As that languid voice drifted leisurely through Grey Street, Old Ma, hunched over and about to close the door, shuddered all over.
He whipped his head around, and extreme delight and reverence burst forth in his eyes at once.
The hazy grey mist was lightly parted by a pair of fair, delicate jade feet.
Wu Xiang had at last returned.
She was still in that same form as always — a thin black gauze draped over her carelessly, languid and bewitching.
Only, upon that peerlessly beautiful face there faintly showed a trace of weariness that would not disperse, and the hem of the black gauze skirt was stained with a touch of road dust.
Clearly, this journey of hers had not been as leisurely and comfortable as she made it appear on the surface.
"My lord! You've finally returned!"
Old Ma hurriedly went out to greet her, the creases on his face all crowded together in excitement, and quickly ushered Wu Xiang to a seat inside.
Wu Xiang sat down in the grand armchair with exceeding casualness, jade hand lightly rubbing the space between her brows, her beautiful eyes turning slightly to sweep a glance at the utterly empty Grey Street outside.
"Oh?"
Wu Xiang yawned, her tone carrying a measure of offhand mockery:
"I go out on a single trip, and this Grey Street is already all but dead and gone?"
"My lord doesn't know — out there, the very sky is about to come crashing down."
Old Ma attentively presented hot tea while smiling bitterly, and reported the great upheavals of this period in full, exactly as they had happened.
The all-out war between Black Blood Stockade and the White Bone Alliance, the terrifying beast tide that had erupted deep within the Hundred Thousand Great Mountains, and how those keen-nosed rogue cultivators of Grey Street had scattered like startled birds and beasts…
Wu Xiang held her teacup and listened quietly, her expression showing no great ripple.
To her, the life and death of a few clans, even if they fought until blood ran in rivers, was nothing more than a farce.
Until—
"Oh, right, my lord. There's also that rotten brat Lin Mu."
Reaching this point, Old Ma could not help smacking his lips, his tone carrying a note of astonishment.
"That boy's become something else entirely. The war's only half fought, and he's already broken through to Rank 3 middle stage!"
Clink.
The jade hand that had been idly toying with the tea lid stopped with exceeding abruptness.
The lid knocked against the rim of the cup, giving off a crisp little sound.
"Rank 3… middle stage?"
Wu Xiang slowly lifted her eyes, and within those peach blossom eyes, originally hazy and alluring, a trace of genuine astonishment flashed.
She turned her head and looked at Old Ma. "How long have I been gone?"
Old Ma hurriedly reported the exact span of time.
Having heard that span of time, Wu Xiang fell utterly silent.
Within the gloomy sundry shop, it was quiet enough that only Old Ma's heavy breathing could be heard.
Wu Xiang knew Lin Mu concealed a great secret and must possess something extraordinary about him.
But this rocket-like pace of advancement had clearly caught even her somewhat off guard.
After that brief astonishment, the corners of Wu Xiang's mouth curved, bit by bit, into an exceedingly intrigued arc.
"Heh…"
She laughed softly under her breath, a certain sharp light glinting in the depths of her eyes:
"Then this really has become interesting."
Watching that obscure, unreadable smile of Wu Xiang's, Old Ma stood off to one side, yet his heart tightened faintly.
He hesitated again and again, gritted his teeth, and in the end still could not help forcing himself to speak:
"My lord… out there the beast tide runs rampant now, and the slaughter between the two armies is exceedingly brutal. Though this child Lin Mu advances in cultivation with great speed, in a meat grinder like that, he's still a bit thin, in the end."
Old Ma swallowed. "If it truly comes to the moment between life and death, could… could my lord perhaps step in and lend that boy a bit of a hand?"
Clearly, over these days of contact, this old fox had, without even realizing it, come to regard Lin Mu as half a junior of his own.
Hearing Old Ma's plea, Wu Xiang leaned languidly back against the chair and let out a scoffing laugh.
She looked at Old Ma the way one looks at an idiot, and shook her head with exceeding certainty:
"Lend him a hand? Old Ma, are you truly blind, or only pretending?"
Wu Xiang lifted the teacup, lightly blew the foam aside, and lowered her head to take a sip.
The next moment, her brows knit slightly as the tea scalded her tongue. The tip of her tongue slipped out for a moment, her manner carrying an unexpected touch of girlish artlessness.
She set the cup down beside her offhandedly, leaned lazily back into the grand armchair, found a more comfortable posture, and only then spoke through a yawn:
"That boy—"
"His life is not yet a thing for you or me to worry over."
...
Time, amid the baptism of blood and fire, ground arduously forward several more days.
The first large-scale beast herd assault at last gradually ebbed away across this broken land.
The outer regions of Black Blood Stockade had by now been utterly transformed into an asura's hell.
Corpses lay strewn across the fields.
Great swathes of mountain forest had been burned black by raging fire, and the once lush herb gardens and mines were now smeared everywhere with dried, blackened bloodstains and mountains of savage beast carcasses.
A thick stench of rot and scorched flesh permeated the air.
The Gu Masters had been fighting at high intensity for days on end.
Within this sleepless, ceaseless meat grinder, the bottom-tier Rank 1 and Rank 2 Gu Masters had suffered grievous casualties; that long list of the fallen was enough to suffocate anyone.
