Chapter 766: The Silent Valley
Part of the frost covering the wooden bridge came from the broken ice beads that had fallen earlier, its chill born from the creaking breaths. But another part came directly from that distant zither sound, equally cold, even surpassing it—could there truly be something colder than the breath of a Frost Dragon?
For a human like Chen Changsheng, it was difficult to find an answer, but for Haidi, the answer was obvious.
Snow Old City was extremely cold, especially that demon palace forever hidden in shadow, where bitter winds blew year-round without end.
He was so shocked, so bewildered, so terrified, precisely because he thought of that place.
He had known beforehand that something would change tonight, but when the change truly came, he still found it hard to bear, because he had not expected that *that one* had come.
...
...
"It seems the demons really don't like the Cinnabar Pill, for such a big shot like Haidi to come personally."
Tang Seventeenth Lord looked down at the courtyard in the snowy valley below, a smile of ambiguous meaning spreading across his face.
The Tang clan of Wenshui had paid a tremendous price to uncover some clues, confirming that the Cinnabar Pill should have originated from Gaoyang Town, and then traced it to this snowy mountain valley.
He hadn't deliberately leaked this extremely important intelligence; he had merely closed his eyes for a moment, and the news spread to many places.
Big shots from the imperial court had come. Big shots from the demons had come.
The news had been sent out from the Songshan Military Prefecture; the demons should have received it much later, but they were only half a night behind, and the one who came was a truly major figure.
From this, one could imagine how seriously Snow Old City regarded this matter.
For the demons, it was utterly unacceptable that humans possessed such a miraculously effective medicine.
Over the past year on the battlefield, the casualty ratio between the strong of both sides had clearly begun to tilt in humanity's favor, dropping from the one-to-four ratio of the past millennium to the current one-to-three-point-seven. This data seemed not to have changed too much, but what if it continued like this? What if the quantity of Cinnabar Pills increased? One had to know that the war between humans and demons had lasted a thousand years; even the smallest change could ultimately affect the overall situation.
So the demons would definitely try to kill the master of the Cinnabar Pill and destroy that prescription.
If that scene truly played out, Tang Seventeenth Lord would feel some regret, but he would also feel very satisfied, just like at this moment.
As he spoke, the sword in his hand was still lodged in the belly of that innkeeper from Songshan Town.
The innkeeper gasped painfully, finally closed his eyes, and breathed no more.
He now stood on a cliff edge high in the snowy mountains, surrounded by corpses everywhere.
Only one person remained alive.
The former chief priest of Yinghua Hall, his face pale, teeth chattering, kept his head lowered, not daring to look at Tang Seventeenth Lord.
These dead men were all Tang Seventeenth Lord's trusted subordinates, all from Wenshui, all killed by his own hand in this short span of time.
This was, of course, killing to silence them.
Tang Seventeenth Lord's scheme seemed to use Chen Changsheng's blade to deal with Zhu Ye and the others, thereby opening up the situation for the Tang clan in Tianliang Commandery, but in truth... he wanted to kill Chen Changsheng. Murdering the Pope—even the Tang clan of Wenshui could not bear that consequence—so he could leave no evidence, not even these trusted subordinates he relied upon. As for Zhu Ye, Ning Shiyi, and the Tianhai family, even if they later grew suspicious, they could prove nothing against him. On the contrary, to avoid the wrath of the Li Palace, they might even have to cooperate with him.
"Lord Haidi probably didn't expect the master of the Cinnabar Pill to be the Pope, did he?"
The current situation could no longer change. The demons were already set on killing the master of the Cinnabar Pill; if they discovered it was Chen Changsheng, they would certainly not let him live.
Thinking that the current Pope was about to die before his eyes, Tang Seventeenth Lord couldn't help but feel a touch of emotion.
He gazed at the lake garden below the snowy ridge and revealed a delighted smile.
Suddenly, a zither sound came from somewhere in the night, and the smile on his face gradually froze stiff.
...
...
The place that first heard that zither sound was not the lake garden, nor the snowy cliff high above, but somewhere else.
That place was over ten li from the courtyard, on the only abandoned mountain path leading to Gaoyang Town.
Zhu Ye, Ning Shiyi, Tianhai Zhanyi, and several hundred elite soldiers had withdrawn from the courtyard and were reorganizing here, unsure of what they planned to do next.
They heard that clear, cold zither sound but paid it no mind, because their attention was immediately seized by the sounds coming from over ten li away.
The thunderous roar, the trembling of the earth, the sounds of wind and rain and swords—all indicated an extremely fierce battle taking place there.
Those strong practitioners had come from the north of the snowy mountains.
North of the snowy mountains was the demon domain.
The ones coming were naturally demon strong practitioners.
If not mistaken, those demon strong practitioners were currently besieging Chen Changsheng and that black-clad girl.
By all logic, whether Zhu Ye or Ning Shiyi, they should have rushed back to help at the fastest possible speed.
On one side was the human Pope, on the other were demon strong practitioners—what to do was a truth even a three-year-old child would understand, something requiring no thought at all.
But Zhu Ye quietly stared into a certain part of the night, Ning Shiyi coldly gazed at the snowy peak, and Tianhai Zhanyi furrowed his brow, as if pondering some difficult matter.
The mountain path was very quiet. For a long time, no one spoke. It was eerie.
Suddenly, Zhu Ye and Ning Shiyi's expressions grew even more solemn.
The sounds from that distant courtyard did not stop.
Only then did they realize that Chen Changsheng's sword path had already grown to such a level, and as for that black-clad girl... legends were indeed legends.
Zhu Ye and Ning Shiyi exchanged a glance, seeing the lingering fear in each other's eyes. Now it seemed that if they had not conceded and withdrawn earlier by the lake, but had tried to force an attack relying on their own strength, they would not have succeeded—only earned themselves the crime of attempting to murder the Pope...
Tianhai Zhanyi's cultivation was much lower; he could not perceive the power of Chen Changsheng and that black-clad girl through the distant sounds and shifts in qi.
So even though he knew what the eerie silence on the mountain path meant, he still found it somewhat dull.
He recalled that zither sound which had suddenly appeared and then vanished, and looked into the night ahead on the mountain path.
The night was suddenly broken—broken by the zither sound, broken by footsteps.
A straw sandal trod upon the frost covering the mountain path, slowly advancing, like stepping on autumn leaves, making a crisp sound that was quite pleasant.
The bare foot in the straw sandal was very small, because its owner was a girl of twelve or thirteen.
The girl had delicate features, very pretty, but the space between her eyes was slightly wide, and her pupils leaned slightly toward the bridge of her nose, giving her a somewhat wooden expression.
A middle-aged scholar walked behind her, carrying nothing, only holding a zither in his arms.
Without any visible movement from him, the strings gathered and scattered on their own, producing a zither sound of extreme clarity and coldness.