they were beginning to lose heart, by pure accident they found in a forest the beast-demons had passed through a demon-sect disciple who had gone mad. Under careful questioning—or one might say patient coaxing—they gradually learned that the beast-demons' great incursion into the southwest had in fact been a great battle with the demon sects, and that the outcome was nothing less than a total victory for the beast-demons: the three great demon factions, once so arrogant and invincible, had been all but annihilated in that battle.
The news struck them all dumb with shock—and among them all, Lu Xueling, standing farthest away, went especially pale!