Even those lofty Rank 3 clan elders were now mostly weary in expression, no small number carrying unhealed wounds upon their bodies.
Many Gu worms had been damaged in the successive vicious battles, and the feed supply for some Gu worms had begun to run tight; the wails of the wounded crammed every corner of the Medicine Hall; and the consumption of strategic materials such as Primeval Stones, medicinal herbs, and Gu materials had reached a staggering figure that made scalps crawl.
This colossal entity that was Black Blood Stockade had now been drained to the utmost extreme.
But fortunately.
The beast roars, in the end, had gradually receded into the distance.
Upon that scarred and ravaged land, many blood-soaked Gu Masters let out their first genuine breath of relief.
Some did not even have time to put away their weapons before sliding straight down along the stockade wall to sit on the ground, closing their eyes and sinking dead asleep.
They all thought: At least… they could finally catch their breath for a few days and get a proper, peaceful sleep.
However.
The cruelty of fate lies precisely in this: it always loves to kick you into an even deeper abyss the moment you glimpse the first light of hope.
On one particular morning, before the dawn mist had yet dispersed, from amid the distant mountain ranges, exceedingly abruptly, came a low, murderous horn blast.
"Wuuu—!"
At first, there was only this one sound.
The sound echoed through the empty valleys, seeming somewhat solitary.
But after only a few breaths' time—
"Wuuu—!"
"Wuuu—!"
"Wuuu—!"
A second! A third! Countless more!
The mournful White Bone horns, like a death knell blown from the depths of hell, instantly joined into one earth-shaking wave of sound, utterly tearing apart the quiet of the morning!
Atop the city wall, those Black Blood Stockade Gu Masters who had only just shut their eyes jerked their heads up in horror as though electrified, their bloodshot eyes filled with disbelief.
Within the great deliberation hall, Patriarch Lin Cang, who had been sitting with eyes closed to recuperate and seize the time to recover his Primeval Essence, abruptly opened his eyes and shot to his feet from the head seat.
Bang!
The hall doors were slammed open, and a scout responsible for reconnaissance came stumbling and tumbling in, face ghastly pale, shouting himself hoarse:
"Patriarch! It's bad!"
"The White Bone Alliance — they've marched out!!!"
As the field of vision passed over range after range of burned-out mountains, upon those flanking mountain paths not yet utterly trampled by the beast tide, banner after banner embroidered with ghastly white skulls snapped and unfurled in the cold wind!
The White Bone Alliance's grand army, like an ant swarm blanketing the mountains and fields, was pressing at full speed along the mountain paths toward the heartland of Black Blood Stockade!
This was an exceedingly lethal grasp of timing!
The deep-scheming Li Mang — he was like a venomous serpent that had endured to the utmost limit, waiting doggedly for precisely this moment!
Waiting until Black Blood Stockade had just fought through the first, most brutal wave of the beast tide — this window of weakness, with the wounded at their most numerous, the Gu worms in their worst condition, the personnel exhausted to the extreme, and the foundations vastly depleted!
Strike a man while he is ill, and take his life!
But if it were merely the alliance's grand army pressing down on their borders, Lin Cang might still have been able to forcibly suppress it with the might of Rank 4.
What made it more despairing still was that deep within the mountains, that vast forest which had only just briefly quieted down had once again fallen into extreme agitation!
Rumble, rumble, rumble—!
Great swathes of birds rose into the sky in terror like black clouds, blotting out the heavens and blocking the sun.
Mournful, violent, terrifying beast roars exploded one after another in the depths of the mountain ranges!
The earth underfoot began once more to shake violently.
Amid that thunder, a torrent even more vast and tangled than the first wave was surging madly from the deepest reaches of the mountains toward the outer regions of Black Blood Stockade!
A new wave of the beast tide!
Atop the high city wall of Black Blood Stockade, a clan elder with a head of silver hair gazed at the two torrents closing in from afar at once.
That face of his, covered in furrows, lost every trace of color, bit by bit.
"They're coming again…"
The old clan elder murmured in despair, the cane in his hand dropping to the ground.
Ahead lay a new wave of the beast tide, blanketing heaven and earth, its end nowhere in sight.
To the flank lay the White Bone Alliance's grand army, rested and gathered in strength, baring its sharp fangs.
And behind them stood the kinsmen of Black Blood Stockade — already spent to exhaustion, their foundations gravely damaged, their very hands trembling.
Only at this moment did a trace of cold finally surface upon Lin Cang's rock-hard face as he stood before the great hall.
He had at last truly grasped Li Mang's most venomous third layer of scheming!
The eruption of the beast tide had never been a tool by which Li Mang hoped to destroy Black Blood Stockade on its own.
Its true purpose required only this— to ensure that Black Blood Stockade could never catch its breath!
Below the mountain, the White Bone Alliance's charge horns grew ever more shrill and piercing.
Within the mountains, the frenzied tide of ten thousand beasts howled like a doomsday tsunami, surging and falling, shattering the firmament.
Two torrents, each capable of destroying everything.
One a man-made disaster.
One a natural calamity.
In this moment, they had formed a perfect closed loop, and came pressing down upon Black Blood Stockade at once, with a thunderous roar.
Black Blood Stockade.
In peril, and its fate hanging by a thread!